A Fair Wind for Troy by Doris Gates
/
Our book today is one we've mentioned before here at Stevereads: A Fair Wind for Troy, a 1976 YA novel about the lead-up to the Trojan War, one that centers, as classically-minded readers might be able to tell from the title, on the bloodthirsty House of Atreus and the willingness of its head, Agamemnon, to sacrifice his young daughter Iphigenia in order to appease the anger of Artemis and secure good sailing weather for the Greek armada bent for Troy.
The book is slim – well under a hundred pages – and it's the sixth and final volume in a series of mythology-retellings Doris Gates did for the Viking Press. It's aimed at younger readers, but Gates brings such texture and depth to her version of Euripides that, like all the best children's literature, it can easily repay adult attention. Gates came late in her life to these adaptations of Greek legends, and they form a patchwork reflection of her own personality and upright morality, much like the similar work of her older counterpart, Edith Hamilton. Indeed, I've often wished some enterprising publisher would gather all Gates' slim mythology books into a stout collection and maybe even call it Doris Gates' Mythology.
A Fair Wind for Troy spends a good deal of its time performing running character studies of the great women of this grim story – only secondarily poor Iphigenia, and far more directly the girl's mother, Clytemnestra, about whom we're told that her dark beauty was “no threat to Helen's dazzling loveliness.” Helen isn't fond of her half-sister: “But there was also a dark intensity about her, an almost brooding fierceness, that Helen found repellant. There was no humor in her, no flippant charm, no playfulness whatsoever.”
And, refreshingly, we're certainly not expected to be fond of Helen herself. Throughout the book, she's portrayed as the quintessence of brittle vanity, as in the scene where handsome Trojan prince Paris is wondering how his plans to escape Sparta with Helen will be crimped by Helen's young daughter. The picture of Helen we're given by Gates is as stern as it is unappealing:
Paris had entertained some doubts about Helen's daughter, Hermione. The little girl was now nine years old. A child had not figured in his plans, but would Helen abandon her willingly?
Helen soon put his doubts to rest. “The child means nothing to me,” she declared. Indeed, during the long months of pregnancy when her body had become swollen and distorted with the life growing inside her, Helen had known an agony of fear. Would she ever be beautiful again? Would this thickened waist ever return to its former elegant proportions? At the time of her betrothal, Menelaus had encircled it with his two hands. Now the grossest of her slave girls was more lissome than she.
And what of Iphigenia herself? Well, there's only so much that can be done with one of the most pathetic fictional creations in all of classical literature, although Gates tries her best. She makes what I think is the tactical misstep of having Iphigenia embrace her victimhood, which might make for a stirring set-piece but also has the deplorable effect of making the girl complicit with her father in her own slaughter:
Clytemnestra took a step toward her, and Iphigenia stepped back. “No, Mother, do not try to weaken my resolve. I will die for Greece. Only I can give these ships the wind that will take them to Troy. It is I, and not our warriors, who will have caused her fall. I will save Greece, and my name will be honored for all time. What is my life against the lives of the thousands gathered here? To save one little life there will be woeful bloodshed, and this fine man here, fighting bravely for me, will surely be killed. Nor will you and I escape with our lives. No, no, my Mother. Much better that I should yield up my body in willing sacrifice so that our warriors can proceed to Troy and conquer it.”
A Fair Wind for Troy is illustrated by Charles Mikolaycak in somber pencils mostly depicting the very thing Gates herself scrupulously elides from her book: Greek and Trojan men-at-arms in full martial glory (one imagines there was some machination to get boy-readers interested in a book that's very much about mothers and daughters). I've re-read the book many times in a scrappy little paperback that I've had for years, so I was naturally pleased to find a sturdy hardcover to go on the shelf and better withstand what I'm sure will be a few more re-readings!