
“Silence”
by Alice Munro
from Runaway
Trevor
With “Silence,” Munro ends a trilogy of stories that take us through three important episodes in the life of Juliet. First, we see her hooking up with a man married to a dying woman. This is Eric, and he will play a role in each of the stories. In the next one, we go with Juliet to visit her parents with her daughter, Penelope — she and Eric, we learn, are now a couple. In “Silence” we go with Juliet to pick up her now twenty-year-old daughter who has been away on a kind of religious retreat for six months. But Juliet soon discovers that Penelope is not there. And she will never see Penelope again.
There are many stories about the young woman who has disappeared and no one can uncover what happened. Those left behind wonder not just what happened but also look for tell-tale signs, something to make sense of the sudden disappearance. Munro’s story has this, too, but it is different because there is no sinister elements involved in Penelope’s disappearance. Juliet knows her daughter is alive and, by all accounts, well. It’s just that, other than a few cruelly impersonal cards and updates from random acquaintances, Penelope has shut off all communication with her mother.
And so Juliet goes through her own past, looking for how it all came to this. Penelope had not been a rebellious child. Juliet and her friends remark that Penelope never gave any trouble before. But what did Juliet do to deserve abandonment by her only child?
That she is to blame is implied from the start. After Penelope has been on her retreat for six months, she writes home this note: “Hope to see you Sunday afternoon. It’s time.” Reasonably interpreting this to mean Penelope is ready to come home, Juliet travels to this out of the way retreat only to be rebuffed by a kindly hostile religious woman, Juliet dubs Mother Shipton. This woman, trying to disarm Juliet with feigned flattery, tells Juliet, “[Penelope] has come to us in great hunger,” suggesting deprivation of some kind.
, who speaks the chilling words: “Penelope is not here.” I don’t believe her, and Juliet probably doesn’t either, but what can she do? She leaves, but not without a humiliating query: “What did she tell you?”
So Juliet goes home, where a month passes, and then another. Soon it’s been long enough we know Penelope’s decision to go absolutely incommunicado was not just a phase as she came out of her teens.
Juliet’s question to Mother Shipton is, I think, at the heart of this story. What did Penelope tell people who encouraged her to abandon her relationship with her mother, to go completely silent? And I wonder, is Juliet asking that question because she is bereft and just wants some explanation? Or does Juliet have something in mind — what did she tell you?
When I started to read “Silence” I kept expecting Penelope to show up. I thought the story would resolve by helping Juliet at the very least discover why her daughter left. As it stands, like Juliet, I try to piece it together from the evidence, much of it contradictory, and I suspect every character we meet is withholding something — though I never suspect Munro of playing games and withholding from me. Instead, this is a story about Juliet, who has to go years hurt by her daughter’s repudiation but who clearly is not equipped to deal with this. And so Penelope becomes a kind of void Juliet tries to ignore. She has relationships with men who, during all the time together, do not know Penelope exists.
With all of this, Munro still ends the story with a bit of a positive note. It’s masterful!
Betsy
“Silence” is the third story in a 100-page series about Juliet, the prodigiously gifted language student who is coincidentally deeply interested in Greek culture and literature.
In the first story of the series, (entitled “Chance”), Juliet gets unfairly fired from her Ph.D. program in Greek studies, meets the charismatic fisherman, Eric Porteous, and gives up her “treasure” – the one thing she is brilliant at. Instead of pursuing an academic career for which she is profoundly suited, she gives up the impossible fight and becomes the delirious Maenad to Eric’s alluring Dionysus.
In the second story of the series (”Soon”), Juliet has been with Eric for about two years, and now has a baby daughter. The entirety of “Soon” takes place during a visit to see her parents back East. Throughout Juliet’s childhood, her somewhat intellectual father and somewhat unconventional mother had focused all their attention on Juliet. But now, being a grad-school drop-out and an unwed mother, her parents seem unable to connect with her or she with them. Her mother is sick. She blindly tells Juliet that her saving faith has been that Juliet will be home “soon”. Juliet is almost nauseated by the claustrophobia of what her mother wants. Juliet has, in effect, rejected her mother, and she is, in effect, repulsed by the strange behavior of her father, who is physically drawn to the mother’s young aide. Juliet leaves, her mother dies, and in essence the death frees Juliet of any further claustrophobic visits. Note, however, that if she had lived, Juliet might have renounced the mother in fact.
