The Irony of Blaming Women (The Victims)
In the author’s note, Miriam Toews explains how women were blamed despite being victims of sexual attacks. The note is based on real-life happenings which transpired in the Mennonite colony. Instead of acknowledging the women and girls' complaints and inexplicable suffering, society blames them. Some ironic explanations regarding women's pain include divine punishments, female imagination, and lies. The ironic explanations are flawed when it is confirmed that the women were raped while unconscious. Their attackers had been using animal anesthetic to render them unconscious. Society's ironic response to the women and girls' predicament demonstrates how deep-rooted the blame-the-victim attitude is persistent when it comes to the sexual abuse of women.
The Irony of Heaven
The religious codes of Molotschna provide that failure to forgive someone results in forfeiting one's place in Heaven. Mariche Loewen wonders, "Should they (women) instead forgive the men and by doing so be allowed to enter the gates of Heaven?" The religious rules are ironic. They only focus on forgiveness but fail to provide a remedy for women who have been offended. Seemingly, Heaven favors men more than women. The religious rules are intended to encourage women to overlook their sexual assaults and forgive their attackers. Heaven should be about justice, not forced forgiveness. Emphasizing forgiveness means that men can repeatedly wrong while knowing they can use the argument of Heaven to blackmail and gaslight the women. The ironic argument about Heaven demonstrates how religion is leveraged to perpetuate patriarchal oppression.
The Irony of Forbidding Helpers
Peters forbids helpers from coming to the colony. The forbidding happens after Greta's attack, which leaves her toothless. Luckily, a traveler offers her false teeth as a replacement for the teeth she lost. The traveler is kicked out of Molotschna after his deed of generosity. Peters is a bishop who is expected to be sympathetic toward the subdued and vulnerable women. However, his ironic resolution of forbidding helpers from setting foot in the colony surmises that he covertly endorses the oppression and sexual assault of women in the colony. He wants the women to bear their pain and not take help from anyone, no matter how well-meaning.
