This Title

I thought "The Price of Silence" was so cool when I picked it for a title. Didn't bother to research it; just settled on it. In fact, I may have had it in mind from the beginning--I can't remember now.

When I searched for it on the Internet, I found out how popular it was. There are several books with that title, a movie from 1959, and even a movie from 1916 with Lon Chaney. A band called Discharge has a song by that name.

But in the early part of this millennium (Isn't it so cool that we can say that?) I was thinking about how Natalie didn't make any efforts to use birth control on that night she got pregnant. That's the most obvious meaning of the title. But it could also refer to her reaction to her rape, or the way she concealed both rape and pregnancy from her family, only revealing them well after they occurred.

In an even broader sense, "silence" encapsulates the way Ashley and Natalie deal with problems in their lives (when Ashley learns of Natalie's abortion, she doesn't tell her parents, saying to her sister, "It would only cause problems"), and silence is the opposite of the strategies Teddy, Natalie's father, uses when confronted with something he doesn't like. In fact, as a professor, he can't afford silence--he has to talk to eat.

Anyway, I could go on, but I think I'm over the title now. I think I'd like to change it to "The Northern End of My Heart," which doesn't seem to be popular on Google. And it's a line from the title story. I've always liked happening upon the title of a book, buried in a paragraph somewhere. It's like a little secret.


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