Epistemic Injustice and the Credibility Deficit of Women’s War Testimony: Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy and Kristin Hannah’s The Women

Abstract

This article draws a comparative analysis of two novels written by British and American women authors: Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy (2021) and Kristin Hannah’s The Women (2024). Both published in the 21st century, these works center on the marginalized experiences of women in war experiences that have been excluded from the literary discourse and are analyzed through the framework of Miranda Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice. Both novels expose the systematic devaluation of women’s wartime testimonies. By resisting the notion that “speech is men’s business, the authors place female characters at the center and strive to transform male-centered war literature. Barker’s mythical rewriting and Hannah’s historical novel converge on the same issue under a feminist epistemological framework. Women war witnesses are unable to articulate their experiences due to both testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice; when they do speak, they are not deemed credible. The scenes of epistemic resistance including the silencing, labeling, exclusion, and marginalization experienced by female characters have been examined through a comparative literature method. This study demonstrates that contemporary war literature, within the context of epistemic justice, not only redefines what we know about war but also who holds the authority to know.