The "social history" promised by the subtitle of Silence is pretty limited in scope. Author Jane Brox focuses particularly on two environments: prisons and monasteries. Despite a brief engagement with Thoreau and some short tangential passages about the development of silent reading, silence in Quakerism, and so forth, institutional penitence dominates the account.

The fourth of the five parts is dedicated especially to the social effects of gender on expectations of silence. An extensive discussion of female silencing and related judicial punishments leads into the women's particulars of incarceration and monasticism. Implicitly, silence is given to be a sign of obedient virtue in women for the history treated, but there is no clear sign of how any masculine silence compares or contrasts with it (let alone the silences imposed on exceptional gender and gender resistance).

Brox's prose is generally lucid and occasionally beautiful. The history is leavened with reflexive anecdotes regarding her research experience and significant digressions about architecture. A considerable portion of the book is given over to thoughts from and accounts of the twentieth-century celebrity monk Thomas Merton.

I learned some history in the course of this reading. It was surprising that I was a little less ignorant of the ancient and medieval aspects of monasticism than I was of the modern evolution of the US penitentiary. But in any case, I never really arrived at the understanding of the social role of silence that the subtitle indicated would be on offer.

An intriguing read. I picked it up partly because of the cover, I thought it was so pretty and yet haunting. The review I saw mentioned an "Eye of God" window in one of the prisons and that reminded me of the Kilmainham Gaol prison in Dublin Ireland that I visited last summer that had a similar "rehab" of prisoners: that they needed to know that God was watching them. In this book though it was also an attempt to so isolate a prisoner that they would hopefully turn to God and change their ways after release. I found it interesting her connection between prison life in the early centuries of Europe and America and monastic life in both areas as well. Silence. One by choice or calling, the other by consequence of actions. One that can offer relief from the chaos of the world with time to relect and meditate, the other that can change a human within days to pure madness. Thomas Merton is now on hold at the library for me, because the author enjoyed his writing so. Being a quiet person by nature, the subject of silence doesn't scare me, as long as its by choice. ( )

What do prisons and monasteries have in common? This is the unexpected and unusual premise of Jane Brox’s Silence. She recreates the history of prisons in England and America, and puts the reader in the place of a prisoner, to feel the punishment – endless years of it. Then she crosses over to Christian monasteries, showing why they exist at all, how they spread, and the extra severe burden placed on women in their own monasteries.

US prisons were designed to be hellish. Prisoners were hooded on their way in so they could not know where they were or the layout of the building. They stayed in their tiny cells, with little or no light, and nothing to read but the bible. Rehabilitation was a 20th century notion, all but abandoned today, as private sector prisons use inmates as slave labor, and have deals with their states to maintain them at least 90% full. So it is in the interest of both state and operator to keep the bodies coming back for more. Today, however, prisoners live together, eat together, and talk. Brox does not venture into this noisier state of affairs.

Instead, she focuses on Thomas Merton, a monk with a pencil and a typewriter. He wrote books on monastic life in the middle of the 20th century that not only became bestsellers, but were smuggled into prisons where inmates could put their own lives into perspective. This is a neat link of the two unlikely axes of this book. A disproportionate amount of Silence is handed over to him and his thoughts.

There is a large difference between the silence of prisons and that of monasteries. For all their silence, monasteries are communities of likeminded men, who choose to be there. They have daily routines that fill their lives. They sing hymns together. They just don’t chat. They signal a lot instead. That is very different from 19th century prisons, where men were sent to be punished. They were not allowed to make any noise, on pain of further punishment, had no community or even contact with other prisoners, and did not even know who their neighbors were. They were totally isolated. With little or nothing to do, they could and did go stir-crazy. Sending them back into complex and noisy society was an additional cruelty foisted upon them. That is the power of silence as punishment.

Brox does not delve much into the psyches of those who thrill to silence – those who go for weeks and months without uttering a word – and don’t even notice it. Think of lighthouse keepers, forest fire watchers, seal hunters, desert dwellers. As long as they are absorbed by their environment and their tasks within it, they are not just at peace, but flourish. She briefly mentions Thoreau, not much of a hermit, as he could still hear the churchbells from town.

Brox notes how a life of silence enhances the ability to hear and perceive. People hear details in a silent environment that are totally lost in a noisy one. When I first moved to New York City, I could discern more than twenty sources of sound just out the front door. Soon, it just became noise, and then, not even noticed. We lose a tremendous amount of processing in noise; there is much to be said for a life in a silent environment. On the other hand, forced, unwanted silence is killer for a social animal. Brox tries to bridge that gap, though she doesn’t lock it down.

David Wineberg ( )