#The scene where hectors is dragged around by Achilles was super fucked up because that was my BOYFRIEND

[atiglain]

One thing to know about me is that I also have an annotated copy of the illiad. It’s an abridged version from my childhood and every time Hector’s name is mentioned it’s surrounded by glitter-gel pen hearts bc he was my first crush as a child.

#When I hit my ankle in a scooter and my dad came over he was like oh you hit your Achilles tendon! And I was like my What. And he was like #Achilles tendon! And I was like don’t say that to me. #The scene where hectors is dragged around by Achilles was super fucked up because that was my BOYFRIEND #AND YOU KILLED HIM

[pinelife3]

The Silence of the Girls

Pat Barker’s newish (August 2018) book The Silence of the Girls (TSOTG) recounts the final months of the Trojan War, as told by a slave woman. The obvious companion piece to TSOTG, and the key text Barker is responding to, is The Iliad, but Barker doesn’t pull out the way Homer did:

The Iliad only covers a few weeks in the last year of the war and does not include the famous Trojan horse or the actual defeat of Troy: at a high level, The Iliad covers Agamemnon’s lady troubles, the plague, Achilles’ sulking and decision not to fight, the death of Patroclus, Achilles’ return to battle, the death of Hector, the abuse of Hector’s body and Priam’s visit to Achilles.

TSOTG covers these events (also starting in media res - more on that later) from the perspective of Briseis. Our protagonist, formerly the wife of a king, was taken during the sacking of a city neighbouring Troy and was given to Achilles as a prize - like all of the women in the Greek camp, she is a slave. Barker and Briseis continue on after the burial of Hector to include the fall of Troy (no mention of the horse though...) and the rape and destruction which followed including the fate of Astyanax, the Trojan women being handed out as prizes, and the Greeks eventually setting off to return home.

I mention the famous events from the Trojan War above, but in TSOTG most of these happen off screen (out of our protagonist’s line of sight) and are reported to us as gossip spreading around the Greek camp. The reader is stuck in the camp with the women and doesn’t see any of the excitement and action on the battlefield (except for when Briseis climbs on the Myrmidon ships to see the battlefield in the distance). The reader is also privy to a lot of ‘girl talk’ amongst the women as they discus their experiences with the Greek soldiers: who’s pregnant, who’s beloved, who’s in favour. So despite hitting the same broad plot points, we are kept away from the iconic set pieces of the war, and instead get a tour through the backrooms where women do laundry, pray, and heal the injured soldiers. 

When we studied Wide Sargasso Sea in high school, it became part of an interesting conversation on high-lit fan fiction: Jeans Rhys reveals the mysterious mad woman in Rochester’s attic, and she shows us how he drove her mad. More than a hundred years after Jane Eyre was published, Rhys, a Dominican author, chose to get into it with one of the stodgiest pieces of English literature out there. She introduced new themes of colonialism and undermined Rochester as the Byronic hero. I don’t think anyone will read Barker’s text that way - Homer’s works and the Bible are so canonical that referencing or interacting with them feels like it doesn’t count as fan fiction (has anyone ever argued that Paradise Lost was fan fic?). Because Barker is a serious author with a Booker Prize on her shelf, they call TSOTG a ‘retelling’ rather than fan fic, but what is more fan fic than recounting a famous story from another character’s perspective? 

For reference: Stephanie Meyer has done this twice to her own novels. She retold Twilight from Edward’s POV in Midnight Sun and wrote a gender flipped version of Twilight called Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined. From Wikipedia, it seems like a pretty straight-forward find and replace job: Life and Death tells the story of 16 year old Beaufort Swan who moves from Arizona to Washington to live with his dad - on his first day at school, he meets the beautiful and mysterious Edythe Cullen... 

^^ It’s fun to laugh at Twilight but remember this: Bon Iver recorded a song for the soundtrack. The New Moon soundtrack also featured Death Cab for Cutie, Thom Yorke, Grizzly Bear and a bunch of other bands with legitimate indie credibility (Pitchfork still gave it a 5.4) - why did they agree to be on this soundtrack? They must be getting approached for this kind of work all the time and New Moon’s budget was not huge - only $50 million so it’s not like they would have been offering obscene cash. Probably a mystery for another time...

