There’s a saying my grandmother liked to use: little girls should be seen and not heard. I internalised that idea for much of my life, but when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, something changed. Cancer took a great deal from me, but it gave me back my voice, and now I don’t think I’ll ever be silent again.
I must have been a difficult child. Much of my childhood features people telling me to be quiet. Schoolteachers. Family members. The man who tried to rape me. The adult who, when I told her, and after having satisfied herself that nothing much had happened, decided that it would be best for me never to mention it again.
At school I was labelled “dogmatic” by a teacher who liked to stare down my blouse during lessons. When I called him out, I acquired the additional label of “troublemaker”. And so I grew up believing that silence was a virtue. I became self-conscious about my voice and its effect on others. I was already more than self-conscious about the effect my appearance had on others, and did my best to mitigate this by hiding behind a curtain of hair. For a time, I forgot what it felt like to be myself, except in the safe space of the page, free from scrutiny and judgment.
When my third book became unexpectedly successful, I was suddenly under more scrutiny than I’d ever known before. No more than was directed at any other successful woman, but enough to help confirm the voices of my childhood: that when you’re a woman, physical appearance is the first thing people notice; and that no one wants you to be loud, or flippant, or opinionated. My agent agreed. A grande dame in the old style, she took me in hand in a manner that brooked no refusal: decided what I should wear, what I should say, what I should write next and how best to keep out of trouble. The implication was clear: if I showed my true self, if I failed to conform to her expectations, if I spoke out about my politics – in short, if I was difficult – then something dreadful would happen.
But in spite of this, somehow my voice was coming to life. It started with being a mother. My instinct to protect my child brought out my confrontational streak. I became a troublemaker again, at least in certain circumstances. But a lifetime of self-effacement takes a lot of breaking down. It took me another 20 years to learn to be myself again.
By the time my agent and I parted ways, the internet had taken over as arbiter of what I should be. Women on the internet are often commented upon, told their experiences don’t count. When they push back, they receive abuse. For someone like me, raised on keeping the peace, it was sometimes tempting simply not to engage.
But some events are too huge for that. The US election of Donald Trump, then Brexit, Covid, lockdown and Boris Johnson’s premiership seemed to demand some comment. On those issues, at least, I found myself growing outspoken. I got the usual abuse in response, even the occasional death threat. It was upsetting, but not as much as I’d imagined. With age comes a feeling of “fuck you”. Menopause had made me rethink my relationship with my body. Insults about my appearance made little impression on me. Even 20 years before, I’d never understood the need for strangers to see me as sexy.
Then I got cancer. I spoke about that online, too, and found that others in the same situation found it comforting to hear about my experience. There was something oddly liberating in actually saying something was wrong. My old agent would have been horrified: she hid her own cancer treatment from everyone – including me – for fear of revealing weakness. I didn’t feel weak, however. I felt as if, at long last, I had taken back control. I declined the offer of a wig and opted to shave my head before chemo took my hair.
Suddenly there was more to life than worrying about optics. So what if I didn’t look as people expected me to? So what if I expressed a view that made someone else despise me? I realised that I had been hiding away – under my hair, under my fear of upsetting people – all my life. Now, in the face of cancer, I felt I’d rediscovered myself. Acknowledging the effects, the fear – felt like a superpower. My scale of priorities had shifted. The dreadful thing had already happened. What was left for me to fear? I found myself engaging in discussions I would have avoided 12 months before. An angry man on Twitter lambasted me for my “woke hair”. I laughed to think he’d mistaken my chemo buzzcut for a political statement.
Three years later, I’m cancer-free. My body has mostly recovered. Even my hair has begun to grow back. But the effect remains. I no longer stay silent for fear of causing trouble.
Recently, I found the origin of the “seen and not heard” saying in a collection of old English proverbs by an Augustinian clergyman called John Mirk in 1450: A mayde schuld be seen, but not herd – although if Mirk already considered the proverb old, then it must have dated from long before that. Remembering his advice, I wonder what he would have said to a woman who was no longer a mayde? I like to think he learned the hard way. I like to think that some 15th-century version of me told him “fucke you”, and left him forever speechless.
Joanne Harris is the author of Chocolat and Broken Light
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