Silences

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful: Why aren't you writing?, September 18, 2003 By Charity Kendall (Ann Arbor, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews Silences by Tillie Olsen Annotated Bibliography This book is addressed to the silences in literature and the ways in which writing ceases to be, to the dying and death of capacity. It is about the censorship and self-censorship of woman primarily. The book is written to encourage everyone who is marginalized to find a place for their voice amidst the constrictions of wage-labor and child rearing because their experiences are invaluable. Olsen estimates that only one out of twelve writers in our century are women.Olsen goes into great depth telling the story of Rebecca Harding Davis a nineteenth century woman who spoke out through her literature from isolation both as a woman without encouragement and as a citizen of a backward city, without even a library, in what became West Virginia. She wrote and eventually was introduced to society and made great friends with many prominent writers, however, at age thirty-one she married, and once she had children she let her writing go. Her sympathetic perspective about iron-workers in her town is almost inexplicable in terms of her class. Olsen asks how she got the information she used in her story and remarks on her personal qualities that made her into a popular conversationalist before she retreated/succumbed to motherhood and fulfilled the role of what was properly expected of her. Primarily this book is about the silences of women throughout time. It asks why women have not been enabled to publish, why their lives have usually been overwhelmed by child rearing (their work not allowing time for writing), what is wrong with the world that it doesn't ask-and make it possible-for people to raise and contribute the best that is in them. Olsen explores the idea that women must choose between their art and their fulfillment as a woman and asks what difference it makes to literature if a woman remains childless especially since so many marvels have been created by childless woman. There is a wonderful excerpt from Henry James on the value he placed on his mother's sacrifices to her family.The book is filled with quotes from writers, Katherine Anne Porter writes that writers must not let editors or publishers tamper with their lives because writers are practicing an art while publishers are running a business. Olsen notes that at one time woman were asked to divest themselves of characteristics that might identify them as women if they were to try to write in this man's world. Cynthia Ozick is quoted as saying "...The term "woman writer"...has no meaning, not intellectually, not morally, not historically. A woman is a writer."Common people are asked why they do not write and writers are examined to understand why they have pauses in their otherwise fertile production. This is not about those times a writer takes to regenerate and think creatively, b

Silences by Tillie OlsenAnnotated BibliographyThis book is addressed to the silences in literature and the ways in which writing ceases to be, to the dying and death of capacity. It is about the censorship and self-censorship of woman primarily. The book is written to encourage everyone who is marginalized to find a place for their voice amidst the constrictions of wage-labor and child rearing because their experiences are invaluable. Olsen estimates that only one out of twelve writers in our century are women.Olsen goes into great depth telling the story of Rebecca Harding Davis a nineteenth century woman who spoke out through her literature from isolation both as a woman without encouragement and as a citizen of a backward city, without even a library, in what became West Virginia. She wrote and eventually was introduced to society and made great friends with many prominent writers, however, at age thirty-one she married, and once she had children she let her writing go. Her sympathetic perspective about iron-workers in her town is almost inexplicable in terms of her class. Olsen asks how she got the information she used in her story and remarks on her personal qualities that made her into a popular conversationalist before she retreated/succumbed to motherhood and fulfilled the role of what was properly expected of her. Primarily this book is about the silences of women throughout time. It asks why women have not been enabled to publish, why their lives have usually been overwhelmed by child rearing (their work not allowing time for writing), what is wrong with the world that it doesn't ask-and make it possible-for people to raise and contribute the best that is in them. Olsen explores the idea that women must choose between their art and their fulfillment as a woman and asks what difference it makes to literature if a woman remains childless especially since so many marvels have been created by childless woman. There is a wonderful excerpt from Henry James on the value he placed on his mother's sacrifices to her family.The book is filled with quotes from writers, Katherine Anne Porter writes that writers must not let editors or publishers tamper with their lives because writers are practicing an art while publishers are running a business. Olsen notes that at one time woman were asked to divest themselves of characteristics that might identify them as women if they were to try to write in this man's world. Cynthia Ozick is quoted as saying "...The term "woman writer"...has no meaning, not intellectually, not morally, not historically. A woman is a writer."Common people are asked why they do not write and writers are examined to understand why they have pauses in their otherwise fertile production. This is not about those times a writer takes to regenerate and think creatively, but rather, about those times when it is impossible to write because of the pressures the artist puts on him/herself or allows the world to impose.

I am not shocked that this wonderful work is out of print -- it's simply history repeating itself. But I do think we should work very hard to get it back into print, probably by one of the small feminist publishers, such as The Feminist Press or Aunt Lute or Spinster -- because they are faithful to their books. However, until that happens, those looking for the essays will find many of them reprinted in various anthologies, including the title essay, "Silences: When Writers Don't Write" in IMAGES OF WOMEN IN FICTION: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ed. Susan Koppelman, Popular Press, 1972, and still in print and available from the publisher.

It is difficult to understand why this book is out of stock. Olsen's ideas encouraged International PEN Women Writers' Committee(of which I was then Chair) to hold two regional conferences on censorship and self-censorship of women. It was also part of the inspiration for the resolution forwarded by our delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Women writers have been aware for centuries about women's silences, but it was generally acknowledged that there was little support for the perspective of it being institutionalised ,deliberate ,and encouraged by societies. Those who wish to find evidence for the phenomenon and examples of women who broke the silence would find much to interest them in'The Book of the City of Ladies' by Christina de Pizan, a Fourteenth Century Italian writer(and widow) at the court of the King of France.Christina broke many of the taboos of her day. It is remarkable that women's censorship and self-censorship(silences) are not the subject of doctoral theses in women's studies' departments. Olsen provided women everywhere with a great service in writing this book. Read it,I urge you to do so.It will make you reflect ,if you are a woman, on your own silences. If you are a man with an open mind, it will probably make you wonder how such a continual human rights' abuse has continued for so long.Perhaps the answer is because it is a silent one.The scars are and have been felt on the souls of our mothers,sisters, and daughters of blood and spirit throughout the millenia of recorded human history.Simply because they do not inflict physical hurt, does not mean that such silent scars do not constitute abuse.Olsen's book,'Silences',did much to set the record straight. I , as a woman writer, am grieved, at both the intellectual and emotional levels, that such a valuable record should go out of print.It is ironical that in the 'great age of gender issues' such a book is no longer available.

This book has long been important to my students at Vermont College, the nation's only campus devoted to adult learning. Adult students who haven't before seen the role of gender, class and race in their lives suddenly understand why it's taken them a while to get to school, to discover they have something to give the world, and that the world isn't equally welcoming to the perceptions of everyone. To share this predicament with writers like Melville and Woolf and Poe is for many a life-changing experience--both depressing and liberating. That Olsen's brilliant connections can no longer be easily accessed--this is itself an example of the kind of silencing that has discounted and erased artists' insights and contributions over the centuries. Olsen's book is a classic! Bring it back!