Wailing Wounds: War-Torn Women in Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy

Abstract

The article hopes to explore the multifaceted repercussions experienced by women as wartime rape is weaponized as a tool for silencing and subjugation. By unpacking the wartime realities of the Trojan women outlined by Pat Barker in her novel The Silence of the Girls and its sequel, The Women of Troy. Engaging with the authors’ intricate and multi-layered narrative of war serves as a critical scaffold to discuss issues of gendered violence and coercion. The novels have drawn from mythological accounts to shed light on the indelible mark left on women during the war, psychologically and physically scaring them for life. Barker has anchored the narrative in mythology, and the novel, with its interpretive potential, engages with multiple ideological issues and paradigms related to women in war. The research at hand critically examines the lives of the women who were displaced and subjected to sexual and physical violence during the war. Through a comprehensive review of these mythological narratives, the study substantiates how women’s sufferings were subsumed and predominantly silenced by heteronormative war narratives. This paper is oriented to elucidate and understand the pattern that emerges when probing the treatment of women during war.