In the Land of Two-Legged Women

Fiction. Women's Studies. In Ramprend, at the onset of puberty, girls' right legs are amputated in the Beautification Ritual. In this dystopian novel, female stumps are desirable to men. Solanj'l hates her inability to move freely and makes a wooden leg to enable her to walk, or step-drag: an extraordinary thing to do because no artificial limbs exist in Ramprend. Her husband sees commercial possibilities in his wife's invention and begins producing Glom's Glamor Legs, while the ability to move more or less on two legs, no matter how uncomfortably, opens new ways of thinking for the women. When items start disappearing in Ramprend and it is learned that women who live in the mountains outside the city have two legs and operate independently, Solanj'l and some of her friends are determined to put an end to the Beautification, no matter the cost.