ABSTRACT
Judith, published in 1990, is based on the apocryphal story of the eponymous Jewish heroine who conveyed herself secretly to the tent of Holofernes, her country’s oppressor, seduced and then murdered him, taking away as trophy the decapitated head of her victim. Besides the two central protagonists, Barker includes another woman who accompanies Judith referred to in the dramatis personae as ‘the Servant’; such is the function initially ascribed to this character by Judith when the two women arrive at Holofernes’ tent but Barker also describes her as ‘An Ideologist’—something which becomes more apparent later in the play. In The Possibilities, Barker dealt with the aftermath of this episode in a play entitled The Unforeseen Consequences of a Patriotic Act where Judith, having lost the power of speech, has retired to the country to give birth to the murdered Holofernes’ child. When a representative of the state comes to urge her back into public life, Judith describes her action as ‘a crime’ because murderer and victim had desired each other. When the representative extends her hand to Judith to reassure her, the latter cuts it off with the words:
Barker is focussing again upon the point where personal morality, the intuitive sense of the ethical, is violated in the interests of the political. Where the face to face with the other (That Good Between Us), in which Levinas locates the foundation of the ethical, is savagely betrayed.
