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The must-reads: 7 lessons on the ancient classics’ most brilliant women

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Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Homer… They may all be men, and their stories may be ancient, but their female characters still speak to us across the ages as bracingly modern heroines. Why? Because these female protagonists are complex, flawed, and constantly being revisited by contemporary writers. And their conflicts – how to love, how to grieve, how to be true to oneself, how to command respect, how to forgive – are still issues that we tussle with today. Here are seven updated versions of ancient tales with brilliantly modern women at their heart…

Circe by Madeline Miller (April 2018)
The American classicist Madeline Miller follows up her hugely successful debut, The Song of Achilles, which retold the tale of Achilles and Patroclus as a gay love story, with this novel about Circe, the sorceress best known for transforming Odysseus’ crew into swine. In Miller’s hands, it becomes a tale of one woman overcoming the odds (banishment and scorn) to find a room of her own, or in her case, an island – the remote Aiaia, where she masters witchcraft and becomes mistress of her own destiny. Empowerment has a new parable.
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (September 2018)
English writer Pat Barker, best known for her Regeneration Trilogy about the First World War, turns her sights on another formative war, retelling The Iliad from the point of view of Briseis, the captured Trojan princess first claimed by Achilles, then Agamemnon. Although the original epic chronicles a war fought over a woman (Helen of Troy), the female voice is “conspicuously silent”, says Barker, who corrects that by giving it back to one princess-turned-concubine.
House of Names by Colm Tóibín (2017)
Master Irish writer Colm Tóibín tackles The Oresteia – Aeschylus’ trilogy of plays about the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, and her subsequent murder by their son, Orestes – with his usual understated intensity. Taking us inside the heads of the main players – particularly Clytemnestra as her grief over the death of her daughter, Iphigenia (sacrificed by Agamemnon to appease the gods), turns vengeful – Tóibín conjures a godless and acutely modern world where we must look to ourselves and not the heavens for meaning and motivation.
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (2017)
In this contemporary reworking of Sophocles’ play, British Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie uses the ancient story of Antigone – who must choose between obeying the law of her country and honoring her religious duty – to look at modern Muslim identity. Antigone is recast as Aneeka, whose brother Parvaiz is radicalized and leaves London to work for ISIS. The fiercely loyal Aneeka must plead his case in order to secure his return, manipulating others and sacrificing herself, in this often heartbreaking and very relatable tale about how familial bonds can break us apart.
Bright Air Black by David Vann (2017)
How to make sense of the story of Medea, who chooses to sacrifice her own children instead of losing her husband to a rival? American writer David Vann’s novel, which updates the story with starkly poetic and modern language while keeping to the original ancient setting, asks how a woman can assert power in a world where only men and the gods are granted any. Ultimately, this is a forbidding tale of female rage – a force that seems to have renewed currency in today’s political climate.
The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes (2017)
In this feminist retelling, British writer and classical scholar Natalie Haynes rescues two women from the fringes of two Sophocles plays: Oedipus’s mother, Jocasta, and Antigone’s sister, Ismene. The former is unhappily married to an emotionally negligent (‘half-dead’) king, while the latter is a tomboy straining to assert herself in a conflict-ridden royal household. It’s a book that sheds particular light on mother/daughter relationships and gives agency back to women, who are so often relegated to walk-on parts.
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (2005)
The first in a series of novels from publisher Canongate in which contemporary authors reimagine ancient myths, this novella from Canadian icon Margaret Atwood elevates Odysseus’ long-suffering wife, Penelope, a woman who must fend for herself in the fraught Ithacan court when her king leaves for war and other seafaring escapades. In Atwood’s hands, Penelope, the emblem of patient, long-suffering wifehood, is transformed into a shrewd and sardonic woman-in-charge – in other words, a typically wily and guileful Atwood heroine.

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