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Pat Barker: The Silence of the Girls (Book Review)
Which I picked up because a) Pat Barker (had liked her WWI trilogy), b) I'd heard it said it was the anti Madelaine Miller/Song of Achilles. (I'm good with the second half of Madeline Miller's Circe, but Song of Achilles felt like an excellent example of a terrible slash story to me.) Also that Briseis, who is the main character, is decidedly not in love with Achilles, and that the novel is very clear on that what all those warriors are doing when taking women as "prizes" is rape.
All of this turned out to be true.
On the first page, Briseis tells us that they used to refer to Achilles as "The Butcher" in her realm, which reminded me of Christa Wolf's novel Kassandra, where he's only Achill das Vieh. Now, he does get somewhat more complicated than that in the course of the story, but unlike Miller, Barker doesn't blame his dark side on Mom. And Patroclus isn''t a pacifist, either, though he is the first man in the Greek camp to treat Briseis decently. (He's also kind to his "own" slave girl. This does not stop the woman in question being given away as one of the prizes in the games at Patroclus' funeral, just like his armor.) Barker is in general really good at the everyday horror of slavery, and doesn't make the mistake to pretend it's only one side who does the slave owning. Briseis is aware that before becoming a captive, she never stopped to wonder what the slaves her own household was owning felt - in this version, she was the wife of a minor king before the Greeks came - , and that the those who were already slaves, there isn't much difference whether they're owned by Trojans or Greeks.
The captured women at the Greek camp get fleshed out into individuals, and to respond in different ways to their new existence. I've seen one review declare that Barker starts out inspired by the Iliad and ends in an Euripides vein (The Trojan Women, of course), and that's very true. The time described more or less corresponds with that of the Iliad - the war has been going on for nine years already when Briseis gets captured, which starts the novel, though unlike The Iliad, it doesn't end with Hector's funeral (or Achilles' death) but the Greeks going their various ways after the fall of Troy (and one more murder, that of Polyxena as sacrifice to the dead Achilles). The fragile comradery between the women at the camp is one of the few consoling spots in what is a very dark story.
Any take on the Trojan War has to decide what to do with the gods - do they exist, or do the human characters just believe they do? If they exist, do they show up in person? Do their various interferences from the Iliad get explained by natural causes or do they stay divine interference?
The Silence of the Girls goes with existing gods. Achilles' mother is indeed a sea goddess. The plague arriving at the Greek camp after Agamemnon has insulted Apollo's priest Chryses could be explained naturally, but later when Achilles mangles Hector's corpse Barker includes something I haven't seen other versions take over from the Iliad - the nightly restoration of said corpse to unmutilated completeness and prevention from decomposition. (It's been many years, so I don't remember whether it was Aphrodite or Apollo responsible in the Iliad.) Otoh, no one but Achilles ever interacts with a god, and his encounters with his mother are either observed from a great distance or recalled by him in memory. So the gods aren't "characters" in the novel the way they are characters in the epic.
It's very much a book engaging with its inspiration on an in story and meta level. For example: the novel gives us what is one of the most famous scenes from the Iliad, Priam coming to plead for his son's corpse with Achilles, his son's killer, and Achilles being finally moved by this out of his nihilistic rage and grief and into compassion, but twice. The first time around, it's basically a re-telling, including Priam's line "I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son". It is as moving here as in the original. But then, the pov switches back to Briseis, and we read her think while she hears this statement: “I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers.”
That grief and rage are treated differently when coming from men - the Iliad is, after all, the story of "the wrath of Achilles" - while women are expected to shut up about and get over it - is a powerful point the narrative makes. At the same time, Barker acknowledges that it's still Achilles' story that frames the narration (which starts with his conquest of Briseis' town and is moved along by his actions - the argument with Agamemnon, the refusal to fight, the avenging of Patroclus etc.); Briseis by her position as a captive responds, instead of initiating, and only finally becomes free of the narrative she's in at the end. (Not metaphorically by death, I hasten to add. Briseis here is a survivor.)
