The Roaring Ghosts: Depictions of female silence and its oppositions

Any examination of female silence and speech has to consider the context in which such images were created. An examination shows that despite two World Wars, social attitudes to female silence barely shifted from beliefs held during the Renaissance to those held in the last century. Simborowski writes how the motif of women’s silence is deeply embedded in our culture’, citing folktales which use the features of dumbness, and of tongues as central to their aesthetic. When women speak, they are reduced to ‘old wives’ represented as gossiping women whose hands are idle but whose tongues never rest (2003:108). The roaring ghosts of the title are those images which project and give a voice to women, and show the tension between acceptable behaviours and the difference between silence and the act of silencing. An examination of the interfaces between passive and active forms, between choice and imposition, between trauma and freely made decision, this considers images where the roaring female appears on the page, and questions why it is easier for a ghost to inhabit this role, rather than a living woman. This continues the theme of silenced female voices and explores those ways in which women have been represented and the ways in which women have answered back.