Pat Barker
In The Women of Troy, Pat Barker picks up from where The Silence of the Girls ends. Here Barker focuses on the plight of women after the fall of Troy while the Greeks await favorable weather to return home. She fashions new elements into the story, including the story of Priam’s burial and the urgency of hiding the birth of a new-born Trojan male from the Greek captors.
The novel opens with the prelude to the fall of Troy. Greek warriors cram together in the wooden horse waiting to be dragged inside the city. The description is masterful, evoking the stench, sweat, and fear of the Greeks as they sit in the dark, terrified to make a sound while listening to the muffled voices of the Trojans debating what to do with the horse. We see the scene through the eyes of Pyrrhus, Achilles’ sixteen-year-old son. This is followed with the bloody raid on Troy and Pyrrhus’ savage murder of Priam. The Greeks plunder the city; kill all the males, including infants; enslave or marry the women; and wait for favorable weather.
The narrative unfolds through the first-person voice of Briseis, now the wife of Alcimus and pregnant with Achilles’ baby. Her status as the wife of a Greek gives her freedom of movement, allowing her to observe and comment on characters and events. She shuttles from her home to the enslaved women’s quarters, visits Hecuba, Cassandra, and Andromache. Interspersed throughout are occasional chapters depicting the perspective and internal thoughts of Pyrrhus and Calchas, the seer.
Barker immerses the reader in the atmosphere of the Greek camp. The men are bawdy, crude, violent, and one step away from taking their frustrations out on each other. They drink themselves into a stupor each night. They participate in the games and races Alcimus organizes to distract them during the day. The Greeks are clearly delineated and depicted as well-rounded individuals, the most prominent being Pyrrhus. He is a child in a man’s body; a blundering fool who fears being ridiculed, especially by women; riddled with insecurities; and desperate to garner the respect worthy of the son of Achilles. He falls short at every turn. Calchas emerges as a distraught seer, worried about his tenuous position in the Greek camp.
The perspective, however, is primarily and solidly female. Barker portrays the women as unique individuals with complex responses to their captivity. She captures the trauma of women who have witnessed the brutal deaths of their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. They live in fear, subject to the sexual and physical abuse of their Greek victors. Some are described as hollow shells, performing their daily tasks with vacant stares. But among them are defiant women, like Amina, Cassandra, and Hecuba—women who refuse to succumb to fear or intimidation. Briseis emerges as intelligent, practical, and shrewd. She facilitates the bonding of women and promotes their resilience, strength, and survival.
Barker’s pacing is solid. Her characters are well-developed and authentic. The setting is saturated with the dirt, grime, and blood of a fallen Troy; its wind-swept beaches; its smoke and dust-filled air; its exposed, decaying bodies; and its shores littered with dead sea creatures. Her blunt diction captures an atmosphere fraught with tension.
Barker’s lens is unswerving and unflinchingly honest as she directs it at the women left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of war.