Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

animals, blood, feathers, knives, the smell of the killing; andsex begins for her here, with these sounds and smells of violence,in a hard bench-bed with a morbid old woman; the oldwoman “ smelled of burned feathers and mice. Sometimes shewould lift the child’s shift and run her dead hands over thegirl’s hot body, cackling with impure delight: Tire! Fire! Thegirl’s burning up! ” ’8One night after the old woman has died, Rechele is leftalone on Yom Kippur, the holiest night for Jews; Polish lordsrape Jewish women on that night, and children die in fires. Interror, she collapses, “lying with her knees pulled to her chest,her eyes glazed and her teeth clenched. ”9She stopped speakingaltogether, became chronically ill, and was paralyzed in one leg.She was never strong or normal again. But her uncle wanted tomarry her because she was beautiful; so he tried to have herhealed. He hired an old woman to wash her in urine to get ridof any evil spirits. He provided the best medical care, a Polishdoctor who taught her Latin. He himself taught her Torah sothat she could pass the hours. When her uncle soon died, shewas sent back to Goray to live with her father, who traveled oftenand had no interest in her. Mostly she was alone: “For dayson end she sat on a foot bench facing the hearth, reading thevolumes she had brought from distant cities, and it was rumoredthat she was versed in the holy tongue. ” 10It even becamepublicly known that she knew Latin. Matchmakers triedto get her married, but her father was indifferent to the idea,and she preferred reading to socializing. She was lame, but still“ she aroused sinful thoughts in men. ” 11Goray had changed. Once a center for the old-fashionedscholars, pure and holy, then deserted after the massacre, nowit was receptive to the many bounders who came preaching