![]() ![]() Being illiterate, the women rely on August, a school master and son of excommunicated Mennonites to record the meeting. Torn between leaving and fighting, the women appoint eight of their own to come to a final decision. While the rest of the men are in the city posting bail for the accused, Molotschna’s women vote on what they should do before their attackers return. Just before the novel begins, it is discovered that a group of men have been drugging and violently raping the women and girls of the village. In this particular colony, called Molotschna, that structure has exposed its dark underbelly. ![]() It is a world built on patriarchy, though the women have no direct translation for the concept. The men tend the land, learn to read and handle the money. Here, the women quilt, milk cows, and give birth to families of 10 or 15 children. The story takes place in a remote Mennonite Christian community. But this is the contradiction that sits at the heart of Miriam Toews’s Women Talking, and it neatly illustrates the plight of her characters. It seems ironic that a work so concerned with the female voice should be written from a man’s perspective. ![]()
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