Hottentot Venus by Barbara Chase-Riboud

Author:Barbara Chase-Riboud [Chase-Riboud, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Usenet, Fiction, Historical, C429, Kat, Exratorrents
ISBN: 9781400032082
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2003-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Miss Austen, Edward Austen’s Esq.

Godmersham Park, Faversham, Kent

I lifted my pen from the paper and thought about what John Kemble had said about our prejudices and our belief in our own superiority and our ravishment of the world because of it, of which this poor dislocated creature was a symbol. What had I really felt, standing there in the crowd with Mary, witnessing this cruel humiliation of one of my sex, but a secret, sniveling joy at my own safety and invulnerability . . . wasn’t that why I loved freak shows? She, the Venus, was the Other, I was me, Jane, safe within the confines of my privileged provincial white world. I could never be she. As long as I did nothing to trespass it.

And that was the rub. Cowardness. The four feathers. My options, I thought wryly, were limited to this suspended pen I held in my hand whose ink bled onto the middle finger of my right hand. And no, I was not going to use this pen to denounce her suffering or what I had seen. Or to write about her or recognize her plight in any other way than in this letter to Cassandra . . . Forgive us, I thought, our trespasses, Lord, and deliver us, or at least, quarantine us, from evil . . .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.