Strategies of Reticence: Silence and Meaning in the Works of Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, and Joan Didion

This work examines the unspoken in the work of four women writers – Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, and Joan Didion – as a consciously employed feminist rhetoric. Acknowledging that reticence is often enforced by patriarchal silencing of women. Stout argues that each of these writers turns that traditional limitation into a weapon of mockery of assault against masculine society.