Women Talking

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions and depictions of domestic and sexual violence.

When the women gather in Women Talking, they are deciding what action to take in response to the unspeakable violence they have suffered. They have been not only been regularly and viciously attacked as they sleep but also silenced by the perpetrators and their allies, either explicitly or complicitly. This violence and repression are a result of a toxic patriarchy: a society in which men have complete control over women.

Salome, in an impassioned speech, describes the world in which the women live:

We’re not members! she repeats. We are the women of Molotschna. The entire colony of Molotschna is built on the foundation of patriarchy […] 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 (120-21).

This patriarchal society, with Peters at its head, creates a world wherein the women are subjugated and men control their lives. Their society not only denies them any kind of political voice or power but cuts off their access to such things at the root: They cannot read, so they cannot “interpret” the Bible, which is the source of ultimate authority in their religious colony.

Salome’s remark about punishment makes it clear that the sexual abuse the women have experienced is not a fluke but a feature of a system that keeps women in line with violence when ideological control fails. Evidence of this violence is clear in the descriptions of the characters: Mariche is missing half a finger, Nettie/Melvin has ceased talking and “no longer wants to be a woman” (46), Salome’s three-year-old daughter Miep has a sexually transmitted disease, Mejal experiences regular seizures, and Greta wears ill-fitting false teeth after having hers knocked out during an attack. No women in the colony have been spared brutality. When Mariche’s husband returns, he beats Mariche and hits his daughter, Autje, when she intervenes. The nonchalance with which the characters accept this violence illustrates just how widespread and normalized it is.

Despite the obvious atmosphere of abuse, the men of the colony deny the violence is taking place, allowing it to grow and fester. Bishop Peters, the “spiritual” and political leader of the colony, attributes the attacks to ghosts, the devil, or acts of “wild female imagination” (57). It is only when one of the attackers is caught in the act that the brutal attacks are recognized. Even then, Peters intends to handle the abuse internally, only seeking outside help when the victims of violence respond in kind: Salome attacks the men with a scythe, and Peters removes the men from the colony for their own protection, underscoring that violence is seen as legitimate only when wielded to subjugate the colony’s women. The denial and gaslighting damage the women beyond the physical attacks, eating away at their ability to trust themselves and each other.

Early in the deliberations, Mariche points out Peters’s mandate and the consequences the women are facing: “We will be forced to leave the colony, she says, if we don’t forgive the men and/or accept their apologies, and through the process of this excommunication we will forfeit our place in heaven” (24). Peters’s threat forces the women to either repress their anger and forgive the violence or leave everything they know. The power they claim by the end of the novel necessarily involves defying the patriarchal constraints of the colony and setting out with their children, determined to create a society where they can exercise choice and agency and raise their children in a more egalitarian environment.

The story arc of Women Talking relies completely on conversations among the women of Molotschna Colony. These women have been silenced their entire lives until violence, patriarchal control, and self-preservation force them to clandestinely meet in the hayloft of a run-down barn. There, they find power and freedom as they come together and open their hearts and minds with each other.

As their meetings begin, many of the women treat each other with animosity and distrust. They come from two of the colony’s prominent families, and while there is not a feud between the two families—the two elders have strong respect and affection for each other—the adult women regularly argue with and sometimes lash out at each other. Mariche and Salome especially are both strong, opinionated, and outspoken women, and they each represent the choice their family prefers: “The Friesen women, predominantly, want to stay and fight. The Loewens prefer to leave” (6). However, neither woman is accustomed to really communicating with others, as their patriarchal society has forbidden or forced underground true communication and community among the women. The representatives of the older generation, Greta and Agata, have clearly found ways to cooperate with each other despite these limitations: “[T]he meetings have been organized hastily by Agata Friesen and Greta Loewen” (4). Similarly, the two youngest members at the meetings share the close bond teenage girls often find, frequently acting in unison. However, the women who have households and children to protect and care for mistrust each other and show no such connection or closeness. Instead, their initial interactions are contentious and argumentative. These initial generational differences are illustrated early in the novel when Ona proposes to write a revolutionary manifesto. Greta savors the word “collectively,” while Mariche scoffs and accuses Ona of being a dreamer.

However, by coming together and speaking openly, honestly, and fearlessly, the women learn to act collectively to move toward a new life. As Salome—the last woman to join the departing line of buggies—says goodbye to August, their conversation captures the sense of unity the women have found with each other: “She began to climb down. We really have to hurry, she said. But you’re not fleeing, I said. You’re not rats running from a burning building. She laughed again. That’s right, she said. We’ve chosen to leave [emphasis added]” (207-08).