It Was a Passive Voice
Recently, my husband Steve and I spent a day away from home helping our oldest son move across two state lines. We left early in the morning and wouldn’t be back until evening, so we recruited our middle son, who lives nearby, to check in on our two Labrador Retrievers, Tilly and Harper.
Before I go any further, I should tell you that Tilly is 10 years old, has grown out of most of her bad habits, and generally has the run of the house, even when we’re gone. Harper, on the other hand, is only 20 months old—still a puppy as far as Labs go—and is limited to a crate when we are gone, mostly because bad habits like digging on the furniture and chewing on shoes continue to beset her.
When we stopped for lunch just south of Milwaukee, Steve checked in with Caleb, and he was just leaving our house. The dogs were fine; everything was fine. But when we arrived home a few hours later, things just seemed … oh I don’t know … off. Wet paper towels were floating in the trash can. A pair of my socks was lying in the middle of the living room. And upstairs, our youngest son’s shoe was sitting near the door in our bedroom, just one of the pair, despite the gate being up to restrict the dogs from going to the second floor of the house.
“Something weird must have happened,” I said to Steve, holding up my socks. “These were lying on the living room floor.”
“Must have been the dogs,” he said with a shrug.
“And this,” I held up Jacob’s shoe. “This was sitting near the door in our bedroom. And just the one. I can’t find the other.”
“The dogs?”
“But the gate was up.”
We talked for days about the strange appearance of the socks and the shoe, always referring to them mysteriously with the passive voice. And to be fair, with two dogs in the family, the passive voice finds its way into our language often. Mostly because things happen and we never know how. Water was spilled. Mud was tracked. Crumbs were dropped … and eaten. And passive verbs aren’t the only things dogs are good for; they elicit quite a lot of passive aggressiveness, too. Like the day I was taking a little too long fussing over my hair in the bathroom, and my husband told the dogs, “She’s going to be late, isn’t she?” But I digress.
This passive way we talk about the strange goings on in our house “eliminate the doer of the deed from view,” as Lawrence Weinstein writes in Grammar for a Full Life, and “reinforce the misunderstanding that things ‘just happen,’” when we know very well they did not. It was the dogs! Every time something goes missing or gets destroyed, it’s the dogs. Well, almost every time. And maybe it’s that little hint of uncertainty that keeps us speaking as if “no person (or cat)—or dog, in our case!—were involved.”
Of course there are other reasons, though, reasons I might not have even recognized were it not for Weinstein’s astute observations. For one, the passive voice is often invoked “to avoid being held accountable for bad decisions.” When we had one naughty dog, we assumed it was her fault. Now that we have two, we’re pretty sure we are to blame. If we blame the dogs outright every time a sock goes missing, it’s almost as if we are pointing a finger at ourselves.
Then there’s the issue of agency.
“In representing the events of life as happening with no person at the helm, choosing to act, the passive voice robs us over time of our core sense of agency,” Weinstein writes.
Here’s a confession: We don’t know what to do about our unruly dogs. So we talk about them as if the matter is completely out of our hands. But here’s another confession: Sometimes I feel helpless in the face of my unruly life, too. I talk about it as if I have no control.
“The plans were messed up.”
“The bill was paid late.”
“The article was rejected.”
“The branches were strewn across the back yard.”
Weinstein reminds us that we aren’t always victims. “Within certain, quite important limits, we remain the makers of our fate,” he writes. The passive voice can “lead us to forget that fact,” but other grammatical constructions, like transitive-active verbs, “keep the fact of life alive to consciousness, so that we are able to reshape the world anew from day to day, with at least some traces of a four-year-old’s gusto.”
So yes, it was the dog who brought the socks into the living room that day. Our son later confirmed it. But it was probably because I dropped them on the way downstairs. And our son also is the one who put the shoe in our bedroom after Harper ran through the house with it in her mouth. We still don’t know how she got it, but I did eventually locate the other one under our youngest son’s bed.