In terms of characterisation of the mythological figures, it's more or less as you'd expect - Agamemnon is vile, I already mentioned that Patroclus is decent (though a far cry from a pacifist; the novel maintains Achilles' line to him that he (A) wishes everyone else was dead so they could conquer Troy all by themselves), Priam and Chryses are devasted yet determined fathers, and so forth - with one notable exception: Odysseus comes across as a character amalgan between himself and Thersites (he's the one to make jokes about Achilles and Patroclus being lovers, which unless I'm misremembering Thersites does in Homer), and even takes over Pyrrhus' most revolting deed (killing Astynax, Hector's son). Now there are shady actions by Odysseus during the Trojan War that often get airbrushed out in modern versions (ask Ajax, or Philoctetes), but these are unique to this novel, which surprised me somewhat. Anyway, that otherwise the characterisations are basically traditional but that the readers see these same men raping and pillaging from the pov of their victims makes the novel so effective in its disturbing power. Not an easy read, but one that stays with you.
All of this turned out to be true.
On the first page, Briseis tells us that they used to refer to Achilles as "The Butcher" in her realm, which reminded me of Christa Wolf's novel Kassandra, where he's only Achill das Vieh. Now, he does get somewhat more complicated than that in the course of the story, but unlike Miller, Barker doesn't blame his dark side on Mom. And Patroclus isn''t a pacifist, either, though he is the first man in the Greek camp to treat Briseis decently. (He's also kind to his "own" slave girl. This does not stop the woman in question being given away as one of the prizes in the games at Patroclus' funeral, just like his armor.) Barker is in general really good at the everyday horror of slavery, and doesn't make the mistake to pretend it's only one side who does the slave owning. Briseis is aware that before becoming a captive, she never stopped to wonder what the slaves her own household was owning felt - in this version, she was the wife of a minor king before the Greeks came - , and that the those who were already slaves, there isn't much difference whether they're owned by Trojans or Greeks.
The captured women at the Greek camp get fleshed out into individuals, and to respond in different ways to their new existence. I've seen one review declare that Barker starts out inspired by the Iliad and ends in an Euripides vein (The Trojan Women, of course), and that's very true. The time described more or less corresponds with that of the Iliad - the war has been going on for nine years already when Briseis gets captured, which starts the novel, though unlike The Iliad, it doesn't end with Hector's funeral (or Achilles' death) but the Greeks going their various ways after the fall of Troy (and one more murder, that of Polyxena as sacrifice to the dead Achilles). The fragile comradery between the women at the camp is one of the few consoling spots in what is a very dark story.
Any take on the Trojan War has to decide what to do with the gods - do they exist, or do the human characters just believe they do? If they exist, do they show up in person? Do their various interferences from the Iliad get explained by natural causes or do they stay divine interference?
The Silence of the Girls goes with existing gods. Achilles' mother is indeed a sea goddess. The plague arriving at the Greek camp after Agamemnon has insulted Apollo's priest Chryses could be explained naturally, but later when Achilles mangles Hector's corpse Barker includes something I haven't seen other versions take over from the Iliad - the nightly restoration of said corpse to unmutilated completeness and prevention from decomposition. (It's been many years, so I don't remember whether it was Aphrodite or Apollo responsible in the Iliad.) Otoh, no one but Achilles ever interacts with a god, and his encounters with his mother are either observed from a great distance or recalled by him in memory. So the gods aren't "characters" in the novel the way they are characters in the epic.
It's very much a book engaging with its inspiration on an in story and meta level. For example: the novel gives us what is one of the most famous scenes from the Iliad, Priam coming to plead for his son's corpse with Achilles, his son's killer, and Achilles being finally moved by this out of his nihilistic rage and grief and into compassion, but twice. The first time around, it's basically a re-telling, including Priam's line "I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son". It is as moving here as in the original. But then, the pov switches back to Briseis, and we read her think while she hears this statement: “I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers.”
