Gender, Power, and Agency Theme Analysis

The Song of Achilles revolves around the actions of men, as the titular character, Greek warrior Achilles, is thrust into the Trojan War alongside his best friend and lover, Patroclus. Women are minor characters by comparison, as they’re largely powerless and beholden to the strict gender roles of ancient Greece (a society in which women were generally expected to be submissive to men). However, they also play crucial roles in the novel—in fact, certain women appear to take agency over their lives and bodies. But while it would be easy to accept this agency at face value, it’s usually temporary, and it always benefits others. By presenting female characters who defy the norms of ancient Greece, and by implying that even these women have no genuine agency of their own, the novel suggests that female empowerment in ancient Greece is an illusion. Worse, it’s a tool, given and taken by men and gods alike.

The foundation of Greek society in the novel is female powerlessness—women set the story’s events in motion, but they can only do so passively. For instance, Achilles is a product of sexual assault: his mother, Thetis, is a sea nymph, and the gods force her to mate with a mortal king, Peleus. Her assault is a reward for Peleus’s piety: the Fates prophesize that Achilles will outshine his father, ensuring the family’s continued fame. Achilles goes on to become the best warrior in Greece and is a prominent fighter in the Trojan War, in part because he’s half-god. In this way, Achilles’s heroism (and indeed his very existence) is predicated on his mother’s powerlessness as a woman. Similarly, Patroclus’s mother is a passive figure—it’s implied that she’s intellectually disabled. Her husband, King Menoitius, resents both her and Patroclus, believing that both are weak. Patroclus’s unhappiness eventually leads him to kill a young boy by accident, which causes his father to exile him to Achilles’s kingdom. The passivity of Patroclus’s mother thus, indirectly, propels the story forward: her powerlessness is central to Patroclus’s early frustration, which leads him to Achilles.  Even the Trojan War begins as a tale of female powerlessness: the Trojan prince, Paris, allegedly steals Helen away from her husband, Menelaus. Menelaus assembles an army to retrieve her from Troy, which paints Helen as a damsel in distress. Again, women like Helen are central to the novel’s plot, but only in a passive way.

Although female powerlessness underlies the novel, certain women defy that powerlessness—but what little agency they possess actually makes them more vulnerable. Because Achilles is prophesized to die in the war, Thetis sends him to hide on Scyros, an ailing king’s island. Achilles poses as a female companion to the princess Deidameia, who runs Scyros—she is, in practice, the real king. Deidameia, who alone knows Achilles’s true identity, believes she has power over him; he can’t do much as a “woman.” But Thetis soon convinces Deidameia to secretly marry Achilles and have his child, admitting that she saw Deidameia as a “tool.” Deidameia’s clueless father must exile his daughter while she gives birth, since she can’t claim Achilles as her husband publicly. In the end, her assumed agency left her with none. Later, before the Greek army sails to Troy, they’re stuck on a strip of land with no wind. They need to sacrifice something—or someone—before the goddess Artemis allows them to leave. The Greek commander, Agamemnon, summons his daughter Iphigenia, telling his wife that he intends to marry their daughter to Achilles. Iphigenia is a priestess, meaning that she can commune with the gods—she has power that other women, and even her own father, do not. But Agamemnon ends up sacrificing Iphigenia against her will; her blood appeases Artemis because she’s a priestess. In other words, her power is what dooms her. Later, in Troy, Achilles and Patroclus take responsibility for Briseis, a Trojan woman that the Greeks captured during early raids. Rather than living as a slave, Briseis eventually helps Patroclus run the Greek camp—a position that gives her more power than other Greek women and certainly more than other Trojan slaves. But Briseis’s prominent position only makes her a target for Agamemnon, who steals her away—having more agency than most women makes her more vulnerable in the end.

Ultimately, the question of female agency is irrelevant: men control the novel’s events and outcomes, and they use “powerful” women to do so. Although Paris’s kidnapping of Helen is what spurs the Trojan War, Achilles and Patroclus speculate that Helen may actually have gone to Troy with Paris voluntarily. In other words, she may have had an unprecedented amount of agency for a woman of her time. Achilles even believes that Helen knew her actions would start a war and craved the fame it would bring her. However, Patroclus doesn’t think it matters either way: the Greeks would have attacked the wealthy Troy regardless, and Helen only provided a convenient excuse. Helen may have had agency, but that agency only galvanized the men around her. Similarly, Thetis believes that she has control over Achilles’s fate: the Fates prophesize that Achilles will die in Troy, but Thetis hopes she can make him immortal beforehand by heightening his fame. As a minor goddess, she can’t change him herself, but hopes she can influence the other gods to do so. This causes her to interfere in battle, protecting Achilles and shifting his appearance. But these interferences only shield Achilles until his death, when Apollo encourages Paris to finish him off. Thus, Thetis’s agency only leads to a conclusion that was already foretold by the Fates. In this way, female agency only appears to impact the novel’s events—in the end, any power that women have is only a convenient tool that allows men and gods to pull hidden strings.