Women Talking

Greta is a seasoned leader who shares the role willingly with Agata, the other elder. Like Agata, she keeps the women working together toward their common goal. She stands up to the men of the colony as much as a woman in her society can, and she is a strong voice for taking action, whether it’s leaving or fighting. When the discussions begin, she advocates standing up to the men, saying, “[W]e have been preyed upon like animals; perhaps we should respond in kind” (21). Later she declares the women are not animals, noting that the animals of Molotschna are better cared for than the women.

Like all the women in the colony, Greta has been attacked, and when she cried out, the attacker broke almost all of her teeth off with the force of his hand over her mouth. Her false teeth don’t fit and are painful. Her knuckles are large and rough, conveying years of hard work. August notes that recently Greta’s balance has not been good, and she has broken some ribs and her collarbone. He sums it up by saying, “Greta is very tired, and her body is heavy and it is apparent that every piece of it hurts” (147).

Regardless of her personal pain, Greta keeps the women on track, pushing them to come to a decision. Her role as a voice of reason and harmony does not stop her from confronting the women when she needs to. She occasionally erupts, calling her daughters out on their behavior and reacting favorably or not when the situation calls for it. While her character arc is not pronounced, she is multifaceted, reflecting competing emotions and disparate drives.

One of the primary women in the novel, Mariche is a strong and opinionated woman, filled with anger. She is tough and sports a bitten-off finger, the source of which is never explained. She is married to Klaas, who at one point in the novel beats her. She accuses Ona of being a dreamer and is constantly at odds with the other women. Her role in the group is that of cynic. She questions everything and is not afraid to argue in her dissent.

At the same time, Mariche is one of the more religious of the women, questioning whether the women should fight or forgive the men and whether God will find them if they are not in Molotschna. She also feels the women should not be forced to choose between forgiving their attackers and eternal life. It is harder for her than the others to let go of the guilt and fear the Mennonite culture has imbued her with, illustrating the difficulty of Keeping Faith in a Religion Steeped in Hypocrisy.

Mariche is one of the most critical of August. Early in the discussions, Mariche reminds August that “the women had asked [him] to take the minutes of their meetings only because [he] was able to translate and to write, and [he] should not feel obliged to offer inspirational counselling” (35). She is bewildered by his difference from the other men and says to him, “Why do you talk that way? You shit like any other man, why can’t you talk like one?” (78). Although she never truly warms to August, she mellows toward him and the other women over the two days, evidenced by her willingness to accept help from Ona to learn to write her name.

Mejal, a secondary character in the novel, is less outspoken than many of the others but no less opinionated. She is simply less vocal about the suffering she carries. She sometimes disagrees with or questions one of the other women, but she retreats from any full-blown argument. In one scene, August writes that Mejal hates when Salome tells her what to do, but she shrugs and does it anyway. Mejal is often the quiet voice of dissent or devil’s advocate; it is Mejal who says, “not all men” when Mariche says it is the men who prevent them from finding freedom and safety. She also seeds discussions, making a remark or asking a question that prompts the other women to follow through with the debate or discussion. Although she does not evolve much in the novel, she does become less secretive and more willing to speak up.

Mejal is a “secret” smoker and is often rolling her own cigarettes and smoking them while the women talk. August describes her as “a friendly chain-smoker with two yellow fingertips and what [he] suspect[s] must be a secret life” (7). Mejal also experiences seizures; when she has one during the discussions, all the women stop and tend to her. In this way, even her seizures act as a buffer, stopping a discussion from spinning out of control and bringing the women together for a common goal.

Agata shares the role of elder and the archetype of the wise woman with Greta. Although she is a Friesen, she was born a Loewen. Her ancestry is an example of the inbreeding common in Mennonite colonies. While stories have built up around her husband’s death, her account is that he “put the .22 to the side of his head and blew his brains out” (172).

Agata, like Greta, serves as a settling voice when the women argue, gently bringing them back to the task at hand as a kind voice of reason. She welcomes August and affectionately encourages him to share his opinions and thoughts with the women, allowing a (safe) male voice to enter the conversation. She takes her faith seriously and sometimes recites passages of scripture or leads the women in hymns, and she uses that faith to argue for leaving. She is a woman who feels things deeply: When her daughter Mina hanged herself after Neitje was attacked, Agata is said to have washed the young woman’s body in her own tears. However, she laughs frequently and is good-natured most of the time. A complex character, she also is not afraid to fight, reminding the women that horses do not always flee their attackers but sometimes stomp them to death. August describes her as becoming “very still, predatory” when the women bring up the details of her three-year-old granddaughter’s attack (44).

Although Agata is more traditional than the younger women, she is willing to grow and change. One of the most striking examples of this concerns Nettie/Melvin. Nettie, after she is attacked, changes her name to Melvin and “no longer wants to be a woman” (46). As the discussions begin, Agata continues to call them Nettie; however, as the women prepare to leave, Agata uses the name Melvin.

Agata is a realist and often voices the obstacles and challenges the women will face if they leave the colony; however, she does not discourage them, and she interacts with Klaas when he comes back, manipulating him to keep the women and their secret plans safe. Her health is weak, and it weakens even more over the course of the novel. When she almost collapses as they are loading the buggies, Ona reminds her it will be a difficult journey. Agata sums up her character in her response: “Today is the day that the Lord hath made, she adds. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Then, to Ona, she says softly: I won’t be buried in Molotschna. Help me into a buggy now and I’ll die on the trail” (197).

