The Silence of the Girls

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker is an adaptation of the Greek epicThe Iliad, focusing on the experiences of Briseis, the Greek queen of Lyrnessus and the war-prize of the soldier Achilles. In her retelling of the myth and the history of the Trojan War, Barker looks at the impact of the war not only on its most famous female character, Helen, but also on the many women who were killed, wounded, or taken as prisoners during the conflict. As the novel progresses, Briseis struggles to create her destiny despite a lack of agency and the realities of a nation ravaged by war.

The novel opens as the story of the Trojan War opens – with the ransacking of the city of Lyrnessus. There is a brutal retelling of the siege that ended in the Greeks’ capture of Briseis. Led by the warrior Achilles, the city is burned to the ground, every man in the city murdered by the Greek raiders. After the men are massacred, all of the women of the city are rounded up and handed out to the Greek warriors as prizes. This includes the former Queen Briseis, now only a concubine. In her life before, Briseis was married to King Mynes. The couple did not have any children; this coupled with her beauty and status makes Briseis the perfect gift for the leader Achilles, to whom she is given as a sex slave.

Briseis hates Achilles and everything he stands for. She remarks, sourly and with great pain, that it is the lot of many women to “spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers.” Briseis narrates the rest of the novel, which follows the story of The Iliad as Achilles and his fellow soldiers lay siege on Troy in order to return the beautiful and elusive Helen to her rightful home. The novel follows, in particular, Briseis's life as Achilles's property. During an argument with Agamemnon over the Trojan woman Chryseis, Briseis is given to Agamemnon as a consolation prize.

Achilles refuses to join the war, is eventually persuaded, and finally dies in battle alongside Patroclus and Hector. Briseis remarks on the deaths of all these men, including Achilles, who has impregnated her with his child before he dies in the fields outside Troy. Knowing that Briseis is pregnant, Achilles prepares to have her married off to his lieutenant, so she and the child will be cared for after his death. Again, Briseis finds herself returning to a place that is not her home with a man whom she did not choose.

Some of the most dramatic moments in the novel involve the sacrifice of Priam's daughter on Achilles's burial mound and the revelation of the fates of the Trojan women whose lives were altered by the events of the war. Briseis feels for these women, whose lives and fates she understands; she, too, has had to sacrifice everything she knew and loved because of the brutal violence of men.

The novel is unique because of Briseis's positionality, and because of Barker's decision not to make the ancient war glamorous. Unlike many texts that admire the feats of the soldiers, Barker is more interested in its cultural impact, and particularly the emotional toll that women bear as a result of the upending of thousands of lives. Briseis, caught between Achilles and Agamemnon, the two powerhouses of the Greek fleet, is in a unique position to reflect on the motivations of both men, their actions, and their characters. Unable to rationalize their actions, Briseis reveals the true nature of war as violent, often tied primarily to the reputations and egos of powerful men.

Pat Barker is the author of nearly a dozen novels. From England, she is best known for her Regeneration Trilogy, which is based on her own grandfather's experience in World War I. The three novels discuss the trauma of war and its aftermath, a theme that is common in many of her novels. Earning a Guardian First Book Prize and a Man Booker Prize for her work, Barker was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the arts in 2000. The Silence of the Girls is her most recent novel. It was published in 2018.