A nymph faces the joys and lonelinesses of independence in this feminist reworking of Greek myth from an Orange winner In her first novel, _The Song of Achilles_, Madeline Miller retold the siege of Troy from the point of view of Patroclus, whose death Achilles avenged by unleashing outsize destruction on Troy and especially on Hector, whose body he tied to his chariot and dragged around the city walls. Homer did not spell out the exact nature of a relationship that might trigger such a reaction; Miller made it a love story, tender and loyal, and by clearly showing what Achilles’ hubris would cost him gave it not only intimacy but the arc of true tragedy. _The Song of Achilles_ now exists in 23 languages and despite disapproving mutterings in some quarters – it had “the head of a young adult novel, the body of _The_ _Iliad_ and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland”, according to the New York Times – won what was then still called the Orange prize. A striking aspect of _The Song of Achilles_ was the degree to which Miller was alive to gendered inequalities of power, describing how fighting men gathered when a well-born woman (Helen) came to puberty, and how Greek wars were fought: arrive, kill the men, take the women, parcel them out, tumble them on marsh-reed beds then require them to serve and feed the now entrenched army. This could be seen especially in her characterisation of Thetis, a young nymph given by the gods to the mortal Peleus. A kind man who would become a well-loved king, Peleus was nevertheless required, by those same gods, to overpower her; the rape resulted in Achilles, “best of the Greeks” – and made the nymph as chilly and harsh toward humans as the depths of the sea in which she lived. Continue reading...
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