The Gender of Sound

by Anne Carson

Human history is filled with unacceptable sounds: high-pitched voices, gossip, talkativeness, hysteria, wailing and ritual shouts. Who makes them? Those deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control: women, catamites, eunuchs and androgynes all fall into this category.

From the myths of antiquity to Margaret Thatcher via Sigmund Freud and Gertrude Stein, The Gender of Sound charts the gendering of sound in Western culture. Carson invites us to listen again, and in doing so to reimagine our conceptions of human order, virtue and selfhood.

Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Feminism, Music, Classics, Queer, Female Authors

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics. Carson lived in Montreal for several years and taught at McGill University, the University of Michigan, and at Princeton University from 1980 to 1987. She was a 1998 Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2000 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She has also won a Lannan Literary Award.

Carson (with background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art) blends ideas and themes from many fields in her writing. She frequently references, modernizes, and translates Ancient Greek literature. She has published eighteen books as of 2013, all of which blend the forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, dramatic dialogue, fiction, and non-fiction. She is an internationally acclaimed writer. Her books include Antigonick, Nox, Decreation, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry; Economy of the Unlost; Autobiography of Red, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry, and Glass, Irony and God, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Carson is also a classics scholar, the translator of If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, and the author of Eros the Bittersweet. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her latest book, Red Doc>, was shortlisted for the 2013 T.S. Elliot Prize.

Reviews

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I wonder if there might not be another idea of human order than repression, another notion of human virtues than self-control, another kind of human self than one based on dissociation of inside and outside. Or indeed, another human essence than self.”

Anne Carson I’ve loved you since I read a pdf of “An Oresteia” I found on Tumblr in 2016.

[idkclau · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public. A piece of inside projected to the outside. The censorship of such projections is a task of patriarchal culture that (as we have seen) divides humanity into two species: those who can censor themselves and those who cannot.”

[Aurelija · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oj tas Aristotelis. Įlytinti balsai ir garsai Vakarų kultūroje. Visai geras žingsnis metų pradžiai:

“I wonder if there might not be another idea of human order than repression, another notion of human virtue than self-control, another kind of human self than one based on dissociation of inside and outside. Or indeed, another human essence than self.”

[Yasemin]

Seansta bu kitap imgesiyle gözümün önüne geldi. Danışanımın ilk seansında sesindeki bölünmüşlükle karşılaştığım anın hayretiyle kabul ettim bu imgeyi. Ve hemen kitabı çıkarıp okudum. Sesle taşınanların cinsiyete yüklenenlerin duygu, dürtü dışavurumları oluşu, sese logosun eklemlenmediği yerde susturma, kapatma ve yaban göndermeleri üzerine Homeros'tan Ernest Hemingway'e bildiğimiz erkeklerden örneklendirmeler var. Alexander Graham Bell'in eşi ile ilgili anekdotsa ilginçti. Bizdeki güncel politik şahsiyetlerden incileri de maaleseff anımsattı. Tabii Freud'un, psikanaliz kuramının atasının, kadınlarla ilgili yanlış, aşırı ve kendi analiz edilmemiş meselelerine de göndermelerde bulunulmuş. 21 sayfalık bir makale okumak gibiydi. Bilinen kabullerin üzerine düşünmek hem zorlayıcı bir "ee,ne var ki bunda" hissi veriyor hem de kışkırtıcı olabiliyor. Anne Carson'un da verdiği örneklerin kimini tam bu bağlama oturtamadım. Kısa bir yazı olunca açımlanmasındaki kısıtlayıcılıktan da kaynaklanmış olabilir.
Kadınların sesine üst ve alt ağıza dair anlamlar yüklenmesini psikanaliz, mitoloji ve edebiyatla örneklerle vurgulamış. Kimi zaman coğrafya zaman her şeyin üstüne çıkıyor anatomi:)

"Sessizlik kadınların kosmosudur(iyi düzen)"
Sofokles
"Çünkü kadının her daim hali hazırdaki duygularının ağzına gelip sonra da diliyle dışarı çıkması onun doğuştan gelen zevkidir" (Andromache)
Bir erkek o anki duygularınkn ağzına gelip sonra da diliyle dışarı çıkmasına izin verirse kadınlaşmıştır.
Herakles'in Trachinia'i'nın sonunda:
" bir kız gibi hıçkırarak ağlıyorum halbuki önceden işimi sızlanmadan yürütürdüm, şimdiyse acı içinde bir kadın olduğum ortaya çıktı."

