Three Dreams in a Desert

Three short allegories about women and freedom, written by a South African novelist who spent her life arguing for both. In the first, a woman lies bound on the sand beside a man, unable to rise until the bands are cut. In the second, she comes to a river with no bridge and is told the only way across is for enough women to walk in and drown until their bodies make one.

It is barely twenty pages and it was read aloud at suffrage meetings across Britain for decades. Schreiner never softens the cost of what she is asking for, which is why it kept working long after gentler arguments were forgotten.