Steampunk Paper Doll Journal - Spread 24 - Silences

"How much have we lost, how much are we losing as a result of silences where lives never came to writing?  Among these, the mute inglorious Miltons: those whose waking hours are a struggle for existence, the barely educated, the illiterate; women.  Their silence, the silence of centuries as to how life was, is for the most of humanity. Traces of their making, exist in folksong, lullaby, tales, language itself, jokes, maxims, superstitions - but we know nothing of the creators or how it was with them.  In the fantasy of Shakespeare born in the deepest Africa (as at least one Shakespeare must have been), was the ritual, the oral storytelling a fulfillment? Or was there restlessness, indefinable yearning, a sense of restriction?
- Tillie Olsen (in 'Silences')(1912-2007) (American writer associated with the first generation of American feminists.)