Most of Barker’s works deal with war in some capacity. The only other book of hers which I’ve read is Regeneration. In that book, Barker riffs on historical figures, places, events, and literary works as she explores the impacts of WWI on returning English soldiers suffering PTSD. There are a lot of complicated ideas moving around and bumping up against each other - it’s like she’s playing a 20 string guitar or jamming out on a 40 piece drum kit or something: she’s just super masterful and it’s a good read but also interesting to look at how she achieved it technically. It’s a super satisfying book to explore and think about and probably my favourite war book (maybe tied with Slaughterhouse 5).

In TSOTG, she’s still interested in war, but now she’s looking more closely at the impacts of war on women. In a way, TSOTG seems kind of blunt and stupid in its handling of war compared to Regeneration. Barker is so focused on proving that women had it bad during the war and trying to deromanticise the Greek warriors, that she depicts all the men (except Patroclus and Achilles) as childish brutes: they’re capricious and proud, they’re rough and inconsiderate, they take offence easily, they eat messily and they drink too much. We never see them in action on the battlefield, so the one thing they’re good at is hidden from us: we don’t get to admire their magnificence but when they die, the women make fun of their shriveled cocks. Of course, we see this through Briseis’ biased eyes (fair enough given her situation), but what she reports of their behaviour is pretty bleak. No one has a rich interiority: they just fuck, shit and fight. It seems like Barker’s argument is that the men must be assholes because they rape their slaves. But we know that’s not how it works: the men raped their slave women because that was the cultural norm but beyond the raping they were average guys. In fact, the raping and slaving made them average. Not heroes, not assholes. Just 1100BC guys.* 

(*This isn’t ‘boys will be boys’ - if anything it’s historical relativism. I’m not saying it’s average because they were guys, I’m saying it’s average because it was a long time ago. Remember, Jesus was a radical thinker with all his wacky ideas about compassion and love - and he was still more than a 1000 years away. The Greeks were very advanced in some ways, but their culture relied on slavery - at a point you need to accept that that was their normal (bad by our standards, yes) and engage with them on their own terms otherwise you’ll never get anywhere in a conversation about their values.)

Barker retells this astonishing passage from The Iliad about three quarters of the way through TSOTG - just to set it up, Achilles killed Prince Hector and has been desecrating his corpse (dragging it behind his chariot) as vengeance for the death of Patroclus (Achilles’ closest friend). In ancient Greece, it was believed that you couldn’t pass on to the underworld until you’d had a proper burial. Beyond being disrespectful, the abuse of Hector’s body torments his family because it means Hector cannot pass peacefully to the afterlife. Growing desperate, Hector’s father King Priam has snuck out of Troy and come to the Greek camp to beg Achilles to return Hector’s body:

Priam found the warrior there inside ... many captains sitting some way off, but two, veteran Automedon and the fine fighter Alcimus were busy serving him. He had just finished dinner, eating, drinking, and the table still stood near. The majestic king of Troy slipped past the rest and kneeling down beside Achilles, clasped his knees and kissed his hands, those terrible, man-killing hands that had slaughtered Priam's many sons in battle. Awesome - as when the grip of madness seizes one who murders a man in his own fatherland and flees abroad to foreign shores, to a wealthy, noble host, and a sense of marvel runs through all who see him so Achilles marveled, beholding majestic Priam. His men marveled too, trading startled glances. But Priam prayed his heart out to Achilles: "Remember your own father, great godlike Achilles - as old as I am, past the threshold of deadly old age! No doubt the countrymen round about him plague him now, with no one there to defend him, beat away disaster. No one - but at least he hears you're still alive and his old heart rejoices, hopes rising, day by day, to see his beloved son come sailing home from Troy. But l - dear god, my life so cursed by fate ... I fathered hero sons in the wide realm of Troy and now not a single one is left, I tell you. Fifty sons I had when the sons of Achaea came, nineteen born to me from a single mother's womb and the rest by other women in the palace. Many, most of them violent Ares cut the knees from under. But one, one was left me, to guard my walls, my people  the one you killed the other day, defending his fatherland, my Hector! It's all for him I've come to the ships now, to win him back from you - I bring a priceless ransom. Revere the gods, Achilles! Pity me in my own right, remember your own father! I deserve more pity ... I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before - I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son." Those words stirred within Achilles a deep desire to grieve for his own father. Taking the old man's hand he gently moved him back. And overpowered by memory both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely for man-killing Hector, throbbing, crouching before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself, now for his father, now for Patroclus once again, and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

