Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Bakalářská diplomová práce

2021 Beatrice Křížová

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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Beatrice Křížová

Rewriting Greek myths of : Voicing Female Experience Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.

2021

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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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Author’s signature

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A., for her valuable feedback

and guidance and above all for our shared passion on the topic. I feel privileged that I could choose a

topic we were both interested in despite the fact this is usually taken for granted. I would also like to express my gratitude towards my family and friends who supported me when I was losing faith in myself.

And finally, I would like to thank my loving partner who took care of me and practical aspects my life

when I was working on the thesis. Thank you all again.

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Introduction ...... 6

1. Archetypal Tradition of Greek Myths ...... 8

1.1 The original myth of the and Homer’s portrayal of women...... 9

1.1.1 The Iliad and role of women in the plot ...... 9 1.1.2 Women’s portrayal in the Iliad ...... 12 1.2 The original myth of and Homer’s portrayal of women ...... 22

1.2.1 The Odyssey and role of women in the plot ...... 22 1.2.2 The archetypical portrayal of women in the Odyssey ...... 23 1.3 Misogyny and archetypes in the traditional Greek Myths ...... 26

2. Retelling the myths; search for authentic female silenced experience in the novels...... 30

2.1 Multiplicity of truth ...... 35

2.2 The Critique of Romanticizing the Relationships...... 49

2.3 Problem of Deities ...... 55

2.4 Motive of Silencing Women’s Voices, Authors’ Devices ...... 59

Conclusion ...... 66

Bibliography ...... 69

Resumé ...... 73

Summary ...... 74

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Introduction

Greek mythology has had an extensive influence on Western culture and it is claimed to be an inherent part of European civilization’s cultural heritage. Artists from the ancient to our times derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes. Thus Greek myths record not only ancient civilizations’ traditions, culture, rituals, beliefs, events and daily life but also they have a potential quality to mirror themes of our contemporary world. Since the start of the 21st century a phenomenon of re-imaginations of the myths in a form of bestselling and by critics approved novels has appeared. Many of world acclaimed writers retell the stories of the Greek myths and in their novels they advocate their thoughts on current problematics by using or deconstructing the ancient patterns. This process is nothing new in the world of adaptations in general, but between the years

2005-2020 quite a lot of well received novels emerged retelling the Greek myths in feminist reading form. They adapt the myths that are important part of oral tradition of the Greek mythology; stories of and its aftermath which are best known from Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.

In this thesis I intend to analyse these renditions of Greek myths focusing on their aspects of portraying female characters and their experience of the events known from the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the recent adaptations women prove to play more profound roles in the stories under influence of the feminist attitude towards art work.

In the first chapter of the thesis I will provide analysis of archetypal tradition in

Greek myths, which is vital for better understanding of the process of feminist retelling in the novels under study. I will analyse the portrayal of women in Homer’s Iliad and

Odyssey, because without being aware of the original shape of the portrayal of women the modern adaptations cannot be analysed and understood in-depth. Therefore, the first

- 6 - chapter will provide the reader with the context of Homer’s portrayal of female characters in order to understand the context of the origin, which is then usually deconstructed in the novels. Focus will be also placed on feminist archetypal theory as presented by scholars and theorists.

The second chapter covers the in-depth analysis of novels under study. These are

Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, Natalie

Haynes’ A Thousand Ships, Colm Tóibín’s House of Names and Madeline Miller’s

Circe. Nevertheless, I note that the emphasis will be put on the first two of the enlisted novels so I would be able to present a close look on the novel’s aspects. Thus in the second chapter concepts and aspects of the retellings will be studied to illustrate how they use mythology and its archetypes to mirror female experience and how they voice their silenced, up till now unheard voices.

In my thesis, I employ a critical textual analysis of both the ancient epics and their rewritings in order to show how the process of feminist retelling works. In other words, in order to explore why is there a need to deconstruct archetypal notions of the original myths and to convey different points of view to emphasize the overlooked aspects of the

Illiad and the Odyssey. This thesis also tries to find patterns in the novels under study which the authors use to redefine what had been ever since defined just by male- thinkers and writers, and to voice authentic female experience. I will discuss how the authors show the potential of textuality of the myths in the novels to tell the “true” experience of women despite the fact their stories are fictional.

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1. Archetypal Tradition of Greek Myths

In this chapter I intend to describe the context in which the modern novels under study of the thesis have been written. Conception of the original forms need to be explained first to have a better understanding of how the patterns of archetypal tradition in Greek myths are broken or used in the novels. The novels under study are all retellings of the

Greek myths and mythology; which shaped not just ancient cultures, but also our - more recent - Western culture and civilizations. As Korkmaz states in her study: myths “are not simple, innocent stories about old gods and goddesses, but symbols and images, which bear political, social, historical and cultural meanings and codes” (Korkmaz 1).

Prior to the analysis of the novels, which retell these traditional stories from women’s point of view, it is important to discuss the traditional context and archetypes well- known from the original works the novels were derived from. Feminist readings of these myths enable to mirror and voice female experiences and sufferings they have gone through. Korkmaz explains the reasons behind the rewritings:

“As the inferior positioning of women in hierarchal societies has been the most

consciously and intentionally practiced agenda for centuries, feminist thinkers and

writers, too, have used the myths to lay bare the reasons, means, and consequences

of this systematic oppression women have been suffering for ages” (Korkmaz 1).

Thus this chapter will be looking at the archetypes in the original works to emphasize the inferiority and silence and often helplessness in portrayal of women’s characters, which makes them tragic figures in Homer. Since the novels under study are renditions mostly based on Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey, the chapter will first focus on the original myths described in these two epics, thereafter the emphasis will be placed on

- 8 - the women’s portrayal in the two works and then a subchapter on feminist archetypal theory will close the chapter.

1.1 The original myth of the Iliad and Homer’s portrayal of women

1.1.1 The Iliad and role of women in the plot

The Iliad is an ancient Greek poem traditionally attributed to Homer, although it is not sure whether he was the actual author, in this thesis I will not further discuss these considerations and I will further refer to him as to the author of the texts. The Iliad is divided into twenty-four books and it covers the story of the Trojan War – the ten-year siege of the city of ; in the old Greek called , which gave the epic its name.

The city of Troy was besieged by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states; in the Iliad called ; under the leadership of the king . The famed pretext for the attack of a thousand Greek ships on Troy was the abduction of queen Helen, the wife of Spartan king , Agamemnon’s brother. Helen was rumoured to be “the of all her sex the most divinely grac’d” (Homer III, 450)1; the most beautiful woman in the world. She was seduced by Trojan prince and taken away from Sparta to Troy.

This was taken as the reason for the 10-year long war. Homer’s narrative yet starts with another girl, who is the cause of another fight. As Jan Parker says in the introduction to

The Iliad: “The trouble starts with a girl” (Parker, Homer 15). Barker herself prefaces her novel with Philip Roth’s quote:

“‘You know how European literature begins?’ he’d ask. […] ‘With a quarrel. All of

European literature springs from a fight.’ And then he picked up his copy of The

Iliad and read to the class the opening lines ‘Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath

of … Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon the King of men, and

1 In this thesis I quote Homer with roman numbers for the number of book within the epic and then with the verse number. Also in the first sub-chapter I only refer to the Iliad and in the second to the Odyssey as I possess a one book edition of these two works.

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great Achilles.’ And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty

souls? It’s a basic as barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl,

really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war.’” (The Human Stain

qtd. in Barker)

This “girl abducted in a war” Roth was referring to is , who was a daughter of a

Trojan priest of . The father offered Agamemnon wealth for the return of his daughter, but Agamemnon refuses. This is rumoured to be the cause of a plague inflicted on the Greek army by Apollo who heard the father’s prayers and decided to avenge him and his daughter. After nine days of plague, Achilles, the best fighter among the Greeks, calls an assembly to deal with the problem. Since Achilles is well respected figure and the Greek army was already in the priest’s favour before,

Agamemnon finds himself under pressure and agrees to return Chryseis to her father, but he demands a compensation, Achilles’ captive girl, . This angers Achilles since he is losing his prize of honour that was given to him, he almost kills

Agamemnon, but after being stopped by apparition and advice from the goddess of wisdom , he withdraws to his tent determined not to fight anymore by

Agamemnon’s side.

Achilles and his men are essential fighters in the Greek army and since his withdrawal the Greeks are being defeated in the battles with Trojans. In the meantime,

Chryseis is taken by back to her father and the plague is ended by Apollo; and

Briseis is taken from Achilles to Agamemnon as he demanded. This happens in Book I of the Iliad, Books II-VIII follow, describing the battles between Trojans and Greeks and also the gods’ part in these fights, because they are scheming in the background of the whole war and the people’s fates are determined by their own motivations and intrigues. In Book IX Agamemnon admits he made a mistake and that he needs Achilles

- 10 - to win the war, so he sends his heralds to take Briseis with some gifts back to Achilles, but he furiously refuses the offer and says he would not return to the battle until he was personally threatened. In Book XVI Achilles closest friend and a speculated love interest, (as many modern adaptations describe him, I will discuss these interpretations later in the thesis) decides to take the helm as he cannot bear the Greeks’ situation in the war anymore and he wears Achilles’ armour to lead his men into a battle. Achilles agrees to this with a condition that he would not pursue the Trojans so he wouldn't take Achilles’ glory away. Patroclus later ignores his command and fights with , a Trojan prince and best fighter, Hector kills him. In the next book

Achilles is mad with sadness over Patroclus’ death promising he would avenge him by killing Hector. Achilles’ mother , a goddess of the sea, knows that if Achilles killed Hector, he would die and his name would be known forever, which is Achilles’ goal, so she requests new armour for her son by which would shield him.

In Book XIX Agamemnon gives Briseis and promised gifts back to Achilles, but he is more or less indifferent to both as he seems to know his final days are coming.

Next day he slays many men in the battle. This continues along with the gods’ intrigues, until Hector and Achilles finally meet to fight each other in Book XXII. Hector’s parents, the king and the queen Hecabe plead him not to face Achilles, but since

Hector already ignored Achilles’ callings two times he decides to face him this time. In the battle Achilles kills him and afterwards dishonours Hector by dragging his body behind his chariot back to the Greek camp. In the last Book of the Iliad, Book XXIV, the comes in secret to Achilles’s tent and on his knees begs for his son’s body so he could bury him properly. Achilles is moved and in the end allows him to do so. What happens at the end of the war is described in the Odyssey with Odysseus’s trap in the form of the Trojan horse and finally with the fall of the city of Troy. All of this

- 11 - plot is presented in both Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and ’ A

Thousand Ships, but they both allow the readers to see the legends and the possible background behind them by presenting the women's point of view, as they were also adequate witnesses. Before the analysis of the novels I will now focus on how Homer himself depicts the female characters.

1.1.2 Women’s portrayal in the Iliad

Prior to analysing the modern adaptations, it is important to stress how Homer portrayed women. Female characters in Homer seem to share one specific fate, which is shown by the manner Homer describes them and by how he describes the manner they are treated by the male characters. The readers are able to deduce that the female characters of the Iliad are all different by their personal story and personality traits but, as Farron points out: “Homer treats them all in the same manner” (Farron 15), because there is one objective he wants to emphasise in the women’s stories and that is their tragic fate of not being able to determine how their lives are going to continue. Homer makes his point by showing and putting emphasis on “how intense and deep were their

(women’s) emotions and sentiments and how little regard the male characters had for these emotions and sentiments” (Farron 15). So his audience can acknowledge how sensitive and even perceptive the women are but how little this matters, because it is the men and the gods who will determine the course of events and their own lives. This is how he portrays the women as above all “extremely tragic figures” (Farron 15). But

Farron also states that “women play a very important role in every scene that takes place in Troy,” (Farron 15) which is where it needs to be noted that there is a theory held by some scholars (e.g. Gomme, Murray, Sale) that the Iliad’s female characters were not part of the traditional original inherited myth, but they were invented by Homer himself.

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A brief analysis of individual female characters in Homer will follow so it could be further compared with the retellings in the modern novels.

The first woman to be analysed must be Helen. Helen is maybe the most infamous female characters of the Trojan War myth and she is the one who is the most analysed by the scholars. She is mentioned in Book II (Homer II 161, 177) as the cause of the war. For Homer she is an example of how women’s feelings are ignored; they are considered to be an object; something that men can “lump together with the possessions that came with her from Sparta to Troy” (Ferron 16). Helen is treated more as a treasure that will be part of the reward for the victorious party. Nevertheless, her situation resembles a situation of any woman in Troy (or in adjacent cities besieged by the

Greeks). Women live through the war in constant waiting to whatever their fate will be and with what men they will end up. They are treated as possessions, like cattle, not as feeling human beings. Homer emphasises that women are made to “play the passive role” (Farron 16). In Book III Paris and Menelaus are fighting in an arranged duel, which Trojans hope would decide the whole war and solve the argument over Helen.

