All the best stories were invented in ancient Greece, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that each next generation of writers returns to them in one form or another, rewriting old stories in accordance with the requirements and fashions of their era. The fashion of the last half-century requires the author to give voice to the voiceless, to change the angle in such a way that something new gets into the lens, and the old, on the contrary, appears at an unexpected angle; and most importantly, to bring to the surface emotions and experiences, hidden deep in subtext in ancient epic and drama. All together, this automatically brings female heroines to the forefront: reduced in the primary sources to an almost instrumental function, as protagonists they provide modern interpretations of classical plots with a proper measure of emotionality, and a new perspective, and an obvious change of priorities. The German Krista Wolf retold the Trojan myth from the point of view of Cassandra, the Canadian Margaret Atwood in her Penelopiade - from the point of view of Penelope, and the Irishman Colm Toybin in The House of Names turned the Oresteia so that Clytemnestra and Electra were in the center.
Pat Barker was born in Thornaby-on-Tees in 1943. She was educated at the London School of Economics and has been a teacher of history and politics.
Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy Regeneration; The Eye in the Door, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road, winner of the Booker Prize; as well as seven other novels. She's married and lives in Durham, England.
The novel of the modern English classic Pat Barker (at home she is known primarily as the author of the cult trilogy about the First World War "Rebirth") "Silence of the Girls" continues the same tradition of "modernization" and "feminization" of the Greek heritage. The main character here is Briseida, a nameless captive (her very name is actually not even a name, but a patronymic, “daughter of Bris”), because of which a feud flares up between Achilles and the leader of the Achaean army, Agamemnon. The unloved wife of a petty king, an ally of Troy, Briseis witnesses the death of her loved ones during the storming of her native city, and then Achilles gets it as a war booty, or, more simply, a concubine.
Not a person, but a thing, an expensive trinket, passing from one indifferent hand to another, not loved by anyone - but what is there, simply not existing outside the male gaze, Briseis, nevertheless, seeks and finds moments in her existence among the Achaeans, if not happiness , the meaningfulness that allows her to survive and keep her sanity. And, of course, sisterhood becomes a huge support for her - mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the killed Trojans, who became captives and slaves in the Greek camp, console and encourage each other, gaining subjectivity under Barker's pen and the long-awaited right to finally tell the world about their experiences. loss, suffering and humiliation.
There are fragments of tremendous emotional persuasiveness and power in The Silence of the Girls. Perhaps the most powerful and exciting of them is the list of warriors killed by Achilles in an attempt to overtake Hector on the battlefield. Starting as a dry list, at some point it transforms into a soft and hopeless female cry for each of the people mentioned in it - for Mulia, who began to walk at the age of six months, for the twins Laogone and Dardan - one of them said this in childhood it’s bad that my brother had to translate his words for his mother, according to Iphition, who, on his first fishing trip with his father, could not put a worm on a hook ... Faceless extras of the great war, thanks to Barker, they all become alive, warm, recognizable people for a short moment, about death who can - and should - mourn.
However, in general, Pat Barker's ambitious experiment should be considered unsuccessful, or at least not completely successful. At some point, the narrative breaks, and the look of Briseis - and with it the author - loses its specific femininity, and the eternal, great and completely masculine story of Achilles, his anger, his friendship comes to the fore again - just like in the original with Patroclus, his terrible revenge for the death of a friend and sudden nobility over the body of an enemy. Homer replays Barker outright: his male characters again push the weakly resisting female characters to the periphery, the female voice dissolves into the male one, and the entire logic of the narrative returns to its original track with ponderous grace, in order to roll majestically to the final predetermined once and for all, in which women again no place.
Homeric story, no doubt, one of the most beautiful in the world, and Barker, in the manner of a real aed, retells it confidently, poetically, with non-banal variations of the canon, which will certainly please the hearts of those who have already heard different versions of the Iliad. Moreover, it is not entirely clear whether it is possible to unfold this brutal plot in such a way that from dumb observers, whose destiny is to stand on the wall and wait for death or serve the killers of their relatives in a military camp, Homeric women turn into full-fledged heroines, and if so , then will the history of the fortress, which the heroes storm and defend, lose its ancient charm from this. But even assuming that the creation of a full-fledged female version of the Iliad is in principle possible and meaningful, Pat Barker's Silence of the Girls is definitely not.
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