Virginia Woolf declared that in all of history, an anonymous has almost always been a woman. What a marvelous observation it is that women have been silenced for so long in literature and society. Silenced by patriarchy, confined to domesticity, and often erased from memory, women have not struggled merely to be heard but to speak. In literature, they were narrated by men who seldom understood or valued the depth of female experience.

The Things We Cannot Say is a historical-contemporary fiction novel released in 2019, written by Kelly Rimmer. The novel presents a dual narrative; two different women are completely separated through the generations but belong to one blood, memory, and silence. The first tale concerns Alina Dziak. A young Polish girl whose entire life changed with the advent of Nazi occupation during World War II. The second one is about Alice, Alina’s granddaughter, handling the troubles of motherhood in the modern-day United States, particularly with raising a nonverbal autistic son amid the emotional needs of her family.

Parallel stories intermingle as Rimmer creates a very human tapestry of love, survival, and trauma’s awakening consequences. At the center of the story lies a testimony to the “often unseen labor and resilience of women” and their tales, whose impact, however subdued, continues to provide for generations.

Elaine Showalter’s “gynocritics” aims to access literature with women at the forefront. Women are no longer just objects or characters in books written by men but subjects of reflection and criticism in their own right, with voices, styles, and histories. Gynocritics, instead of examining how men write women (which was the primary focus of early feminist criticism), are more concerned with how women write about themselves: What are the themes they offer? What kind of narratives testify to the conditions of living in their world?

Moreover, really, that is the desire Showalter had not to study a realm of women’s writing in relation to men’s but in itself. Her concern seems to lie in understanding female subjectivity and how women see themselves and express this vision in their creativity. This generalization means that much of this wonderful yet complex literary tradition comprised of women has eluded histories that have often been written from a male point of view.

Through gynocriticism, the literary text becomes more than the mere stories of a page: it becomes a mode of self-reclamation that tells women’s truths and shines a light on all the stuff too long silenced or brushed aside by patriarchy.

Showalter mapped the development of women’s writing over a tripartite division, each one modulated by the social and literary modifications of the time. First comes the “feminine phase,” in which women writers are virtually trying to fit into a man’s world by imitating his writing into style and substance. They were sort of becoming good girls: learning the rules, copying the guys, and playing along with the expectations. These authors internalized the whole system, embracing male views and adhering to the same roles assigned by male writers, the stereotypically “feminine” view.

Another phase is the “feminist phase,” which follows the previous one. Women want to get rid of the imitation of men. They create a ruckus against inadequate roles as allowed in literature and society. These writers challenge masculine standards and the manner in which women were excluded or misrepresented and start making their voices heard. They’re like, “Enough is enough; let’s rewrite the narrative!”

Incredibly, we have come to that phase, which is even tagged as the “female phase.” Here, the women writers have really begun to say something meaningful about being a woman, less so about the above common experiences and emotions and identities of women, but about a real and full expression of women as actual, full-fledged human beings whose narratives are independent of external ideology, nurturing, or parenting. Showalter views this as revolutionary because it does turn the whole issue around as it positions women’s voices and experiences in the middle of literature rather than at the periphery.

Nowhere is this more aptly demonstrated than in Rimmer’s The Things We Cannot Say. If anything is to be said about this, Showalter’s definition of the “female phase” in women’s writing. Rather than imitating male-centered narratives or simply arguing against patriarchal traditions, Rimmer takes it one step further and watches over what goes on in the inner worlds of female characters and immediately unleashes their voices. That is not about matching or reacting to someone else’s model. It is about telling stories (from the inside out) with all the emotion, angst, and strength present.

In the book, we hear from Alina, who had to survive the horrors of World War II, and from Alice, who deals with the joys and challenges of contemporary motherhood, particularly raising a son with autism who is nonverbal. Rimmer shows us not only what these women are feeling, thinking, and carrying with them each day.

She truly brings into the light the portrayal of Alina’s silence not as merely a means of being careful in a dangerous world but something deeply intrinsic to a woman’s existence during the war, with all the expectations, fears, and sacrifices that go with it.

With Alice’s story, we get an insight into invisible emotional labor; it takes strength of spirit, the kind that, while seemingly little, is relentless. It takes the kind of strength to pursue the work of caring for one’s family while holding oneself together.

This book’s great power is elevating female voices without the mediation of a male consciousness. Rimmer sees their experiences as valid, complex, and deserving of serious attention. That is Showalter’s “female phase,” a shift toward narratives that focus on women’s agency, relationship dynamics, and emotional truths. It is not only storytelling; it is a reclamation of space, an assertion: “Hey, it matters.”

