Vow of silence

The Vow of silence is a religious practice observed by the maunts of the Cloister of Saint Glinda, a community of monastic women in Oz. For Elphaba, the vow becomes a central discipline during her seven-year retreat from the world, a period of recuperation and self-erasure following the traumatic collapse of her revolutionary activities and the death of her lover, Fiyero. The vow represents a profound attempt to escape individual identity and moral responsibility, yet it ultimately fails to provide the peace she seeks, serving instead as a prelude to her re-engagement with a world she cannot abandon.

Practice and Purpose

The Vow of silence is a core component of maunt life, a discipline that governs daily existence within the cloister. The maunts live in a community of hermits, a paradoxical institution where silence is the rule, though it is revoked in the decay of old age. The vow is not merely an absence of speech but a structured practice: three years of absolute silence, followed by two years of whisper, and then a period of service on the ward for incurables. This progression suggests a graded return to the world of language, a careful management of the boundary between the self and others. The vow is intended to foster a state of unquestioning silence, a surrender of individual will to the collective and to the Unnamed God. For Elphaba, entering the mauntery under the care of Mother Yackle, the vow offers a way to escape a self she can no longer bear. She spends about a year in a deathly sleep, and the vow of silence allows her to sink into a pattern of existence where she need not struggle to be unique, where she can find her way without groping.

Elphaba's Experience of the Vow

Elphaba's years under the vow are marked by a profound, almost willful, self-erasure. She sinks into the daily pattern of the cloister, finding solace in the small changes of the seasons—a red bird on the windowsill, leaves to rake from the terrace. The vow allows her to become a function, a nurse, rather than a person. She tends the dying and those too clumsy to die, arranging wrists in a pleasing pattern above starched bedsheets, reading nonsense words of scripture. She grows to see dying as a pattern, beautiful in its way. The vow provides a structure for her grief and guilt, a way to perform penance without having to articulate it. However, this state of suspended identity is not permanent. The arrival of Tibbett, a pale invalid from her past, at the Home for the Incurables shatters her silence. He recognizes her, addresses her by her name, and forces her to be an individual again. Under the scrutiny of his tired frame, she is re-created against her will. The vow of silence, which had been a refuge, is broken by the demand of another person to be seen and known.

Breaking the Vow and Its Aftermath

The Superior Maunt eventually decides that Elphaba must leave the cloister, telling her it is time to go and atone for her mistakes. The vow of silence, which had been a form of penance, is no longer sufficient. Elphaba is sent out into the world with her broom, a basket of simples, and a few pages of paper. The vow is not revoked but superseded by a new mission: to conduct an exercise in expiation. The Superior Maunt tells her that the unquestioning silence of the cloister is no longer what she needs; she is returning to herself. The vow, therefore, is not an end in itself but a stage in a longer journey. It is a discipline that prepares her for a return to the world, a world she must re-enter not as a silent maunt but as a witch, a figure of action and consequence. The vow's legacy is a lasting difficulty with speech; even after leaving the cloister, Elphaba finds her words poor and her thoughts rich and complicated, a testament to the years of enforced silence that have shaped her interior life.