‘I thought about what would happen to our humanity if we actually couldn’t speak to each other... It was quite a fun Domesday scenario’
Christina Dalcher’s debut novel about a world where women can only say 100 words a day has been a huge hit in America. Ahead of VOX’S UK launch, the author talks to Hannah Stephenson about her feminist dystopia and the danger to democracy posed by complac
How many words a day do we speak? Research suggests an average of 16,000 – so, imagine if women were only allowed a daily quota of 100.
This is the startling premise of VOX, the debut dystopian novel by American linguistics scientist Christina Dalcher, which has been described as “The Handmaid’s Tale meets Only Ever Yours meets The Power”. It’s been dubbed “feminist dystopia” and book clubs are buzzing about it.
Set in a near-future America, all females are required to wear bracelets around their wrists which, if they speak more than 100 words a day, emit an electric shock. The 100-word rule doesn’t apply to males.
The protagonist, neurolinguist Dr Jean Mcclellan, can no longer read her six-yearold daughter bedtime stories, or communicate effectively with her teenage son or her husband.
Books are forbidden, bank accounts transferred to the closest male relative and all female employment suspended, while any LGBT citizens and non-conformists are sent to “correctional” camps.
Jean has been forced to give up her job as a scientist working on a cure for language loss, silenced by a religious right wing government in thrall of an extreme preacher named Reverend Carl Corbin, leader of the Pure Movement, which wants women to return to their biblical role of piety, purity, submission and domesticity, remaining at home to look after their children.
But when the president’s brother suffers a stroke, Jean is temporarily given back her voice to work on the cure. More sinister events are unfolding though, as she discovers she’s part of a much larger plan to silence voices around the world for good.
The book, a cracking, fast-paced thriller, sparks important questions about communication, politics and the dangers of voting complacency, and has already generated interest from film companies – Dalcher would love her heroine to be played by Charlize Theron or Kate Winslet.
“We need someone who can play a realistic woman, who could play a strong character.”
VOX has been described by Time magazine as a novel for the #Metoo era, although Dalcher wrote it before the #Metoo movement began, describing the timing now as a “happy coincidence”.
“I was thinking a lot more about some of the marches and other things women were doing in the earlier part of 2017, which had very little to do with sexual abuse, particularly the women’s march on Washington (a million turned out to protest on the first day of Trump’s presidency). I thought, ‘What if people just said, ‘Shut up! No, we don’t want to hear you any more, girls!’,” the author explains.
While some of the inspiration came from the 19th century ‘True Womanhood’ and ‘Cult of Domesticity’ movements, which rendered females domestically dependent, Dalcher also picked up on a new True Woman Movement, founded in 2008 and still in existence, started by women themselves.
Members support a patriarchy and are, in a sense, counter-revolutionists to the feminism of the 1960s. More than 32,000 women have signed a manifesto in which they support and affirm a return to biblical gender roles.
Dalcher, 50, grew up in New Jersey. Her father was in the furniture business, her mother stayed at home and looked after the children.
She says her chosen reading Christina Dalcher, main; her novel VOX, inset below from the age of about 10 was horror. Stephen King remains her hero and she recalls being allowed to watch the old Dracula films, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, from an early age.
“I love creepy movies, not so much the gore, but quiet horror.”
She watches horror to relax, she says, although her husband Bruce, a maritime lawyer, doesn’t share her passion. He’d rather read a book.
“There’s a phrase in my house, and that is, ‘soothing horror films’. My favourite is Rosemary’s Baby.
“They are a complete escape. There are so many pressures in the world that it’s quite lovely to escape into this fantasy land of horror. On the one hand, you get out of reality, and on the other hand you realise, ‘Wow! My life could be a lot worse. I could be having Satan’s baby!’”
Some have interpreted VOX as a warning to Trump’s America, but she says it’s broader than that.
“Although we are seeing a socio-political crisis in the States, it’s not something that we’ve never seen before, or that we haven’t seen in other countries – look at Ceausescu’s Romania, Hitler’s Germany.
“But how fast can something happen when people aren’t paying attention? This is all about government control, which is something I’ve been afraid of for almost as long as I’ve been alive.”
VOX also shows the danger of complacency among nonvoters, who think the worst could never happen.
“Of course, complacency worries me. In the US, the turnout percentage of eligible voters in presidential elections is 60-65 per cent. It’s about the same in the UK. Then if we go to a small local election, we’re talking about turnout in the teens, 10 per cent.
“We saw this happen with Brexit. We had a situation where people thought, ‘Nothing’s going to happen, we don’t really need to vote’, and then look what happened. There’s an expectation that everything is going to chug along as it always has.
“Things don’t always chug along. There are revolutions, there are communist invasions, there are horrors in this world.”
Dalcher and her husband lived abroad for seven years in the UK, Abu Dhabi and Sri Lanka – before returning to Norfolk, Virginia, when she realised that being out of the academic field for so long had left her career in the doldrums. It was then she decided to write a novel.
What began as a piece of flash fiction ended up as VOX, which she penned in just two months.
“I thought about what would happen to our humanity if we actually couldn’t speak to each other. It was quite frightening. I think we would degenerate into barbarism in no time at all. There wouldn’t be anything left to separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. It was quite a fun Domesday scenario.”
She’s already penned her second novel – another dystopian tale – and is considering a sequel to VOX. She still can’t quite believe her debut has caused such a stir.
“My husband thinks I should write a letter to Stephen King, to tell him how much he’s meant to me and how he’s inspired me. If nothing else, I need to thank the man – as soon as I work up the courage.”
“This is all about government control, which is something I’ve been afraid of for almost as long as I’ve been alive”