From Bridges, Volume 1, Number 2

Yente Serdatzky's "Confession

From the Archives: Jewish Feminism 1913: Yente Serdatzky's "Confession"

Translated and Introduced by Irena Klepfisz

From the introduction

The Story

"Vide" (Confession) Appeared in Serdatzky's Geklibene shriftn (Collected Writings). Set in the "old country" and in the States, it takes place before and after the failed 1905 revolution and provides an explicitly feminist critique of radical and progressive mocements, Serdatzky exposed the revolutionary rhetoric of male political activists and intellectuals and scruplously measured the difference between theory and practice: even within a progressive context, women's needs were not being met because women were valued only as wives and mothers.

The "Confession" is the oral autobiography of Miss Mary Rubin, a consumptive woman who contacts the narrator because she wishes to share her story, which focuses around her trying and failing to find a husband in America.

"Hunting for a husband...Ha! Who knows its special flavor! You come home tired, have no time to dat, force your feet into high heels and a shabes corset and you run...Where? Who knows? You run to gatherings, lectures, meetings and the theater--anywhere where it's possible to meet a friend in trousers...Ha!How bitter and ugly that is...But still you do it... You must do it because you have to, because you must. And you come home tired, bitter, disappointed: twenty girls for every boy, and every girl looks prettier and more worth than you...And all the while you wear Cain's mark on your forehead: Everyone can see that you want a husband..."

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