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TheGreyBadger
Toucan
Toucan

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Joined: 31 Dec 2005
Gender: Female
Posts: 266

05 Jan 2006, 10:06 am

Many decades ago there was a short story in one of the science fiction magazines - I think it was F&SF - that struck me hard and stayed with me forever. The viewpoint character was a woman who had all sorts of differences. She was too tall and too thin, with straight hair that had been iron-gray from the time of her birth. Her tastes in decorating ran to ceilings painted black and cornstalks as flower arrangements. IIRC, her mother was the same way.

The story detailed her growing alienation and loneliness as she found nobody who shared or even understood those differences and her slow yielding to the pressures not to stand out so much. Then, in middle age, she sees a man walk by who is very clearly of the same sort of people she is, and she tries to signal him. But he walks by, oblivious, since all that's visible is her hard-one disguise.

I got the moral of the story immediately ... in fact, there seem to be three morals to the story and I've lived them out. One must, after all, earn a living. It was only within the past decade I had a name for what it was about. I think you can see why I've asked WP people if they know this one!

I can't remember the name of the story or its publication date, except that we were very near the end of the most conformist era of the 20th century. I can't remember the author but am sure I'd remember the byline had been female, since I'd have greeted it with glad cries of "Sister!" However, I'm fairly sure the author was, indeed, a woman, and that the story was more or less autobiographical. How? Because male authors in those days who were dealing with such themes had male heroes who either did great things or were prevented by a conformist society from doing great things, and whose handling of female characters did not encompass the sort of thing I just described.

If anyone remembers this, please help?

Thanks.