We may never know how it got there, but I have a good guess.
___________
In his new book Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us, Lawrence Weinstein invites readers into their own journey of well-being through the intentional uses of grammar. We invite you to join us as Charity Singleton Craig leads our discussion.
Grammar for a Full Life Book Club Announcement
June 2: Grammar to Take Life in Hand plus Grammar for Creative Passivity
June 9: Grammar for Belonging and Grammar for Freedom
June 16: Grammar for Morale, Grammar for Mindfulness, and Grammar for the End
Photo by Claudio Gennari, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Charity Singleton Craig.
- Grammar for a Full Life Book Club: On Becoming Less Possessive - June 16, 2021
- Grammar for a Full Life Book Club: Chilling Out on the Grammar Rules - June 9, 2021
- Grammar for a Full Life Book Club: A Passive Voice - June 2, 2021
Megan Willome says
Charity, I am so glad you introduced me to this book. It helps explain some of the choices I’ve made as an editor and makes me reconsider others. And, as you point out in your story about life with dogs, the book makes us think about how we use grammar to express things about our lives that we don’t realize we are expressing.
Looking forward to more as the month unfolds!
Charity Singleton Craig says
You might be interested to learn that Mr. Weinstein believes the real power in using Grammar for a Full Life is that the speaker/writer acts with “volition, wishing to be influenced by” the grammatical moves they make. As I’ve thought about my own life, it seems that certain passive grammar choices may reflect negatively on my life (like in the case of feeling like a victim), but when I want to regain a sense of agency, I need to be actively changing my grammar. It’s a subtle but important distinction that became more obvious to me the more I read the book and began to think about its application in my own life.
Glad you’ll be joining me here each week.
Bethany R. says
Thanks for this post, Charity! I’ve discussed active and passive voice with my kids as part of our English class at home, and this adds adds some further food for thought. I hear what you’re saying about how you don’t want to blame one dog if you aren’t certain it is her fault. Why point the finger when you’re (a little) unsure, right? 🙂
I don’t have the book, but I do appreciate your post’s reminder to use the active voice when you do know what happened and you want the reader (and yourself) to stay clear and mindful of the subject’s agency.
Interesting what you brought up in your comment to Megan (Hello, Megan!) about how “Mr. Weinstein believes the real power in using Grammar for a Full Life is that the speaker/writer acts with ‘volition, wishing to be influenced by’ the grammatical moves they make.”
Charity Singleton Craig says
I didn’t have space in the post to address another aspect of the passive voice that I found very fascinating. Mr. Weinstein has a whole chapter where he makes a case for using the passive voice. He says the passive voice can foster a mindset of passivity that allows us to accept the “many things at work on one’s behalf,” and to acknowledge that our “inborn gifts themselves can’t be tapped without one’s learning to be largely passive in relation to them.” I think this is an interesting thought for writers as we consider inspiration, collaboration, and even the serendipity that happens when we stumble upon a connection between two things that makes our writing really come to life.
L.L. Barkat says
I love this idea. 🙂
Also, I seem to remember something about Spanish using the passive voice exclusively when an “accident” happens. (Will might be able to say more about this for us…) This has the effect of placing blame elsewhere, like maybe Fate or the Universe or just strange mischief, and providing automatic grace for the one who dropped the vase.
Personally, I’ve always appreciated the grace aspect of the passive voice. Where it allows some benefit of the doubt first and allows another to come in when they are ready to take responsibility if that’s needed.
It’s also a softer voice, and I prefer to use that when I’m trying to achieve a certain tone in a written piece or in conversation. More drifty. More mysterious. More infused with possibility.
Bethany R. says
Fascinating, Charity! In a way reminds me of some mindfulness and stress-reduction techniques. And how interesting about Spanish use of passive voice, L.L.
Yes, I gravitate toward grace too. 🙂 My personality and approach with others (I hope) is generally more along the lines of the “softer voice.”
