A review by octavia_cade
Mine-Haha by Philip Ward, Frank Wedekind

dark reflective medium-paced

3.0

This is the weirdest fucking thing! I don't know what to think of it. The story's about young girls at a boarding school, being trained in dance and physical movement in order to perform in some shady erotic play for the masses. Eventually they become adolescents and are made to leave the school and its theatre; they're basically ogled through the streets of a nearby town, and the novella ends abruptly, with no real idea of the future. The girls are completely ignorant of what's happening to them, but it must also be said that they all seem pretty happy with their weird, exploitative little lives. I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be a utopia or a dystopia, a feminist piece or a piece of fake feminism, and from the introduction it seems that this general bafflement is a fairly common reaction. 

Apparently it's a symbolist work. I have no idea what that means. That it's incomprehensible, maybe? It manages to be both interesting and off-putting at once, anyway, and is strangely compelling because of it.