Review: 'The Silence of the Girls'

The Silence of the Girls
By Pat Barker
Literary fiction
September 2018
Doubleday
ISBN: 978-0385544214

Women taken as prizes in war, given to the men who slaughtered the men in their families as they watched, treated as nothing more than property -- these are the women of the Trojan War who are given voice in The Silence of the Girls, the latest novel by Man Booker Prize-winner Pat Barker. They are conditioned to be silent. And even though they may not say much in public, or to those in power, their stories will be told.

The lead voice that cannot be denied is Briseis, a young queen among the women captured in a citadel after the men have been cut down and other women have leaped to their deaths rather than become slaves. She is given as a trophy to the war hero Achilles. This is no romanticized version, as many tellings of The Iliad would have it. This is war. She becomes the thing he rapes when he feels like it.

As her life as a slave begins, she is warned to not think about her previous life:

"That's over now -- you'll only make yourself miserable if you start brooding about it. Forget! This is your life now." Forget. So there was my duty laid out in front of me, as simple and clear as a bowl of water: Remember.

Even in statements as stark as this, Barker builds layers. Briseis is childless. She is both grateful that she does not have the sorrow of worrying about a child's abuse and death now that she is a slave, but she also is sorrowful to not have a child. For a soldier to talk to a childless woman about brooding is one of many thoughtless acts of cruelty.

That Achilles feels drawn to her by coincidence does not negate the fact that Briseis is his property, awarded to him, and that theirs is not a consensual relationship. Barker has a light touch in making this clear, even as the stark reality of the situation of the captured women living in a battle camp that has existed for years and years is portrayed.

To help stop a rat-caused plague from wiping out the camp, Agamemnon returns his captive concubine to her father. In recompense, he demands Achilles give him Briseis. Barker brilliantly shows how this is all about male pride and nothing to do with any other kind of human or humane consideration.

Then comes the horrific ending to the Trojan War, when Barker leaves The Iliad for Euripedes's tragedies. There is much death and abuse to come in the wake of male pride and stubbornness, all depicted calmly and vividly. Like all tales involving the cruel ways in which war affects those on the periphery, just when it appears that events have settled into dull routine, women and children are shown how their destinies are not in their control.

Even though the focus is on the women, an old man nearly steals it all with his late appearance that encapsulates the toll of loss. King Priam sneaks into Achilles's camp to beg for the body of his son, Hector, which the warrior has been abusing day after day with no sense of victory. The actions Briseis takes in the aftermath of the elderly king's visit restore the focus to the women. And just when her actions don't make sense, give it a page or two. Then they will.

This is one of the occasions when Briseis appears to be arguing with someone. She is talking to herself even as she remembers what happened. Some of the women hope to become the wives of their captors if they bear children. Asked if someone could marry a man who had killed her brothers, her answer is:

"Well, first of all, I wouldn't have been given a choice. But yes, probably. Yes. I was a slave, and a slave will do anything, anything at all, to stop being a thing and become a person again.
"I just don't know how you could do that.
"Well, no of course you don't You've never been a slave."

This was uncomfortable to read in the context of another age-old cruel treatment that continues to reverberate today -- the racism with which so many white people either refuse to see or understand, or which they even condone. It was a horrific reminder that there is more than one way in which we as human beings denigrate others individually and institutionally.

The various careless ways, and cruel ways, in which the women are treated are seen again and again to this day. That Barker can write so clearly and calmly about this pervasive treatment of women without falling into preaching or despair shines a brighter light on the injustices. This past month has been extremely difficult. I have had to turn off the news. I have had to stop in-person conversations. I have blocked and dropped dozens of people (at least, some of them seemed to be people) on social media. Yet this novel did not make me feel worse.

It gave me strength. That's the kind of power knowledge brings. Knowing we are not alone, knowing this is not new and that we have endured and carried on and still done remarkable things in public and for our families and our communities, even with this punishment for thousands of years merely because we are women and not men. Although as Barker writes, "men carve meaning into women's faces; messages addressed to other men", we women have other ways of communicating and keeping our truth alive.

Achilles's boon companion, Patroclus, talks to Briseis and seems to treat her as an actual person. He is not an ally, but he tells her:

"Things do change. And if they don't you bloody well make them."
"Spoken like a man."
"You'll get your chance. One day. And when you do grab it with both hands."

That day arrives and leaves, arrives and leaves. But we endure. Sometimes we live in on ways the captors never imagined:

"We're going to survive -- our songs, our stories. They'll never be able to forget us. Decades after the last man who fought at Troy is dead, their sons will remember the songs their Trojan mothers sang to them. We'll be in their dreams -- and in their worst nightmares too."

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