In “Silence,” the third story of the series, all of Juliet’s chickens come home to roost: giving up her Greek studies, putting up with Eric and his affairs, having numerous dramatic affairs after Eric’s death, having shared and overshared her emotions with her teenaged daughter throughout this tumultuous time, and having had to make money after Eric died.
Juliet’s daughter Penelope is now grown and has gone on a retreat. Juliet has become a well-known TV personality, and she is on her way to pick up Penelope. But once at the retreat, Juliet discovers that Penelope is gone and has left no forwarding address. The retreat leader tells Juliet that Penelope had been lonely at home and had considered her childhood difficult.
Penelope’s disappearance is profoundly painful to both Juliet and the reader. This disappearance is the central question of the story, and indeed, of the 3-story novella. What is Munro, the keenly ambitious writer, saying about someone who gives up their “treasure”?
The reader wants Juliet to track the daughter down. But time passes.
She keeps on hoping for a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.
Juliet thinks back on the way she played her maternal role:
The fact was, she laughed too much. Too many things had been jokes. Just as too many things — personal things, loves that were maybe just gratification — had been tragedies. She had been lacking in motherly inhibitions and propriety and self control.
Munro details the strange emptiness of Juliet’s post-Penelope life. Juliet gets “too old” for a career in television. She becomes a kind of barista, studying Greek on the side. She has finally begun to recover “the treasure” that was hers: the prodigious linguistic talent and the passionate interest in Greece.
We hear nothing from Penelope herself that explains the terrible breach.
Juliet thinks:
My father used to say of someone he disliked, that he had no use for that person. Couldn’t those words mean simply what they say? Penelope does not have a use for me.
The reader, who has been profoundly pained and shocked by Penelope’s renunciation of her mother, wants more information. There is no more information.
Pedro Almodovar, the great Spanish film maker, made a film of this story, but he solved the reader’s desire for more information by changing the ending.
As for me, my own “solution” to the novella is this. Juliet is not ever going to get her daughter back. If you have a passion that you are very good at and that you call your “treasure,” failing to protect and nurture it will warp your life and all of your relationships. If you are careless with your “treasure” you will suffer, and so will your spouse and your children.
In fact, the carelessness with which you treat yourself and your talents will play out as a vast and uncontrollable carelessness invading every aspect of life.
Juliet’s case is complicated because initially, society stole her treasure from her. She got fired from her graduate study. How could she possibly nurture her love of Greek on her own? It seems lonely and impossible.
What could Juliet have done? Well — she could have done what Munro did. She could have explored and developed her talent on her own. Instead, she renounced it. Making her entire life unwieldy from that moment forward.
But the story is so very complex and so very allusive, there are probably a hundred takes on what the story actually means. Which is, in fact, Munro’s brilliance.
I have been looking forward to reading your thoughts on the closing story of this trilogy for some time. Thank you! I will want to read through this carefully and revisit the trilogy–and I can’t wait! Just a quick note for now: When this got posted to the web site it seems some some technical glitch caused the first part of paragraph 5 (in Trevor’s section) to be omitted.
From “Chance”: “That is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don’t think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don’t think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
That is what happens.
…
Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.”
Yes, a “treasure” she lost was her her passion for ancient Greek classics, but there are layers under layers. By the the end of the trilogy, the “bright treasure” that she loses–the one that is more valuable beyond measure–is her daughter. She loses her only child.
She very slowly comes to terms with that, and it becomes something that on one level she can “barely remember.” But part of her must be remembering it all the time. Just like with her turning away from the Greek classics.
This trilogy haunts me.
I have been reading this site for years and must tell you that the content Betsy and Trevor present on Munro is by far the most compelling and brilliant as I have been able to find on my favorite author. Betsy, in particular — I read your analyses nodding and so gratified to hear my own thoughts echoed and validated. Thank you so very much.
