20. Persuasion

By Jane Austen

19. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

By Kate Beaton

18. Women Talking

By Miriam Toews

Women Talking was one of a few random finds from my annual summer visit to Vancouver.

 

My brother moved to Abbotsford a few years ago, a minimum one-hour drive from Kits, so I was trying to find a way to visit him.  In the past, we’ve met up for lunch in Surrey, a good halfway point.  I recall my friend had recommended the Otter Co-op Outdoor Experience, a water park out in Aldergrove, a half hour drive from Abbotsford.

 

I thought my family could spend an afternoon at the water park, then meet my brother for dinner.  Admission was ridiculously inexpensive, like $10 for an adult and $5 for kids but the catch was you had to buy tickets online at least a day in advance, and we were limited to a 3 hour time slot.  Otter was a decent water park with slides that you ride down on inflatable tubes, a wave pool, hot tubs and swimming pools.  It was quite crowded too – no surprise, considering the low admission price.

 

When our time ended, we had about an hour to kill before meeting my brother.  There was a Salvation Army thrift store nearby where we browsed around.  It was there that I spotted a hardcover of Miriam Toews' Women Talking - a pristine library copy that still had labels stuck to it and the plastic cover, but had never been checked out.  It was only 25 cents!

 

What made this copy particularly interesting was that it once belonged to the “Middle and High Library of the Langley Christian School”.  I thought, how interesting that a Christian school would acquire Women Talking, as it deals with the very adult subject of sexual assault within a remote religious community!  I wonder if someone had caught on and removed the book so it wouldn't outrage young Christian minds... how else would this apparently unread copy end up at a thrift store?

 

I’d already watched the film adaptation (on Aug 30th to be precise, thanks to my Letterboxd history).  I was spurred on because some filmmaking friends of filmmaking friends were saying how good it was.  I was invited to join a 5a7 at Pelican’s astro-turfed terrasse.  The FFs of FFs shared an amusing story about attending the premiere (I assume in Montreal) where a couple was being very vocal about how much they disliked the film.  I think they were parents of Dave G?  I can’t remember.  At some point we clinked glasses.  Someone made a toast, to ‘Women Talking’.  Then as our glasses clinked, I exclaimed, “To parents talking!”  I got a few laughs! 

 

As mentioned earlier, Women Talking was based on true occurrences of systemic rape within a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia.  Between 2005 and 2009, over a hundred girls and women in the colony woke up to discover that they had been drugged and sexually assaulted in their sleep.

 

The novel begins after the suspects had been finally caught and apprehended by city police -- eight men from within the Molotschna colony (the fictional name for the actual Manitoba colony).  While the rest of the village men were away to post bail for the suspects, the women secretly formed an ad hoc meeting in the barn loft to discuss whether they should stay or leave the colony.  They only had a couple of days to decide before the men returned with the suspects to await trial. 

 

Most of the novel was structured as the minutes of their meeting, which were taken by August Epp, the colony's male schoolteacher who recently returned following a period of excommunication. August took the minutes at the request of Ona, the object of his unrequited love and his childhood friend, as the women cannot read or write (they speak Plautdietsch).  Some may take issue with the fact that the story was told from the viewpoint of a man, but August was also an outsider and considered by the men to be low status like the women, as he cannot farm. 

 

Here's an excerpt from August’s POV which pretty much set up the story:

When I arrived in the spring of 2008, there were only whispers, fragments of whispers, concerning the mysterious night-time disturbances. Cornelius, one of my students, wrote a poem called “The Washline” in which he described the sheets and garments on his mother’s washline as having voices, of speaking with one another, of sending messages to other garments on other washlines. He read the poem to the class and all the boys laughed. The houses are so far apart and there is no electrical light anywhere, inside or out. The houses are small tombs at night…

 

      In the year after I arrived, the women described dreams they’d been having, and then eventually, as the pieces fell into place, they came to understand that they were collectively dreaming one dream, and that it wasn’t a dream at all.

 

      The women in the Friesen and the Loewen families who have gathered for today’s meeting represent three generations each, and all have been repeat victims in the attacks. I’ve done some simple calculations. Between 2005 and 2009, more than three hundred girls and women of Molotschna were made unconscious and attacked in their own beds. On average, an attack occurred every three or four days.

 

      Finally, Leisl Neustadter forced herself to stay awake night after night until she caught a young man prying open her bedroom window, holding a jug of belladonna spray in one hand. Leisl and her adult daughter wrestled the man to the ground and tied him up with baler twine. Later that morning, Peters was brought to the house to confront this young man, Gerhard Schellenberg, and Gerhard named the other seven men involved in the attacks.