There is an emphasis from the men that her wealth counts the most along with her beauty and who would win the fight; “he that overcomes” (Homer III, 76); should

“enjoy her utmost wealth, keep her, or take her home” (Homer III, 79), this is again emphasized on one of the following lines as: “The queen, and all her sorts of wealth, let him at will enjoy” (Homer III, 97). When this decision is made and the duel is discussed

Helen is weaving a tapestry with the war’s motives, which is the only way she can participate. She can also watch the battle, which she does later sitting high on the Troy’s walls next to the king Priam, who does not blame her for the war: “come, loved daughter, sit by me, [...] do not think I lay the wars endur’d by us on thee / The gods have sent them” (Homer III 178, 182). Homer does give Helen space to speak up about

- 13 - her feelings, which is where we learn she is in fact homesick; missing her home in

Sparta and regretting she is now where she is, she confides in Priam:

“would some ill death had seiz’d me, when I saw / The first mean, why I wrong’d

you thus; that I had never lost /The sight of these my ancient friends; of him that

lov’d me most, / Of my sole daughter, brothers both; with all those kindly mates, /

Of one soil, one age borne with me, though under different fates: / But these boons

envious stars deny; the memory of these / In sorrow pines those beauties now, that

then did too much please.” (Homer III, 188-194)

This is the first time Helen speaks and it is revealed how she feels about the situation. It is clear that she is feeling homesick and she also states that she regrets she did not die and that she followed Paris to Troy. The shameful feeling of Helen appears further in the Iliad in Book VI, where she says she wishes that she had died at her birth and further she even describes herself as a “horrid dog” and men’s “curse” (Homer VI, 379).

This “wish” comes again in her other speech in Book XXIV, so it is a persisting feeling.

Farron remarks that despite the fact that: “Helen seems to be the only person with what we would call a guilty conscience” (Farron 16-17), she is treated as an object and her feelings are not taken in account as men control the situation. In his notes Farron adds that surely “Priam treats her (Helen) like a human being, but his situation is like that of the women. He must wait and watch while the young men control what is happening,”

(Farron 17) which is mirroring the form of the epic heroic poem. The poet is interested in the woman’s psychological reaction, but “as always in the Iliad, a woman’s psychological state, which is so interesting to Homer, is irrelevant to the men who are determining her future” (Farron 17). At the end of Book III when Paris returns from the fight with Menelaus without any of them being killed, Paris is considered to be a coward. Even by Helen, whose tragic situation is visible very clearly in this passage.

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Helen says to Paris: “And was thy cowardice such / (So conquer’d) to be seen alive? O would to god thy life / Had perish’d by this worthy hand, to whom I first was wife”

(Homer III, 458-460). Then she asks him to go back to fight Menelaus again and then in the same speech she tells him not to go, because Menelaus would kill him, which is a rather contradictory statement which shows Helen’s internal battle. Paris impulsively tells her not to “chide and grieve him” (Homer III, 467) and invites her to bed because he longs for her too much, she passively follows him. Thus Paris treats Helen as an object of his pleasure and lust.

In the scene the goddess of love plays a great role as she is connected with Helen’s sexuality. Here a problem arises with the gods and their intervention in the course of events. They are often used as an explanation of character’s inner feelings and decisions; and I will treat this problem further in the thesis. Nevertheless, it is clear from

Homer’s descriptions that Helen is internally fighting with her emotions, her attachment to Paris and her rational thinking and feeling of shame and condemnation. Her attachment to Paris is all she has left and she has not much of other choice as she is treated like an object, as already stated. There are multiple indications in the epic that

Paris treats her only as a sexual object and she even despises him as the war develops.

She says about him to Hector: “he is senseless, nor conceives what manhood is”

(Homer VI, 391). In Book VII Paris for the only time says he would return her possessions but not herself, which is the only time she is separated from the objects, however Farron argues that Paris values her more than the possessions because she is the object that gives him more pleasure. In Helen’s last speech after Hector’s death she states that “only Hector and Priam were kind and helpful to her” (Farron 21). She is the last woman after Hecabe who speaks in the final lines of the Iliad. Her last speech is full of pathos over Hector’s death, only Priam speaks afterwards and only a few final lines

- 15 - complete the Iliad. By that privileged speech we complete the portrayal of Helen.

Farron argues that for Homer, Helen is an interesting character because she is “a person hopelessly trapped by a thoughtless act she committed many years before” (Farron 22).

Helen understands the shame and knows the strangers in her new home have a right to hate her, she lives separated from her former family in Sparta and is forced to bear the guilt set upon her as she is called the reason for this conflict over and over. Compared to the other women, her situation is unique. But just as the other women she is forced to

“watch and wait passively while the men determine the course of events” (Farron 22).

This is the fact that is most emphasized by Homer.

The same helpless situation applies to other women mentioned in the Iliad. One of them is , Hector’s wife. He represents a loving, devoted wife depended on her husband and her husband’s fate. As all the women – as already mentioned – she must wait for the outcome of the war and all she can do is taking care of her household and her son. Andromache came not from Troy but from Thebe, which was already destroyed by Achilles like Lyrnessus, which is where Briseis came from. Therefore,

Andromache had already (similarly to Briseis and Helen), lost her family and her only family was Hector and their son. In Book XXII where Hector dies, Andromache

“equates Thebe and Troy” (Farron 22) and there is the sense of that what happened to

Thebe and other cities will also happen to Troy and the women’s fates will be very similar. In her first speech Andromache addresses Hector who comes from a battle and asks him to be more careful and to think of their son, she states that if he died it would be better for her to die too: “Better my shoulders underneath the earth, than thy decease;

/ For then would earth bear joys no more” (Homer VI, 444-5). Andromache does not express a pride of her husband’s martial success and she wishes he would rather stay inside Troy’s walls. She shares with him “military advice” (Farron 23), so he would be

- 16 - able to stay safe, but Hector does not comment on the idea she proposes and only tries to comfort her and tells her to continue to take care of female domestic duties, which is the only thing she can do. Therefore, even courageous, caring Hector “cannot take his wife completely seriously as a human being” (Farron 24). When he dies, she is weaving.

After she learns what happened she mourns; most of her lament speech concerns her son, because she knows that without his father he will not be fully accepted by the society. “So her dependence on Hector is caused not only by her own personal background and feelings but also by the fact that in her culture women in general simply could not function in civil life without men” (Farron 25). The domestic chores she made now have no meaning. If Hector would listen to her, her fate might have been different.

When Troy falls, she becomes a slave.

The next woman I will discuss in brief is Hecabe, the Trojan queen, Priam’s wife.

She represents above all the mother of multiple children. Hector is her pride. Just as

Helen and Andromache she is ineffective in any attempts to influence the men’s decisions and she is “a helpless spectator of an activity that is fundamentally important to her” (Farron 26). Just like Andromache, she pleads Hector to stay inside the walls and just like Andromache, she is ignored. After Hector dies, “she shows that she, like

Andromache, has been completely dependent on him for meaning in her life”

(Farron 26). She cries out on the walls: “Oh my son, […], why still kept / Patient of horrors is my life when thine vanished? / My days thou glorifiedst, my nights rung of some honour’d deed” (Homer XXII, 376-378). In Book XXIV, Priam asks about her opinion on his intention to go to Achilles for Hector's body. To this she says he should not leave the Troy’s walls and he should leave it up to the fate, but her speech has no effect on him as he says that he will go not matter what her opinion is. This illustrates

- 17 - that Hecabe is in the same position as the other women; she cannot change men’s decisions, which affects the course of events.

The last women’s portrayal I will analyse is Briseis. Briseis’ story is essential especially for understanding of Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, which will be analysed in the second chapter. Briseis was a captive in the Greek camp and she was a slave to Achilles. Her condition “displays in the most radical form of the tragic situation of women in the Iliad” (Farron 27), because she went from the position of queen of

Lyrnessus to a position of slave. As I already described, the captive women were considered as objects and prizes. Briseis and another captive girl Chryseis were a cause of a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon.

Since this story will be discussed in detail later, I will now focus on lines which could help to analyse if the men had any feelings for these women, in other words if there is some romanticization of the relationship between Briseis and Achilles in the

Iliad. “In his argument with Agamemnon in Book I, Achilles never mentions any emotion he might feel for Briseis” (Farron 27). As already stated she is more regarded as an object and a prize. Farron further states that for the Greek warriors it is not even a question of lust, but more a question of their pride. According to Homer’s Iliad,

Agamemnon never has sexual intercourse with Briseis “because he took her through pride not through lust” (Farron 27). However, Farron suggests two passages which could give evidence for Achilles’ romantic feelings towards Briseis. The first one is in

Achilles’ speech in Book IX: “Every discreet and honest mind cares for his private love,

/ As much as they, as myself lov’d Briseis as my life, / although my captive, and had will to take her for my wife” (Homer IX, 329-331). This explicit claim of love contradicts other parts of Achilles’ speech, so it is often not taken seriously by the scholars. Another explanation of this claim is that the speech itself is a representation of

- 18 - heroic honour, Farron argues that by calling Briseis his wife Achilles’ reasons his pride and the fact that fighting for Menealus’ wife does not make sense to him since his own

“wife” has been taken away by Menealus’ brother. This only increases the insult in the speech and excuses Achilles’ hurt honour (Farron 28). Nevertheless, even in the rest of the speech Achilles “does not show the slightest sign of taking Briseis seriously as a human being in her own right” (Farron 28), in his reasoning Briseis is only used as an explanation of the wrong done to his pride; Briseis’ feelings or honour of course are not taken in account, which can be illustrated by the fact that even in the moment when

Briseis is offered back to Achilles by Agamemnon so he would resume fighting in the battles, he refuses only caring about his pride. The second passage, which could imply

Achilles being in love with Brises is in Book XVIII. Thetis talks to Hephaestus and tells him about Achilles beloved Briseis, who was taken away from him. She says she is the one: “for which in much disdain he mourn’d, and almost pin’d away” (Homer XVIII,

399). Nevertheless, Farron argues that: “Certainly personal feelings for Briseis never determine the course of the plot” (Farron 29). In one passage Achilles even wishes

Briseis died that day he conquered Lyrnessus (Homer XIX, 50-53), which shows

Achilles’ “callous disregard for Briseis as a human being” (Farron 29).

After this Achilles’ statement Briseis speaks for the first time after eighteen books of the plot where she had been “discussed and bargained over” (Farron 29) constantly, being described as the cause of the dismay. Her feelings or her point of view was never expressed and she was never addressed to speak. So when she speaks in Book XIX it is surprising; it is the point where the audience discovers that she cannot be treated as an object. Briseis speaks after Patroclus dies and she expresses her feelings towards him:

“O good Patroclus, to my life the dearest grace I had” (Homer XIX 279), then she mentions that in her desperate situation of seeing her husband and her three brothers die

- 19 - and then becoming Achilles captive, Patroclus would soothe her, would be kind, would become her friend and even would promise her that Achilles would marry her. To that she expresses her gratitude: “I never shall be satiate, thou ever being kind, / Ever delightsome, one sweet grace fed still with one sweet mind” (Homer XIX 295-296).

Homer emphasizes her goddess-like beauty and her passionate sadness. Briseis takes part in the preparation of the dead for the burial ceremony, which was women’s domain in ancient Greece. Homer also speaks about the other seven captive women given to

Achilles’ who weep over Patroclus’ body with Briseis: “Patroclus’ fortunes in pretext, but in sad truth their own” (Homer XIX, 298), so Homer focuses on showing that the women are human beings with their own sufferings only doing what they are told to do to survive. Farron also notes that this is the first time Briseis speaks indeed, but with tiny details Homer already expressed Briseis point of view in Book I, when he first mentioned her. He notes that she left Achilles and went to Agamemnon “unwilling”,

Farron says that this detail “had no interest for (Homer’s) male characters” (Farron 30), so the audience cannot be sure why exactly Briseis did not want to leave Achilles. It could be because of Patroclus’ kindness and Agamemnon’ brutality, it could be feelings towards Achilles. However, it could as well be the general horror of the situation of being treated as an object. Last time Briseis is mentioned she is spending a night in

Achilles’ bed after he gives Hector’s body to Priam. Homer describes her warmth and beautiful cheeks (Homer XXIV, 602), but nothing about her feelings is mentioned.

It is also important to note that in the novels under study stories of other women appear. They are not much prominent in Homer’s Iliad but they are part of the traditional myths about Trojan War. These are, for instance, Hecabe’s daughters

Polyxena and . is traditionally described as Priam and Hecabe’s youngest daughter (Duckworth 231), who was sacrificed to gods for Achilles’ burial

- 20 - ceremony after the Greeks took the city (Hamilton 201). Her story appears in classical dramas - ’ The Trojan Women and and Seneca’s Troades. Cassandra is famous for her prophecies about Trojan War, which were never believed and she was considered to be mad (Schein 11-16). She is in fact mentioned twice in Homer’s Iliad, first in connection to her fiancée Orhryoneus who was killed in the Trojan War’s battle.

And the second time in Book XXIV when Priam returns to Troy with Hector’s body,

Cassandra here announces their arrival before anyone else can see them. Homer, as in case of the other female characters’, emphasizes her beauty comparing her to Aphrodite, but apart from the mentioned announcing, Homer does not describe Cassandra’s prophetic powers in the Iliad. In the later art works such as: Agamemnon by ,

Heracles by Euripides and Ajax by ; Cassandra is described as a former beautiful princess with the ability to see the future, who is cursed by Apollo. She loses her fiancée in battle, then is raped by Ajax and the she is given to Agamemnon as a prize of war. She is then killed by his wife queen Clytemnestra, who kills her from jealousy. Therefore, the Trojan War and the stories of its women are not described only in the Iliad and Andromache, Hecabe, Helen, Briseis and Chryseis are not at all the only women whose lifetime was determined by these wars, however the Iliad sets the tone for the following versions of the story; and it also serves as the bedrock for many ancient texts about Greek gods and heroes. I will treat the archetypes presented in the other traditional texts in the following subchapters.

