Elodie Harper, The Wolf Den
Aug. 31st, 2023 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiBut I did read a book recently!
lizbee pointed me toward The Wolf Den, by Elodie Harper -- a book about an enslaved woman in Pompeii in the 70s AD, who is forced to work in one of the city's many brothels. (One thing about this book, is that many of the buildings in it are places you can see if you visit Pompeii or read about in books, and see illustrations of. So the brothel is a particular brothel in Pompeii.).
There are not a lot of books told from the perspective of enslaved people in the ancient world, which is a shame because there were a lot of enslaved people in the ancient world, especially the Classical world. One thing that doesn't come through immediately in this book is the extent to which the majority of people in a city like Pompeii would be no more than a generation or two out of slavery, if that; it's possible that it doesn't come through because the pov character herself isn't aware of that, though. So for example she is surprised that Felix is a freedman -- I don't know if the author has done this on purpose because Amara is Greek, but Felix is very obviously the kind of name given to an enslaved person in Rome.
I liked this book, although the subject matter is pretty grueling, obviously. Nothing is very explicit, but the main characters are enslaved prostitutes and so a lot of bad things happen to them. Harper focuses more on the emotional damage they suffer, and again, I don't know whether this is purposeful but it strikes me as an important point if you're writing a novel about enslaved people -- that they are really people, not only bodies who might be owned by someone, and might suffer this or that kind of abuse. The main type of first-hand testimony we have from slaves and freedmen in Roman society is from tomb inscriptions, so they are highly formulaic but within that there is a lot of emphasis on emotional ties and family bonds, I suspect precisely because the law doesn't recognise the families and emotions of enslaved people.
The main character, Amara, is a Greek woman who was sold into slavery when her father died and her mother ran out of money. She suffers a but from protagonist syndrome in her singleminded focus on (re)gaining her freedom -- at points it seems like she feels this more strongly than the other enslaved characters, which I'm not sure is realistic. But she's also a real grifter, and there are some interesting parallels between her and Felix, the pimp she is determined to escape from. I think it's the determination, and the active role she takes, that seem to set her apart in the narrative -- she feels other things in the course of the book, but that's what stays with me about her. The other characters -- especially the other prostitutes -- are really well-drawn and sometimes feel more human than Amara, I'm not sure why.
(As an aside, about 20 years ago there was a scholarly debate on the main sources of enslaved people in the Roman Empire, and it was interesting to see all the main sources represented here: exposed children, the children born to enslaved people, people sold by family members, people kidnapped and sold as slaves, people captured during Roman military operations...)
Anyway, this is a good book, and I'm going to read the sequel as soon as I get it.
lizbee pointed me toward The Wolf Den, by Elodie Harper -- a book about an enslaved woman in Pompeii in the 70s AD, who is forced to work in one of the city's many brothels. (One thing about this book, is that many of the buildings in it are places you can see if you visit Pompeii or read about in books, and see illustrations of. So the brothel is a particular brothel in Pompeii.). There are not a lot of books told from the perspective of enslaved people in the ancient world, which is a shame because there were a lot of enslaved people in the ancient world, especially the Classical world. One thing that doesn't come through immediately in this book is the extent to which the majority of people in a city like Pompeii would be no more than a generation or two out of slavery, if that; it's possible that it doesn't come through because the pov character herself isn't aware of that, though. So for example she is surprised that Felix is a freedman -- I don't know if the author has done this on purpose because Amara is Greek, but Felix is very obviously the kind of name given to an enslaved person in Rome.
I liked this book, although the subject matter is pretty grueling, obviously. Nothing is very explicit, but the main characters are enslaved prostitutes and so a lot of bad things happen to them. Harper focuses more on the emotional damage they suffer, and again, I don't know whether this is purposeful but it strikes me as an important point if you're writing a novel about enslaved people -- that they are really people, not only bodies who might be owned by someone, and might suffer this or that kind of abuse. The main type of first-hand testimony we have from slaves and freedmen in Roman society is from tomb inscriptions, so they are highly formulaic but within that there is a lot of emphasis on emotional ties and family bonds, I suspect precisely because the law doesn't recognise the families and emotions of enslaved people.
The main character, Amara, is a Greek woman who was sold into slavery when her father died and her mother ran out of money. She suffers a but from protagonist syndrome in her singleminded focus on (re)gaining her freedom -- at points it seems like she feels this more strongly than the other enslaved characters, which I'm not sure is realistic. But she's also a real grifter, and there are some interesting parallels between her and Felix, the pimp she is determined to escape from. I think it's the determination, and the active role she takes, that seem to set her apart in the narrative -- she feels other things in the course of the book, but that's what stays with me about her. The other characters -- especially the other prostitutes -- are really well-drawn and sometimes feel more human than Amara, I'm not sure why.
(As an aside, about 20 years ago there was a scholarly debate on the main sources of enslaved people in the Roman Empire, and it was interesting to see all the main sources represented here: exposed children, the children born to enslaved people, people sold by family members, people kidnapped and sold as slaves, people captured during Roman military operations...)
Anyway, this is a good book, and I'm going to read the sequel as soon as I get it.
