reconditarmonia:

davidmalki:

Daughters of the horse-leech, thy tempest out-thunders me.

source: Israel Zangwill, Without Prejudice, 1899. This description, at the time meant to be as absurd a set of charges and demands as could be placed in a straw woman’s mouth, today reads like a beautiful manifesto.

I like this excerpt, but you’re underestimating Zangwill. The narrator is dreaming, and as the dream continues he meets all sorts of people whom the Nation or the Market or Society or what-have-you have wronged, and his protestations that he’s just one person and it isn’t his fault are unconvincing.

More:

I saw a withered old pauper with the Victoria Cross on his breast. “I went to the mouth of hell for thee,” he said, with large reproachful eyes; “and thou leavest me to rot in the workhouse.”

“I am awfully sorry!” I said. “I never heard of thee. It is the nation.”

“The nation!” he cried scornfully. “Thou art the nation; the nation is only a collection of individuals. Thou art responsible. Thou art the man.”

–

“Shame on thee!” hissed the chorus, and advanced upon me so threateningly that I seized my hat and rushed from the room. But a burly being with a Blue Book blocked my way.

“Where didst thou get that hat?” he cried. “Doubtless from some sweating establishment. And those clothes; didst thou investigate where they were made? didst thou inquire how much thy tailor paid his hands? didst thou engage an accountant to examine his books?”

“I am so busy,” I stammered feebly.

I’m pretty sure Zangwill didn’t set out to make feminism look absurd and accidentally write a beautiful manifesto.