Ona’s pregnancy

Ona’s pregnancy is at once a physical condition, a source of imposed stigma, and a test of what the women’s community means by protecting its children. The colony treats her unborn child as someone to be reassigned, while Ona and the other women consider leaving a society that has failed to protect them. At the threshold of departure, the pregnancy also becomes a bond of care: Salome Friesen promises August Epp that she will look after her sister and the baby.

Pregnancy and Colony Judgment

During the women’s meetings in the hayloft, Ona keeps an empty feed pail beside her because pregnancy makes her nauseated. Her condition is visible, but the colony’s response is shaped less by care than by judgments about her sexual status and supposed sin. When it became clear that she was expecting, several women hurriedly tried to arrange a marriage between her and Julius Penner, the simple son of Ondrej Penner. Ona resisted the match, believing Julius deserved better and that marriage to a woman who was not a virgin would taint him with sin.

The elders’ judgment compounds that stigma. They consider Ona beyond redemption and interpret Narfa as making her incapable of reason. August Epp identifies the irony in this accusation: the elders’ claim about Ona’s reasoning is itself unreasonable. In their account, because Ona did not willfully sin, she would be exempt from eternal damnation; nevertheless, they plan for the child to be raised by another colony family, possibly even the family of one of the assailants. The pregnancy thus exposes a sharp division between the colony’s moral classification of Ona and its willingness to decide the future of her child without her.

That classification also shapes how others regard her. Klaas Loewen will not look at or acknowledge Ona, whom August describes as a ghost to him because of her Narfa, unmarried status, and visible pregnancy. The contrast is pointed: a condition that makes Ona impossible to overlook in the meeting space becomes a reason for a man in the colony to treat her as if she were absent. The narrative notes that this erasure suits her, but it does not undo the exclusion that produces it.

A Future Contested

The women’s debate over leaving gives Ona’s pregnancy a broader urgency. They are not deciding only where they themselves can live; they are considering the safety and futures of children in a community where the adults’ choices can expose younger people to harm. Salome Friesen challenges the distinction between boys old enough to accompany the men and younger boys allowed to join the women, asking why thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds should be left behind and whether they might become targets if the accused men returned. August answers that boys of that age can cause harm, but are also children capable of being taught. His comparison of them to young yearlings holds power and vulnerability together rather than treating either as the whole story.

The argument reflects the unequal positions within the group: some women are mothers leaving sons behind, while Ona is preparing for a child not yet born. Mejal Loewen and Salome Friesen, often at odds, join in a crisis, and Mejal crosses the plywood table to embrace Salome as she grieves about leaving her son. The scene makes clear that departure carries separation as well as protection. Ona’s pregnancy belongs to this same collective question of who will care for children, and under what conditions, even though the colony has already proposed that her own child be raised elsewhere.

The women also reconsider who has authority to define their religious obligations. Salome points out that the women cannot read the Bible and that their husbands have told them what it requires about submission. Her challenge does not establish a new scriptural ruling; it exposes how male interpretation has shaped the women’s understanding of what they may do. For Ona, whose pregnancy has already been judged through the colony’s religious and sexual rules, this debate is part of the wider effort to make decisions about their lives and children for themselves.

Leaving as Maternal Responsibility

Agata Friesen argues that remaining in Molotschna would put the women on a collision course with violence and could turn the colony into a battlefield. For her, leaving is not a rejection of Mennonite faith but a way to uphold its commitment to pacifism. She later makes the maternal dimension explicit: the women’s duty is to protect themselves and their children, bear witness to their faith, and avoid a situation in which any forgiveness offered would be coerced rather than genuine. Leaving, she says, can teach children to follow values of peace and love beyond the expectations imposed by their fathers.

Agata calls the women’s decision to influence their sons instinctive as well as considered. They are mothers acting for their children, she says, and their instinct has joined their intellect and faith in determining what they believe is best. That account does not erase the distinct circumstances of Ona’s pregnancy or settle what will happen to the baby. It does place her and her unborn child within the circle of people the women understand themselves to have a responsibility to protect. Their collective departure stands against a colony that has treated the pregnancy as grounds for judgment and the child’s future as something others may allocate.

Departure and the Promise of Care

As August Epp prepares to part from the women, he asks Salome Friesen to take care of Ona and her baby. Salome promises, explaining that Ona is her sister and her blood, and that the baby is included in that bond. The promise answers, in personal terms, the colony’s plan to hand the child to another family: here, the baby is acknowledged as part of Ona’s family and as someone for whom her sister will assume responsibility. Salome then begins to climb down, urging that they hurry.

In a later moment, Ona takes August’s hand and places it on her pregnant belly. She tells him that she has prayed he will find God’s grace and describes him as a physical reminder of goodness, hope, and life after violence. Her words connect the pregnancy to a wider inheritance of pain and hope, referring to August’s mother and to Peters, his biological father. The scene does not resolve the child’s future or announce a birth. Instead, it closes on a gesture of contact and a promise of care, leaving Ona’s pregnancy as both an unresolved vulnerability and a reason the women’s departure matters.