(Not sure about this translation but it’s the best I could find online)

So this scene plays out beat for beat in TSOTG, and it’s very moving and well done (well done by Homer originally - and Barker renders it well too), but Barker wants to make it about the women so in response to Priam’s famous line ‘I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son’, Briseis thinks: "And 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.” Is she an asshole for thinking about herself in this moment? I understand what Barker is trying to do: elevate the suffering of the women to the same platform that the men have always had. But this is graceless. It’s not a competition. 

Another element I found frustrating was the suggestion in TSOTG that the Greeks regarded Achilles’ close bond with Patroclus as unusual - characters are scornful of Achilles’ relationship with Patroclus and make snickering jokes about them being gay. This is disappointing because I am sure Barker did her research and therefore she must know that ancient Greece was probably more accepting of homosexuality (at least between men) than society is today. The only whisper of controversy around their relationship was the ancient equivalent of the ‘who’s the bottom?’ question: the Greeks would have been curious about who was dominant and who was passive, but wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow at Patroclus and Achilles being together.

Frank Miller also choose to make his ancient Greeks homophobic in 300 and Alan Moore, always happy to play the expert, was quick to point out the mistake:

There was just one particular line in it where one of the Spartan soldiers—I'll remind you, this is Spartans that we're talking about—one of them was talking disparagingly about the Athenians, and said, ‘Those boy-lovers.' You know, I mean, read a book, Frank. The Spartans were famous for something other than holding the bridge at Thermopylae, they were quite famous for actually enforcing man-boy love amongst the ranks as a way of military bonding. That specific example probably says more about Frank's grasp of history than it does about his grasp of homosexuality, so I'm not impugning his moral situation there. I'm not saying it was homophobic; just wasn't very well researched.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of ancient Greece would be familiar with their permissive attitudes toward homosexuality. Why did she choose to do this? I know she’s not homophobic because Regeneration sensitively observed the suffering of gay men, for example that minor speech impediments (lisps, stutters) manifested in men who were repressing their homosexuality. I don’t understand this choice from a woman who wrote maybe the best war book of all time.

TSOTG wraps up with a reflection on memory and the stories people want to hear:

I thought: Suppose, suppose just once, once, in all these centuries, the slippery gods keep their word and Achilles is granted eternal glory in return for his early death under the walls of Troy...? What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were. His story. His, not mine. It ends at his grave... Once, not so long ago, I tried to walk out of Achilles’ story - and failed. Now, my own story can begin.

Through the sickening dramatic irony, I can pick out three points Barker is trying to make:

Achilles looms large, but Briseis is her own person and deserves her own story

This is the untold true story of what really went down during the Trojan War - the people aren’t ready for this heat but I, Pat Barker, will bring it to them regardless

This isn’t a love story, but if it were, it would be the authoritative and definitive Trojan War love story

Point 1: Briseis deserves her own story

As I mentioned earlier, TSOTG begins in media res - meaning unlike in Troy, we don’t see what the gang was doing before the fighting kicked off, the catalysts of the war, the journey from Greece, etc. The action begins mid-way through the war, mid-way through a day, mid-way through a battle as our protagonist, mid-way through her life, peers over the parapets watching the Greeks disembowel her countrymen. So TSOTG begins as Achilles enters Briseis’ life and ends just as he leaves it - it begins in media res because no one would want to hear about her boring ass life before incandescent Achilles walked into it. Briseis is most interesting when she’s talking about Achilles, watching him from afar, describing their awkward encounters, analysing his behaviour - sure, the story is from Briseis’ perspective, but she’s always looking at Achilles. Is Barker arguing that we should care about Briseis outside of Achilles? She can’t have it both ways! She can’t complain that no one cares about anything but Achilles and then tell a story centered around Achilles, make Achilles the most interesting character and - in a particularly weird move - allow him to narrate some chapters in the second half of the book. 