[Andrew Kornfeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t know much about this book before picking it up, so I didn’t expect it to rely so much on ancient Greek tradition to make sense of the relationship between gender and sound, but I actually think that was a really valuable and new frame for me. Some interesting and relevant ideas about how gender and the human is constructed through the regulation of sound/our voices. Had to sit with the last few sentences for a minute:

“I wonder about the concept of self-control and whether it really is, as the Greeks believed, an answer to most questions of human goodness and dilemmas of civility. I wonder if there might not be another idea of human order than repression, another notion of human virtue than self-control, another kind of human self other than one based on dissociation of inside and outside. Or indeed, another human essence than self.”

I wonder too!

[Salem ☥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The censorship of such projections is a task of patriarchal culture that (as we have seen) divides humanity into two species: those who can censor themselves and those who cannot."

This was terrifically interesting. So much so, that by the time it was over—I wanted more. Anne Carson always has a way of doing that.

[Saskia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would not have coped in Ancient Greece for many reasons and I now know that some of them would be related to how much I yap but that also women in Ancient Greece were major yappers which the men hated so maybe I would have been fine x

This was a very powerful essay!

“It is a fundamental assumption of these gender stereotypes that a man in his proper condition of sophrosyne should be able to dissociate himself from his own emotions and so control their sound. It is a corollary assumption that man’s proper civic responsibility towards woman is to control her sound for her insofar as she cannot control herself…Female sophrosyne is coextensive with female obedience to male direction and rarely means more than chastity”

[Lilly Brenneman · Rating 5 out of 5]

sex is cancelled out by sound and sound is cancelled out by sex

[sona · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was originally published in 1992 and usually is published as part of Carson’s essay collections, but this year has been republished as a standalone pamphlet ! and did in fact catch my eye in an indie bookshop — the title may be particularly striking given politics / interest in gender studies at the moment but i do wonder why this chapter alone !

the essay was not at all what i expected given the title — rather than a contemporary take or an exploration of how sound, gender and power have intersected across time, this had a big focus on ancient philosophers and older attitudes using a few case studies. it felt a little more like a few cherry picked examples rather than a developed or nuanced argument but did touch on some v interesting themes including animalistic comparisons of women’s voices in mythology and links to sex with control of both sets of “mouths”.

i would’ve liked this balanced with a more modern take and particularly more (any?!) thought to intersectionality here — the essay touches on the perceived superiority of men having “logic” with no mention of class divides and access to education, and there’s no mention of the roles of race (the angry black woman stereotype), existing power structures (workplaces), or thoughts beyond a gender binary which are huge factors when considering how we react to women’s noise today. but reading this has led to some rly interesting discussions on these themes so points for that !

“throughout most of the ancient and some of the modern discussions of voice: female sound is bad to hear both because the quality of a woman’s voice is objectionable and because woman uses her voice to say what should not be said”

[Nihlah Assegaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public.”

[Iman Lost Her Old Account · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will never stop being obnoxiously loud!

[Fin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did not realise this is just a repub of an essay from Glass Irony & God and feel a lil ripped off butttt this is an amazing essay regardless. Loved learning about those Baubo statues + provided extra evidence to my growing conviction that Gertrude Stein is the most important author of the 20th C (not that I've read her but still). Excellent choice reading it with a sore throat too...

Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public. A piece of inside projected to the outside. The censorship of such projections is a task of patriarchal culture that divides humanity into two species: those who can censor themselves and those who cannot.

[Katsia Lazar]

Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography.

The essay was first published in 1992 and laid out references, texts, rituals of the ancient Greek tradition of several thousands of years before, and yet in 2026 it is as relevant as ever, even if it lacks the examples from a more recent history. This (subject’s) standing through time alone proves its worth (also, its pamphlet size doesn’t come into proportion with the vast meanings it conveys).