I find this trilogy haunting. Just gutting. Unless I am missing something fundamental here, I have always felt that Penelope’s punishment of whatever Juliet’s ‘crime’ was, it was almost grotesquely out-sized. Please, if any of you can, explain to my why Penelope needed to impose on her mother such absolute exile?
I have another, unrelated question for all of you. I studied the “Wigtime” page on this site but did not see it mentioned. When Anita recalls the incident that precipitated her departure from her marriage:
“While on a trip with her husband, the two stopped in a restaurant and Anita saw a man who looked like someone she had once loved. Leaving the restaurant, she felt herself “loose in strips and tatters.” She decided that if she could feel such a pain, if she could feel more for a phantom that she could ever feel in her marriage, she had better go.”
I have always believed that Ruell was the man she thought she saw in the restaurant. Which is why my reading of the story is slightly different than yours. I believe that the post-appendicitis scandal involving Margot and Ruell is the animating event of the story; that Anita’s sense of ‘second best” has remained with her. I think the reunion between the women is satisfying and thrilling as such reunions often are, but I also believe there’s a querulous tone as well, related to the unresolved tension about who won the man.
Trevor says ‘I never suspect Munro of playing games and withholding from me’. Wow, I always suspect Munro of this. Ha ha. That’s one of the things that makes her such a great short story writer.
Trevor also doesn’t believe Joan, and thinks Penelope is still at the Spiritual Balance Centre when Juliet visits: ‘I don’t believe her, and Juliet probably doesn’t either’. I don’t agree that Juliet probably doesn’t. Surely there is no indication of this in the text. If Juliet did believe this, why didn’t she return to the centre? Snoop around? Hire a private detective?
Sure, the big question in the story is why Penelope cuts herself off from her mother so completely. But isn’t it also equally strange that Juliet does so little (if anything) to try and locate Penelope? And is there a clue here as to Juliet’s personality and why Penelope disappears? To get even more fanciful: is Penelope trying to get her mother to search for her? And when Juliet doesn’t, Penelope’s response is to stay away forever.
This is how I make sense of the inclusion of the reference to the Ethiopian Queen story. The point being that the Ethiopian Queen also loses her daughter, but in contrast to Juliet she sends someone to find the daughter.
I think the biggest clue as to what’s going on between Juliet and her daughter is when Eric, Penelope’s father, dies while Penelope is away on a camping holiday. Penelope seems to be close to him, and we’re told he adores his daughter. But when he dies, Juliet doesn’t immediately inform Penelope (13 at the time) and they hold the funeral without Penelope knowing, let alone being able to come back from holiday and attend.
Instead, after it’s all over, Juliet travels in order to break the news to her. For me this is the most telling paragraph in the story:
“Penelope received the news with an expression of fright, then — when Juliet rather formally put her arms around her — of something like embarrassment. Perhaps in Heather’s house, in the white and green and orange sunroom, with Heather’s brothers shooting baskets in the backyard, news so dire could hardly penetrate. The burning was not mentioned — in this house and neighborhood it would surely have seemed uncivilized, grotesque. In this house, also, Juliet’s manner was sprightly beyond anything intended — her behavior close to that of a good sport.”
‘Her behavior close to that of a good sport’. My jaw dropped when I read that.
Elsewhere Juliet’s verdict on herself is that ‘She had been lacking in motherly inhibitions and propriety and self-control.’ But is just the opposite closer to the truth?
A final thought. Penelope has 5 children. This might suggest she got pregnant at the Spiritual Balance Centre? This could be the ‘great hunger’ Joan refers to?
Hi Howard – love that speculation that Penelope got pregnant at the “Spiritual Balance” center!
Howard,
Yes, I also think Juliet’s failure to notify Penelope immediately regarding her father’s death is likely the main reason Penelope became estranged from her. After Penelope had time for what happened to sink I expect she would have seen this an unforgivable. And although Juliet pointedly did not tell her about how they burned his body on the beach, we can expect that this is the kind of thing people would talk about. Word regarding this would get back to Penelope sooner or later. And yes, when she did find out, we can expect that this would be from someone who found it unseemly and disturbing, and it would have seemed “uncivilized, grotesque” to her. Her since of betrayal would likely be magnified by the fact that Juliet withheld this from her and that Juliet withheld this from her.