That grief and rage are treated differently when coming from men - the Iliad is, after all, the story of "the wrath of Achilles" - while women are expected to shut up about and get over it - is a powerful point the narrative makes. At the same time, Barker acknowledges that it's still Achilles' story that frames the narration (which starts with his conquest of Briseis' town and is moved along by his actions - the argument with Agamemnon, the refusal to fight, the avenging of Patroclus etc.); Briseis by her position as a captive responds, instead of initiating, and only finally becomes free of the narrative she's in at the end. (Not metaphorically by death, I hasten to add. Briseis here is a survivor.)
In terms of characterisation of the mythological figures, it's more or less as you'd expect - Agamemnon is vile, I already mentioned that Patroclus is decent (though a far cry from a pacifist; the novel maintains Achilles' line to him that he (A) wishes everyone else was dead so they could conquer Troy all by themselves), Priam and Chryses are devasted yet determined fathers, and so forth - with one notable exception: Odysseus comes across as a character amalgan between himself and Thersites (he's the one to make jokes about Achilles and Patroclus being lovers, which unless I'm misremembering Thersites does in Homer), and even takes over Pyrrhus' most revolting deed (killing Astynax, Hector's son). Now there are shady actions by Odysseus during the Trojan War that often get airbrushed out in modern versions (ask Ajax, or Philoctetes), but these are unique to this novel, which surprised me somewhat. Anyway, that otherwise the characterisations are basically traditional but that the readers see these same men raping and pillaging from the pov of their victims makes the novel so effective in its disturbing power. Not an easy read, but one that stays with you.
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Song of Achilles felt like an excellent example of a terrible slash story to me
OMG, you too? I was in the Achilles fandom back in college, so 2002-2005, which was right around when the Brad Pitt Troy movie came out, which meant there was a *lot* of slash fic, and I was reading everything I could get my hands on, fanfic and published fiction. Ten years later, I picked up Song of Achilles, said to myself, "Not only do I feel like I've read this fic before, I think I've *written* this fic," and put it down partway through. I still haven't finished it. The only reason I think about going back is that I can write Achilles and Patroclus any given day, so I could theoretically offer this for Yuletide...but I still haven't been able to bring myself to finish reading the book.
Agamemnon is vile
For some reason, this is always the case. I myself even set out to write a vile Agamemnon (he messed with my fave Achilles!), but once I started my Mycenaean archaeology-inspired fanfic (I took Mycenaean archaeology in grad school, and was obsessed with reading the scholarship on it for about a year after grad school), I discovered I was writing him sympathetically, dealing with a whole bunch of unsolvable military and political problems right before the Bronze Age Catastrophe.
Yes, my fave Achilles, not Briseis: just like with Fritz, fandom for me is an escapist place where I specifically go to get *away* from real-life morality and just enjoy mass killing. :P If Briseis kills lots of people, she can be my fave too.
Thersites (he's the one to make jokes about Achilles and Patroclus being lovers, which unless I'm misremembering Thersites does in Homer
I think you're misremembering not Thersites but Homer. It's been many years since I read either, but I remember Thersites cracking these jokes in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and I remember obsessively researching the question of whether there was any evidence for Greek homoeroticism in Homer--twice. (I was emotionally invested in my ship, okay. :P) Once in college and once in grad school. And the second time, I came to the conclusion that there wasn't, that scholars who claimed there was had poor methodology, that homoeroticism of the Athenian et al. kind came about centuries later, and was projected by Aeschylus, Plato, and their successors up to the present day back onto Homer. I remember lecturing my students on this very point when I TAed Homer. I vaguely remember that you can watch homoerotic depictions appear on vases even before it makes it into the literature that is extant today.
So notwithstanding that I haven't read Homer in about ten years and have forgotten a great deal, I feel reasonably confident that you're thinking of Shakespeare, but right about Thersites.
It's been many years, so I don't remember whether it was Aphrodite or Apollo responsible in the Iliad.
