How does the author address the theme of "personhood" in the novel, Women Talking?

The author uses the persecuted women of the Molotschna Colony to illustrate the individual's profound human right to thinking and speaking independently. Toews's novel is intensely interested in personhood, in the voices of the overlooked, the commodified, and the silenced. The Molotschna women, as well as August, represent all those individual's whose agency has been stolen from them. Yet while the women have been abused, are disallowed from learning to read and write, the author subverts narrative expectations by crafting dynamic and spirited discussions between them and August. The Friesen and Loewen women are not meek, nor are they mute. Rather, their spirits appear indomitable. Though the men have limited the women's agency in all seemingly possible ways, through August's recordings, the reader understands the men have not stripped them of their intellect, curiosity, nor their wit.