In my experience, the offense we take in response to a perceived trespass usually tends to mellow over time. We veer in the direction of “get over it” with the trespass becoming less disturbing. The more we think about it, the more able we are to move past it and forgive. However, there are some trespasses that–the more we think about it the more offensive we find them to be. Thinking and mediating on a trespass of this nature does not allow us to move past it–rather it results in our realizing that it is not something we are able to just forget and forgive. And I think this is the conclusion Penelope reached during the time she spent at the Spiritual Balance Centre. Towards the end she thought she was able to move past what had happened, but then realized that she could not move past it and maybe never would. She didn’t necessarily decide to “delete” Juliet from her life–rather she decided she’d just take more time away from her. But the weeks became years and the years became decades and she never found herself ready to re-establish contact.
All in all, very sad.
Sheila – I am interested in thinking about your “Wig-Time” question. I need a week or so! It’s been a while since I’ve read it and also the family schedule is big. Will get back to you. On another note – I loved the way these two women talked with each other. Reminds me so much of the glue in my own relationships with old friends. Anyway, I love the idea that it was Ruell that was the person she had once loved.
Howard – I loved your observation that Juliet’s behavior when informing Penelope of her father’s death was peculiar in the extreme. As if she was the very opposite of her own accusation of herself – lacking in inhibition. Somehow, to me, it’s Penelope who is required to be Juliet’s mother. It’s as if Juliet is the perennial daughter – with all the wrong secrets and all the wrong rebellions. Thanks, Howard, for being a close reader!
Sometimereadr – Thanks for joining in! Yes, ultimately, the story is just as you say – “Very, very sad.” It just lingers with me just like that. Pedro Almodovar could not, in the end, stand the sadness and changed the ending (after trying to film the story several times!)
Sometimereader, the genesis of the estrangement is surely shown in Juliet’s anecdote about Penelope in the month after Penelope learns of her father’s death, while the two of them are still at Heather’s house.
Penelope and Heather sometimes have girlfriends over:
“By chance, Juliet heard Penelope say to one of the visiting girls, “Well, I hardly knew him, really.”
She was speaking about her father.
How strange.”
This is some two years after the then 11 year old Penelope was telling people how she was ‘going to go out fishing when she grew up’ – like her father. Here I can only psychobabble really, but I see “I hardly knew him really” as Penelope’s understandably juvenile response to Juliet cutting her off from the reality of her father’s death. Only 13, she feels she has to go along with it and distance herself off from her father (or at least appear to): ‘dismiss’ him, as Juliet calls it.
Then later Penelope extends this, really ‘dismissing’ her mother.
Howard — Thank you for your insightful observations. Invariably, your interpretations shed additional light on my reading of Munro’s work and further my appreciation of her subtlety and brilliance. I agree with you and others here that Juliet’s handling of the death of her partner and Penelope’s father was a moment of real significance in the plot (J made it easy on herself, not on P). I don’t know if if it is a tribute to Munro’s character building or my oblivion, but I wonder now why I accepted Juliet’s failure to look for Penelope. On first reading, I was experiencing J’s hurt and horror at the disappearance of Penelope (Oh, and such a VILLAIN, that terrible Sister Joan!) and her sense of helplessness and lassitude attached to any thought of searching for P. I suppose I assumed that despair and, again, a sense of humiliating rejection had drained her of any agency regarding a search for P — as a jilted lover might allow pride to prevent reconciliation or deeper understanding.
But of course Juliet had connections and resources — she could have tried to locate P. That she did not to me tells me something about Juliet and her — I would say — lack of empathy for her daughter. Juliet sees the two as equal players and they are definitely not (by virtue of their family relationship). I felt like the detail of Penelope’s big brood of children was also suggested as a rebuke of Juliet’s self involvement — in the case of this piece, I think the scholarly thinking that absorbs Juliet to a point of inattention to her daughter is yet another riff by Munro on the guilt and conflict inherent in being a mother and an artist — one is always calling for you while you are attending to the other.