To conclude on the portrayal of women in the Iliad, it can be noted that “the various women of the Iliad together link and create the impression of the insecurity of their lives and the tremendous loss and suffering they must undergo” (Farron 22).

- 21 -

1.2 The original myth of the Odyssey and Homer’s portrayal of women

For the Odyssey a detailed analysis will not be included, as the archetypes and Homer’ representation of female characters could be understood from the previous Iliad oriented subchapter. Nevertheless, it is still essential to note the original myth’s characteristics for a better understanding of Margret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, a novel under study of the thesis. The Odyssey’s female characters also represent archetypes of female characters in the Greek myths in general, which will be further specified in the sub- chapter 1.3.

1.2.1 The Odyssey and role of women in the plot

The Odyssey is just as the Iliad an epic poem attributed to Homer and it also consists of twenty-four books. The story follows events after the Iliad, the audience also discovers how the Greeks managed to win the war; how they thanks to Odysseus’ idea with the infamous Trojan horse managed to break the walls of Troy. The plot then describes Odysseus’ journey back to Ithaca. The war lasted ten years but Odysseus’ journey back home lasts another ten years. Homer’s work then explores the perils

Odysseus encounters on his way, but at the same time it captures events at his home in

Ithaca, where his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus are waiting for him, while they have to host a group of Penelope’s unruly suitors. When Odysseus comes home, he disguises himself and he also competes for the hand of his wife as a suitor. Eventually, he challenges and fights the other suitors and proves to his wife he is Odysseus.

Scholars argue that in the narrative women have a quite prominent role unlike in some other works of ancient literature, which might be explained by Homer’s attitude towards female characters and their portrayal which I described in the previous sub- chapter, however the Odyssey provides “if we include the goddesses and semi-divine women, […] a great panorama of womanhood,” (Graham 3) which is a statement that

- 22 - probably could not apply to Iliad, at least not to such an extent. Graham also advocates that women’s portrayal in the Odyssey offers an insight into the roles of women in general in ancient Greece; thus it is often a sought-after source of the historians.

However, women in the Odyssey are not just goddesses and ordinary women like

Penelope, who is waiting for her husband’s return; but they are also nymphs and witches who slow Odysseus down on his way back home.

1.2.2 The archetypical portrayal of women in the Odyssey

Women mentioned in the Odyssey could be divided into two categories. Fletcher notes that in the Odyssey Homer focuses on ideological women’s role by emphasizing

“women’s chastity or lack of it” (Fletcher 77). The first category lacking the chastity is independent of male control; and therefore they are dangerous often semi-divine or divine creatures. These women are portrayed as cunning and lacking virtue, they are usually connected with lustful thinking. These are , who is a witch and wants

Odysseus to stay with her as a lover for a year (Homer X-XII); and Calypso, who is a nymph representing female vile careless sexuality, who imprisons Odysseus for seven years (Homer I-V). The power of independent women in Odyssey is usually turned against them as they are portrayed as selfish characters without self-control, their lust and desire are also turned against them and they are considered to be their weak points.

Another independent woman in Odyssey is a goddess of wisdom Athena, who represents more a role of Odysseus’ mentor and patroness, but often even Athena as a woman is portrayed as someone who makes emotional and poor judgements and therefore cannot always advise rightly to Odysseus (Hamilton 204).

The second category of female characters in the Odyssey are women under male control; they are exemplary women of virtue, who are admired and defended, usually these are mother figures, wives or daughters; or other women under male control, who

- 23 - are slaves and they are more regarded as property than human beings. The virtuous women are not usually linked with wits but Penelope is an example of a woman who uses her cleverness to reject the suitors; she postpones the moment of choosing her future husband by undoing her work on a tapestry every night while she claims that when the tapestry is finished she will marry. Apart from virtuous and clever Penelope, there is Eurycleia the slave, who was nurse both to Odysseus and Telemachus, and who is viewed by Fletcher as someone “who crosses from male to female social spaces to deliver the news […] and who unites these gendered spaces” (Fletcher 89). When

Odysseus returns and kills Penelope’s suitors, Eurycleia accuses twelve maids of sleeping with the suitors, then Telemachus hangs them (Homer XXII).; thus they represent the punishment of all promiscuous non-virtuous women.

Nausicaa, her mother Arete, princess and queen of Phaeancia, are another example of women, who are virtuous and who assist Odysseus on his journey (Homer

VI), Nausciaa is portrayed as a kind modest young girl, who when she first meets

Odysseus, he is all naked. She just offers him some clothing she has been washing and kindly directs him to go to her mother to ask for help (Hamilton 209-210).

Another woman only mentioned in the Odyssey is Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, who killed her husband and his new concubine Cassandra with the assistance of her lover (Hamilton 241). In the Odyssey, dead Agamemnon warns Odysseus in the

Underworld to be careful about his own wife when he comes home and Odysseus listens to his advice. As Wolfe argues, “Clytemnestra has been said from her first appearance in surviving written works to reflect badly on all women, everywhere. She was, in fact, adopted as a sort of universal model of the ʽbad womanʼ in Greek society”

(Wolfe 692). She is a representative of the archetype of vile, cunning women, who for the lust for their lover kill their husband. The misogyny culture and patriarchal thinking

- 24 - can be illustrated by the fact that it does not matter much that the husband also came home with a concubine and that he probably had more sex slave back in Troy (e.g.

Briseis, Chryseis), this is considered “altogether normal […] for the Greek man”

(Cantarella 65). Nevertheless, to understand Clytemnestra, it is important to understand the background of the crimes. As Hamilton says, vengeance waited for Agamemnon

“since the Queen, Clytemnestra, had come back from Aulis, where she had seen her daughter die. She did not keep faith with her husband who killed her child”

(Hamilton 242). Their daughter was on Agamemnon’s command - similarly as Polyxena after the war - sacrificed to the gods, so they would bring wind to the thousand Greek ships for their journey to Troy. Agamemnon lured Clytemnestra and their children on Aulis with a promise that Achilles wanted to marry Iphigenia, which was a lie. After this betrayal Clytemnestra took her destiny into her hands and while

Agamemnon was in the war she and her lover Aegisthus took over the political power, then they killed him and Cassandra. After that Clytemnestra became more of Aegisthus’ puppet and she was killed by her own son Orestes in the end. The family tragedy was adapted in a novel House of Names by Colm Tóibín, which explains – unlike the

Odyssey – the context of Clytemnestra’s behaviour. But in the Odyssey Clytemnestra’s portrayal “conforms to a common belief about women prevalent in ancient Greece: that they are naturally uncontrolled and need the firm hand of a man to keep them in line”

(Wolfe 649). In her case it is either Agamemnon, Aegisthus or Orestes who control her.

Even though her motive for the murder would be taken as reasonable in our modern thinking, Clytemnestra continues to shed a bad light full of shame on the womankind and she follows an archetype of evil, cunning women in the Odyssey.

To conclude on this part, throughout the epic, the archetypes of virtuous and non- virtuous women are presented, virtuous women usually help Odysseus on his journey

- 25 - and lustful passionate women usually entrap him and prolong his journey for years by making him stay with them as their lover (e.g. Circe, Calypso). Odysseus is warned by other men on his journey against the vile archetype of women like Clytemnestra, who are cunning and are able to murder their own husband. An archetype of mother figure is also illustrated by Athena, Odysseus’ mentor; and Eurycleia, his loyal nurse. The promiscuity of the women is symbolically punished by the ending of the epic, when

Telemachus hangs twelve maids for their sexual activity around the slayed Penelope’s suitors. Penelope herself is clever, but she is also viewed as a very passive character who waits for her husband patiently and loyally. Atwood is giving another explanation on this in her The Penelopiad; the thesis is going to treat the topic in the next chapter.

Other minor female characters who are virtuous usually help Odysseus on his way with their advice (e.g. Nausicaa, Arete). It could also be noted that the women’s smart advice or cunning skills or powers also move Odysseus forward in his journey, but they are blamed or overlooked and the credit for the progress is given to male courage and strength.

1.3 Misogyny and archetypes in the traditional Greek Myths

Since the society of the ancient Greek was patriarchal there are patriarchal archetypes presented in the myths. It must be noted that both Iliad and Odyssey were performed in oral-tradition. So called the aidoi and the rhapsodoi were “singing the deeds of their ancestors, fulfilling not only a recreational function but an important pedagogical one as well. They taught the Greeks what to feel and think, what they should be, and how they should behave. As men learned from the epos to adapt themselves to the model of the hero, so women listening to poets learned what sort of behaviour they should adopt and what they should avoid” (Cantarella 25). Therefore, the men were encouraged to be strong, brave and courageous and women were shown

- 26 - what is expected of them in the relationships towards men. In the myths women are presented as weak sexual objects or cunning wives and witches; if women are different and if they possess any kind of power that men lack, they are considered mad like for example already mentioned Cassandra, who never believed her accurate prophecies and was considered to be insane.

The origin of the women being portrayed as foolish, weak-willed and illogical creatures who go too far with their curiosity (Hamilton 70); leaving them in need of a man to guide and control them; stretches to Pandora, who could not resist her curiosity and opened a box containing all of the woes of the world, which to this day plague the human kind. Hamilton in her Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes notes: “From her, the first woman, comes the race of women, who are evil to men, with a nature to do evil” (Hamilton 70). Thus this story in Greek mythology is similar to biblical Eve, who is also, due to her curiosity, responsible for all the challenges and difficulties that men have to face in the world. Women in the Greek mythology and in the Odyssey live under the shadow of Pandora; they are not trust-worthy and they are forever in need of the leading of men to prevent them from wreaking havoc and creating chaos in the world. Consequently, as already described in the Iliad analysis, in the mythological narratives women are often treated like objects, their feelings or opinions are not taken in account and they only become targets of desire, shame, or blame.

Korkmaz in her study presents links of feminist archetypal theory and different conceptions of the myths to explain the phenomenon of rewriting myths. She analyses words of different scholars and philosophers who attempted to explain function of the myths in human culture. Korkmaz mentions for example Ernst Cassier who believed

“that myth has a very crucial role in the formation of cultural forms and that human culture is a historical and social structure” (Korkmaz 3), in his essays he further studies

- 27 - symbolism in myths, which he believes, help individuals “to understand themselves and/or each other” and he states that “myth and language are inseparable” (Korkmaz 4).

Korkmaz further mentions C.G. Jung’s theory of archetypes “who introduces his collective unconscious from which he believes myths are derived”. Jung states that “The whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious” (Jung 152). Feminist thinkers profit from Jung’s and Freud’s theories, because they for the first time introduce process of individuation and they allowed more recent theories to develop from their basic thoughts. However, Korkmaz argues that feminist thinkers have “totally different standpoint” (Korkmaz 7) from Jung and Freud, because feminist thinkers argue that meaning of myths, stories or any other cultural expression vary depending on “the social structure with which they interact” (Korkmaz

19). She further talks about feminist theorist Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, because their theories “reveal and subvert the binaries and hierarchies which have conquered not only myths but all literary works and even languages of Western civilizations” (Korkmaz 7) introducing phallogocentrism and myths structure which is linked to it, because the phalogocentric discourse defined the discourse of the myths for centuries.

The French feminist movement écriture feminine, which started in the 1970s, resonates with the feminist retellings as it encourages women to retell their own genuine experience and it praises the individuality of women’s writings about themselves and their bodies freed from the patriarchal discourse and encoding. Korkmaz mentions

Hélène Cixous, who “celebrates the plurality of femininity” and who “condemns the myths created by the patriarchal society” (Korkmaz 14) because of the oppressive tone towards women. Feminist archetypal theory which also appeared in the 1970s revised

Jung’s ideas about archetypes and it emphasizes the need to voice “the existence of

- 28 - genuine female experience and its expression through archetypes” (Korkmaz 16). The scholars engaged in this theory revised their ideas in the book Feminist Archetypal

Theory: Interdiscplinary Re-visions of Jungian Thought edited by Estella Lauter and

Carol Schreiner Rupprecht in 1985. These theorists do not agree with Jung’s theory of collective unconscious and fixed image. “They believe that any repeated psychic image can be the archetypal image” (Korkmaz 16). According to them, archetypes are changing images with tendency to reform which “cannot be completely analysed until all their previous, present and future manifestations are discovered” (Korkmaz 17).

Lauter and Rupprecht according to Korkmaz seek to establish a theory which would help to explain and study “the patterns found in women’s thoughts and images ʽto clarify distinctively female concerns that have been persistent throughout human historyʼ” (qtd. in Korkmaz 17).

