Narrating Silence in Pat Barker’s Feminist Retelling of Homer’s

Abstract

Pat Barker, one of the most prominent postmodern writers, masterfully employs myth, silence, war and trauma to depict the historical atrocity, that is, silencing and subjugation of women by patriarchal society. Her works, The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, a retelling and rewriting of the Iliad from a feminist perspective, use silence as a narrative strategy and a transformative tool. In Barker’s writing, silence becomes a space of possibility and self-reflection, capable of triggering profound change and healing. Throughout her novels, Barker deftly navigates the intricate intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships of Briseis, Achilles, Patroclus and the community, using silence as her guiding thread. This approach invites readers to become witnesses to the characters’ experiences and the power of silence as a category of expression and existence. By rewriting Homer’s Iliad from a feminist perspective, Barker aims to fill the gaps in concealed and undocumented history and redefine womanhood. Barker’s treatment of silence as an epistemological category, along with the theory of intertextuality, underscores the problematics of history and the complex interplay between personal and collective experiences, where the individual is often isolated from the community due to the inverse equation of power and knowledge.