From Captivity to Counter-Narrative: Feminist Reclamations of Silence in Emma Donoghue’s Room and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls

This article examines silence in Emma Donoghue’s Room and Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, arguing that muteness functions not simply as the absence of speech but as a contested space of oppression, survival, and reclamation. In Room, Donoghue situates silence within the claustrophobic conditions of captivity, where Ma’s suppressed voice reflects both coercion and strategic restraint. By contrast, Barker reinterprets the Homeric epic by foregrounding Briseis and other enslaved women, showing how silence operates both as a tool of their objectification and as a means of counter-narrative. Read through feminist and trauma-theoretical lenses, these novels portray silence as evidence of trauma, endurance, and ultimately a medium for reclaiming agency. By transforming constrained or muted expression into acts of testimony and counter-narrative, Donoghue and Barker challenge literary traditions that privilege male heroism while marginalizing women, redefining narrative as an act of feminist resistance and historical reclamation.