To conclude, Korkmaz, while presenting scholars’ theories argues that: “the rewriting of myths and writing new myths are possible for many theorists when the ever-changing quality of them is considered. To give voice to women who have been oppressed by the male-defined myth for centuries is the concern of many women writers” (Korkmaz 19). The specific characteristic of myths give space to changing and shaping; and therefore retelling the original myths, which can – when the narrative or point of view I changed – explain or correct negative or false portrayal of women of patriarchal discourse and can express the genuine female experience as Korkmaz is trying to present in her study.

- 29 -

2. Retelling the myths; search for authentic female silenced experience in the novels

In the second chapter of the thesis aspects of novels under study will be presented. Over recent decades, Greek myths have become a prominent theme for authors to base their novel upon. Very often their discourse has feminist critique undertone. There are several aspects, ideas and concepts that the new retellings share; some of them are unique for the given novel. Nevertheless, I intend to study their aspects to illustrate how they use mythology to mirror female experience and voice their voices. First, I will briefly introduce the novels to include the presentation of the context needed for understanding of the analysis. Then I will continue to analyse the aspects of the novels in the following sub-chapters.

The Silence of the Girls is a novel written by Pat Barker; it was published in

2018. Pat Barker is a British writer known for her the Regeneration trilogy, which is

“blending fiction with the true stories of World War I” (Stivers). Her work is often viewed to be direct and blunt, her usual themes are memory, survival and recovery

(Jaggi). Her novel The Silence of the Girls was shortlisted for Women’s Prize for fiction in 2019 and Barker was also rewarded for her other novels. The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad. Barker reimagines the story from the women’s point of view; most importantly Briseis’ point of view and partly also from Achilles’s point of view.

This gives the reader a whole new perspective on the Trojan War and its legendary male heroes; it also makes them reimagine the adaptations of the Iliad already presented in the 21st century. Like for example, Wolfgang Peterson’s film Troy released in 2004, which also gave some space to the women’s part in the story, however it highly romanticized it, particularly when it comes to relationships. Barker tells the story as realistically as it gets; depicting the aspects of the war women had to deal with. They

- 30 - were part of such work as dealing with the wounded, dealing with the practical side of the war in general such as cooking and taking care of the men after they came from the battles, which of course included spending nights with them. These women were not their wives, their wives waited for them at home; these women were their slaves captured in the fallen cities near Troy. As already mentioned in the first chapter, one of these captured women was Briseis from Lyrnessus, which was a city near Troy that was invaded by the Greeks. The Silence of the Girls describes the story from the moment the women and young children of Lyrnessus wait hidden in a citadel while the Greeks kill their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. The women know what will happen after the city will fall; the young boys will be killed and women and girls will be taken to slavery. This also happens to Briseis regardless of the fact she is a queen; she becomes

Achilles’ war trophy. She spends years in the Greek war camp outside the walls of Troy and along with other enslaved women she witnesses the horrors of the war. She has a different story to tell about the famous male heroes of the Trojan War we know from the Iliad. In this chapter I will focus on the novel’s aspects emphasizing on why this ancient story told by Barker resonates with our times and what devices Barker uses to retell the myth that suddenly seems more realistic after filling the gaps of women’s silences.

The second novel, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad published in 2005, follows the story of Odysseus’ wife Penelope during the events we know from the Odyssey.

This novella was published as a part of Canongate Myth Series, in which authors reimagine and rewrite myths from various cultures. “We want to tell the story again” is the motto of the international project The Myths, which started in 2005 at the British publishing house Canongate. The spiritual father of the project is editor Jamie Byng. He appeals to some of the world's prominent writers to retell one of ancient myths in

- 31 - modern times from a contemporary point of view. In the novella, Penelope tells the story of her life as she remembers it. It could be noted that the story is told in our contemporary time as Penelope tells the story after death from the Underworld, also called “”, and reminisces her whole life comparing some of her opinions to the modern world perceptions. Her narrative is interpolated with the chorus of her twelve maids, who were hanged by Telemachus. The chapters narrated by the maids are always presented in different form and genre including a ballad, a lecture, a court trial, a lament or jump-rope rhyme. The novella was also made into theatrical version. When it comes to the author: “Margret Atwood is considered among the most influential writers and poets of Canadian literature in 21st century” (Korkmaz 20). She writes variety of genres; poetry, novels, short stories, scripts, children’s books, critical essays and non-fiction.

She won Booker Prize in 2000 for her novel The Blind Assassin (Korkmaz 20). She is well known for her novels Surfacing, Alias Grace and The Handmaid’s Tale, for all of which she was also awarded. Her work studies themes of gender, myth, nature, identity, feminism, the power of language and politics (Wynne-Davies). Korkmaz notes that

“Atwood makes use of myths, archetypes and fairy-tales” in her writing (Korkmaz 20), she further states that “Atwood uses mythic elements to tell women’s quest stories and a key component of the quest is the search for a voice with which to tell stories, for women’s plots have traditionally centred on romance and passivity” (Stein qtd. in

Korkmaz 20), which shows how vital Atwood is for this thesis and in general for study of myths’ renditions.

The third book which I will discuss, is a novel A Thousand Ships by a British writer Natalie Haynes. It was published in 2019. Natalie Haynes is also an author of a feminist retelling of Oedipus and Antigone stories, The Children of Jocasta and non- fiction book about Ancient History, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life. She was

- 32 - awarded the Classical Association Prize for her work in bringing Classics to a wider audience in 2015. Her novel A Thousand Ships is a retelling of the Iliad and the

Odyssey. However, unlike Barker or Atwood she writes from the point of view of all women, not just one of them. Haynes notes: “this was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them” (Haynes 339), in this tone she gives a complete spectrum of women’s experience of the Trojan War. Each chapter is told from a different but all-female point of view. Haynes changes her style of writing for each character, which makes every female testimony unique in its discourse and in its fate.

Namely she depicts stories of already mentioned characters from Iliad and the Odyssey:

Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Electra, Helen, Penelope, Eurycleia, Circe, Calypso, Thetis,

Briseis, Chryseis, Hecabe, Polyxena, Cassandra, Andromache, but also less prominent names like Creusa; the amazons Hippolyta, Penthesilea; the goddesses, muses and nymphs like Calliope, , Aphrodite, Athena and even old goddesses Gaia or Themis.

Haynes gives voices to all women of The Trojan War. If she cannot name them, because the epics do not mention them by name, she lets them speak generally as The Trojan women.

The House of Names is a novel by Colm Tóibín, an Irish writer, author of

Brooklyn and Nora Webster, which are novels that “give mythic grace to ordinary women’s lives” (Clanchy). By contrast in The House of Names published in 2017

Tóibín focuses on a myth and “sets out to humanise” (Clanchy) it. He depicts the events that happened at the house of Atreus, the house of king Agamemnon, before, during and after the Trojan War. Tóbín follows the story of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon and their children, son Orestes and daughters Iphigenia and Electra. The myth of the house of

Atreus is known not just from Homer’s epics but also from plays by Aechylus and

Euripides. Toíbín retells the myth from Clytemnestra's, Electra’s and Orestes’ point of

- 33 - view and explains how and why the events resulted in murders inside the family. Colm

Tóibín’s book analysis is the only male author whose retelling I intend to mention in this thesis, so I will particularly focus on the specifics which might differ from the female writings. Tóibín’s book nevertheless will not be given in-depth analysis in the thesis especially considering the fact the female writers are more important for this analysis, since it focuses mainly on the mentioned écriture feminine philosophy about women writing about genuine female experiences as presented in the novels.

The last author of mythical retellings worth mentioning is Madeline Miller, an

American novelist. She is the author of The Song of Achilles published in 2011 and

Circe published in 2018. The Song of Achilles deals with romantic interpretation of the relationship between . Miller also retells the Iliad and depicts the horrors women had to endure in the Trojan War in the novel. In her other novel Circe, she reimagines the Odyssey and presents Circe’s point of view on her relationship with

Odysseus and her life somewhere in between the human world and the world of gods.

She herself is forced to live on a deserted island, because she has magic powers and

Zeus is afraid of her. Miller focuses on the psychological side of being an immortal outcast nymph alone on an island; “that is where Miller anchors her story – in the emotional life of a woman” (Edemariam), in the feminist context Odysseus and other heroes of Greek mythology once again appear to be something different from what the readers know from Homer’s epics.

Having presented the authors and their works I will now focus on the aspects of the novels which are important for the understanding of voicing female experience. The main focus will be placed on The Silence of the Girls and The Penelopiad as they are two representative retellings; one being a retelling of the Iliad and the other one retelling of the Odyssey. The other works will be mentioned additionally to illustrate the

- 34 - points. The following subchapters will focus on the multiplicity of truth in the novels, the critique of romanticization in some adaptations, then on the problematization of

God/s and finally on the motive of silencing women's voices and authors' devices used to voice female experience in the novels.

2.1 Multiplicity of truth

Multiplicity of truth is one of the aspects that appear in all of the novels under study. This could be explained by the fact that to retell the story by adding another perspective leads to more depictions of one story. Korkmaz in her philosophical study talks about attack on the origin of the myths. She states that: “myths and archetypes in the traditional discourse reinforce […] categories” (Korkmaz 29), which are defined by language as binary paradigms. She says that “mechanism of language man is born into have created hierarchies, that privilege one leg over the other” (Korkmaz 29). These categories are further validated in the myths that usually inexplicitly “sharpen the boundaries between good and bad, men and women, immortal and mortal, human and beast, always carrying a message, either a warning or advice to the listeners”

(Korkmaz 29). Since myths and their archetypes are embedded in the Western culture and they even define our language and way of thinking, it is one of the first challenges that the authors need to overcome if they want to retell the story. Korkmaz argues: “it is not by accident that women writers, feminists and poststructuralists attack the origin first and foremost” (Korkmaz 29). To be able to talk about the female experience and female role in the story it is important to “attack” the original explanations we know from the epics and try to find new ways to see the already known and deep-rooted notion. “In order to talk about female body, power, desire and language, one must deconstruct the principal codes of patriarchal logocentric system” (Korkmaz 29). In the novels to be analysed this deconstruction is made by adding the female perspective on

- 35 - the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey. By adding the perspective and by narrating the story in first person the authors attack the conceptions from the original myths and they create multiple possibilities on how the story can be interpreted. In other words, the stories in the novels are seen not just epic legendary narratives but as a real life events lived by women who now have their space to tell their stories. In this way multiple truths are created in the novels.

The Penelopiad opens with Penelope’s wishful sentence to “know everything”, that is what she hoped for after she would die. As already mentioned, Penelope is dead in the Underworld and now retells her story. She starts: “Now that I’m dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many wishes it failed to come true” (Atwood 1). Atwood from the start demonstrates that even after death

Penelope could not define what is the one truth; she claims “the impossibility of absolute knowledge or truth as such” (Korkmaz 30). Penelope in the Hades has a chance to talk to all involved characters, but still she is not certain about the truth. However,

Penelope thinks: “Now that all the others have run out of air, it’s my turn to do a little story-making” (Atwood 3) and she starts to tell her story. As a re-imagination of the

Odyssey, The Penelopiad attacks the original myth and “destroys the notion of simple truth” (Korkmaz 30). The chorus of twelve maids hanged by Telemachus and their testimony presents even another alternative version of what Atwood’s Penelope claims.

As multiple perspectives appear they blame each other to be mere gossip, myths or assumptions.

As already analysed, Penelope in the Greek mythology represents the archetype of a faithful and smart wife who patiently waits for her husband to come home. In modern

Greek people even use Penelope’s name when they want to comment on someone’s waiting in a relationship, for example you could hear a comment: “You don’t have to

- 36 - wait for him, you are not Penelope.” Atwood’s Penelope feels sad about how she was made into a legend, which had become “a stick used to beat other women with”

(Atwood 2), her Penelope is “self-sufficient”, intelligent and yes, sometimes

“manipulative” (Korkmaz 30), but self-reflective. She is fully aware of what her husband Odysseus is really like; yes, he is full of wit and he is considered to be a hero, but she knows he is “tricky and a liar”; she notes: “I just didn’t think he would play his tricks and try out his lies on me,” (Atwood 2) this gives Penelope’s character whole new level as the reader now realizes there is more to her patience and faithfulness than one might expect. She asks herself: “Hadn’t I been faithful? Hadn’t I waited and waited, and waited, despite the temptation – almost the compulsion to do otherwise?” (Atwood 2).

Here Atwood reveals also that Penelope stayed faithful indeed, but that does not mean she had no sexual desire, living the twenty years without her husband. This discredits the idea of purely innocent wife that thinks only of her husband in a sexual way.

Atwood’s Penelope wished only to be happy in her own life. Her Penelope further declares that as she became the archetype of ideal wife and example for other women, she hated it and wanted to “scream in your ears- yes, yours!” (Atwood 2) – she addresses the contemporary reader – warning them to not to follow her example.

“Despite Penelope’s enduring disposition and exceptional efforts, the myth was quite different from her experience: they turned her to a story she did not like to hear”

(Korkmaz 30). The reader only comes to know this only because the story is told by

Penelope from the first person as a genuine attempt to tell someone’s truth that differs from the well-known conceptions. This is enhanced by the fact that the narrator;

Penelope; is already dead. Her posthumous image is moreover positive in people’s minds; thus there is no potential motive for her to lie about the events. “The personal account of Penelope as opposed to the official version of the myth stresses the

- 37 - importance of myths as a medium which organizes individuals’ behaviours and roles”

(Korkmaz 31), this emphasizes the fact that the myth of the Odyssey is very limited narrative when it comes to perspectives, it actually provides only one perspective in the genre of epic heroism flattering Odysseus’ qualities, which might not even be true or so positive - as the readers come to learn in The Penelopiad.

