Jonathan’s Reviews > Bryher: Two Novels: Development and Two Selves > Status Update

She had learnt fencing simply because "girls couldn't have boxing lessons." What she really wanted was to smash out with both fists and knock somebody over.

Interestingly I think we would now diagnose Bryher with gender dysmorphia - she very much sees herself as a "boy" unfairly trapped in the body of a "girl" - the "two selves" of the second book are her exterior, performed gender and that of her interior life

Row on row of girls, dressed in white, with the absurd carnation, trooped across the lawn. Nancy wanted to scream with laughter at the stupidity of it all, at the anxious mistresses and parents herded in front, looking so obviously unhappy. The platform, with its flowers, the staff; the table of prizes, reminded her of a prehistoric gathering of a tribe to pronounce justice.

THE brown ears of Nancy's mule twitched in a slow rhythm. She was jolted upwards at an aggravatingly even pace, ahead, as usual, by some hundred yards. Light was regal about the fretted ridges, the luminous air lived; morning, jocund and defiant, leapt on the snowy points of Monte Rosa. The mountains sloped in vivid line against a gentian sky.