Thursday, 16 August 2012

"The Afflication of a Lady" – Morag Burn

This is a short section of one of my short stories from the collection "Craftsman". It plays on the literary depiction of women through time and the focus on a negative depiction that is often created surrounding women's emotions and independence. What I often think should be shown as strength of mind is shown as self destructive force and as a consequence weakness, hopefully this short story challenges that in a creative way.


“The Affliction of a Lady” - Morag Burn

I rub and chafe in this skin I’ve been put in. Scrubbing my hands continuously, like stones clashed together under the tide I will grind it down slowly. I shall be a new form. If only this skin would come off. For all the layers I take off new dirt is built on, they will covet my bones. The barnacles latch on to the meadows I have cleared, they know there is life in me yet- more than this tempered realm. Give me the cleansing salt waters of my earthy home and let the barnacles come and armour me. Starting with my hands. They are the actors of my actions; they are the expressers of the urgency of my mind. You hear that? My mind. These hands which are glued and weighted with subservience, they were my attempt at my undoing. My clawing efforts to undo my strings and be satisfied. It is clever how one now clamps my mouth and the other hangs to my side. The fane of Fife had a wife where is she now? What’s done cannot be undone.

You want my hysterical form. You long to see me in my white gown of hysteria. My womanly garments or the shroud of my independent being. All floating and liquid, an unhealthy excess of feeling. I am not the incoherence of passion. Passion can be used and manipulated, disposed of with the settling of the mind. You want uniformed responses; I shall give them the marching orders of wails to come from my mouth and the rivers to come from my eyes. I can perform the part of a barren woman, a construct especially for you. I am emotionally childless.

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