Written by Worth

A while back when I was visiting Louisville, I found what might have been my first journal in a lot of debris in the attic of the old house where I grew up. I didn’t remember the journal and I was curious to see what I’d written at nine or ten; I often teach memoir writing, and memoirs—for better or worse—are often extensions of the first journals girls used to keep, “Page A Days” given at Christmas or on birthdays with a “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying” inscription. And we used to try to find plenty of rosebuds.

After the first twenty or so entries in my journal, I saw that the handwriting changed, becoming larger and blacker. At the top of each of these pages, I’d inscribed, “Written by Worth”—the older brother I both admired and feared. He would not have asked my permission to fill in my journal pages, that was not his way, and if challenged (which rarely happened), he would have laughed or blustered, perhaps offering as an excuse that his handwriting was better or he had more interesting things to say. And I would have said nothing, taking the journal back when he tired of it.

Two movies I saw recently brought that moment back to me: Women Talking and She Said. Both of these haunting movies dramatize the extraordinary power and importance of what we women say, which is the reason our talk is often circumvented, cut off, misinterpreted, or ignored.

In Women Talking, set in a remote cultish community where the women are silenced, it’s the revolutionary aspect of what follows when women break that silence and come together that is highlighted. Sitting in a barn loft, a group of fifteen women of all ages, gathering in the only setting where they are not supervised by the colony’s governing men, speak hesitantly but with growing conviction about leaving. Their emotions about leaving their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons are complex—one refused to leave her pre-teenaged boy—but in the end, the power of joint purpose—to escape tyranny, to revolt against silence—compels the group to go. The final shot, of a long procession of buggies heading out, is, for me, a repudiation of that long-ago “Written by Worth.”

In She Said, the two reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein case worked hard to persuade a handful of women to overcome their fear of what they perceived as a powerful, career-wrecking man in Hollywood. Hoping for a joint declaration, the reporters are frustrated; no one they interviewed is willing to speak on the record although all have something to say. Finally, one brave woman cuts the silence, describing despicable acts Weinstein performed on young would-be stars in hotel bedrooms and bathrooms; a recording of a woman’s child-like voice protesting is a powerful aural example of a deadly imbalance of power between the abuser and the abused, and the attempt on the part of some of the women to blame themselves is so familiar to me as the way things used to be I nearly gasped. But, because of the bravery of one woman willing to speak out, others broke their silence, and in the end, eighty gave their testimony and Harvey Weinstein is now in jail.

Yet I know from my own example and many others that we are still frequently silenced, either by our own fears—which are real; the repercussions can be deadly—or the manifest disapproval of the men and women around us. Peace, so-called, is valued above all in this raucous culture, and to “make waves” or “rock the boat” will always mean incurring penalties.

And so it is worth repeating, again and again, that we women must gather to speak. Objecting alone, as I know from my own experience, is too frightening and dangerous for most of us—and even Georgia O’Keeffe felt compelled to leave an important meeting to rush home to cook lunch for Alfred Stieglitz.

There are many forms of silencing.

In Women Women Worth Bingham Favorites of 2023