The title The Things We Cannot Say settles in like a potent emblem for all the ways in which women have been silenced or muted over time, not only in books but also in real life. It is not only about trauma and pain so overwhelming that women cannot articulate it (although that is certainly included); it also includes all the cultural and social pressures making women unable to “speak” about it.

Such an idea of silence appears in various forms in the novel. In addition to dealing with the horrors of war, Alina is placed in a world that expects her to be emotionally composed, obedient, and silent. She is carrying so much but cannot express it.

So, when we conceive of “the things they cannot say,” we think of more than just personal secrets. Grief, fear, anger, exhaustion, love—those are the big, messy emotions it may be least socially acceptable for a woman to express. And that’s what makes the title so powerful. It doesn’t merely describe a condition; it challenges it.

It’s an unpretentious defiance, really, a feminist gesture that surfaces all those repressed feelings to say: “This matters. It cannot be ignored.” Showalter spoke of a “female phase,” which implied that women are finally heard, and literature is an arena in which to tell the stories that potentially had always been there but had never been heard.

This is not only physical isolation but also emotional and mental isolation. There is heavy silence surrounding her, a suffocating atmosphere where, as if nothing is happening, she roars her head. In addition, no place is given to her where the voice that could have spoken her truth could have been heard or considered a valid voice.

The world around her expects her to be a “good girl”: quiet, obedient, one who surrenders her needs for the greater good. When she does things for the ones who need help, when she is doing little things to resist, all are done in secret. Her form of bravery is never loud or flamboyant, so she never gets the credit. It is, in fact, the issue; women’s voices in history, especially during war and conflict, are usually downplayed or disregarded as unimportant.

According to Showalter, the issues of both Alina’s loneliness and quiet strength often serve to highlight how women’s complex emotional lives and moral dilemmas are largely sidelined in favor of more spectacular, male-told war stories. However, Rimmer changes that up a little: Solitude becomes something empowering for Alina; in her silence and isolation, her true strength really shines. She is not out there charging into battle, but she is surviving, acting, and clinging to what matters, and that is pretty heroic in its own right.

In the contemporary segment of the text, Alice’s experiences encircle motherhood and emotional burden, especially because she has a nonverbal autistic son. It is this kind of emotional labor that no one can see, but everyone can expect. Like, society expects women to be selfless caregivers while invariably giving without asking in return. Moreover, of course, Alice faces that pressure. Just like Alina in the past, Alice was supposed to be the perfect mother, someone who is endlessly patient, loving, and devoted, but whoever actually checks in on her?

However, who realizes the enormity of her giving, or who would extend an offer to help carry some of that burden? Instead, Alice feels that she is drowning with the sensation of all these burdens and responsibilities; he has a son to take care of, tensions with her husband, and family secrets she cannot talk about, and as all that happens, there is not a room where she can let off or just say how hard it really is.

Alice has to manage that as an automatic expectation, but when is she afforded a moment to say, “I am weak?”

The more Alice gives, the more demands people make upon her, and none of her immediate needs are attended to. It highlights the ways mental and emotional labor are rendered invisible in a woman’s life: as no one cares to acknowledge how heftily they are burdened with it, there is no reason anyone should be expected to voice it. Alice’s tale reveals how the whole society lacks space for women to put into words the emotional costs of so much caregiving; a woman does that; she feels no one listens to her and that she is going unsupported.

In her work, Rimmer shows what Showalter calls the “female stage” of writing. This stage involves recovering the words of women neglected or left unspoken for so long. As Showalter advocates for writers to delve into women’s internals, Rimmer opens up to the quiet emotional spaces of her protagonists, Alina and Alice. Both of these women live within social systems that put strict limits on them.

In Poland during the Nazi occupation, women were required to simply keep quiet, obedient, and leave the fighting and talking to the men. In contrast, today’s America is home to Alice, who faces a different silence but is under the pressure of being the perfect mother, always patient and always caring, but never demonstrating just how hard it is to find those qualities.

Rimmer gives a voice enraged at the things left unsaid by many of these women. Alina is not just the protagonist; the war also works on her trauma, fears, hopes, survival, and the silences she upholds. Sometimes, the world around her impedes her from telling the truth.

In the same way, Alice does not have anyone around her to recognize and see just how much of an emotional struggle it is for her, as all good mothers would understand. Society overlooks the invisible emotional labor she pours into her family, including caring for her son. Rimmer makes sure that we see some of those invisible internal battles living underneath the surface. Things are going on with these women, and Rimmer exposes them by bringing them up to the surface to explore their inner lives, where their truths lie.