But I can see, perhaps in some novels or in non-fiction texts, how the active voice could help keep things clear, as far as who exactly is doing what. And I suppose I wouldn’t want my driving directions told me in a passive voice or I’d be lost for sure.
“In a mile, 8th Street could be where your vehicle goes left.”
“Wait, what?”
Although I wouldn’t mind if the GPS spoke with both an active voice and a touch more gentleness.
“In 1.5 miles take a left onto NE 8th St., the one lined with white lilac bushes. Don’t worry a bit if you miss it, you can use the roundabout just after the espresso stand. (And they offer curbside service, if you’d like a little treat.)”
Charity Singleton Craig says
Bethany and Laura — These are beautiful thoughts that I think Mr. Weinstein would love so much. In fact, I chose just one aspect of passive/active verbs to write about; he actually suggests a hybrid.
“To my understanding, passivity needs to be mixed with proactivity, if we are to live ably and happily.”
Interestingly, he says blessings are a perfect blend of the two, especially when they start with the word “may.” He says a blessing
1. connects the speaker with a wish or vision
2. that she acknowledges she is incapable of achieving on her own
3. and asks for help from a person (or divinity) to make it happen.
I love that so much … it’s the softer voice you both referenced, and that touch of grace that Laura mentioned. And that word “possibility” … I think the passive voice is loaded with it!
Bethany R. says
Thank you for that, Charity And I have to say, I have a special affinity for the word, “possibility” (as L.L. might know). 🙂
May your book club continue to stimulate delightful musings and the warmth of community connection.
L.L. Barkat says
I think you should do a GPS makeover thing, Bethany. Like, a series of little GPS poems with these mini stories! 🙂
Bethany R. says
I *love* how you spot and invite the fun, L.L. I will chew on that!
Also, am I the only one left still using a GPS unit? I don’t like to use the data on my phone, so I often plug in the ol’ chunky tech. Or, I just jot down the directions—on paper [gasp].
Will Willingham says
Yes, Spanish uses what could be (sort of) considered passive voice. I always think of passive voice as that sort of nebulous “it was done” instead of “she did it” or “he did it.” In the Spanish construction you’re referring to, if I dropped a plate and broke it, I wouldn’t say I dropped the plate or I broke the plate, but “the plate dropped itself” or even “the plate dropped itself to me.” And “the plate broke itself.” I actually see that as active, not passive. The plate has become the active party, and my involvement, if at all, is only as the object of the plate’s actions.
The bothersome thing is that I was taught in my early Spanish-learning years that this was a blame-shifting move, and had the effect of rendering those who shared the heritage of this beautiful language as irresponsible. If the roots do have something to do with where blame is to be affixed (and honestly, I have no idea), I do like your characterization of that better, Laura: Fate, the Universe or Just Strange Mischief. That has the (better) effect of removing blame from the conversation altogether, and focusing on the plate and what has befallen it. And how we set things right.
Charity Singleton Craig says
This adds so much richness to the conversation, Will. Thanks so much for your insight into the Spanish. I would think that cultures probably differ quite a lot on the openness or aggressiveness even with which they assign action or blame. I like this gentler approach … though I also think there’s something important about having agency in our language and lives to do something about those things we can. I’ve found that to be so helpful during the pandemic when so much felt out of control … to step up and say what I can do. I can bake. I can sew masks. I can FaceTime my mom (when no visitors were allowed). I can exercise. I wonder if there is a sense of this in Spanish, too, when speakers can self-initiate?
Rebecca D. Martin says
I’m looking forward to this!
Charity Singleton Craig says
I’m so glad. It’s a really delightful book.
Megan Willome says
Popping back in to say I just read a poem by Abigail Carroll titled “Ode to the Passive Voice,” from her collection “Habitation of Wonder.”
It ends like this:
“for a moment, truth is submerged
by the weight of its own telling,
and I am going in after it.”
Charity Singleton Craig says
This is so beautiful