Another aspect Atwood provides to advocate the idea that there is no one simple truth is that when Penelope tries to start telling her story, realizing there is no beginning she could start with:

“Where shall I begin? There are only two choices; at the beginning or not at the

beginning. The real beginning would be beginning of the world, after which one

things has led to another; but since there are differences of opinion about that, I’ll

begin with my own birth” (Atwood 7).

This shows the doubtfulness of the myth and of the origin in general since Penelope, the character of the Odyssey, is fully aware of the “slipperiness” (Korkmaz 31) of the myth.

Penelope herself acknowledges that there are different opinions – different versions of the story and on the beginning of the world itself. As Korkmaz notes, this is how

Atwood displays that “there is not one fixed truth, there is not one beginning; not one transcendental signified that other signifiers end up with” (Korkmaz 31). Since there are multiple versions of the beginning, there are also multiple versions of the story and each perspective brings more opinions on one subject as Atwood exemplifies on the beginning of the world. This idea aligns with the “poststructuralist” (Korkmaz 31) theories of “the free play of signifiers with the possibility of multiple meanings and the various originary traces rather than the original” (Korkmaz 31). So the traditional myth readers know from Homer’s epic is questioned here by Penelope herself and a new space for her version of the story is created.

- 38 -

An important part of the concept of multiple truths is also advocated by questioning the paternity of some characters in the novel. Parents and origins are important specifiers in Greek mythology; they usually define the characters’ fate and nature. Penelope herself is somewhat semi-divine as a daughter of a Naiad. Another example could be already mentioned semi-divine Achilles, who was a son of the sea goddess Thetis. Atwood – just as with the origin of the world – deconstructs the notion by making the parenthood, and especially paternity, ambiguous. Penelope describes two ambiguous origins; the one of , her cousin and the one of Odysseus, her husband. Helen’s origin is described like this: “It was claimed she’d come out of an egg, being the daughter of who’d raped her mother in the form of a swan” (Atwood

20). In Odysseus’ case there are multiple rumours about who was in fact his father.

Penelope doubts the paternity because of his nature; it is too similar to Sisyphus’ nature, who is rumoured to have seduced his mother and who was said to be so witty that he

“cheated Death twice” (Atwood 46). Penelope also mentioned that Odysseus’ grandfather claimed to be a son of the god , who was also believed to be a tricky liar (Atwood 46). Like that Odysseus would have two “crafty and unscrupulous men on two of the main branches of his family tree” (Atwood 47), which would make sense to

Penelope regarding his fox-like personality. Both of the origins are nevertheless rumours and even Penelope discredits them right away in her narrative as she asks herself: “I wonder how many of us really believed that swan-rape concoction?”

(Atwood 20); and for Odysseus being a son of Sisyphus she says: “I found it difficult to believe, as who would want to seduce Anticleia? […] But let the tale stand for a moment” (Atwood 46); Anticleia was Odysseus' mother, who Penelope found to be ugly and did not believe that she would or even could be unfaithful to her husband. As

Korkmaz says: “the ambiguity of both Helen and Odysseus not only dismantles the

- 39 - illusion of origin but also demythologizes the divinity of these characters by involving rape, seduction, adultery, cheating and so forth” (Korkmaz 32). These are all serious and complicated themes that were not to be displayed so transparently in the ancient mythological epic in connection to divinity, nevertheless they were present indeed.

At this point it would be interesting to analyse different interpretations of Helen being abducted and raped by Theseus and Peritheus in a very young age. Helen was claimed to be so beautiful that Theseus would decide to abduct her as a perfect semi- divine future bride. Hamilton in her Mythology mentions: “Theseus succeeded in kidnaping the little girl, […], but (her) two brothers marched against the town she had been taken to, and got her back” (Hamilton 155). In The Penelopiad this instance

“displays the textuality of grand myths” (Korkmaz 32). Atwood’s Penelope says about her cousin’s abduction:

“Theseus and his pal Peirithous had abducted my cousin Helen when she was less

than twelve years old and hidden her away, with the intent of casting lots to see

which one of them would marry her when she was old enough. Theseus didn’t rape

her as he might otherwise have done because she was only a child, or so it was

said” (Atwood 75).

Atwood’s Penelope also mentions that Helen herself told her the story, she notes “It sounded quite different when she told it” (Atwood 75). This is another example of the multiplicity of truth in the narratives as more of the characters have space to tell their stories. In The Penelopiad Helen uses the story about her abduction as a history of

“awes” given to her beauty; she claims not just that she was not raped by Theseus and his friend, but moreover she says that: “Theseus and Peirithous were bot so in awe of her divine beauty that they grew faint whenever they looked at her, and could barely come close enough to clasp her knew and beg forgiveness for their audacity”

- 40 -

(Atwood 75). Therefore, in The Penelopiad Helen seems to be a somewhat vain character. Penelope further notes: “I’ve often wondered whether, if Helen hadn’t been so puffed up with vanity, we might all have been spared the sufferings and sorrows she brought down on our heads” (Atwood 76). For Penelope Helen again – as already analysed in the first chapter – archetypally becomes a target of blame because of her

“deranged lust” and “vanity” (Atwood 76). So even the instance where she was maybe raped as child does not mean much to Penelope and there is still the shame and blame, that even Helen herself expresses. This could be explained by the fact that Helen really complicated Penelope’s life, at least if we look at the war’s pretext from Penelope’s point of view, in other words if we would accept the notion of relationship of Helen and

Paris being the cause of the war, which took her husband away from her. Also throughout the book Helen does not show kind behaviour towards her cousin and

Penelope is jealous of her in the first place because her husband originally wanted to marry her – just like every other man; so naturally one cannot expect the relationship to be the warmest and Atwood’s depiction could be thought of as realistic.

However, Barker has a different story to tell about Helen and her abduction in youth. The Silence of the Girls is told from Briseis’ point of view. Briseis in Barker’s novel notes on Helen:

“[…] as for the men…We-ell, she had a pretty good idea what they were

thinking—the same thing they’d been thinking since she was ten years old. Oh, yes,

I got that story too. Poor Helen, raped on a riverbank when she was only ten. Of

course I believed her. It was quite a shock to me, later, to discover nobody else did”

(Barker 126).

Thus Barker proposes whole different testimony on Helen and her history; her Briseis, who had a chance to spend some time with Helen in Troy, believes she is “lonely”

- 41 -

(Barker 125), “light-hearted” (Barker 126), yes “confident” (Barker 125), but also

“desperate”; feeling “nothing but guilt and misery at being the cause of all this carnage”

(Barker 127). Briseis also wonders why Helen was so hard on herself in public and so blunt in private; she reflects: “Perhaps she thought if she used the word “whore” frequently enough, others would be less likely to use it” (Barker 128). She also notes that when they were alone together she would laugh at all the Trojan women who hated her, because even when they did, they tried to be just like her at the same time. “All this mindless imitation of a woman they affected to despise… No wonder she laughed at them” (Barker 128). These passages give an impactful insight on what might Helen feel like and what would explain her unpleasant behaviour her cousin Penelope described in

Atwood’s The Penelopiad. Briseis also ponders about another reason behind Trojan women’s negative perception of Helen: “It wasn’t the routine malice of the other Trojan women, but something altogether deeper. Looking back, I wonder whether my dumpy, plain sister wasn’t slightly in love with Helen. I was probably a little in love with her myself” (Barker 130). These feelings, wherever the reader takes the love for sisterly/friendly love or for romantic love, are not described further in more detail, but

Briseis’ reflexion on Helen still provides another point of view on Helen’s character and it illustrates the argument about the need for the archetypes to be demolished for better understanding of female characters’ experience.

Returning back to The Penelopiad, there is the variety of multiple truths within one novel to be explored. This can be illustrated on The Penelopiad, because the novella presents Penelope’s point of view and the point of view of the twelve maids. Part of the women’s storytelling would be just gossip, Atwood uses this as a device to stress the textuality of myths and multiplicity of truth. Korkmaz argues: “The various gossips and charges about Penelope and her relationship with the Suitors are one of the most

- 42 - outstanding examples of textuality of history” (Korkmaz 33). Penelope treats these gossip as follows:

“I must address the various items of slanderous gossip that have been going the

rounds for the past two or three thousand years. These stories are completely

untrue. Many have said that there’s no smoke without fire, but that is a fatuous

argument. We’ve all heard rumours that later proved to be entirely groundless, and

so it is with these rumours about me” (Atwood 143).

The gossip would ruin Penelope’s faithful and patient wife reputation; the stories accuse her of having sexual relationship with one of the suitors – Amphinomous, “the politest of the Suitors” (Atwood 143), there is also gossip of her sleeping with all of the Suitors and subsequently giving birth to a god Pan (half human, half goat), she finds this gossip

“outrageous” and “monstrous” (Atwood 144). The stories are supported by the fact that

Odysseus’ mother did not tell anything to him about the Suitors when she met him on the Island of Death, because she would have to reveal Penelope’s infidelity, which would only sadden her son. In the Chapter XX Penelope addresses those stories trying to disprove them with “rational explanations” (Korkmaz 33), for instance she admits that Amphinomous was nice to her and the suitors were giving her expensive gifts, but she only accepted them because she took it as “a return for everything they’d eaten and wasted” (Atwood 144), she declares “it’s a long jump from there to bed” (Atwood 143), advocating that she had never slept with them. Note, that this is again the same pattern of someone discrediting stories that are told about themselves; so their experience is voiced by giving them space to narrate the story from their perspective. However, in

The Penelopiad it is not just Penelope who is given space to narrate. One must not forget that Atwood presents also the account of the twelve maids. In one of their choruses (Chapter XXI) they provide their point of view:

- 43 -

As we approach the climax, grim and gory,

Let us just say: There is another story.

[…] World has it that Penelope the Prissy

Was- when it came to sex – no shirking sissy! (Atwood 147)

Then the maids continue by enumerating the already mentioned rumours about

Penelope sleeping with the suitors and invite the audience to “peek behind the curtain”

(Atwood 148) of their perspective. They develop the idea that Penelope and Eurycleia were actually standing together and as Odysseus was coming home, Eurycleia warned

Penelope and advised her to kill the maids and to put the blame of “whoring” with the suitors on them. Penelope – played by the maids in this scene – expresses her fear of her husband coming:

And now, dear Nurse, the fat is in the fire –

He’ll chop me up for tending my desire!

While he was pleasuring every nymph and beauty,

Did he think I’d do nothing but my duty?

While every girl and goddess he was praising,

Did he assume I’d dry up like a raisin? (Atwood 148-149)

This representation differs from Penelope’s account and it presents her as “lustful, unfaithful wife” (Korkmaz 35), which is even “doubled by the representation of

Eurycleia” (Korkmaz 35), who is Penelope’s accomplice here, even though Penelope blamed her in her own narrative for being too loyal to Odysseus. Eurycleia – also played by the maids – says when asked by Penelope who knows about her infidelity:

Only the twelve, my lady, who assisted,

Know that the Suitors you have not resisted.

They smuggled lovers in and out all night;

- 44 -

[…] They’re privy to your every lawless thrill-

They must be silenced, or the beans they’ll spill! (Atwood 150).

After this Penelope orders Eurycleia to tell Odysseus about maids sleeping with the suitors, because he would believe her as to his loyal nurse. Then she would be saved;

“And I in fame a model wife shall rest / All husbands will look on, and think him blessed!” (Atwood 151), which Korkmaz describes as an “announcement of her final motive” (Korkmaz 35). This is a representation of the killed maids which portrays

Penelope “as a woman of desire, but also of tactic” (Korkmaz 35) as she assures her own survival and a place in the mythology as “virtuous wife” (Korkmaz 35). Penelope herself in her narrative describes a whole different story; she says that she loved her maids as she raised them and they were all precious to her; she says that when the maids were hanged Eurycleia gave something in her drink that put her to sleep, so she couldn’t do anything. Of course this is controversial as the maids were basically made to accept rape and abuse by the suitors and spy on them, which Penelope saw as just another part of their duty to their master and to herself as the queen. She – according to her words – asked them “to hang around the Suitors and spy on them, using whatever enticing arts they could invent” (Atwood 115). When she finds out about the slaughter she notes:

“What could I do? Lamentation wouldn’t bring my girls back to life. I bit my tongue”

(Atwood 160). Thus this is the example of different perspectives which contradict each other and which are part of one retelling. As Korkmaz notes: “The different accounts of the events in The Penelopiad underline the textuality of history and display how myths are constructed” (Korkmaz 35), she further emphasizes that the importance of the presentation of the maids’ perspective lies in the affirmation that “not only male myth- makers create myths in time but also there the possibility for women to create myths according their own agenda as in case of Penelope, who has consciously deceived

- 45 - humanity under her virtuous wife mask” (Korkmaz 35). Penelope’s account in The

Penelopiad does not correspond to the traditional version of the story nor to the gossip and rumours about her.