Alina and Alice’s stories are anchored in emotional depth and quiet endurance. Rimmer’s narrative, like that of Showalter’s feminist vision, demands that we see strength in the silence and depth of everyday struggles that women undergo, thus granting these voices hearing.

Women’s agency deeply intertwines with emotionally attached labor, which society frequently overlooks and takes for granted. Both Alina and Alice have the responsibility of caregivers, protectors, and emotional anchorage in their families, and these roles, despite the enormity of emotional actualization, go unnoticed. For these women, agency is not expressed in large, militant action but in daily subtle and quiet acts of resilience.

The way they handle their various personal issues, keep their families together, and stay alive with their disabilities often goes unnoticed but defines their worth. Their ability to withstand suffering, sacrifice, and glue people together through rough times is a more quiet and internal strength. It may not be a form of resistance that is exhibited or acknowledged in loud, crass ways. However, it is just as important, or more important, because it absolutely requires recognition in the everyday aspects of their lives.

It is a very heavy survival for a young girl; it is not just through her physical being that she is alive but within and without. This girl has much of the family’s survival on her head, along with the mental burdens of war.

Alina has the emotional stamina to carry on when the whole world around her crumbles. This strength comes from her silent, unspoken agency, which does not quite fit into the traditional descriptive form of heroism but is no less powerful. Resilience is in the mundanity of her daily life, not grand acts of rebellion but merely surviving and keeping those she loves safe. It is this form of quiet strength that really defines her character.

Alice is taken a little bit for granted because all the sacrifices she makes just seem to be part of her job as a mother. However, nobody really notices, or certainly no one cares, how run down she is or how hard it is to keep everything under control.

It also endorses the notion of inheritance as not only a fight but the fight in which women, in general, take part. They somehow form part of a grand history that transcends time, borders, cultures, and individualized experiences. Alina, isolated by war, bears the heavy emotional weight of guilt and sacrifices to protect her family, but that does not end with her. These things go through and define her daughter, thus creating Alice’s inheritance.

Alice’s life reflects the same patterns of emotional burden, silence, and resiliency being repeated. It starkly reminds us that whatever a woman undergoes affects others, including her descendants, her actions in shaping their identity and worldview. In this light, Rimmer argues that women’s experiences are not their own; they are set into something greater, a historical tapestry of emotional resilience passed down, sometimes unwittingly.

The Things We Cannot Say focuses more on how the Alina and Alice characters (as women) will resist certain patriarchal norms; that is not going to be explicit, yet it turns out to be potent too. Both girls grow up in societies that try to box them into strict definitions of gender, but each struggles to find mechanisms with which to foil that expectation.

It is not the kind of resistance that makes noise or stands out in an obvious way, but it is. And it matters. They challenge the accepted norms in ways that show us how women can find subtle but powerful ways to assume control over their lives, even if the surrounding world wishes to silence or push them back into their place.

Occupying Poland in Nazi times, Alina faces an active suppression of her agency and voice. Deeply embedded patriarchal expectations working against the oppression by war itself do not leave her free; they expect women to be silent, passive, and obedient. In such a setting, Alina’s resistance does not need to go out to fight battles at some point. Such resistance conceives a very folky way of survival and endorsement, to find ways to retain one’s humanity in a world striving to strip a person of it.

It is endurance in silence and holding on to her inner strength, with everything around her forcing it. She does not become what the world expects, that something is helpless or suffering defined. Instead, she goes forth and cares for others and does what she can to shield her loved ones.

Alina’s decisions show that, even in a time of war and trauma, resistance is not always loud or visible enough to be effective. Sometimes, the greatest acts of defiance come just through holding on and finding ways to keep going while everything around you is determined to grind you down.

The Things We Cannot Say could very easily be called much more than a story of love, loss, and survival; this book could be considered a deep probe of the silent revolutions women wage against those invisible bonds that hold them. Unknown as they are, Rimmer voices the “silent,” the “invisible,” and the “repressed” in lucid stories about Alina and Alice as they discover that the most subtle gestures of defiance can be great paths to personal liberation.

To the lens of feminist theory, Showalter’s novel does not simply project an account of historical trauma or contemporary struggle; rather, it is a reclamation—a reclamation of women’s silences, their unsung endurance, and their refusal to be defined by a Spartan script that has constricted them down the ages.

It is as if the silence between the words reverberated as we closed the pages of the book, imploring us to ask what else is left unsaid and how soon we can give in to unspoken things buried in us. Perhaps the real question is not what we cannot speak but what we are finally willing to utter aloud. In the end, not holding secrets but being brave enough to name them is the most revolutionary act.

References

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