Abstract

In the legal world, silence is often seen as an absence of rights yet in literature it is seen as resistance, sadness or invisibility. This paper takes a unique comparison of a Victorian era classic Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse” and the modern era literature “Never Let me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro to deepen the understanding of how silence is not only seen as an emptiness but also as a site of legal invisibility. It is true that these two are very unrelated texts one that is s foundation on the domestic work of the pre - war household and the other in a dystopian and biotechnological future. But both these books reveal a world concern, the law’s failure to understand the complexities of human lives when it said to operate without empathy or voice. Woolf’s books give out a subtle critique to a patriarchal legal norm that invisibility dictates the roles given in a household including the inheritance causing invisibility oven the females of the household. Mrs. Ramsay’s silene, her emotional labour and her existential crisis becomes more of a metaapho0r than a reality for the legal system that is quite and unseen. In Ishiguro’s book legal silence is more like institutionalizes, like they remain outside the moral and legal framework of person hood as clones exist, they breathe, love and die. The book reflects a quite dystopia that becomes a haunting reflection of the law’s lack of concern dressed as order. The paper argues that silence is a void but a vessel of carrying their burden of the legally made loopholes and exclusion. It invites reimaging of legal consciousness that can hear what is not to be shouted, what is not to be claimed, and recognizers lives that are not litigated but lived quietly.

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