Two questions: what do you make of the birthday cards? What is Penelope doing, do you think? Goading? Taunting? Something else? Also, what do you make of the fact that Penelope has not shared the news of the mother/daughter estrangement with her friends? Is this a further effacement Juliet is meant to experience — that the rupture between J & P was of such little moment to Penelope that she doesn’t even bother to mention it to friends, preferring to keep news of this maternal relationship benign and typical in order to tuck the whole disagreeable history away in a cupboard and simply keep it there.
Thanks to you all!
Howard & Betsy — thank you both. I feel like I have a much firmer grip on this trilogy and was actually coming to the same conclusion — Juliet expects to be attended to, rather than attend to her daughter’s needs. It’s a bad bet to imagine that motherhood will automatically change the fundamental nature of a deeply self-absorbed person.
Thank you Sheila. Much appreciated.
Funnily enough I once knew someone who did this. One year he sent a bunch of his work acquaintances birthday cards on his own birthday. Until we got the card on that particular day, few of us knew it was his birthday – because we all just weren’t that close. It was only when we said “but Derek, it isn’t my birthday today” that we learned what was going on. It was 95% a smartass joke with a 5% suspicion that he was signalling that he was a bit hurt that no one knew/remembered his birthday. Ha ha.
In Penelope’s case I certainly don’t think it’s a smartass joke. I feel Christa’s charitable/supportive suggestion that it’s Penelope’s way of telling her mother that she’s okay is worth building on. Which I guess is why I suggested before that it might be Penelope prompting, encouraging – or indeed goading (your suggestion) – her mother to search for her. One could get fanciful: Penelope goes AWOL, no signs of her mother looking for her, two weeks later it’s her birthday – usually a significant family day – so it’s time to send a witty or cutting prompt.
The fact it’s her birthday seems telling: the day Juliet brought Penelope into the world. It’s like Penelope is reminding Juliet that she’s her mother. Perhaps an accusation: “remember that it’s you who brought me into the world”.
Then when, over the years, Juliet never responds by looking for Penelope, Penelope finally ‘dismisses’ her forever by ceasing to send the cards. Sheila, I think this is the best I can do. Ha ha.
As for Penelope not sharing the news of the mother/daughter estrangement with her friends, I think I have two suggestions.
First is maybe prosaic: Penelope appreciates that it’s an extreme thing that she’s done, in that her mother’s never been overtly cruel to her or anything like that (perhaps far from it). So she doesn’t want to have to justify her actions to her friends. So she keeps it secret.
Second is terribly reductionist – but fun. Ha ha. It’s pretty central to the story that by the end Juliet learns what happened with Penelope. The device Munro settles on enables Heather to blithely walk up to Juliet and innocently tell her the plain truth.
Had Heather known the truth, well, the story would’ve had to go off in a bit of a different direction. I can think of two alternatives. (a) Heather confronts Juliet: “how could you treat your daughter so appallingly, no wonder she wants nothing to do with you” etc etc. (b) Heather tries to console Juliet: “I’m so sorry. I tried to get her to contact you but she just wouldn’t” etc etc. In other words, if Heather knew the truth then Munro would’ve had to have ended the story somewhat differently.
A third version might have a Heather-in-the-know seeing Juliet in the street but avoiding her – either because she doesn’t want the awkwardness that would ensue or because she doesn’t want to betray her friend by telling Juliet where Penelope is. But then of course Juliet wouldn’t learn the truth.
Hello again Trevor, Betsy and commenters. Read over all this quickly, but want to add the thought that I’ve had since reading this sad story. Penelope did want Juliette to look for her and find her, if she was willing to make the effort. Howard mentions the possibility, calls it fanciful, but I think Penelope’s annual cards to Juliette on her (Penelope’s) birthday are like a reminder, “I’m out here, your daughter, if you really want to find me.” Juliette doesn’t.
usercraig, but don’t we then have to ask why Juliet doesn’t want to find Penelope? I mean, she seems to care a lot about Penelope. Why does she make no effort?