The piece I loved most - not intellectually but womanly, physically - is the reference of Gertrude Stein’s description by one of her biographers: ‘She used to roar with laughter, out loud. She had a laugh like a beefsteak. She loved beef’. If I analyze it, I read men's fear in it, if I don’t analyze it, I feel like laughing and enjoying myself and, maybe, a steak afterwards :)

[Saga Berggren · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public. A piece of inside projected outside. The censorship of such projections is a task of patriarchal culture that (…) divides humanity into two species: those who can censor themselves and those how cannot.”

[Kätlin Kaldmaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who when where & why is given the right to utter a sound. Carson goes back to Ancient Greece to carve out of wood and paint red the reason why - for example - women as politicians still need voice coaching to sound ”trustworthy”.
Urrrrjuhh! Women of all kinds, let’s release all these sounds of all kinds!!!

[alva · Rating 3 out of 5]

”It is confusing and embarrassing to have two mouths.”

En essä om sophrosyne, män som hatar kvinnorösten och hur våra uppfattningar om kön påverkar hur vi hör ljud.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was so ready for more. Love how she ended changing the tone of the essay to a personal one. Have felt her defying words against those who deem them unpleasant and wrong.

[Isaac Simin]

not very long

[Monia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colpire ripetutamente Francesco Renga in testa con questo libro

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

here is a clearer and more informative argument in these 33 mini-sized pages than in many other tomes 20 times longer.

i did wonder a little about the ethics of this book, though.

firstly because Carson spends a long time on the ancient and Greek tradition of ululation, a celebrated and very female-gendered practice still upheld today in the arab muslim eastern mediterranean that i am familiar with (if not also other connected arab or muslim geographies that I couldn't comment out of ignorance). why did Carson not think to mention this? i really hope she's just a feminist who made an unintentional oversight and not another white feminist, because i would be crushed to lose her, since I appreciate her work so much.

secondly, i found it interesting how Carson vividly demonstrates the dichotomy between Greek ideas of, on the one hand, women speaking outside the same things that they hold inside, and on the other hand men exercising self control. Carson steers this towards a critique of Western Patriarchal male repression, but does not consider that the way she explains it, the dichotomy is between valorised repression and disparaged sincerity. Is the patriarchy against sincerity? what with the postmodern search for authenticity at the centre of so much of contemporary high philosophy and popular culture alike? i found the lack of comment on this to be a curious gap in the book.

but thirdly, and above all, I was confused about what Carson thinks it means to be female. on the one hand Carson's clearly feminist argument here spells out the criteria of the patriarchy's invented gender binary, reaching into her expertise of the Greeks to illustrate this. her condemnation of the negative associations with women is implicit. and that implicitness is precisely what causes my mind to wander. Here is Carson:

"in the document cited by Aristotle... we find the attributes curving, dark, secret, evil, ever-moving, not self contained, and lacking its own boundaries aligned with 'Female'..."

attributing dark and evil to women is evidently sexist, and secret makes no sense as a female attribute, especially as elsewhere Carson explains how the Greeks variously upheld a masculine ideal of withholding speaking, not sharing secrets that could topple empires, and otherwise engaging in what the manosphere nowadays calls stoicism and psychologists call repression. but are we suggesting that curving is not a female gendered attribute? or not self contained and lacking its own boundaries? i mean, there are countless feminists who affirm the value of these particularly female traits all the time: the all encompassing, the fluid, the origin of the universe, etc. it is even trendy on the TED talk circuit etc to make medical scientific explanation of female hormones and cycles and their impacts on female thought, behaviour and experience - so that we can colectively understand and work with these natural ocurrences instead of stigmatising them. etc etc

the very stirring finale of the book argues against patriarchial ideals of self control, dissociation and repression. but ultimately, like so much of contemporary leftist speech, while this book knows clearly what it is against, it offers nothing about what it is for.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageeable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God. These judgements happen fast and can be brutal." (Carson, pg. 1).

