On February 1st, 1959, the men of Switzerland went to the polls to decide whether their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers should be afforded the right to vote. Two thirds voted against the proposal, leaving Swiss women without suffrage until 1971. Voting Day by Clare O’Dea is a novella set on that fateful referendum day, following the interconnected lives of four Swiss women.
In this clever exploration of the slow pace of social progress, we meet Vreni, Margrit, Esther and Beatrice, four women at varying life stages and occupying different positions on the social ladder. Vreni is a farmer’s wife accustomed to toil within the home and pondering a future in which her life is not defined by her domestic work. Her daughter, Margrit, is building an independent life in the city while contending with sexual harassment in the workplace. The story of mother and daughter illustrates the frictions thrown up as old worlds break open. But it is the story of Esther and her son Ruedi which is the beating heart of this novella.
Esther is Yenish, an ethnic minority group concentrated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with a nomadic culture which was subject to brutal official policies of assimilation throughout the twentieth century. As a child Esther was forcibly separated from her Yenish parents and grew up with a foster family. O’Dea portrays the long-lasting effects of this childhood trauma for Esther, who finds herself abandoned by her husband and left struggling to care for her son.
This is where Beatrice, a socially-conscious hospital administrator, enters the story, helping Esther in her efforts to recover custody of Ruedi. If Esther is the heart, Beatrice is the wisdom of the story, reflecting on the bitter loss of the vote while sounding a note of optimism – “we don’t have to stand by and do nothing”.
The richness of O’Dea’s story could have lent itself to a full novel but the choice of shorter form carries a powerful impact. With the recent success of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These and Natasha Brown’s Assembly, the novella is growing in popularity again. O’Dea’s Voting Day is an example of how it works at its best: dunking us into a singular story of lasting emotional resonance.
