Myhts retold: Female experience in Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls

This study analyses Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad (2005) and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls (2018) in terms of rewriting Homeric female characters' stories from a feminist perspective.This analysis mainly makes use of Derridean deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and écriture féminine in the light of prominent French feminists such as Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Hélène Cixous. The Penelopiad and The Silence of the Girls attempt to destabilize traditional gender codes and roles in order to retell genuine female experience through rewriting myths. The books also use archetypes and mythical patterns to rewrite gender and sexual identity codes which patriarchy dictates on women. Female characters in these books question patriarchal norms which silence and exclude women from society. Both Atwood and Barker voice their female mythical characters by rewriting myths and enable them to retell their authentic female experiences and the bodies. The analyses of these books show that feminist rewritings of female characters give birth to original female stories. In this way, women can free themselves from the constraints of male authored myths, and make their voices heard as women. Key Words: Myths, Rewriting, Feminism, Female Experience, Patriarchy