This falls under the category of things I have 100% forgotten, and Wikipedia says it's both.
there are shady actions by Odysseus during the Trojan War that often get airbrushed out in modern versions (ask Ajax, or Pirithoos)
Philoctetes, or am I forgetting something?
(One day, we should tag-team teaching
no subject
Sympathetic Agamemnon: I can think of one modern exception where he is indeed not vile but sympathetic, a Yuletide story, no less, by Inhammer. It was called „Young Agamemnon gets the job done“ and actually pulled off an YA style adventure (tongue-in-cheek) with young Agamemnon, exile (along with brother Menelaos) in Sparta while Thyestes and Aigisthos are ruling Mycenae after having finished Atreus together. Kid Helen gets abducted by Theseus, kid Clytaemnestra, Agamemnon and Menelaos set off to rescue her. And it actually works. I‘m still amazed and impressed as hell at Inhammer pulling this off, and stylishly, too.
Thersites: you‘re right, the homophobic joke is in Shakespeare, not Homer; googling tells me Thersites in Homer has a go at Agamemnon‘s selfishness and gloryhounding and wants to inspire a mutiny.
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That's from Euripides' The Trojan Women: he does not throw the child over the walls himself, but the herald Talthybios brings word to Hecuba that Odysseus was the one to convince the rest of the Greek lords that it would be too dangerous to let even an infant prince of Troy live to avenge his father and his city.
(When I was in grad school, I wrote a poem called "Not the Song of Briseis," which is not online. It was an anti-epic.)
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Though Wikipedia now tells me that there are Greek vases where Pyrrhus kills Priam by clubbing him to death with the corpse of Astyanax. Now that's hardcore. And not something I remember from my myth days.
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ETA: That's exactly what I figured happened with Pirithoos! And thanks for the rec, I'll check it out. One of your last recs turned out to be the Edward IV and Richard III Hunger Games AU I didn't know I needed.
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I'm glad you liked the Ricardian Hunger Games AU! I still maintain someone should write a Frederician one. ;)
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I once saw The Trojan Women staged at Salzburg, by a Romanian ensemble, performing in their language. Very powerful experience, despite this being before the age of subtitles; the acting was this good.
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I still maintain someone should write a Frederician one. ;)
WELL. The reason I haven't tried is that my last fandom was Hunger Games, and I tend to get obsessive about things, and the last time I wrote a Hunger Games AU, it took over my life for three years and was almost half a million words. I fear this might distract me from my more important Frederician goals. Not saying it'll never happen, mind you. Your outline was very inspiring. Just...there be dragons in my brain.
(Btw, I decided that FW tried to get Fritz reaped, and Wilhelmine couldn't volunteer for him, so Katte did, and Fritz had to watch Katte being beheaded. A year later, FW's efforts were successful, but Fritz won, but he always feels that Katte bought him that extra year that gave him better odds.)
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Anyway, back to Achilles, are you aware of this version?
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Anyway, back to Achilles, are you aware of this version?
Had not seen that, thank you.
#my son didn't mean to desecrate your temple! #he was just being non-sacrilegiously murder-rapey!
:D #Priorities
Scrolling down on that tumblr page, I see:
Observation: it’s convenient for Trojan War ficcers (published for $ or not) that accounts differ as to whether Odysseus or Pyrrhus committed infanticide. Depending on who’s supposed to be more sympathetic, watch the dead-baby-hot-potato commence.
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Thetis knows what Apollo cares about! Also Aphrodite is laudably not heteronormative and respectful of future slashers but clearly overlooked that Achilles will be Achilles...
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My only concern as a potential reader, where I fear I might sense a pet peeve getting pushed on, is whether the text may read as a bit too "modern feminist" for me. Hard to tell from your review. I think it's a very delicate balance to own women's voices and the kind of conversations they must often have had about how unfair things are on women AND do so without undue (for my taste) modern anachronism. I expect that, like all of us, most of the women bought into most of what their culture expected.
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