"I was no longer the outward and visible sign of Agamemnon's power and Achilles' humiliation. No, I'd become something altogether more sinister: I was the girl who'd caused the quarrel. Oh, yes, I'd caused it - in much the same way, I suppose, as a bone is responsible for a dog fight."
With any retelling of the Trojan War, every writer puts their own mark on the myth by finding the part of the tale that is important to them and expanding on that. Pat Barker did exactly that with The Silence of the Girls and has made this book the definitive text giving Briseis, a pivotal character in the tale all but forgotten, the dominant voice. Briseis may have been just as important in ending the war as Helen of Troy was in beginning it. And this book tells the story from the view of the former, the one who was given as a prize of honour and slave to the man who killed her brothers and husband.
The majority of the novel is narrated by Briseis beginning with the fall of Lyrnessus, the city she was poised to become queen of once her husband, Mynes, became king. But though we read her words, we do not hear her speak aloud for a very long time. In the various ancient versions of the Trojan War, Briseis barely speaks but what Barker has done with that is give us an insight into what she would have been thinking or feeling without verbalising it to the characters around her. In a way, she becomes an observer of her surroundings but, as the reader, we know that she is fighting to survive first in Achilles' compound, and then the brief time she was in Agamemnon's. Not only that, as all the other significant women of the Trojan War are absent at this part of the story, her experiences become the entire focus and give us an idea of what is to come for all the other women but not until this woman has had her part in telling her own story. Through all the noise the men make in their sieges and disagreements, even the dominant presence of the great Achilles, Briseis' silence is the loudest in this book. If ever a title was more perfectly suited, it's this one right here.
"I only know when they weren't blaming the gods, they were blaming me."
Aside from Briseis' silence, she is shown to be quite defiant and resilient to the words and expectations put on her being Achilles' Prize of Honour that caused such a fatal quarrel. From the start, she is more or less told by the men who could have owned her and the slaves she was now one of that all she had to do now was forget the life she used to have and adjust herself to her new normal. She's defiant in deciding that she will remember, she won't forget that her home was destroyed, she won't forget that the man whose bed she sleeps in killed her brothers and husband, she will not forget who she is. Despite the fact that she is a slave for the entire book and that she knows she cannot return to the life she once had, she does not allow it to break her and it becomes her will to survive and live beyond Achilles' story. Because though this is Briseis' story, her voice may not have been so significant and powerful if it wasn't so entwined in Achilles' story.
"Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles... How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him 'the butcher'."
Achilles and Patroclus are not painted in such a wonderful light in this book as they usually are. They are mostly seen from Briseis' point of view but occasionally a chapter will delve into Achilles' thoughts and state of mind. From Briseis' point of view, we see him as a slaughterer, a rapist and her enslaver, which are not incorrect, but she also sees the more human parts of him. And from his point of view, Achilles is shown to be a man who was swept up in the fanaticism of a prophecy about his own eternal glory in his youth but now wondered how the war ever benefitted him to be part of it and all the while is frustrated by how he has come to see the woman he has taken as his slave. Seeing how close Patroclus and Achilles are, how much the death of the former affects the latter and all that followed, Briseis also begins to see what is beyond the butcher and rapist without forgetting those two. By the end of the book, you see how Achilles was both an honourable and an awful man. One did not exist without the other and that is one of the most important things that Briseis has to share from her experience of their story.
"Once, not so long ago, I tried to walk out of Achilles' story - and failed. Now, my own story can begin."
It is clear that Briseis never loved him, only saw that if Patroclus could get Achilles to marry her it would give her the security she wouldn't have as a slave. But it is also clear that with everything she went through at another's hand, everything that happened between her and Achilles, she didn't entirely hate him either. She knew sides of him that were only shared with Patroclus before and she is aware that all her thoughts and feelings about the two of them are conflicted. Though in this version, it is quite fitting to see that she wasn't so fond of either that she never grieved them beyond what they deserved in her eyes, for though they were the kindest of the Greek army to her, she still was not treated like a human being until she had something that reminded Achilles she was a person. It's a great contrast to the original tale where she's plunged into great grief - who would grieve their enslaver and rapist?
Reasons to Recommend:
- One of the best retellings of the Trojan War
- Gives a voice to a character who was silent for too long
- The growth of a strong, defiant and resilient female protagonist
- Complicated duality to just how heroic and good Achilles and Patroclus were, and the opposite
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