Point 2: This is the grittiest telling of the Trojan War that readers have ever had to grit their teeth through

The suggestion that this is ‘the untold true story of the women of Troy’ is totally bogus - exploring what the Trojan War cost women has been done. Euripides wrote the The Trojan Women in ~415BC, some 600+ years after when the Trojan War is estimated to have taken place (if it took place at all). It’s a tragedy which focuses on the Trojan women (Hecuba, Andromache and co.) as they process the death of their husbands, and learn what their fate will be (i.e. which Greek they will be gifted to). As with TSOTG, the action happens off-stage, out of the women’s line of sight and is reported to them by men as they come and go from the stage. It is a relentlessly horrible play: the centerpiece is the murder of Hector’s baby son Astyanax (Odysseus throws him from the walls of Troy) and the women’s response to this terrible news. 

It seems like Barker also takes issue with modern narratives glossing over the rape, slaughter and slavery that occurred during the war - but even Troy (by no means an unromantic movie) makes these elements pretty explicit:

In the clip above, the Myrmidons have brought Achilles the newly enslaved Briseis in case he would like to rape her. The slavery and rape threat elements are there. Is Barker saying that she wants to see the rape? Does this scene somehow read as romantic because he chooses not to rape her? Rape is being used more and more, especially in TV, as a way of creating realism in fantasy shows - and people do seem to have an appetite for it (see: Game of Thrones, Outlander). So her suggestion that modern audiences want a sanitised version of the war doesn’t work for me. 

Point 3: This isn’t a love story. It’s about rape. But also... don’t you just love Achilles?

Quoting from Briseis’ final words again:

No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.

Sounds pointed. Barker is implying someone out there got the lovers wrong. It can’t be Troy because they went with the Achilles/Briseis angle too, so is she referring to Madeline Miller? Miller’s 2011 novel The Song of Achilles is a love story focused on Patroclus and Achilles (disclosure: I haven’t read it). As I mentioned earlier, Barker, going against all evidence we have about ancient Greece, chose to make her Greeks homophobic. She does touch on Achilles and Patroclus’ famous intimacy, but frames it more as some kind of preternatural closeness which goes beyond brothers or lovers. In Barker’s defence, Homer never explicitly said that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, but the suggestion of it is certainly part of the canon. I had a high school Classics teacher who scoffed at Troy because she thought Achilles should have been banging Patroclus instead of Briseis. 

Also: since we’re talking about a ‘rape camp’, were there really many lovers?

For a feminist take on The Iliad, this book has some weird gender politics. Achilles rapes our protagonist - a lot. He’s childish, he has mummy issues, he’s abrasive and fussy - but we want Briseis to win him over! We want Achilles to notice her. He’s so magnetic, even if you write him as a spoiled pig, he’s still Achilles. He’s the coolest guy in school. He’s the rower with big shoulders. He wears his hat backwards. He comes to school on Monday with a black eye. He doesn’t know anything about computers. He says he likes Hemingway. He smells good without deodorant. His socks never stay up. If you walk beside him in a hallway, you can feel heat radiating from his body. His pouting and brattiness play into his magnetism somehow. I honestly think Barker might have fallen into the same trap as high school girls throughout history: we just love a bad boy. Want a glimpse into the terrifying mind of teenage girl? When I was 17, I dumped my high school boyfriend because he wasn’t enough like Achilles or Hector. People are romantic about the Trojan War, but that doesn’t mean they want a love story. 

#Homer #Troy #Trojan War #Pat Barker #The Silence of the Girls #Regeneration #Achilles #Briseis #Wide Sargasso Sea #Jean Rhys #Jane Eyre #Twilight #300 #Frank Miller #alan moore