“She finds it good, it pleases her, this silence of hers, a silence she hopes to preserve to the grave” (Coetzee 166).
J.M. Coetzee’s works – and I am thinking particularly of Elizabeth Costello, but also The Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace and Foe and even Waiting for the Barbarians – explore the limitations of language. Specifically, he explores the ability – or, in this case, lack thereof – of language to articulate trauma; he attempts to reinvent silence as a means, if not of protest, then at least of agency.
And while as a project I do not wholly object to silence as resistance (I am thinking particularly of King-kok Cheung’s work Articulate Silences, which re-reads silences in classic Asian American texts as a means of alternative articulation for the doubly silenced (Cheung 28).), I cannot help but still feel uneasy at Coetzee’s, forgive me, articulation of it.
In Elizabeth Costello, Costello narrates how she has refused to tell or write of the rape committed upon her in the context of her condemnation of Paul West’s book that “obscene(ly)” (Coetzee 159), as she puts it, depicts the execution of Hitler’s would-be assassins. So in Elizabeth Costello, is silence a moral choice to not bring evil into the light, giving it power once again, bringing what is dead and should remain dead back to the life? And yet, in a curious turn, Coetzee’s narrator graphically narrates Costello’s rape (“‘You like that, do you?’ he whispered as he twisted her nipples. ‘You like that?'”). What then is the purpose of silence here? It is obviously not that such evil shouldn’t be narrated, that writers should not write such things, because Coetzee does exactly that. Even the description of the offending chapter of West’s book is graphically described. Coetzee is not, I must assume, speaking about authorial silence then, at least not here in Elizabeth Costello.
When I consider his depictions of the silent victim in his other novels – Michael K, the barbarian girl, Friday, Lucy – I find the pattern disturbing. Michael K, the barbarian girl, and Friday ostensibly “choose” to be silenced in resistance to their oppressors, but they are also actively silenced. Both Michael K and Friday’s respective disabilities serve as silencing mechanisms that “choose” silence on their behalf, complicating any argument for silence as purely agential. And I think it must be asked – what is the significance of having every female rape victim choose silence as their response? Even meek Melanie is portrayed as not having chosen to speak against David Laurie, instead others speak for her – her own voice is never heard, she merely looks away, literally and figuratively.
I am not suggesting that I think that Coetzee has got it wrong in his depiction of victims as silently resisting, but I do find it troubling and it’s a potent unresolved issue for me as I read through Coetzee’s novels. The question lurks persistently – why? Why must they be silent? Why are the aggressors so often given voice, why are we as readers privy to all their morally ambiguous consciousness, but the victims are made to close their lips, swallow their stories “like an egg, an egg of stone, one that will never crack open, never give birth” (Coetzee 166)?
Works Cited:
Cheung, King Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamato, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogowa. Ithica: Cornell U, 1993.
Coetzee, J.M. Elizabeth Costello. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.