Julie Pfeiffer is Professor of English at Hollins University, Virginia, US. She is the former editor of
Darla Schumm is Associate Provost and Professor of Religious Studies at Hollins University. She is the co-editor of several volumes exploring the intersections of religion and disability, most recently
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This article explores the meanings of girls’ silence in three popular late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century novels: Susan Coolidge’s
What do Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking have in common?
This article looks at three popular late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century novels: Susan Coolidge’s
The first of our texts, the American
All three novels appear to fit the shift from “vibrancy” to silence that Anne Scott MacLeod sees as a key element of Golden Age girls’ books. MacLeod writes in
We suggest a third category: the self-possessed girl. As Myry Voipio points out, “not only the wild and witty girl characters whom we encounter in later girls’ literature transcend boundaries” (41). We begin the article by briefly introducing our theoretical grounding in Christian disability theology. Next, we discuss examples from
Disability studies scholars disrupt cultural and societal conceptions of normalcy and reframe negative representations of physical lack or loss as a fertile site for celebrating human variation. For example, Robert McRuer articulates “crip theory,” which draws on Adrienne Rich’s conception of compulsory heterosexuality, and argues that compulsory able-bodiedness, like compulsory heterosexuality, is asserted as the unquestioned cultural norm, thus rendering it the non-identity against which all non-normative identities are measured. McRuer further argues that many of our social and cultural institutions are sites for establishing, repeating, and reinforcing non-identities, to the detriment of bodies that do not, will not, or cannot conform to said non-identity. In a similar vein, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson offers the critical word “misfit” as a way of destabilizing definitions of disability and argues that to fit or misfit depends on the encounter between flesh and the material environment. As such, all bodies – not just disabled bodies – move in and out of fitting and misfitting in social and cultural contexts, and unsettle fixed notions of what it means to be disabled or able-bodied. Alison Kafer proposes an alternative to the prevailing medical and social models of disability and offers the political/relational model of disability, suggesting that coalition building and social activism are important tools for dismantling oppressive structures and celebrating embodied difference. These, and other, disability studies scholars insist on questioning conventional oppressive social constructions of concepts, such as silence, and opening new pathways for imagining how they may be liberating.
Christian disability theology, as an outgrowth of the field of disability studies, challenges theological constructions of what is normal and what is sinful. It draws our attention to prayer as a form of contemplative practice and reminds us of the positive connotations of silence. As our discussion of
Katy, Heidi, and Anne are all introduced as natural children, unhampered by social restriction. The novels begin by celebrating excess – the wild physicality of a young girl who enjoys her body and feels confident in her environment. But as Davis notes, for nineteenth-century cultures: “Disease involved excess, excitability, noise, attention, irritation, stimulation” (
We are introduced to Katy as a child who delights in her physicality; she climbs ladders and ridge poles, scales over fences, and transforms her school room into a site of chaos. Similarly, when we meet the child Heidi on the mountain, she strips off her clothing and tells her grandfather she wants to be as free as the goats. Anne climbs a ridge pole on a dare; her fall restricts her to bed but does not stop her verbal self-expression. All these children are marked by a lack of self-consciousness or inhibition. Katy makes up stories and talks to strangers; Heidi speaks freely to her grandfather and to her friend, Peter, and trusts that those around her will respond to her speech; early in the novel, Anne is defined by her “chatter,” and Marilla tells her, “it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you’ve got anybody that will listen to you” (Montgomery 34, 108). But these girls who run, tumble, and create chaos with their enthusiasm and ebullience do not conform to the physical, moral, or social standards and expectations of their communities for what “good” women should be. As their stories progress, they must learn to defer to the expectations of their communities by giving up their loud, unmodulated voices.
At a dramatic moment in
In
zum Lernen sitzt man still auf seinem Sessel und gibt Acht. Kannst du das nicht selbst fertig bringen, so muss ich dich an deinen Stuhl festbinden. (Spyri 127)
(To study you must sit quietly on your chair and pay attention. If you can’t manage this, I will have to tie you to your chair.)