      Nearly every female member of the Molotschna Colony has been violated by this group of eight, but most (except for the girls too young to understand these proceedings, and the women, led by Scarface Janz, who have already chosen to exercise the Do Nothing option) have marked an X next to their name to indicate that they are content (and many ecstatic) not to attend the meetings about how to respond. Instead, they will contribute to the well-being of the colony by tending to the chores, which are manifold now while the men are away, and which if abandoned for as little as one day will result in mayhem, especially when it comes to the milking and feeding of the animals.

Having read the book after watching the film, I thought Sara Polley and cast did a great job bringing the book to life.  I thought how articulately the women spoke in the film, for Mennonite women weren’t very literate, let alone educated.  But I also noted how much the screenplay was heavily based on the dialogue written by author Toews.  There was so much talking in the novel that I suspect Toews didn't bother with the use of quotation marks!

Here's a sample of one of their many discussions/arguments:

Salome, more calm now, adds: So once again, we return to our three reasons for leaving, and they are valid. We want our children to be safe. We want to keep our faith. And we want to think.

  Agata splays her fingers on the plywood table as if to build a new foundation. Shall we move on? she asks.

  But, says Mariche, if there is any chance that the men in prison are innocent shouldn’t we, as members of Molotschna, be joining forces to secure their freedom?

  Salome explodes. We’re not members of Molotschna!

  The other women recoil and even the sun takes shelter behind a cloud.

  Greta, she says, are your beloved Ruth and Cheryl members of Molotschna?

  No, not members, says Greta, although—

  Salome interrupts. We’re not members! she repeats. We are the women of Molotschna. The entire colony of Molotschna is built on the foundation of patriarchy (translator’s note: Salome didn’t use the word “patriarchy”—I inserted it in the place of Salome’s curse, of mysterious origin, loosely translated as “talking through the flowers”), where the women live out their days as mute, submissive and obedient servants. Animals. Fourteen-year-old boys are expected to give us orders, to determine our fates, to vote on our excommunications, to speak at the burials of our own babies while we remain silent, to interpret the Bible for us, to lead us in worship, to punish us! We are not members, Mariche, we are commodities. (Again, a translator’s note about the word “commodities”: similar situation to above.)

  Salome continues: When our men have used us up so that we look sixty when we’re thirty and our wombs have literally dropped out of our bodies onto our spotless kitchen floors, finished, they turn to our daughters. And if they could sell us all at auction afterwards they would.

Narratively speaking, having articulate characters is convenient because if the women were not very articulate, it would be harder for the author to convey good quality prose.  I found the writing to be overly expository at times and it often felt like Toews was using the women as mouthpieces to get her points across re: patriarchal oppression.  Thus, the writing came across very heavy-handed at times.

 

However, much of the thoughtful, articulate dialogue was attributed to Ona, especially when confronted by an angry Salome (who attacked the perpetrators with a scythe to avenge her children) or a defiant Mariche (who’s in denial that she’s in an abusive marriage).

 

Ona was a bit of an outsider due to some unconventional personality traits (intelligence, melancholy).  Even though she was illiterate and uneducated like the other women, she was able to use big words like “pernicious ideology” in her discussions to try to explain why men are the way they are.

Ona’s Narfa (a term for depression), the colonists say, had been latent, simmering but not unmanageable, until her father died. Afterwards, she committed her life to dreamy eccentricity, and also to facts, curiously, and to her seemingly preferred status as a pariah, as the devil’s daughter, and God-given burden to the colony. I contend a lighter, less intrusive presence has never been known.)

Despite the need to suspend a great deal of disbelief, Toews did execute a great premise:  have a sensitive male outsider take minutes of a secret meeting of women who are divided between leaving an oppressive Mennonite colony to start anew, or staying and thus, being stuck in a situation that won't change for the better.  The women, despite being uneducated and illiterate, are smart, articulate and funny.  After much discussion, which takes up the bulk of the novel, they finally agree upon a decision.

End spoiler coming...   

 

When August is alone with Ona:

   I asked her what good the minutes would do her and the other women if they were unable to read them? (But she may well have asked me instead, What good is it to be alive if you are not in the world?)

  And that’s when she told me the story of the squirrel and the rabbit and of their secret playing, and said that perhaps she hadn’t been meant to see them playing—yet she had seen them. Maybe there was no reason for the women to have minutes they couldn’t read. The purpose, all along, was for me to take them.

  The purpose was for me to take them, the minutes. Life.

  I smile. I see the world turning in on itself, like waves, but without a sea or shore to contain them. There was no point to the minutes. I have to laugh.

Well, there was a point.  The author needed to find a way to tell the story!  

 

So yes, the style and format was rather self-conscious, yet Women Talking was very well-written overall. The minutes device was really an excellent way of telling this important story by giving a POV from someone within the community yet outside of it, while still being empathetic to the victims.  Still, the writing was often too affected for me to truly enjoy it as a whole, as it reminded me too much of a staged play. Come to think of it, Women Talking would be perfect for the theatre stage!

17. Revenge of the Librarians

By Tom Gauld