Mine-Haha: or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls

At once a dystopian fantasy and a critique of sexual norms, Mine-Haha describes a unique boarding institution for girls—part idyllic refuge, part prison—where pupils are trained only in the physical arts of movement, dance, and music, before issuing them into an adult world for which they have (unwittingly) been prepared. The narrator is an old woman recalling her strange childhood and the story is focused through the eyes of her earlier self. Praised by Leon Trotsky in 1908 for its progressive outlook, this symbolist novella is here presented alongside two rare, complementary short-fiction pieces: The Burning of Egliswyl and The Sacrificial Lamb.