Heidi is further convinced by Fräulein Rottenmeier that to tell anyone she wants to go home will make her seem ungrateful. Caught between her own desire – to go home – and the desire to please those around her, Heidi “saß […] regungslos, sein brennendes Heimweh lautlos niederkämpfend” (sat motionless, silently fighting down her burning homesickness, Spyri 201). The result of this conflict is that Heidi loses control over her body and becomes a sleepwalker, wandering through the house at night, and even opening the front door to the house. Her unconscious movement is a sign of her own loss of power (over her body and situation) and her illness is clearly caused by societal constraints. In this novel, a girl’s inability to speak further traumatizes her and causes distress and anxiety. For Heidi to be restored to health, she must be removed from the oppression of Fräulein Rottenmeier and the social structures that see her gender, age, and class as justifications for silencing her.
Anne, like Heidi, is marked by her precarious social status. We meet Anne, an orphan who is dependent on the good will of strangers or relatives, in transit to a new home. In early scenes, Anne’s exuberant curiosity bombards the reader through her unceasing questioning of Marilla’s brother, Matthew. One might imagine that a young orphan girl in this situation would approach her new caretakers with some trepidation and caution, but Anne barrages Matthew with her ebullient inquisitiveness. By the end of the novel, Anne, like Katy and Heidi, appears to have redefined herself as a quieter, less active, more community-oriented individual.
It is exactly the reshaping from boisterous girl to reserved adolescent that leaves critics from MacLeod to Anderson disappointed and with the sense that lively girls are silenced by a patriarchal narrative that links female maturation with self-effacement. In these novels with third-person narrators, intimacy between the reader and protagonist is possible because of the girl’s loquaciousness. We get to know Katy, Heidi, and Anne because of what they tell others about themselves; we delight in their lack of self-consciousness. In this way, the more reserved protagonist may seem to be less available to the reader.
The girls’ silence is further disturbing to readers because of its link to physical restriction. Girl protagonists are taught that their bodies are not their own – they lose control of their limbs, are moved without their permission to new homes, and are enclosed in confining clothing. They learn to live in the parlor and kitchen rather than the woods; they learn to speak in low voices or not at all. Their exteriority is often disconcerting to adult characters because these girls live in communities in which female maturity is linked to self-restraint. The distress and disapproval expressed by the adult characters in these novels regarding the girls’ unruly behavior is not simply a matter of personal preference; it is rooted in long-held community standards in which female maturity is linked to self-control. These girls are taught to mind their limbs and their voices, to take up less space both physically and verbally. When growing up is marked by an increasing quietude and physical constraint, it looks like silencing is a violent act performed on girls.
It is not surprising that this shift from verbal self-revelation to social polish has been read with dismay, or that readers lionize the girl protagonists who defy social expectations by talking freely. When volubility and physical freedom are idealized, the restrained adolescent girl appears to have lost her agency. Because readers begin their reading with an attachment to younger, louder, wilder girls, the new authority/delight of older, quieter, more mature girls has not been recognized.
We turn now to less-commonly addressed examples of silence and reserve in
At a key moment toward the end of
“You don’t chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as many big words. What has come over you?”
Anne colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.
“I don’t know – I don’t want to talk as much,” she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. “It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over.” (Montgomery 429)
This scene helps us see the tension between the girl child’s free expression, which allows for explicit discipline from those around her, and the young woman’s restraint, which removes her thoughts from public view and thus from critique. Here Anne uses silence as protection against the invasive intervention of social critique. By learning to treasure her own thoughts rather than expose them to the ridicule or delight of her community, Anne establishes a sense of individual identity that is linked to inwardness.
To make sense of this model – which offers an alternative reading to a theory that the girl’s reserve must be the result of submission to the gender regime – we turn to Christian disability theology. As noted previously, the turn inward for Anne has been read as a patriarchal silencing of her thoughts and voice by critics from Anne Scott MacLeod to Amanda L. Anderson. She chatters less to her family and friends. Yet, as Laura M. Robinson points out, Anne “has learned to conform on the surface” (216). This surface masks a process of interiority, which, contrary to the loss of her voice, is actually a new form of conversation and chatter. Anne shifts her outward commentary to an internal conversation with herself and with God – she opens channels of divine communication through prayer.