Another example to illustrate the multiplicity of the truth in the myths is necessary to mention the moments which differ in the novels. I will use the depiction of the interaction between Clytemnestra and Cassandra as an example; this example of interaction differs in Tóibín’s The House of Names and Haynes’s A Thousand Ships. In

The House of Names Clytemnestra is very cold towards Cassandra, which is not much of a surprise as she comes to her palace as a new concubine to her husband

Agamemnon. However, Haynes presents the two women having a conversation during which Clytemnestra even gives Cassandra a chance to flee and live, but Cassandra decides to stay and die to enable Clytemnestra finish her vengeance. In The House of

Names Clytemnestra smiles at the thought that Cassandra will die (Tóibín 61), she also lets her lover Aegisthus kill her, she describes:

“She had come to us in glory and now, an ignominy, she was running through the

palace seeking Agamemnon, having divined that something had happened to him.

[…] she could see my husband bent over naked, his head in the bloody water. As

she howled, I handed Aegisthus the knife I had used on Agamemnon and indicated

to hi, that I would leave him to his task” (Tóibín 61).

So this is rather raw description of the murder. Haynes presents a different idea of the two women having empathy for each other. Clytemnestra takes Cassandra to talk to her and she acknowledges the gift of seeing the future. She tells her about her daughter

Iphigenia who was sacrificed by Agamemnon and Cassandra tells her that she talks to her using her gift. Clytemnestra believes her; the two of them understand each other.

There are also no positive feelings implied that Cassandra could have for Agamemnon

- 46 - like in The House of Names, Haynes’ Cassandra says about Agamemnon: “Never talks to me except be quiet, lie still, stop crying” (Haynes 305); so there is no horror implied she might feel seeing him dead as described by Tóibín in the quoted passage. In A

Thousand Ships Clytemnestra tells Cassandra: “If you ran away now, you might live”

(Haynes 306), but Cassandra answers: “Apollo’s mind is made up. (…) It ends today”

(Haynes 306) and further she says: “We’ll conduct the sacrifice together” (Haynes 307).

Clytemnestra gives her another chance to flee but Cassandra embraces her fate and she stays. Now this could be driven into a precipitate conclusion that the male author does not provide other than archetypical reaction of jealous – wicked – lustful Clytemnestra; murderer of her own husband; nevertheless, this conclusion certainly cannot be made without a broader study. Since I do not include any other retellings written by other male authors, I will just focus on the argument that the two retellings The House of

Names and A Thousand Ships present different interpretations of the two female characters’ interaction, which illustrates the multiplicity of the truth in the two renditions. Haynes gives the women a chance to understand each other and gives them a chance not to be each other’s enemy, because they have another common enemy. This account makes the reader rethink the presumption that the two women would hate each other because they are the mistress and the wife of one man. In Agamemnon’s case they would more logically understand each other since he – according to general

Agamemnon’s portrayal – would not treat them lovingly and properly, but as a slave and as husband who kills his own daughter. So suddenly, Toíbín’s interpretation of

Cassandra clinging to Agamemnon does not make much of a sense unless she would suffer from Stockholm syndrome. I will focus on the romanticization of the relationships in the following subchapter.

- 47 -

In the feminist context the novels give rational explanations to support the female accounts. In the novels, the details the readers might know from the mythological epics change into rationally argued stories which make the legends look like heroic “big talk”.

In Miller’s Circe, “we learn that Jason may be beautiful and strong, but he is also ʽlost in the details of his own legendʼ; that Hermes is all very well as a lover, as long as one doesn’t ever commit the sin of being dull; that Odysseus is ʽlawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at onceʼ” (Miller, Edemariam). In Atwood’ The Penelopiad

Odysseus’ adventures are implied to be rumours:

“Rumours came, carried by other ships. […] Odysseus was the guest of a goddess

on enchanted isle, said some; she’d turned his men into pigs – not a hard job in my

view – but turned them back into men because she’d fallen in love with him and

was feeding him unheard-of delicacies prepared by her own immortal hands, and

the two of them made deliriously every night; no, said others, it was just an

expensive whorehouse, and he was sponging off the Madam” (Atwood 83-84).

This extract also illustrates the role of rumours and how they are perceived not just today but within the works and possibly within the times they were invented in. In

Atwood Penelope further states that she was fully aware of the fact that the songs sang about Trojan War and about Odysseusʼ adventures were trying to please her. She notes, the minstrels “always sang the noblest versions in my presence – the ones in which

Odysseus was clever, brave, and resourceful, and battling supernatural monsters, and beloved of goddesses” (Atwood 84), she also says that she always awarded them for their comforting words concluding; “Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others” (Atwood 85). Which would explain Penelope’s patience she is infamous for. Atwood stresses the textuality of myths and shows how the myths work, by using this knowledge she advocates the female accounts in the story and gives space

- 48 - to other perspectives; she “peeks behind the curtain” (Atwood 148) of the rumours and

Homer’s epic emphasizing there is no one truth.

To conclude, in the feminist retelling context, we discover that the authors strive to explain the details of the myths more rationally, enriched by the female perspective, which provides the reader with presumable feelings and views on their own account of events in the myths. As Korkmaz says: “the multiplication of the myth not only invalidates the notion of simple truth or origin, but also negates the male account of history or memory” (Korkmaz 30). By providing more points of view and female perspective, the multiplicity of truth is created and emphasized by the authors of the retellings. This concept mirrors the theory of poststructuralists which stresses the importance of attack on the origin which is needed if the story is to be re-imagined,

“different accounts of the myth not only problematize the concept of ʽtruthʼ but also show […] how subversive the pattern in the relationship between the official and the unofficial records of the myths is” (Korkmaz 35). This also corresponds to the Lacanian view that it is impossible to see the reality without imaginary and symbolic components, which in fact mirror the truth. And the truth is – as illustrated by the novels – not just one, especially when it comes to myths.

2.2 The Critique of Romanticizing the Relationships

One of the most usual interpretations of the myths and their representative couples is their romantic almost idealizing interpretation. The artists throughout the centuries and the great epic poem, songs and paintings often present the audience with great love stories. The 21st century artists were no exception in this notion. The most notorious example might be Wolfgang Petersen’s film from 2004 - Troy. Petersen and Benioff present story of Homer’s Iliad. Omitting the gods who would play a role in the plot, they try to create a more real and still epic story of the Trojan War. Nevertheless, from

- 49 - the feminist critiques point of view the film treats “qua viewers as semiliterate conventional romantics” (Green 187). In the movie we of course see our three prominent couples from the Iliad: Helen and Paris, Hector and Andromache, and

Achilles and Briseis.

When it comes to Helen (Diane Kruger) and Paris (Orlando Bloom) their relationship is very passionate and romantic, and Peterson gives space to Helen to express her regrets as well. Nevertheless, the interpretations of Helen being taken by

Paris by force from Sparta or other interpretations of Helen despising Paris by the end of the war are omitted in the film as it focuses on the romantic aspect. For instance, in A

Thousand Ships, Hayes mentions that Paris was married to a nymph and they had a son before he was promised to have Helen. This would discredit the whole romance, nevertheless, all of this is leaved out in the film.

Hector and Andromache’s loving marriage is depicted as I already analysed in the Iliad chapter, thus the movie in their case stays fully faithful to Homer. But Achilles

(Brad Pitt) and Briseis’ (Rose Byrne) relationship is the one which is most romanticized in the movie. In fact, the love for Briseis becomes a reason for Achilles to die. In the movie Briseis does not come from Lyrnessus but from Troy and she is, like Cassandra originally, a virgin priestess in Apollo’s temple; she is also cousin to Paris and Hector, a niece to king Priam. In the end also Briseis is the one to kill Agamemnon who wants to take her to as his slave, so she also fulfils the role of Clytemnestra; she is portrayed as a courageous and smart young woman who genuinely falls in love with

Achilles. “In the person of Achilles, Homer gave definition to the Western world’s idea of heroism. […] He begins the war as an idealistic young man, concerned only with his personal honour and glory” (Rabel 140), Rabel in his review for the movie further states that Achilles wins some sympathy in the end by showing emotion not just on losing

- 50 -

Patroclus, but in the movie – by falling love with the enslaved girl, who he saved from being raped by Agamemnon and by a bunch of Greek soldiers and in the end he dies

“only when seeking rescue Briseis from the burning ruin of Troy” (Rabel 141). Of course in a certain way, Troy “makes the important (Homeric) point that wars have a tendency to outrun their initial causes and their own reasons for being fought” (Rabel

141). Nevertheless, Barker in The Silence of the Girls presents a rather different account of the relationship between Briseis and Achilles, which makes Troy's romantic interpretation look highly idealized.

In the movie, as already mentioned, Achilles saves Briseis from hands of brute

Greek soldiers who are about to rape her even though she fights back. Achilles admires her courage in the “safety” of his hut. “To fight back when people attack me? Dog has that kind of courage,” (Troy 1:49) Briseis answers him. As she despises war and pities the soldiers she tells him bluntly: “You think you’re so different from thousand others?

Soldiers understand nothing but war. Peace confuses them” (Troy 1:50). But as they talk further about the life of soldiers and the gods, Achilles shares with her his ideas about the beauty of mortality and she changes her opinion slightly: “I thought you were a dumb brute. I could have forgiven a dumb brute” (Troy 1:52). Then in the night she attempts to kill him, but he seduces her and they fall in love. Later they have an exchange while holding each other in bed:

Briseis: Am I still your captive?

Achilles: You’re my guest.

Briseis: In Troy guests can leave whenever they want.

Achilles: You should leave, then.

Briseis: Would you leave this all behind?

Achilles: Would you leave Troy? (Troy 2:00)

- 51 -

Briseis is loyal to her family and to Troy, so later when king Priam famously comes to

Achilles for Hector’s body Briseis leaves along with him and goes back to Troy, which is however soon to fall. When Greeks invade the city, Achilles hurries to save Briseis.

Briseis then kills Agamemnon who wants her to become his slave, she is then attacked by his guards, which is when Achilles comes to the scene and saves her. When Paris sees Achilles with Briseis he shoots him, hitting his heel with an arrow, Achilles then bids a heart-breaking farewell to Briseis whispering: “You game me peace in a lifetime of war” (Troy 3:00) then they kiss for the last time. Briseis flees with Paris from Troy and Achilles dies. Thus this movie’s interpretation makes the audience believe their love was not only mutual and genuine, but also worth dying for as they both enriched each other by their experiences.

Barker’s depiction of their relationship is quite different. “Men carve meaning into women’s faces. Messages addressed to other men,” (Barker 107) is what Barker’s

Briseis notes. In The Silence of the Girls the captured women are just objects. In the novel Achilles does not save Briseis from the soldiers and Agamemnon, instead when she is presented to him as his prize he announces: “Cheers, lads. She’ll do” (Barker 24).

Barker does not forget that Briseis just saw the man killing her brothers and her husband, who she does not love, but who means safety to her; this also illustrates the fact there is no romance at all in the feminist retellings. Achilles simply takes Briseis and she becomes his slave, there are no tender feelings expressed between them and

Briseis is aware of it and honest about it; the readers are allowed to read her internal thoughts: “He fucked as quickly as he killed, and for me it was the same thing.

Something in me died that night” (Barker 28), that is the raw version of how Briseis feels about the first night spent with Achilles. She further describes: “I lay there, hating him, though of course he wasn’t doing anything he didn't have a perfect right to do. […]

- 52 -

He tried me out” (Barker 28). She says he was not cruel but that does not change her feelings towards him, not even later in the novel. Briseis uses king Priam’s famous phrase he told Achilles after he killed Hector: “I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.” (Homer qtd. in Barker 267); she changes it into: “And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers” (Barker 267), suddenly Briseis silently overshadows Priam’s burden and grief and emphasizes that women have worse battles to endure than men.

As I already indicated in my essay on Barker; “Barker prunes the story of anything that would indicate some romantic feelings between Briseis and Achilles, and she even goes a little bit further when she implies there are not such feelings between

Helen and Paris either” (Křížová 4). As I mentioned in the thesis already, Barker’s

Briseis mentions that “it was obvious even to a child that Helen preferred Hector to

Paris, whom I think she’d grown to despise” (Barker 130), because Paris is shown to be a coward who “seemed to be fighting the war from his bed” (Barker 130).

In the novel Briseis also observes other captive women’s feelings and thinks about them in her mind, comparing them to her own. “There is wide range of women’s reactions on the slavery. Some are former prostitutes, who find it easy to give her body, but for example Tecmessa, a younger captive, convinces herself that she is in love with her captor and seems to have a Stockholm syndrome” (Křížová 4-5). Barker’s Briseis observes Achilles constantly and thinks about him but she does not allow herself to like him, always remembering that he killed her brothers and husband. Her female friends tell her: “You never mention his looks. And it’s true, I don’t, I find it difficult. […] How do you separate a tiger’s beauty from its ferocity?’ (Barker 56). I already analysed the possible implied marriage between the two of them in the Iliad. As the end of the war

- 53 - approaches Barker’ Brises also ponders over marrying him because that would again; just like the first marriage; give her a better status and safety. But she fights with her conscience on how she could be able to do such a thing and marry her family’s murderer. After the war is over she has to marry one of Achilles’ men because she is pregnant with Achilles’ child and he wanted her to be secure, knowing he would die soon. However, Achilles also does not show any kind of deep romantic feelings towards

Briseis. When Agamemnon takes Briseis away as a compensation for Chryseis, Achilles tells his men: “Tell him he can fuck her till her back breaks, why would I care?” (Barker

156) As I argued, Barker is rather interested in the politics of power between the men than romance (Křížová 5). At the very end of the novel Briseis’ ponders at Achilles’ grave about how the myth would be told in thousand years: “They won’t want to know we were living in a rape camp. They’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps?” (Barker 324), the author makes her questions resonate with the contemporary reader who becomes conscious of the fact that Briseis is right (Křížová 5).

