Dr Najma Perveen
The study undertakes a detailed comparative analysis of Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (2022) and Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (2021). Both works confront patriarchal religious institutions and systemic gender-based violence. While differing in narrative style—Polley focusing on collective deliberation and Keegan on individual conscience—both illuminate intersections of faith, gender, and power. The study applies feminist and post-structuralist theory to understand how language, silence, and space function as tools of both oppression and resistance.
Women Talking centers on a group of Mennonite women deliberating their response to repeated sexual abuse within their tightly controlled community. They grapple with whether to stay, leave, or resist. In contrast, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in 1980s Ireland, whose quiet ethical awakening occurs amid the institutional abuses of Magdalene laundries. Both texts demonstrate that resistance to systemic oppression requires nuanced negotiation of conscience, morality, and courage.
The theoretical framework draws on Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity, Michel Foucault’s insights on discourse and power, Nancy Fraser’s theory of subaltern counterpublics, and Gayatri Spivak’s ethical witnessing. Butler’s concept clarifies how identities are socially constructed yet resistible. Foucault illustrates how institutions regulate speech and bodies, while Fraser highlights the creation of alternative spaces for marginalized voices. Spivak foregrounds the ethics of witnessing without appropriating silenced narratives. Together, these frameworks enable an analysis of how Women Talking and Small Things Like These interrogate language, silence, and moral agency.
Methodologically, the study uses qualitative, interpretive techniques rooted in feminist literary criticism and post-structuralist discourse analysis. Close reading of the texts allows examination of how narrative strategies—dialogue, introspection, and spatial configuration—mediate experiences of oppression and resistance. Seven thematic axes guide the analysis: faith and religious ideology; forgiveness and accountability; silence and complicity; freedom and agency; moral conscience and resistance; language and discourse; and authoritarian structures intersecting with social oppression.
In both texts, faith functions simultaneously as a tool of patriarchal control and a site for ethical re-evaluation. In Women Talking, Mennonite scripture is manipulated to uphold male dominance and suppress dissent. The women’s hayloft conversations disrupt this control, reframing religious texts as a source of agency. Greta’s assertion that “leaving is how faith is demonstrated” redefines devotion as ethical resistance rather than passive submission. In Small Things Like These, Bill Furlong confronts the Catholic Church’s complicity silently, realizing that true faith demands moral action rather than ritual compliance. Both texts show faith as a contested terrain where moral conscience can challenge institutional authority.
Both narratives explore the tension between forgiveness and accountability within oppressive systems. Women Talking depicts collective deliberation over responses to sexual abuse, highlighting divergent positions on justice versus mercy. Ona refuses reconciliation without recognition of harm, emphasizing accountability as a prerequisite for ethical forgiveness. Salome’s demand for retribution underscores the need for structural redress. In Small Things Like These, Bill’s quiet intervention embodies ethical accountability, disrupting normalized complicity without public protest. These texts problematize the simplistic binary between forgiveness and justice, suggesting ethical responses require truth, responsibility, and tangible action.
Silence is presented as complex and context-dependent, functioning both as a tool of oppression and a form of resistance. In Women Talking, enforced silence conceals abuse, yet the hayloft gatherings create a subaltern counterpublic where speech becomes radical. Butler’s concept of strategic silence and Spivak’s ethical witnessing illuminate how selective speech or quiet reflection can resist dominant norms. In Small Things Like These, societal silence around Magdalene laundries enforces complicity, while Bill’s micro-resistance—acting quietly on his ethical awakening—demonstrates that silent agency can be profoundly disruptive. Both works underscore that silence is morally charged, not morally neutral.
Agency emerges as negotiated rather than absolute. In Women Talking, collective deliberation transforms the women’s speech into action, enabling them to reclaim autonomy within a restrictive religious community. Fraser’s concept of subaltern counterpublics explains how this space nurtures political and ethical agency. In Small Things Like These, Bill’s individual actions disrupt social norms without public recognition. His ethical choices illustrate relational agency: moral responsibility exercised quietly within social constraints. Both texts reject portrayals of absolute freedom, emphasizing that resistance is possible even within limitations.
Moral conscience is the foundation of resistance in both texts. Ona’s leadership and reflective questioning in Women Talking showcase collective ethical awakening. Characters navigate fear, anger, and trauma to arrive at decisions grounded in justice. Bill Furlong’s private deliberation highlights how ethical responsibility can manifest in solitary action. Spivak’s notion of ethical witnessing is evident in his refusal to speak for victims, choosing instead to act in solidarity. Resistance is therefore portrayed as emergent, conflicted, and deeply human—shaped by lived experience and ethical commitment.
Language operates as both instrument and site of struggle. In Women Talking, dialogue reshapes identity, reframes scripture, and enacts political agency. Voting and debating within the hayloft constitute performative acts that subvert patriarchal norms. In Small Things Like These, the ethical weight of language is tied to listening and attending to silenced narratives. Both texts demonstrate that feminist resistance can be enacted through reshaping discourse, reclaiming meaning, and attentive action rather than grandiose gestures.
Patriarchy, religion, and socio-economic structures intersect to shape identity and constrain resistance. In Women Talking, strict religious norms and isolation reinforce gendered subjugation, yet the hayloft deliberation reveals possibilities for communal resistance. In Small Things Like These, gender, class, and institutional authority compound oppression. Bill’s moral choices reflect the fragility of survival in intersecting systems of control. Resistance is subtle, relational, and contingent, highlighting that ethical agency is shaped by structural constraints and lived realities.
Women Talking and Small Things Like These provide nuanced feminist and post-structuralist critiques of patriarchal religious systems. Both works challenge binaries of speech and silence, victimhood and agency, and highlight the ethical complexity of resisting oppression. Through collective deliberation or solitary ethical action, characters navigate faith, morality, and social constraint to assert agency. Intersectional analysis underscores that oppression is rarely singular, requiring a multi-layered ethical response. Literature and film, these texts show, can foster critical engagement with hegemonic systems, demonstrating that resistance is subtle, relational, and morally consequential.