In her article, “Blessed Silence: Explorations in Christian Contemplation and Hearing Loss” (2017), Jana Bennett explores how the concept of “Deaf Gain” – an idea that asserts that deafness is not a “loss” as traditionally understood, but a “gain for both the individual and society” – may be used to think about Christian theology and disability ethics (138). Bennett argues that religious practices of “silent contemplation” are one way to utilize Deaf Gain for rethinking hearing loss. Bennett notes that understanding Deafness as loss reinforces a medical model of disability, which insists that physical impairment is a lack or flaw in the individual body requiring a fix or “cure.” Deaf Gain, in contrast, aligns with the social model of disability, which suggests that disability is a result of inadequate accommodations, such as ramps, sign language, availability of Braille material, and so on. Bennett observes that for adherents of the medical model, silence, as in the case of hearing loss, is seen as detrimental to human flourishing. Yet, when seen through the frame of Deaf Gain and contemplative Christian traditions, silence is beneficial for human flourishing. From these perspectives, silence and silent contemplation are not only valued vehicles to God, but they are also transformed into powerful tools of self-possession.
Bennett’s analysis highlights two important points relevant to our close reading of Anne’s transition to a quieter girl. First, Bennett rejects the notion that silence is always negative and indicative of loss or repression. Second, in drawing a connection between silent contemplation (prayer, as in Anne’s case) and human flourishing, Bennett creates space for us to reframe the interpretation that the quieter Anne, who increasingly filters her external speech and turns her thoughts inward and toward silent communion with God, is not simply giving in to social repression, but instead leveraging her own agency to decide when and when not to speak. It is the agency to make one’s own decisions that transforms Anne’s silence from an oppressive social construct into a powerful expression of self-possession.
Anne demonstrates how prayer is paired with a growing sense of self-awareness and strength when she reflects on her experience of floating on the sinking barge:
“I was horribly frightened,” she told Mrs. Allan the next day, “and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly, but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it […] It was proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it.” (Montgomery 379)
Anne knows that she must do her part if she is going to survive, but she finds her inner strength to do what is necessary through conversation with God. We might surmise that in quieting her external chatter, Anne opens space for her internal strength to emerge: “Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession” (379). Anne does save herself from the sinking barge, she does exhibit the ability to know not only what needs to be done, but also how to do it. Anne resolutely grabs the bridge pole and climbs to safety. Anne’s simultaneous attentiveness to God and the world around her provides the inner fortitude to save herself from certain disaster.
Here Anne may appear to follow the tradition of the mid-nineteenth century “dutiful woman,” who, as Jane Tompkins argues in
“You’re old enough to pray for yourself, Anne,” she said finally. “Just thank God for your blessings and ask Him humbly for the things you want.”
“Well, I’ll do my best,” promised Anne, burying her face in Marilla’s lap. “Gracious heavenly Father – that’s the way the ministers say it in church, so I suppose it’s all right in private prayer, isn’t it?” she interjected, lifting her head for a moment. (Montgomery 94)
Later in the novel, when Anne is alone in her room after recounting the frightening barge experience to Mrs. Allan, Anne prays again. Unlike her first prayer, this prayer is not a rote imitation of the minister, but a silent, private, and heartfelt expression of Anne’s internal thoughts: “That night Anne […] knelt sweetly by her open window in a great sheen of moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude and aspiration that came straight from her heart” (445).
This second prayer is a stark contrast to Anne’s first prayer at Green Gables, which sounds like an obedient young girl’s letter to God. In the first prayer, Anne is funny and shallow; her prayer is a performance. In the second prayer, Anne is sweet and reverent; her prayer is private silent contemplation. The obedient girl child who does what she is told matures into an older adolescent who talks to God straight from her own heart, on her own terms. None of the other characters in the novel hear Anne’s second prayer, as this is private time between Anne and God. Yet, the readers hear Anne’s quiet, private voice as she silently speaks with God. The readers witness the self-possessed Anne engaging in “blessed silence.”
A useful model for understanding Anne’s use of silence is Charlotte Brontë’s novel,
When Anne tells Marilla, “It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over” (Montgomery 429), she is both acknowledging the restrictions of a world in which she is patronized, “laughed at,” or marked as an outsider to her community and defining a solution: to decide for herself the value of her thoughts and to protect them within an interior space. Anne reframes silencing as interiority; she adapts her childhood tendency toward extroversion as a way of cherishing her own ideas.
