CBR 17 BINGO: Citizen. While Mennonite women theoretically have the same citizenship rights as anyone else in their country, this isn’t the reality for the women of Molotschna.
Women Talking, adapted for film in 2022, is a fictionalized response to very real and appalling incidents that occurred in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009. During that period, more than 100 women in a remote Mennonite colony woke up to signs that they had been raped during the night. Their claims were dismissed by the colony elders: the women were lying; the women were crazy; the women were being punished by God for their sins. Eventually the truth came out: eight men from the colony were using a spray anesthetic normally used for animals to knock the women unconscious during the night in order to rape them. The men were tried and imprisoned, but assaults and sexual abuse continued to occur in the colony. This novel is an imagined response to those events.
At the opening of the novel, all the able-bodied men from the fictional colony of Mootschna are away on a mission to bail the rapists out of jail. The women meet in secret in a hayloft to decide what their course of action should be: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Time is of the essence, because they have just two days before the men return with their violators. Because all the women are illiterate, one of them asks August Epp, a gentle man who isn’t favored among the colony for his own “shortcomings,” to record minutes for them.
A few of the women are “do nothing” holdouts, believing that they are in their rightful place in the colony; the majority (eight women in total), however, debate the best way to keep themselves and their children safe. As far as the men are concerned, the women’s only choice is to “forgive these men, thus guaranteeing everyone’s place in heaven.” That’s right: according to the bishop of the colony, Peters, forgiving the men is critical not just for the men’s salvation, but for the salvation of the women who have been violated. These women are desperate to protect not only themselves but their children, leaving them, theoretically with the choice between “protect[ing] the children or enter[ing] the kingdom of heaven.” According to the teachings of their church, they can’t do both, and by offering that forgiveness they would be subjecting their daughters to the same violence they have already experienced. I am hard pressed to think of a more abhorrent message from any religion, anywhere (but I’m willing to listen; I’m sure I’m forgetting some equally horrific examples).
This novel is exactly what it says it is: women talking. But the characters have depth and distinct personalities, and they argue among themselves as they philosophize. Salome is all fire and fierceness. It comes out that the only reason the rapists were arrested is because she tried to kill one of them, so the police were called for the protection of the men. She has good reason to be enraged: her three-year-old daughter Miep was also a victim of the attacks. Peters refused to call a doctor to treat Miep for fear that word of the attacks would get out and “the whole incident would be blown out of proportion.” (I’m starting to think Salmone should have taken the scythe to Peters to put an end to this entire affair.)
Ona is the sweet, unmarried friend of August and the one who invites him to take minutes. She suffers from anxiety, which they call “Narfa” in the colony. She’s also pregnant from one of the attacks and already loves the unborn child, saying “He or she is as innocent and lovable as the evening sun.”
At one point in the discussions, Ona proposes a fourth alternative: asking the men to leave. Of course, it’s ludicrous to think that the men would ever agree to this, but it gets the women thinking. Agata, one of the eldest of the women, ponders this in a sentiment that stuck with me from the award-winning screenplay: “None of us have ever asked the men for anything. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body. Isn’t it interesting, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave?”
This novel isn’t going to be for everybody: it’s all discussion and philosophizing, and the subject is harrowing. The women do eventually come to a decision, but that’s as much action as you are going to get. Part of me wonders why the author didn’t write this as a stage play, for which the subject and setting is perfectly suited. However, I do think this is an important read, and in spite of being “slow” I read it in just a few days. These women have voices, and we need to listen to them.