"A White Heron"

Lynn Dolberg (Essay Date June 1998)

SOURCE: Dolberg, Lynn. "Unanswered Questions, Unquestioned Voices: Silence in 'A White Heron.'" Colby Quarterly 34, no. 2 (June 1998): 123-33.

In the following essay, Dolberg suggests that silence is used as an empowering narrative technique in "A White Heron."

Literary history and the present are dark with silences, some the silences for years by our acknowledged great; some silences hidden, some the ceasing to publish after one work appears; some the never coming to book form at all.

Olsen, Silences

Since the publication of Silences in 1965, "silence" has meant more than absence of speech or text. Tillie Olsen uncovers the various agencies behind things unspoken: how and why has silence come about? Who has silenced whom? Olsen's work makes "silence" a political term; giving voice to the previously muted is now...