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51 pages 1 hour read

Miriam Toews

Women Talking

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “June 6: August Epp, Before the Meeting”

Part 1 Summary

The first section of the novel is preceded by three drawings and August Epp’s introduction of the minutes, naming the place, dates, himself as scribe, and a list of the women present: Greta Loewen, two of her daughters (Mejal and Mariche, the oldest), and Mariche’s daughter (Autje), as well as Agata Friesen, two of her daughters (Ona, the eldest, and Salome), and Salome’s niece (Neitje). The drawings illustrate the three options the women have in dealing with the rapes and abuse: “1. Do Nothing”; “2. Stay and Fight”; “3. Leave” (6).

August introduces himself and his place—“irrelevant”—in the events he is recording and explains why he is taking the notes: “[T]he women are illiterate and unable to do it themselves” (1). Last night, Ona asked him to keep a record of the women’s meetings while they were standing on the path between their two houses; August, a schoolteacher, has been back in the colony for seven months, and he agreed to the request because it was Ona who asked him. She also told him a story about a squirrel and a rabbit alternately charging at each other when there was no one else around to see—“playing,” she thought.

August explains that Agata and Greta organized the meetings following a spate of attacks. Almost all the women and girls in the colony have been sexually assaulted while anesthetized with a concoction of belladonna. These rapes were initially written off as the work of spirits or demons, but recently it emerged that eight men from the colony were carrying out the attacks.

August points out that the colony is self-policed and that the men were turned over to outside authorities—to protect them—only after Salome attacked one of the men with a scythe. The relatives of a victim hanged another perpetrator. The other men, except August and those who are disabled or very old, have left to post bail for those arrested. When the men return, Bishop Peters, the colony’s spiritual and practical leader, expects the women to forgive the men to ensure everyone’s salvation; if the women refuse, they will be banished from the colony. The women have two days to decide. The women are deadlocked between staying/fighting and leaving. They have selected two families—the Friesens and Loewens—to represent the women on either side. The “Do Nothing” women are not represented because most women don’t consider that a viable option.

August explains that he is translating the women’s speech from “Low German” to English as he transcribes. He learned English in the UK after his parents were expelled from Molotschna for possessing and sharing illicit “intellectual materials.” He attended college in the UK but experienced a mental crisis during his studies. This crisis worsened after he was expelled and imprisoned due to his involvement in unspecified “political activities.” By the time he was released, his mother had died; with no one else to care for (his father had left long before), he was contemplating suicide when a librarian happened to strike up a conversation with him. With her, he shared not only his recent history but also his deep-seated shame and trauma surrounding his time in Molotschna. At the time his parents were excommunicated, he believed it was because he had stolen some pears; he was 12 at the time and also harbored vague guilt about his then-nascent sexual interest in girls, which his mother tried to reassure him about. After speaking to the librarian about Ona, she urged him to return to the colony and helped him earn enough money to do so.

Peters readmitted August to the colony on the condition that he “renounce” his parents, be baptized, and teach Molotschna’s boys. August began to hear rumors of the sexual assaults shortly after he returned, but it was only when one woman stayed up to catch her attacker that the matter was brought out into the open. The section ends with the Friesen and Loewen women gathered in the hayloft of an old barn and August poised to take notes.

Part 1 Analysis

This first section introduces the primary characters and provides background information about them, the colony, and the role of the women in the colony, which is defined by the violent and repressive nature of patriarchy. The details paint a picture of women who are intelligent, hardworking, and devalued by the men in the colony. While some criticism of the novel revolves around its use of a male character as narrator, in these first pages it is clear that August honors the women and is dedicated to serving as their scribe. He is doing something no man of Molotschna has done—serve the women.

August’s respect for the women likely relates to his outsider status. He has spent much of his life in England and is better educated and more knowledgeable than virtually anyone in Molotschna, giving him a different perspective on the colony’s extremely traditional gender roles. However, his backstory also suggests other reasons for his empathy, including his internal struggles—his fear, shame, and vulnerability. Much of this section centers on August as he reveals the self-disgust he feels and how difficult he finds living in the world to be. This sensitivity and nervousness (known as Narfa) place him outside the bounds of conventional masculinity, fostering a sense of kinship with the women. His long-held love for Ona and his fond memories of his mother are other probable factors. August’s mother was an anomaly in Molotschna, inspiring him to learn and trying to introduce him to a less judgmental and more loving form of religion; when August embarrassedly confessed various “sins” to her—his theft of the pears, his competitive streak, his fantasies about girls—she merely “laughed” and assured him that he was “a child of God” (11).

Through August’s centrality, the novel therefore introduces themes that will weigh heavily in the women’s storyline, including Keeping Faith in a Religion Steeped in Hypocrisy. The opening section also hints at many of the women’s personalities, allowing an intimate look at the disparate ways surviving abuse can manifest and the toll the colony’s patriarchal tenets have on the women. The women are characterized as complex and contradictory: Salome is combative but vulnerable and Ona dreamily serene but strong. Not one of the female characters introduced in this first section (or elsewhere in the novel) is a simple caricature. Only the men, with the exception of August, remain flat and predictable. While the women all suffer under the weight of the patriarchal society in which they live, it is clear in these opening portrayals that their strength, both individual and collective, buoys them in the colony’s cesspool of oppression.

Women Talking is an epistolary novel, and Toews’s use of this literary device conjures up the epistolary genre popular among women writers of the 18th century. Seen as a tool “particularly suited to the female voice,” epistolary writing is believed to have evolved from women first learning to write in the form of letters (“To My Beloved, BB4N: The History of ‘Woman’s Writing,’ or the Epistolary Novel.” Gnovis Journal, 25 Apr. 2014). Toews turns the genre on it traditional head by substituting the male voice of August, thus reversing the power dynamic that drove the style originally. In addition to its gender-flipping properties, Toews’s use of the epistolary style enables her to supplement the women’s discussion with knowledge they do not have access to thanks to their restrictive background. August attempts to stay as true to their words as possible, but his education and experience form a bridge between the women’s imposed limited viewpoint and the reader’s assumed experience.

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