The account of the relationship between Achilles and Briseis is even more problematized when Barker; just like Miller in her The Song of Achilles; implies

Achilles’ homosexual orientation and romantic feelings towards Patroclus. Haynes’ novel A Thousand Ships on the other hand argues that Achilles took Briseis to his compound for Patroclus, who was the one to fall in love with her and the one to sleep with her, which would rationally explain Briseis’ lamentation over Patroclus’ death in the Iliad which I mentioned in the first chapter. With the information known from the

Iliad all these versions are possible, Achilles is complex character that can be reimagined multiple ways and can advocate more ideas for the authors, nevertheless by romanticizing the relationship of him and Briseis (like Troy does) the pain and trauma of Trojan women; which they had to go through as captives in the Greek Camp; stays

- 54 - unvoiced and silenced just like in the Iliad, in other words romanticizing subverts the idea of voicing genuine female experience of the war. The explanation can be illustrated by repeating Briseis’ final words in The Silence of the Girls: “They won’t want to know” (Barker 324) the truth.

2.3 Problem of Deities

Another important aspect of the retellings is the authors’ approach to deities and

God himself. Korkmaz in her study argues that “the problematization of God/s in another attack on logos as God is one of the master signifiers Western epistemology has placed in the centre” (Korkmaz 44). According to the Jungian theory which was re- visioned by Wehr in Feminist Archetypal Theory; and which Korkmaz mentions; collective unconscious - with its fixed idea of almighty masculine god principle that provides “control and limit (to) human behaviour and thinking” (Korkmaz 44) - serves

“to legitimate socially constructed roles for women” (Wehr 32). Korkmaz also presents

Irigaray’s thoughts on how the western ideal masculinity of the god and divinity’s connection to masculinity endangers and limits female authenticity while legitimizing the male prominence “both socially and psychologically” (Korkmaz 44). In the Greek mythology there are of course also female goddesses, nevertheless the most powerful god who stands above other Olympian gods is still Zeus. Also the Greek goddesses are to a certain extent still shaped just like all the mortal women by male-God above them, the God “who positions women according to his self-image and who limits female experience as unnatural, worthless or irrational” (Korkmaz 44). The authors of the novels under study convey their characters’ thoughts on the gods to deconstruct this archetype to explain the female experience.

In Atwood’s The Penelopiad Penelope is very “ironic and subversive” (Korkmaz

45) about the gods. The magic of Atwood’s attitude lays in the fact that Penelope is

- 55 - speaking her thoughts from the Underworld, which means she has relevant information and she does not have to be scared of gods’ punishment anymore; and above all she also speaks in our times of 21st century, thus she possesses a certain sensitivity when it comes to conveying feminist ideas linked to god to a contemporary reader. Her

Penelope basically thinks that gods are “stupid” (Atwood 39) and “bored” and that is why they do such thinks like randomly deciding people's fates. She imagines them like

“pack of ten-year-old children” (Atwood 135), who “cast the dice” and decide from caprice: “let’s destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of crayfish!” (Atwood 135). She later openly says about them on this topic: “the gods couldn’t seem to keep their hands or paws or beaks off mortal women, they were always raping someone or other” (Atwood 20), this indicates the legitimized acts the gods are allowed to do because of their supremacy and power, thus Atwood’s attitude

“shatters both the concepts of divinity and causality” (Korkmaz 46). Since this notion is destroyed, Atwood further illustrates the injustice which is only encouraged by this kind of gods. In one of the maids’ choruses titled “An Anthropology Lecture”; which is really written in the genre of lecture; the maids present the symbolic in their story, especially in the number of twelve and their way of death, they connect this to matriarchal religious moon cycle rituals that were destroyed by a patriarch – Odysseus.

This advocates the idea that “patriarchy has always found a legitimate theory to justify its actions” (Korkmaz 46), which was only later supported by patriarchal religion.

Atwood satirizes “the insufficiency of theories in explaining the rape and murder of women in myths” (Korkmaz 46), she lets the maids add that these rapes were happening

“all around Mediterranean Sea” (Atwood 166) in that times. Then they finish the lecture by telling the audience not to worry, they are not “real girls, real flesh and blood, real

- 56 - pain, real injustice” (Atwood 168) they are just symbols. As Lacan argued, reality cannot be seen without the symbolic aspect.

Later in The Penelopiad the maids appear in another chorus entitled “The Trial of

Odysseus as Videotaped by the Maids”, in this chapter Odysseus faces allegations of murder of the Suitors and then the murder of the maids in the 21st century-like trial.

Atwood again satirizes how the topic of rape and violence on women is treated in the courts. When the maids ask for justice the judge in the end concludes:

“your client’s times were not our times. Standards of behaviour were different then.

It would be unfortunate if this regrettable but minor incident were allowed to stand

as a blot on an otherwise exceedingly distinguished career. Also I do not wish to be

guilty of anachronism. I must dismiss the case” (Atwood 182).

This “comic-ironic attitude of the judge” (Korkmaz 47) mirrors 21st century real-life trials concerning the sexual abuse allegations. The scene ends up in chaos as the maids call for troop of twelve mythical creatures Erinyes to punish Odysseus, but he calls his patron Pallas Athena to help him and she saves him. However, the maids themselves promise they will not let him live in peace in Hades or in any other of his future lives.

Athena in this scene helps to the injustice, which illustrates Atwood’s attitude that the maids must advocate their justice themselves without the deities which are obviously on the “wrong” side; they are unjust just like 21st century judge in Atwood.

Briseis in Barker’s The Silence of the Girls thinks about the gods in a similar way as Atwood’s Penelope. She also does not believe the gods should be trusted. She states:

“If calling on the gods achieved anything, Lyrnessus would not have fallen. Goodness knows, no one could have prayed any harder than we did” (Barker 62). The god Apollo then brings plague on the Greek camp to avenge Chryseis, so it can be said the gods in the novel have a notion of justice, nevertheless Briseis does not believe them as she

- 57 - knows she has to rely on herself. She says about praying to the gods after the plague does not show yet: “Nothing happened. Well, of course nothing happened! Isn’t nothing what generally happens when you pray to the gods?” (Barker 64). Briseis also makes fun of the women’s role and behaviour that is expected of women to perform from the fear of the gods. When taking care of a dead body of a man, which was women’s duty, she notes ironically: “If fear of earthly punishment didn’t make us treat his body with respect, then obedience to the gods surely would. Women are, after all, renowned for their devotion to the gods.” (Barker 87). Yet when the men leave them alone with dead body the women laugh and play with the corpse’s “poor limp penis” (Barker 87), which is a manifestation of a small act of rebellion against the patriarchal system. The only ones who are using the god to advocate and legitimize their acts are men. Agamemnon swears to Zeus that he did not have sex with Briseis when returning her calls “upon the gods to punish him if he lied” (Barker 210), Briseis notes that she “felt an absurd desire to giggle” (Barker 210), because from her narrative the readers find out that

Agamemnon did not have sex with her literally, so he could swear on that, because he preferred “the back gate” (Barker 295). “Swearing of a solemn oath in front of the gods” (Barker 160), Agamemnon lies about the rape he did, because he feels this is legitimate as set in the patriarchal system. And thus Barker presents her attitude towards the gods similar to the one of Atwood in The Penelopiad.

To conclude on the subchapter, the archetype of male-patriarchal god and goddesses shaped into patriarchal ideals is destructed in the retellings by pointing out the destruction of matriarchal system and by representing the female characters’ opinions and experiences with the patriarchal religion, which is set to limit their behaviour and legitimize the male behaviour, including the violence inflicted upon women.

- 58 -

2.4 Motive of Silencing Women’s Voices, Authors’ Devices

One of the most important reasons behind the feminist retellings of the Greek

Myths is the fact that up till now the voices of female characters were silenced or framed into archetypes. Pat Barker talks about why she decided to voice experience of female mythological characters in an interview; here are some words the author said about reading the Iliad: “I was astonished by that silence. The eloquence of the men, the absolute silence of the women they’re quarrelling about.” (Barker “Five Dials” 19), I already quoted Philip Roth’s quote (p.7), here is how Barker elaborates on this later in this conversation: “this is where European literature starts: two men quarrelling over a girl, and after that the girl saying nothing. That’s where it starts. For men it starts with a quarrel. For women it starts with silence” (Barker “Five Dials” 27). She states that this is why she decided to voice these voiceless, untold stories. She also describes an experience of her neighbour who happened to be a classist and she shared her first reaction to the Iliad with her:

“She was sitting in class, a little fourteen-year-old girl, absolutely outraged by this

silence. To her it was just leaping off the page. I’m sure a perfectly nice fourteen-

year-old boy would read the same scene and wouldn’t notice the silence. Men don’t

hear women’s silences. They just complain about them yammering on” (Barker

“Five Dials” 19).

This finding speaks for itself. Barker also notes that the silences in the history or in the myths have great potential for the novelist. In her novel The Silence of the Girls silence is a very prominent theme. “Silence becomes a woman”; this is what women are often reminded of in the book. Briseis notices: “Every woman I’ve ever known was brought up on that saying” (Barker 294). Her and another captive Trojan woman think about this phrase a lot and sometimes – when they can – they laugh at it as loudly as they can.

- 59 -

Barker is interested in the conversation between the women that were unknown up to this point; we know the men’s heroic speeches from Homer, but the readers don’t get to know who takes care of the wounded, of the dead, who washes the clothes, who cooks, in other words who deals with the consequences. Barker notes: “It’s a typically feminine thing to do. The long-term consequences – which is what is typically dealt with by women, of course” (“Five Dials” 25). In the Greek camp Briseis starts with helping the

Greek medic with the wounded. She is fascinated by the herbs and healing methods and she is eager to learn. In her mind, she cannot resist to feel pity for the young dying men and she always puts their deaths in broader context than we would get from men’s;

Homer’s point of view. Barker uses Homer’s poetic form but adds female insights.

Homer gives us lists of men killed by Achilles. Barker gives us the raw description how

Achilles killed them and who will mourn for them, Briseis describes their lives and family background adding what a woman feels is important (Křížová 4). In this way

Barker deconstructs the Iliad and provides female perspective.

In Helen’s example Barker advocates how the women could express their feelings and opinions and presents how they tried to fill their silences and tell their story. Her

Helen spends her time in Troy weaving a tapestry which records the events of the war.

Briseis notices Helen is blamed for all the pain and deaths of the war: “There was a legend – it tells you everything, really – that whenever Helen cut a thread in her weaving, a man died on the battlefield. She was responsible for every death” (Barker

129). Just like Homer, Barker sees that, regardless all the blame imposed on her,

Helen’s fate is decided without her. Briseis seems to understand the importance of the tapestry: “What I came away with was a sense of Helen seizing control of her own story. She was so isolated in that city, so powerless—even at my age, I could see that— and those tapestries were a way of saying: I’m here. Me. A person, not just an object to

- 60 - be looked at and fought over” (Barker 130). Briseis understands that even though she is not yet on the tapestry herself: because “she won’t know where to put herself till she knows who’s won” (Barker 130), the tapestry and the events are still in her control:

“Oh, I know she wasn’t in them, I know she deliberately made herself invisible, but in another way, perhaps the only way that matters, she was present in every stitch” (Barker

131). Thus by the weaving Barker illustrates how women can manifest their involvement and their presence. Another example is Briseis awareness of the fact that if she survives and if she will pass on the stories, they will be remembered. “We’re going to survive – our songs, our stories. […] We’ll be in their dreams – and in their worst nightmares too” (Barker 296). The songs the Trojan women who survived will sing to their Greek babies are another act of remembrance and manifestation of one’s individuality and fate under control.

Barker makes Briseis sarcastic and rationally thinking woman who embraces her situation and tells herself that there are only two options of resistance: death or survival and remembrance. Briseis chooses the second option and by the end of the war she is glad she did (Barker 323). Briseis stays strong in her mind and finds her own way of resistance, Barker uses various devices to depict the story realistically and naturalistically. Her language is often coarse and colloquial, as if she was trying to erase the notion that art can make war beautiful, which is a very feminine thing to do. She uses “anachronisms to presentify the Trojan conflict as a raw, modern war, and to debunk the epic mode and use parody to impose a woman’s perspective” (Lanone 16).

