Subverting The Patriarch Through Silence: A Feminist Resistance in Mrs. Noah’s Pocket

In the canon story of Noah, Mrs. Noah, one among the few being saved from the flood, is barely mentioned. She is not even given a name indicating that she is unimportant. The lack of information about her creates a curiosity about this character. A picture book called Mrs. Noah’s Pockets (2017) is one of the few books for children that addresses this issue. What makes this book stands out is its attempt to shift away from the biblical canon. Another interesting trait is the intense presence of silence as there is no communication nor interaction between Mr. and Mrs. Noah. In tracing research on Noah’s story, we found that the research can be classified into three topics: the flood story, sex roles and heteronormativity, and female violence. Our research will contribute in the discussion about how silence subverts the dominant masculinity. We aim to show how silence operates in the text as the feminine strategy to resist the domination. In order to explain about the functions and meanings of silence, we applied Glen’s (2002) Silence: A Rhetorical Art for Resisting Discipline(s).[1] The research found that although silence and silencing are practiced by masculine domination to oppress the feminine, silence is also used by the feminine to subvert masculine domination.