One of the primary characters, Ona is the reason August returns to the colony and the woman who asks August to take minutes of the meetings. The only unmarried adult woman in the group, she is pregnant by one of the men who attacked her and is not afraid to stand up to Peters or The Violent and Repressive Nature of Patriarchy. She is considered a dreamer and lives with Narfa, or nervousness; she has also been seen to roam the colony with “her hair too loosely covered, her dress too untidily hemmed, a suspicious figure—the devil’s daughter, as Peters has named her” (3). She was a part of August’s mother’s “secret schoolhouse” before his family was excommunicated, and August is deeply in love with her.

Ona is a powerful presence in the women’s talks; however, unlike Mariche and Salome, Ona is gentle and soft-spoken, never raising her voice or becoming agitated. She does not engage when the other characters bait her or try to draw her into an argument, but she also does not shy away from difficult discussions or ideas. She is kind and lighthearted, always quick with a laugh. Her steadiness is disconcerting to the women at times, but she counters their discomfort with affection. When the women discuss whether they are revolutionaries, Ona commands attention with her quiet voice, and August observes: “[E]ven Neitje and Autje, who are normally wary of Ona because Ona is thought to have lost her fear—which is akin, for colonists, to having lost one’s moral compass and been transformed into a demon—have turned their attention to her” (55-56).

Ona delivers several of the most important statements in the novel. Her voice is that of unmitigated truth and love, and she sometimes asks philosophical and probing questions of the other women—e.g., “Is forgiveness that is coerced true forgiveness?” (26). She tells Salome that the only certainty is the power of love, which Salome calls inane. She draws attention to the distinction underpinning the women’s plans—that they are not fleeing but leaving. She sees the larger picture of what the women are doing, calling August’s posters of lists “artifacts for others to discover” (51).

In August’s narration, Ona is a heavenly being, an angelic presence in the midst of the hellish world of the colony. While August is basically a reliable narrator, when it comes to Ona, his eyes are clouded by love. Because of that, it is never clear whether August idealizes Ona so much that he depicts her as unrealistically sublime, or if she is, in fact, the calm, clear, unafraid, and uncowed woman he describes. Regardless, as an archetype of both the virgin and the goddess, she quietly guides the women where they need to go.

Salome is the warrior queen of the novel and, in temperament, the opposite of her sister, Ona. A primary character, Salome’s voice is angry and defiant, and it is clear she will stop at nothing to protect those whom she loves. It is Salome’s actions that move Peters to turn the men over to the authorities and propel the women to do something about the violence they have been experiencing for years: When her three-year-old daughter is attacked, Salome goes after the attackers with a scythe. She is a fighter and an instigator, as August describes her for the minutes:

[H]er rage is barely suppressed, vesuvian. Her eyes are never still. Even if, one day, she runs out of words like a woman is said to run out of ‘eggs,’ I believe that Salome will be able to communicate and to give life, fearsome life, to every emotion stemming from each injustice she perceives. There is no Inward Eye in Salome, no bliss of solitude. She doesn’t wander. And she is not lonely (21).

Salome’s anger is only matched by her will. When Peters refuses to allow Salome to take her young daughter to the doctor after she contracts a sexually transmitted disease from her attackers, Salome secretly carries the girl 12 miles to the nearest clinic. Her willingness to do whatever it takes is also evident at the end of the novel when she uses belladonna anesthetic on her son, who has refused to leave with the women.

Salome is unafraid to ask hard questions or to question the rules the women have had to obey their entire lives. When the women discuss forgiveness, Salome asks, “Do you mean that God would allow the parent of the violated child to harbour just a tiny bit of hatred inside her heart? […] Just in order to survive?” (27). When Mejal scoffs at the idea of “a tiny bit of hate,” Salome says that a small amount of hatred is necessary to survive. August records an impassioned speech she makes, naming the form her hatred will take if anyone tries to hurt her children again: “She will lie, she will hunt, she will kill and she will dance on graves and burn forever in hell before she allows another man to satisfy his violent urges with the body of her three-year-old child” (94-95).

No one box can hold Salome. August calls her a “puzzling contradiction,” as she is defiant yet traditional, rebellious yet eager to enforce the colony’s rules on others. She criticizes the others at times but accepts that the women have different responses to their abuse and no response is more appropriate than another. She tells the women she has no time for “fun,” but August observes that she laughs frequently. The complexity of Salome’s character is enhanced by the evolution she undergoes over the course of the two days, which likewise illustrates The Healing Power of Community and Communication. She softens, loses a little of her anger, and grows close to August. She is the last of the women to leave the barn, and the two, scribe and warrior, experience a new level of closeness and familiarity as they say goodbye.

Neitje and Autje, the two adolescent girls who join the women in the loft, are similar in character and behavior. The product of a society that tamps down individuality, their similarity is unsurprising. The rules and norms of the colony, however, do not completely restrict the girls. The girls are secondary characters, but their perspective and their willingness to eschew restrictions and norms is critical for the women’s plans to succeed.

Although Autje and Neitje have had their share of tragedy in their young lives—both are victims of the violent abuse rampant in the colony, and Neitje’s mother, Mina, died by suicide after Neitje’s assault—they are mostly lighthearted. They braid their hair together into one braid, they play hand games, they pull pranks on the women, and they roll their eyes at the adult women like any teenage girl is likely to do. However, there is also a seriousness to their characters. Their ingenuity prevents Klaas from taking Greta’s team of horses, and they devise the idea of seducing the boys from a neighboring colony so the women’s plan will succeed. While they are reckless at times, almost derailing the women’s plan, they do what it takes to correct the mistake.

While Neitje and Autje play minor roles, their presence is important. They add levity, and their actions provide a glimpse of a future where the women can name their preferences and have agency over their own lives and bodies.