When Briseis is captured and paraded in front of the Greek soldiers for the first time, she hears catcalls: “Hey, will you look at the knockers on that.” (Barker 20) As the moments sometimes clash awkwardly with the more classical sections of prose, they also force readers to compare the misogyny of ancient Greece with the misogyny of the

- 61 - present. Briseis notes that the Greek soldiers argue over whether King Menelaus should simply execute his wife, Helen˗˗the reason the war was waged in the first place˗˗or

“fuck her first, then kill her.” (Barker 201) And the Greeks sing obscene drinking songs about Helen and her necessary fate: “When she’s dead but not forgotten / Dig her up and fuck her rotten” (Barker 202). As Barker advocates “Nothing happens in the book that is not happening in the contemporary world. Nothing happens in The Iliad that is not happening in the contemporary world” (“Five Dials” 25). In the interview she mentions oppression of women in Syria but also immigrant women who are sexually exploited in Britain. Helen’s story and no one believing her rape story resonates with

MeToo movement. Barker also notes on the rewriting of the myth that: “the freedom of myth, the freedom to be naughty and deliberately anachronistic is also very stimulating and a relief” (“Five Dials” 20). Barker retells the Iliad with irony, using anachronisms and combines it with what we know from the epic and with Homeric style, only enriched with women’s realistic point of view. “The equivocation between utopia and irony, between the symbolic and the real, between myth and history, is an important element in contemporary women's writing,” notes Brannigan in his essay on feminist writings; this describes Barker’s writing style. Lanone says: “she now explores The

Iliad as a contemporary war, to engage with ‘a sense of an ending all around’ (Barker

2012), perhaps the end of patriarchy, or the kindling of violence, and the silencing of women in war and conflict today,” she uses the language and attitude to connect with modern reader and makes the silence of the girls resonate with today’s realities; she does what men writers have not done; breaks the silence with even more powerful silence – inner voice, testimony and remembrance (Křížová 6).

Another way the novelist retells the violence on women in feminist way is giving them a choice and reconciliation. I already mentioned Cassandra’s and Clytemnestra’s

- 62 - example. So I will just briefly illustrate the point by Polyxena’s story. Polyxena was the youngest Trojan princess killed by the Greeks as a sacrifice to gods after the war ended; her story was already described in the first chapter. Polyxena is also mentioned in

A Thousand Ships and The Silence of the Girls in very similar connotations. In The

Silence of the Girls Polyxena is to be sacrificed as a gift to Achilles. Briseis remembers her from words she says to her mother Hecabe after they already know what will happen: “Better to die on Achilles’ burial mound than live and be a slave” (Barker 314).

Very similar interpretation is made by Haynes in her novel A Thousand Ships:

“Polyxena was dead rather than enslaved, relieved if the shame could be contained to herself and would not cascade down through the generations of the children of Priam”

(Haynes 214), Haynes explains that if she was a slave also her children conceived in a rape would be born to slavery, which Polyxena did not want to see. Of course Polyxena could not really chose, but by her reconciliation the authors created a contrast to what the reader might see just as violent murder, nevertheless to Polyxena it is not just bravery but also a question of honour which would be in the epics traditionally reserved to men. Haynes emphasizes in the Afterword:

“I hope that at the end of the book, my attempt to write an epic, readers might feel

that heroism is something that can reside in all of us, particularly if circumstances

push it to the fore. It doesn’t belong to men, any more than the tragic consequences

of war belong to women” (Haynes 345)

In the narrative she also gives space of one of the Greek men to express his feelings about Polyxena, he confides in his new slave/concubine Andromache. He says to her about Polyxena: “She is the one who torments my sleep” (Haynes 333), when

Andromache asks him why he answers: “She was so willing to die. She did nothing to resist. She offered me her throat to cut. Why wasn’t she afraid?” (Haynes 333). To this

- 63 -

Andromache says that Polyxena was afraid, but she was more afraid of the slavery.

“More afraid to belong to a man she did not know or choose” (Haynes 333).

Andromache also realizes her heroism in her that she managed to raise another child to her owner after the Greeks killed her and Hector’s son and Haynes acknowledges her and Polyxena’s account as a different kinds of heroism in women.

Atwood in the introduction to The Penelopiad also mentions her reasons for choosing Penelope and the maids’ perspective to retell the story:

“I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and the twelve hanged

maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus which focuses on two

questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of The Odyssey: what

led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story told

in The Odyssey: doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistences. I’ve always

been haunted by the hanged maids: and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself”

(Atwood 15).

As already analysed, Atwood also uses the 21st century language and attitude to connect with the modern reader and convey her ideas. The silences of the Odyssey are filled thousand years after it from the Underworld by Penelope. The maids present their account in multiple types of genres as it was also already mentioned. As Fletcher argues: “Feminine silence is idealized, if nor realized, in Greek thought, while unrestrained speech of women is frequently equated with lack of sexual restrain.

Women’s voice poses a variety of threats to men throughout the Odyssey” (Fletcher 77-

78) and it is almost like the maids would continue in this thought during the trial with

Odysseus. Nevertheless, The Penelopiad takes place in our times and there are different notions today, so it is okay now for them to speak up – even though they are dismissed by the judge in this scene, which reflects that it is time to voice these silences, but there

- 64 - might still be some blindness to the problems the retellings are mirroring. This aspect perfectly reflects the contemporary thinking and our times, which is what the myths are supposed to do as also already argued in the thesis more times.

To conclude on the subchapter; Barker, Atwood and Haynes in their novels illustrate by using a modern language and modern notions that rape, injustice and violence inflicted upon women usually back-lashes at their male characters in the retellings; in their dreams, in their nightmares, in their conscience, in their afterlives. In the novels they also mirror the role of women in the war and they acknowledge their heroism by realistically describing the horrors of the war and the trauma they have to deal with. The unheard and silenced voices of the Iliad and the Odyssey are finally voiced as Haynes’ muse Calliope sings in the finale:

“I have sung of the women, the women in the shadows. I have sung of the

forgotten, the ignored, the untold. I have picked up old stories and I have shaken

them until the hidden women appear in plain sight. I have celebrated them in song

because they have waited long enough. Just as I promised him: this was never the

story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them. A war does not ignore

half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?” (Haynes 339).

This is how Haynes concludes her novel; it presents the process of the retelling of the myth and voicing female experience which was in the dark until now.

- 65 -

Conclusion

The aim of my thesis was to bring attention to recently written novels which adapt myths connected to Trojan War well-known from Homer’s epics. In summary, this paper attempts to reveal patters that are employed by the authors of the novels under study to retell the ancient myths with the emphasis placed on genuine female experience, which was not voiced for millennia. As Armstrong pointed out in her study

A Short Story of Myth: “Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives – they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human” (Armstrong 62). And thus even their retellings have a potential to re-shape some notions of our culture. The novels stress the fact that seem to try to tell the “true” stories of women, which can be told by myths even though they are products of fantasy.

The first part the thesis provided close analysis of women’s portrayal in Homer’s

Iliad and Odyssey, to illustrate the archetypes in tradition of Greek mythology. Also an overview of archetypal theories was presented in the last part of the first chapter. It was revealed that despite Homer’s attempts to show some of the women’s feelings to stress their tragic fates and situations they were put in. Greek myths have been under control of patriarchal thinking. The myths and the epic had their didactic function to them to show and control men and women’s behaviour and attitudes; they shaped morals and limited especially female individuality as they illustrated by codes and symbols how they should behave or react in certain situations. In the myths women are defined by their relationships towards men, by their virtues or by their shame, their significance in men’s eyes – therefore as objects without a possibility to decide their own fate, or they are independent but wicked creatures, mad lunatics; dangerous witches; or whores; who are presented as antagonist of the stories. These are the archetypes encoded in the

- 66 - ancient myths. In the first chapter, I also provided a brief overview of some researches like Freud and Jung and then of those who re-visioned their ideas. Certain aspects of their theories were rejected by feminist archetypal theorists who do not agree with the idea of fixed symbols and identities presented in the myths from collective unconscious.

I also mentioned French feminist who advocate écriture feminine, which stresses the importance of female writings about female experience. Lacanian ideas about the impossibility to mirror reality without symbolic and imaginary components were also mentioned. To sum up, the feminist theorists argue that it is possible to restructure patriarchal notions of myths and archetypes to voice authentic female experience. This point was important to make to then analyse the novels and their aspects.

The purpose of the second chapter was to provide common aspects of Atwood’s

The Penelopiad, Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and marginally Haynes’ A Thousand

Ships, Tóibín’s House of Names and Miller’s Circe. I studied the common archetypal images in these novels. The most prominent aspect of all of the novels was revealed to be the multiplicity of truth, which appeared in all of the retellings. The authors stress that female experience is usually contrary to what has been written by the male mythmakers. The female authors explore the alternatives of events and connotations known from the myths and they rewrite them.

The thesis revealed common patters used by the authors to retell the myths in feminist way. By attacking the original archetypes, which were for this reason analysed in the first chapter, the authors emphasize that there is no one truth. By adding new perspectives, the authors subvert the original myths. They work where there was only silence before and they voice genuine female experience, which brings to light what remained in the dark in Homer’s epics. Since the myths always work with contemporary problematics, even the novels under study mirror today’s issues by illustrating the

- 67 - problems that still happen today in real life. As the writers argue, the violent atrocities would be probably happening during the Trojan War thousands years ago. They argue that women are also affected by the war just like men are; and this would be the case of

Trojan War, but it would be a case of any other war no matter of the era it was taking place in. Only the ancient myths show this in different light; they put praise on men’s heroism and shame on the one of women. Atwood and Barker use modern language to connect with the reader and to create impactful bond. Their heroines are strong reflective women, who find their way to prevail; survive the worst situations so they could finally tell their own stories and express their real feelings without being victimized. From my perspective, this process of showing female insights is important to create a contrast between the ancient notions and contemporary issues. The myths –as a didactic material enrooted in our culture – has potential to rewrite gender roles, perception of women in the society and make visible issues that remained ignored and unnoticed or idealized until the authors attempted to voice the silences.

- 68 -

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Resumé

Tato bakalářská práce si klade za cíl analyzovat moderní adaptace starých řeckých bájí, které se v našem století začaly objevovat ve formě úspěšných románů. Tato moderní převyprávění se po většině zaměřují na vnitřní pohnutky postav starověké mytologie a snaží se je přiblížit dnešnímu myšlení. Hlavními hrdinkami bývají nejčastěji ženy, jejichž úhel pohledu zůstával po tisíce let nevyřčený. Práce se především soustřeďuje na adaptace Homérových epických básní o Trojské válce a porovnává je s novými koncepty feministické kritiky. Práce reflektuje témata nových verzí, která nejsou jen starověká, jak by se mohlo zdát, ale naopak i velmi současná.

V první části práce nabízím analýzu způsobu zobrazování a charakterizování

ženských postav v Homérových epických básních. Soustřeďuji se také na archetypy prezentované ve starověkých řeckých mýtech. Ženské postavy se v Homérovi objevují okrajově, ale jejich charakteristika odráží vnímání ženské role a ženské povahy ve starověkém Řecku, které bylo patriarchálním a misogynním světem. Kapitola je zakončena zkoumáním některých filozofických a teoretických pohledů na feministické pojetí mýtů.

Ve druhé kapitole se zaměřuji na rozbor daných románů. Především jsou to

Penelopiáda od Margret Atwood a novela A dívky mlčely od Pat Barker. Kapitola se soustřeďuje na aspekty, které díla sdílí. První část kapitoly se zabývá faktem, že přidáním nových perspektiv vzniká také nová verze pravdy a tudíž neexistuje jen jedna pravda, kterou by se mýty daly vyjádřit, čímž vzniká prostor pro autentický a realistický

ženský pohled, který se často liší od toho, co známe z Homéra. V kapitole se také věnuji problematice bohů, motivu umlčených ženských hlasů a prostředků, které autoři používají pro ztvárnění jejich hlavního sdělení, že nyní mohou být ženské úhly pohledu konečně vyslyšeny.

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Summary

This bachelor’s thesis aims to analyse modern adaptations of ancient Greek myths, which in our century began to appear in the form of successful novels. These modern renditions mostly focus on the inner motives of the characters of ancient mythology and they try to bring them closer to today’s notions. The main heroines are usually women, whose point of view has remained unspoken for millennia. The work focuses mainly on adaptations of Homer’s epic poems and compares them with new concepts of feminist criticism. The work reflects the themes of the new retellings, which are not only ancient, as it might seem, but also very contemporary.

In the first part of the work I offer an analysis of the way of depicting and portraying female characters in Homer’s epic poems. I focus on archetypes presented in ancient Greek myths. Female characters appear marginally in Homer, but their characteristics reflect a perception of the female role and female nature in ancient

Greece, which was a patriarchal and misogynistic world. The chapter concludes with an examination of some philosophical and theoretical views on the feminist rewritings of the myths.

In the second chapter I focus on the analysis of the novels under study. These are mainly The Penelopiad by Margret Atwood and The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker.

The chapter focuses on the aspects that the novels share. The first part of the chapter deals with the fact that the addition of new perspectives also creates a new version of truth and therefore there is no only one truth that myths can express. Thus a space is created for an authentic and realistic female experience, which often differs from what we know from Homer’s epics. I also address the issue of gods, the motive of silenced female voices, the critique of romanticization of the myths and the devices that authors use to convey their message that women’s perspectives can now be finally heard.

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