Mercy - Andrea Dworkin

353 Pages·1610·5.52 MB·English

by  Andrea Dworkin

FOUR WALLS EIGHT WINDOWS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1990, 1991 by Andrea Dworkin.
A Four Walls Eight Windows First Edition.
First Printing August, 1991.
First paperback printing September, 1992.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including
mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Excerpts from this novel have appeared in
The Michigan Quarterly
Vol. XXIX, No. 4, Fall 1990 and ,
Review, The American Voice
No. 21, Winter 1990.
was first published
Mercy
in Great Britain by Seeker & Warburg in 1990.
The author and publisher are grateful to the following for
permission to quote from copyright material: Olwyn Hughes for
“Daddy, ” in by Sylvia Plath, published by Harper
Collected Poems
& Row, Publishers, © 1965 1981; Pantheon for Anna Cancogni’s
translation of by Annie Cohen-Solal, © 1987
Sartre: A Life
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dworkin, Andrea.
Mercy: a novel / Andrea Dworkin.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3554. W85M4 1991
813'. 54—dc20 91-18157
(Cloth) ISBN: 0-941423-69-7 CIP
(Paper) ISBN: 0-941423-88-3
Four Walls Eight Windows
P. O. Box 548, Village Station
New York, N. Y 10014
Printed in the U. S. A.
For Judith Malina
For Michael Moorcock
In Memory of Ellen Frankfort
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
“Daddy, ” Sylvia Plath
For a small moment have I forsaken
thee; but with great mercies will I gather
thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face from
thee for a moment; but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith
the Lord thy Redeemer.
Isaiah 54: 7-8
Contents
Not Andrea: Prologue i
one In August 1956 (Age 9) 5
tw o In 1961 and 1962 (Age 14, 15, 16) 29
th ree In January 1965 (Age 18) 35
fo u r In February 1965 (Age 18) 56
five In June 1966 (Age 19) 74
six In June 1967 (Age 20) 100
seven In 1969, 1970, 1971 (Age 22, 23, 24, 25) 134
eight In March 1973 (Age 26) 164
nine In October 1973 (Age 27) 214
TEN April 30, 1974 (Age 27) 273
eleven April 30, 1974 (Age 27) 308
Not Andrea: Epilogue 334
Author’s Note 343
Not Andrea: Prologue
Now I’ve come into my own as a woman of letters. I am a
committed feminist, of course. I admit to a cool, elegant
intellect with a clear superiority over the ape-like men who
write. I don’t wear silk, of course. I am icy and formal even
alone by myself, a discipline of identity and identification. I do
not wear myself out with mistaken resistance, denunciation,
foolhardy anguish. I feel, of course. I feel the pain, the sorrow,
the lack of freedom. I feel with a certain hard elegance. I am
admired for it—the control, the reserve, the ability to make
the fine point, the subtle point. I avoid the obvious. I have a
certain intellectual elegance, a certain refinement of the mind.
There is nothing wrong with civilized thought. It is necessary.
I believe in it and I do have the courage of my convictions. One
need not raise one’s voice. I am formal and careful, yes, but
with a real power in my style if I do say so myself. I am not, as
a writer or a human being, insipid or bland, and I have not sold
out, even though I have manners and limits, and I am not
poor, of course, why should I be? I don’t have the stink on me
that some of the others have, I am able to say it, I am not effete.
I am their sister and their friend. I do not disavow them. I am
committed. I write checks and sign petitions. I lend my name.
I write books with a strong narrative line in clear, detailed,
descriptive prose, in the nineteenth-century tradition of
storytelling, intellectually coherent, nearly realistic, not
sentimental but yes with sex and romance and women who do
something, achieve something, strong women. I am
committed, I do care, and I am the one to contend with, if the
truth be told, because my mind is clear and cool and my prose
is exceedingly skillful if sometimes a trifle too baroque. Every
style has its dangers. I am not reckless or accusatory. I consider
freedom. I look at it from many angles. I value it. I think about
it. I’ve found this absolutely stunning passage from Sartre that
I want to use and I copy it out slowly to savor it, because it is
cogent and meaningful, with an intellectual richness, a moral
subtlety. You don’t have to shout to tell the truth. You can
think. You have a responsibility to think. My wild sisters revel
in being wretched and they do not think. Sartre is writing
about the French under the German Occupation, well, French
intellectuals really, and he says—“We were never as free as
under the German Occupation. We had lost all our rights, and,
first of all, the right to speak; we were insulted every day, and
had to keep silent.... and everywhere, on the walls, the
papers, the movie screen, we were made to confront the ugly
mug that our oppressor presented to us as our own: but this is
precisely why we were free. As the German poison seeped into
our minds, every just thought we had was a real conquest; as
an omnipotent police kept forcing silence upon us, every word
we uttered had the value of a declaration of rights; as we were
constantly watched, every gesture we made was a commit­
ment. ” This is moral eloquence, in the mouth of a man. This
applies to the situation of women. This is a beautiful truth,
beautifully expressed. Every just thought is a real conquest,
for women under the rule of men. They don’t know how hard
it is to be kind. Our oppressor puts his version of us
everywhere, on walls, in the papers, on the movie screens.
Like a poison gas, it seeps in. Every word we utter is a
declaration of our rights. Every gesture is a commitment. I
make gestures. I experience this subtle freedom, this freedom
based on nuance, a freedom grotesquely negated by a vulgar,