Reading, riddling and relayingthe legacies of female voices in Tillie Olsen's "Tell me a riddle"

Resumo

The paper will focus on the cornerstone of Tillie Olsen’s fictional oeuvre, “Tell Me a Riddle” (1961), a work which has been the subject of much criticism in relation to Olsen’s depiction of the growth of the central character’s voice, the dying Eva. This essay traces the essential stages of Olsen’s pioneering engagement with women’s voice, as both activist and artist, relating the essential motifs of riddling and relaying in “Tell Me a Riddle” to her struggles for the enabling of ‘reading women’ within the American literary canon (Silences, 1978). Ultimately, the essay will emphasize how female voice in “Tell Me a Riddle” –as embodied by Eva, younger characters, and even Olsen herself as underlying teller– functions as a symbolic legacy which, originating in a silencing traditionally derived from the values of patriarchal society, is conveyed down the generational line for the sake of reformulating and reshaping the prospects of future generations of women.