Reading your comment I suddenly wondered whether there was any significance to the fact that Penelope disappears just before her 21st birthday. At 21 is she of an age where in the eyes of the law she’s an adult and therefore a parent can’t report a disappearance to the police and expect them to take any action? Would this explain the cryptic line in Penelope’s message to Juliet: “It’s time”?
Sadly the Munro conspiracy theorist in me has to report that apparently in British Columbia since 1970 the age of majority has been 19:
https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/96007_01
The story starts in about 1990. So I guess another great theory bites the dust!
User Craig – That’s the big question, isn’t it? Why doesn’t Juliet want to find Penelope?
I would think the answer would look a little like a spider web. One spoke has to do with Juliet’s own difficulty separating from her own parents and Juliet’s respect for Penelope’s need to separate.
Another spoke has to do with Juliet’s own admisssion that her relationship with Penelope had been both way too distant and way too familiar – involving Juliet as she did in Juliet’s own men troubles.
Another spoke has to do with the news that Penelope had revealed to the retreat leader that her childhood life had been very lonely.
Another spoke is that Juliet recognizes that Penelope may have “no use for” Juliet. That’s something that Juliet’s father used to say about people. Penelope apparently has become uber-mother, something that Juliet never was.
Another spoke has to do with Juliet’s slow recognition that she needs to cultivate the very thing she gave up and in giving it up torqued her entire life. Juliet becomes a barista and begins studying Greek again. She is exploring what she might have done back in the day when she was unjustly fired (one, for being a woman and two, for appearing promiscuous, and three for having a prodigious talent, and four for all three together) from the PhD program.
Another spoke may be Time, with a capital t. Juliet may realize that she may have nothing to contribute to Penelope’s life until she takes the Time to straighten out that thing she did so very long ago – give up her “gift”. This is a terribly important theme in Munro – when women give up their “gift” (being amazing at Greek), or in Juliet’s case, wantonly throw it away. There is no way around the fact that this issue controls the whole story – that women wantonly give up their gifts.
Munro herself pursued her gift despite a very hard road – that she had to drop out of college, that she had to marry or go home to take care of her invalid mother, that she had to come to terms with motherhood, that she had to find Time, that she had to divorce her husband (who in some ways had paved the way for her). That she had to teach for a while (which she did not enjoy). That when she re-united with JErry Fremlin – there was also his sick mother to take care of. All this – and a Nobel Prize.
Munro’s point is not that Juliet would have been happy with a PhD. Her point is that giving up Greek drained her life of all that gave her life meaning. Living with someone who seemed like someone out of a Greek myth was in the end no substitute.
So now, Juliet needs to do what she never did back when she’d been fired from the university – find a way to be Edith Hamilton on her own.
Thanks for the reply Howard, and yes Betsy, as I finished that quick comment which sounds like a judgement of Juliet (which I have no right to do as Munro herself never seems to write in judgement of her characters) I did think that it is about why she didn’t look for Penelope when I believe she could have. I don’t have the patience and mental stamina to think and write clearly about these things as you do! But I sure feel them reading these stories, and I was glad that your essays on Silence finally appeared. There is a way of existing in which nothing really matters fundamentally, in which we become spectators to our own life and detached from the people who most need us. I suppose with time they can learn not to need us. Again, I’m not expressing that clearly, but I have lived that way a few times briefly and it has an frightening appeal.
Quite frankly, I am impressed by all these three stories because they carry such a unique concept and it reveals in an absolutely incredible format. I would like to say that the writing style of Alice Munro stands out with its huge individuality and original submission. It is truly wonderful that Alice Munro decided to complete a trilogy of stories exactly with “Silence” because I think that there everything perfectly has come to its logical conclusion. I absolutely agree that carelessness with which we treat ourselves and our talents can play tricks on us, going sideways. It is such a wise thought that this carelessness will invade every aspect of your life and I think that it is the main thought of the book because looking at Juliet, we realize how valuable our aspirations are. Of course, this book teaches us how it is important to nurture your passion, your “treasure” because, otherwise, you will be at risk to remain with a huge emptiness in your life and soul, but, without any doubts, Juliet’s situation was not easy.