Previous
Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Silence of the Girls, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mythology and Oppressed Perspectives
The Effects of Misogyny
Honor and Violence
Slavery and Dehumanization
Grief and Revenge
Summary
Analysis
Young queen Briseis lists complimentary “epithets” applied to Achilles and notes that her people only called him “the butcher.” Pondering the epithet “Swift-footed Achilles,” she recalls a myth in which Achilles chased the god Apollo around Troy and, upon catching him, told him that if he weren’t a divine being, Achilles would have killed him: “Nobody was ever allowed the last word; not even a god.”
An “epithet” is a repeated phrase used in epic poetry such as Homer’s Iliad (on which The Silence of the Girls is based) to characterize a hero or god. When Briseis says that her people only ever called the Greek warrior Achilles “the butcher,” the novel makes clear that Briseis and her people have a perspective that stands in opposition to the one that animates the ancient Greek Iliad. Meanwhile, when Briseis notes that Achilles would never let anyone else have “the last word,” she suggests that Achilles as an individual wanted to dominate other people’s narratives, much as The Iliad overshadowed the cultural narratives of the Trojans whom the Greeks fought and conquered.
Themes
Briseis first hears Achilles’s battle cry outside Lyrnessus while walking with the other women to shelter in the citadel. As a “respectable married woman,” Briseis almost never leaves the palace, so the walk would be fun—except the women know what will happen to them if the enemies take the city. In the citadel, Briseis climbs to the top floor with the other aristocrats; slaves and commoners take the basement. The women hear pounding on the city gates.
A “respectable married woman” is rarely allowed to leave her own domestic space in Briseis’s society, making clear that women in Lyrnessus live oppressed, circumscribed lives. That the aristocratic women take shelter on a different floor than commoners and slaves makes clear that Lyrnessus is a slave society with entrenched social hierarchies.
Themes
The women with sons are jealous of those with daughters because the enemy will kill the boys but not the girls. The enemy may even kill pregnant women in case they carry sons. Briseis sees Ismene, an enslaved woman who is pregnant by Briseis’s husband Mynes; she’s pressing her belly down. Lately Ismene has been looking at Briseis with an expression that says, “It’s your turn now.” Briseis finds this painful. Her family taught her to treat enslaved people kindly; after her father married her to King Mynes, she tried to make her new household kind too—but she wonders whether it’s impossible for masters to be truly kind to slaves and thinks that, yes, it is her turn.
While Briseis has implied that Lyrnessus is a patriarchal society that oppresses women, the revelation that all the men and boys of Lyrnessus will be killed if the city falls illustrates that in violent, patriarchal cultures, men and boys are often exposed to greater risk of death even as they have more rights and freedoms than women. Briseis’s revelation that masters can’t really be kind to slaves emphasizes that slavery is fundamentally dehumanizing and violent, while Ismene’s vengeful “your turn now” suggests that experiencing brutality in war (such as captivity, slavery, and rape) make people want retribution even if retribution will not improve their own circumstances.
Themes
The women in the citadel know that Lyrnessus will fall, though no one says so. They expect that even nine- and 10-year-old girls will be raped. One woman, Ritsa, comments with dark humor to Briseis that at least the two of them already aren’t virgins. Briseis doesn’t reply. She’s thinking about her sick mother-in-law, who refused to let the others carry her to the citadel. She decides to return to the palace to check that her mother-in-law has food and water.
The women of Lyrnessus expect that the Greeks will rape women of all social classes and even young girls when they sack the city, a prediction that emphasizes the all-encompassing brutality and misogyny of the ancient societies being described.
Themes
Get the entire The Silence of the Girls LitChart as a printable PDF.
Entering the palace, Briseis recalls her wedding day: she was carried to the palace on a litter to meet the queen mother Maire and Mynes. Mynes was marrying young for a man: his father had died and made him king, so he needed an heir. He found skinny Briseis unattractive and soon stopped having sex with her, going back to a kitchen slave who had started having sex with him when he was 12. Maire was always hostile to Briseis. When Briseis didn’t become pregnant, Maire mocked her. Maire had chosen a 16-year-old concubine to replace Briseis, but when Maire fell sick, Briseis took power in the palace.
The anecdote about Mynes having sex with a slave from such a young age emphasizes the harm that misogyny and slavery do to powerless and powerful people in misogynistic, patriarchal slave societies. On the one hand, an adult woman is considered the “possession” of a 12-year-old boy. On the other, misogynistic social mores encourage a 12-year-old boy to assert his masculinity by having sex with an adult—an inherently problematic and psychologically intense practice. Meanwhile, Queen Maire’s hostility to Briseis and her attempts to replace Briseis with a 16-year-old concubine show how women in misogynistic societies can perpetrate misogyny themselves.
Themes
Briseis enters Maire’s room, sees her in bed, and gets her some water. Briseis notices that Maire’s sheets smell like urine and gets angry: Maire withheld help and kindness from 14-year-old Briseis when she first married Mynes, and Briseis hated her, but now Briseis feels she is winning a “hollow victory” over her sick mother-in-law. Maire asks Briseis to fetch a knife from a chest in the bedroom. Briseis does. After, Maire asks whether Briseis has news. When Briseis says no, Maire nods dismissively. Briseis leaves.
The revelation that Briseis was only 14 when her father married her off to Mynes emphasizes that in ancient Trojan societies, women and girls were considered sexual possessions to be traded between men. Meanwhile, Briseis assumes that her desire for revenge against her mother-in-law is natural but feels that triumphing over her during her illness is a “hollow victory,” implying that revenge is rarely as sweet as people expect it to be.
Themes
