The Time of the Doves (Week 7)

This week's reading was another interesting one. Now that it is halfway through this marathon of reading, I'm finding how I'm able to compare how differently each of the books are written and the effect this has on the reader. Usually, in my spare time, I read novels that are very similar in genre and writing style so this has been a good mental experiment to see how much a novel's writing style affects the overall message, tone, and my opinion of the novel. For Time of Doves, I found the writing style to have a real point and artistic effect on the novel (maybe even more than the others). 

For the first few pages, I was really taken aback at how there was such little description of the feelings Natalia experienced despite the novel being written in first person. While first-person books tend to portray a little more intimacy and "behind the scenes thought" to the reader, there was a passiveness to this, as if we were only using her eyes as a placeholder to watch from without really seeing it from her perspective. I'm not saying there was no mention of feeling (for example on her wedding night, she expressed her nervousness and fears), and maybe we've been reading such descriptive heavy novels that my judgement is clouded, but I just couldn't quite place Natalia as a narrator. 

Since this was my first impression of the novel, I then started to try and read into why this passiveness exists in this character through the writing as the novel handles topics that usually include great detail of emotion and inner turmoil. Even when we do get inner dialogue that creates an actual image of Natalia, her emotions and opinions usually revolve around the needs of those around her. For example, with Quimet's mother, Natalia notes that she "had to make her think [she] loved her, because Quimet would be satisfied with [her]" (49). Rather than just talking about how she really feels, she chooses to address what she thinks those around her need her to feel. I believe this passiveness that exists in Natalia despite the turmoil happening around speaks to a larger issue of women's place in war. For many women, they were forced to complacently wait for political war to resolve or to follow the lead of their husbands in their own domestic war. The little amount of emotional agency in Natalia throughout the book really exemplifies the place that women and gender hold in conflict.  

Question for the class: Did you think Natalia was passive? What did you think of her as a narrator? Do you think her lack of individual thought speaks to a larger issue of gender?