[lit-ideas] Re: The Training of a Poetess (was: Edith Sitwell)
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:18:44 -0500
Someone help -- it's driving me nuts. What is the sci-fi novelette in
which, in a future time, genetic engineering is de rigeur as part of a caste
system, and in those cases where it does not suffice, an individual is sent
to be "reprogrammed" -- a treatment both changing their physical appearance
and their rational inclination and desires? I read it in .... high school
(was I ever that young? Were there not dinosaurs then?).
Julie Krueger
On 10/14/07, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> *spec.* in *Gardening*, to manage (a plant or branch) so as to cause it
> to grow in some desired form or direction, esp. against a wall,
>
> And indeed, as S. Wagner said it in an earlier quote, it's the _breasts_
> that get trained in the training bra, not the girl _in toto_ (_tota_?)
>
> This incidentally reminds me of Edith Sitwell's training
>
> "The fact that her looks were as unconventional as her nature added to her
> parents' dismay. They were convinced that she was disfigured by having her
> nose out of the straight; and then noticed that she stooped slightly and
> that her ankles were thin and weak. They decided that something drastic must
> be done to restore to the normal looks and normal shape that they so
> desperately desired for her, and sent her to an orthopedic surgeon. No doubt
> the fact that Sir George and Lady Ida agreed to the treatment recommended by
> Mr. Stout does not, by the standards of that day, imply deliberate cruelty
> so much as callousness --"
>
> [cfr. R. Paul's reminiscence of the cruelty of Norman Malcolm]
>
> " -- and perhaps an unconscious desire to compensate for not being able to
> bend her inner nature by bending her outward physique. To us, however, the
> treatment must sound utterly barbarous. 'After my first interview with Mr.
> Stout,' Edith writes, 'I was trundled off to an orthopaedic manufacturer and
> incarcerated in a sort of Bastille of steel. This imprisonment began under
> my arms, preventing me from resting them on my sides. My legs were also
> imprisoned down to my ankles, and at night-time these, and the soles of my
> feet, were locked up in an excruciating contraption. Even my nose did not
> escape this gentleman's efficiency, and a band of elastic surrounded my
> forehead, from which two pieces of steel (regulated by a lock and a key
> system) descended on each side of the organ in question, with thick
> upholstered pads at the nostrils, turning my nose very firmly to the
> opposite way which Nature had intended, and blocking one nostril, so that
> breathing was difficult.'
>
> 'This _latter_ adornment, however, was only worn during my long hours in
> the schoolroom, as it was thought that it might arouse some speculation --
> even, perhaps, indignation, in passers-by if worn in the outer world'
>
> "A Nest of Tigers", p. 41
>
> Compared to that, the guffaws Geary complains at receiving for the
> _training bra_ are irrisory.
>
> JL
>
> JLS
>
>
>
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