Thus starts Anne Carson's wonderful little tome "The Gender of Sound," a book which in turns delights and instructs, always bringing insight and joy to its readers. Anne Carson, a Canadian author and poet, is the perfect guide in this pithy yet informed foray into the ethnography (and psychology) of language of the spoken variety. So, as one 'journeys' through the material with Ms. Carson, our "Virgil" to our Dante, one encounters classical allusions, to Aeschylus and Euripides, as well as Aristotle and the Sybl at Cumae; one also encounters that bugbear to all feminists, Freud, with his 'hysteria' and 'katharsis,'; finally we get an overview concerning the patriarchal element of 'repression,' a phenomena that Ms. Carson (naively?) supposes can be replaced by a more fair, more egalitarian ('gynocentric'?) system that will honor the inside of the body, as well as the outside, creating a world where honesty reigns and emotions are held sacrosanct. (And will also bring equality between the genders, a worthy goal.) But, while I believe that this vision is both valid and achievable, it seems as if the current political climate offers no soon realization of this 'dream,' no matter how copacetic it is with human nature and human freedom.
Either way you view this dilemma/situation, the book here, "The Gender of Sound," is an insightful, evocative, emotionally resonant read that instructs and entertains in equal measures; it also enlightens considerably previously closed minds, a trait well needed for these dire times!

[Reece · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great and snappy essay studying the relationship between sound and ironically women's silence.

It's a testament to any essay that can make you think about phrases you'd taken for granted for years. Why, when describing women negatively, are we drawn to animalistic metaphors? To say your wife growls, squawks, barks at you? Like so much in the world, it all goes back to the Greeks and their mythologies of Sirens, Gorgons, and Banshees. But we go beyond just that. We explore how women have been disarmed by men who have deemed their nosies undesirable.

It does so much in just 33 pages. We span Ancient Greece, to Freud, to Hemingway. I was most compelled by the Greek aspects of the essay because it still has implications to today. It poses the question of whether the distinctions in male and female speech patterns are natural or if it was a result of systematic repression of women. Women in Greek society occupied a role in the grieving process, but certain lawmakers found the loud out pouring of grief to be overbearing and sought to silence them. These women were BLAMED for simply honouring the passing of loved ones because it didn't adhere to the ancient idea of the stoic; that your ability to maintain a [frankly boring] balance of emotion is a virtue to men.

Of course, there has been a repression of female voices for decades since, all coming to a head when discussing Freud in this essay; where he wrote on the benefits of a catharsis. Where women deemed mentally unwell benefitted greatly from an out pouring of emotion and sounds that most would be aghast to hear. Unfortunately, many still recoil when women use language that is considered unladylike, so we still have a way to go.


It's an absolutely stellar read that you can digest in an afternoon sitting.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death.” Anne Carson’s essay The Gender of Sound is just as relevant now as when it was first published in Glass, Irony and God. Carson’s project of exposing, through classical texts, how we can trace misogynistic history of sound, has everything to do still with how women and queer people (perhaps more punitively these days, though still through a specifically gendered lens affecting those who don’t adhere to gender lines in the way they talk — and not even just queer people but anyone who doesn’t present the “correct” way) are policed, dismissed, ridiculed, othered. “It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God. These judgements happen fast and can be brutal. […] Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public, in ancient as well as modern contexts. Consider how many female celebrities of classical mythology, literature and cult make themselves objectionable by the way they use their voice.” In Carson’s signature style she melds the lyrical and the discursive, literary and linguistic analysis with poetic originality. “Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public. A piece of inside projected to the outside.” Always a distinct pleasure to read her work.

[Imogen McGindle]

“There is the haunting garrulity of the nymph Echo (daughter of lambe in Athenian legend) who is described by Sophokles as 'the girl with no door on her mouth' (Philoktetes).15
Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day.” ~ Anne Carson, The Gender of Sound, p. 5

“Closing women's mouths was the object of a complex array of legislation and convention in preclassical and classical Greece, of which the best documented examples are Solon's sumptuary laws and the core concept is Sophokles' blanket statement 'Silence is the kosmos [good order] of women 33” Anne Carson, The Gender of Sound, p. 16

“Breuer entered Anna's apartment to find her on the floor contorted by abdominal pain. When he asked her what was wrong she answered that she was about to give birth to his child. It was this 'untoward event, as Freud calls it, that caused Breuer to hold back the publication of Case Studies on Hysteria from 1881 to 1895 and led him ultimately to abandon collaborating with Freud. Even the talking cure must fall silent when both female mouths try to speak at the same time.” p. 30