Through prayer, Anne reflects a model of spirituality that links maturity with interiority; she reframes silence as personal gain instead of loss. It points to a process where reflection can be understood as evidence of a powerful form of self-knowledge and understanding. Anne holds her “dear, pretty thoughts” inside as she matures, not because she is oppressed or repressed, but because she is finding her inner voice and strength.
Anne’s interiority thus becomes a powerful example of resistance to established societal and cultural gender norms. This helps us understand why young readers of
Anne’s model of interiority also offers an extension of Angela Hubler’s idea of “liberatory reading” (270). Hubler argues that readers can love these books because they mis-remember their plots. Hubler’s research on girls as readers finds that many girl readers simply do not remember the moments of restriction that appear in girls’ books; they make the girl protagonist’s story accommodate their own desires. For Hubler, “liberatory reading” requires
We turn now to the disability studies’ critique of “normalcy” to further complicate the binary in early girls’ books that equates verbosity with self-possession and quietness with oppression. In analyzing how cultural ideas about disabled and “normal” (read non-disabled) bodies are reproduced, Lennard J. Davis argues compellingly that novels often reflect the prejudices of society regarding people with disabilities; the “very structures on which the novel rests tend to be normative, ideologically emphasizing the universal quality of the central character whose normativity encourages us to identify with him or her” (“Constructing Normalcy” 21). The power of this identification, Davis suggests, is that readers absorb the “semiologically normative signs” advanced through novels and learn to locate those normative signs beyond the text and in the broader world (“Constructing Normalcy” 21). Davis challenges the construction of normalcy in novels (and elsewhere), noting that the symbolic creation of a norm also creates the “abnormal,” and firmly establishes it as the inferior other. Davis’s insights about the construction of normalcy encourage other disability studies scholars such as Sarah E. Chinn and Ellen Samuels to claim that “DS […] positions you in relation to normativity in a totally different way […] it’s always in your mind about how are bodies represented, how are bodies functioning, how is functionality represented, what does it mean to be normal?” (148).
If we extend disability studies’ critique of what is deemed “normal” to include not just the body but also the social and moral worlds of the novel, we can understand Anne’s choice to “keep [her thoughts] in [her] heart, like treasures” as challenging both “normal” judgements about female maturation as a process of silencing and assumptions that there was only one way to be a “normal” girl or woman in the nineteenth century. For example, Anne actively chooses silence for herself, rather than being silenced by others. Hence, her external silence is
It is tempting to privilege the girl child as the “normal” female and then see maturity as disabling. In a way, this is reasonable – the gender regime certainly celebrates ways of performing femininity that feel restrictive to many female-identifying persons. But there is a risk in saying that the talkative girl child is the ideal of femininity in the same way that glorifying the silent woman is restrictive. In both cases, there is a model of what it means to perform femininity correctly, and it is a limiting model.
Growth in the girls’ novel is not always about loss; becoming a woman is not just about silencing a girl child. There is another approach to the changing, diverse experience of girlhood and womanhood that focuses on inwardness and on an embodied awareness of the self. The chattering child is most responsive to external authority. The introspective adolescent may appear externally to take up less space, but that is in part because she is directing her energy inward and empowering herself.
Novels, with their reliance on the reader’s access to the interior life of characters, thus provide opportunities to reframe the girl’s silence. While the girl character may become less physically active and less verbal in her own community, the reader continues to have access to her interior experience through the text itself. And because the girl’s thoughts are shared only with the reader and a few of the girl’s trusted confidants, those within the world of the novel who would pronounce the girl abnormal and attempt to re-shape her no longer have access to the self they might want to discipline.
How might a celebration of privacy and quietude sound to twenty-first-century girls who are inundated with messages linking speech and personal agency, and who have constant access to methods for making their voices heard through social media outlets? In the era of Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok, where girls can broadcast their thoughts, opinions, and even bodies from the confines of their bedrooms with a click or swipe, and when the “loud” girl is valorized as powerful, models of self-possessed, quiet girls are not only rare but are often disparaged. As Bennett observes, “Learning about silence’s benefits might be especially important in a technocratic culture like ours, where noise and distractions are default experiences for hearing and deaf people alike” (146).
We are grateful to Claudia Mills and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on this article.
English translations of