“Leaving,” Not “Fleeing”

The distinction between leaving and fleeing becomes a small but consequential act of definition in the women’s debate. As the women of Molotschna weigh what to do after the assaults and the prospect of the accused men’s return, they resist a description that would make their departure sound like surrender. The difference is not merely verbal: it helps them frame a dangerous, time-limited choice as a decision they make together, with purposes and responsibilities of their own.

A choice under pressure

The debate takes place against a coercive deadline. The remaining men of the colony, apart from the elderly or infirm and the narrator, have gone to the city to post bail for the imprisoned attackers, hoping the men can return to Molotschna while they await trial. Peters says that once they return, the women will have the opportunity to forgive them, a requirement presented as the condition for everyone’s place in heaven. If the women refuse, he says, they themselves must leave for an outside world they know nothing about. They have only two days to organize a response.

That ultimatum makes the meaning of departure unusually charged. Leaving is not an abstract possibility or a journey chosen without constraint: it is one of the options imposed by the men’s actions and the colony’s rules. Yet the women are not simply waiting to be expelled. Their discussion includes doing nothing, staying and fighting, and leaving; they assess the choices and begin to make plans. The phrase leaving rather than fleeing holds both parts of this situation together: the circumstances restrict their options, but the decision and its meaning remain theirs to shape.

The words become part of the argument

Salome Friesen asks whether the women want to teach their daughters to defend themselves by fleeing. Mejal Loewen immediately corrects the description: the subject, she says, is leaving, not fleeing. The correction shifts attention from what departure might look like to what the women intend by it. Salome’s question invokes the example the women will set for their daughters; Mejal’s response insists that a departure can be an affirmative decision rather than a lesson in helplessness.

Ona Friesen then gently asks Salome to remain calm and reinforces Mejal’s distinction. She says the word fleeing was used improperly and should be set aside. Mariche Loewen reacts with indignation, sarcastically apologizing for the supposed offense of using an incorrect word and mocking Salome’s authority to correct everyone for the sake of humanity. The exchange shows that naming the action is itself contested: a correction that Ona offers as clarification can also sound like a rebuke, especially to Mariche.

Salome rejects Mariche’s sarcasm and argues that leaving and fleeing are vastly different words, with different meanings and implications. Her insistence makes language part of the women’s practical deliberation. The group is not only deciding what to do; it is negotiating how to understand and communicate that action. The distinction cannot erase the danger or the pressure behind their choice, but it refuses to let those conditions wholly define the women as powerless.

From wording to a collective plan

The debate gives way to concrete decisions. In considering the possibility of staying and fighting, the women begin a list headed Staying and Fighting, with a separate subsection for its advantages. Later, when the leaving option is assessed, Salome says it has no disadvantages. That assertion does not mean departure is easy: the women know nothing about the outside world, and the preparations reveal how much uncertainty they must face. Instead, it expresses the force of their judgment within the choices they have been given.

At last, a woman asks whether the group agrees to leave that night after dark, so that they can pass the Chortiza and Hiakjeke colonies without being seen. The timing and route give the distinction practical form. This is organized movement by a group seeking to control when and how it departs, not simply an instantaneous reaction. The phrase does not make the journey safe, but it belongs to the women’s effort to approach it as a plan.

Preparation and the limits of control

The practical preparations make clear that a decision to leave requires more than agreement. August Epp reports obtaining the Co-op Safe, a stick of dynamite, and a world map after the meeting ended. He later explains that he has wrapped the map around a large block of cheese and concealed it with ordinary brown paper. The safe is placed beneath the back seat of Greta Loewen’s buggy, ready to go. Onions, soap, and pieces of wood are packed as supplies, with the wood intended either to help the wheels gain traction in mud or to start a fire.

Even as the departure plan takes shape, the women face efforts to interfere with it. Agata Friesen says the Koop brothers are waiting for the group to move so they can ride to the city and inform the men, or perhaps prevent the women from leaving themselves. She describes a further deception: the brothers may claim there is a fire north of Molotschna to push the women south toward the city, where the men are, and into a trap. The contrast between the women’s careful preparations and this anticipated obstruction underscores the limits on their freedom of movement. Leaving, in this context, names their chosen course without pretending they can control every danger along it.

The phrase’s significance lies in that balance. The women do not deny the threat that forces the question, the unfamiliar world beyond the colony, or the risks to their route. They distinguish those circumstances from the agency with which they answer them. By insisting on leaving rather than fleeing, they claim the decision as collective, deliberate, and directed toward a future they must make possible together.