“But woman's allegedly definitive tendency to put the inside on the outside” p. 32

Lately I have begun to question the Greek word sophrosyne.
I wonder about this concept of self-control and whether it really is, as the Greeks believed, an answer to most questions of human goodness and dilemmas of civility. I wonder if there might not be another idea of human order than repression, another notion of human virtue than self-control, another kind of human self than one based on dissociation of inside and outside. Or indeed, another human essence than self.” p.33

[Sarah]

When the wife of Alexander Graham Bell, a woman who had been deafened in childhood and knew how to lip-read but not how to talk very well, asked him to teach her sign language, Alexander replied, ‘The use of sign language is pernicious. For the only way by which language can be thoroughly mastered is by using it for the communication of thought without translation into any other language.'

Alexander Graham Bell's wife, whom he had married the day after he patented the telephone, never did learn sign language. Or other any language.

What is it that is pernicious about sign language? To a husband like Alexander Graham Bell, as to a patriarchal social order like that of classical Greece, there is something disturbing or abnormal about the use of signs to transcribe upon the outside of the body a meaning from inside the body which does not pass through the control point of logos, a meaning which is not subject to the mechanism of dissociation that the Greeks called sophrosyne or self-control.

[hope ₊⊹ · Rating 5 out of 5]

anne carson truly never fails in her aim to apply meaning to typically unobsrrved societal behavior. in "the gender of sound," the question asked is: "how do our presumptions about gender affect the way we hear such sounds?"

i believe it is within the socially conscious mind to wish to be absolved from unconscious bias. it is, however, in the examination of ancient texts and beliefs: etymology and psychology (or rather, the ancient pseudoscience and obsolete attempts at achieving scientific fact) where it becomes prevalent the areas in which these biases may arise.

"every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. it has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public. a piece of inside projected to the outside. the censorship of such projections is a task of patriarchal culture that (as we have seen) divides humanity into two species: those who can censor themselves and those who cannot."

[Delia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pamphlets bearing this intriguing title were scattered across independent bookstores in London. Upon picking one up, I found the title somewhat misleading. What the essay really explores are the gendered presumptions around voice (its quality) and speech (its use). Drawing from classical literature and moments in Western culture, the essay sketches out ‘an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death,’ showing how female voices are othered—thus seen as needing to be censored, channelled and contained. I find the argument about the Baubo statues’ two mouths thought-provoking, as it raises questions about sex and sound appropriating each other—both literally and figuratively.

Overall, the arguments presented in the essay are quite fragmented and selective, which prevents it from developing into the stronger piece it could have become.

[natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

um dos melhores ensaios da anne com certeza... o exemplo que ela deu do plutarco foi fantástico. sempre retratado na literatura da antiguidade que, se uma mulher falasse em público, ela não era, na maioria das circunstâncias, por definição, uma mulher. muitos escritores clássicos insistiam que o tom e o timbre do discurso das mulheres ameaçavam sempre subverter não só a voz do orador masculino, mas também a estabilidade social e política, a saúde, todo o estado. quão triste é a socialização feminina, sempre imposta com um gosto muito azedo. transforma a mulher em uma oradora menor, que se vê incapacitada de ter a mesma verve, o sangue na voz dos grandes oradores, porque fala baixo, comedida. o patriarcado atrofia a capacidade de gritar.

[⏺ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essay itself is perfection, like all of Anne Carson's writing. An essay on the way women's sound and language has been coerced (or tried to, anyway) throughout history, from Greek ritual to psychoanalysis' hysteria. Originally published as the last section of Glass, Irony and God, which is probably the better format (if anything, to have "The Glass Essay" at hand as well!)

[Nikita Amin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“As if the entire female gender were a kind of collective bad memory of unspeakable things, patriarchal order, like a well-intentioned psychoanalyst, seems to conceive of its therapeutic responsibility as the channelling of bad sound into politically appropriate containers. Both the upper and the lower female mouth apparently stand in need of such controlling action.”

Brilliant essay. If anything, this will make me more vocal and more disruptive!