An Introduction to Bouquet

A storm in the night,
The garden a mess.
Once delicate and dainty,
Flowers left in distress.

Bruised and broken,
This Bouquet love's token.
Doubts arise too heinous to view,
Memories are sure to bother you.

A search for truth,
For freedom to bring forth healing.
To a garden in distress,
From a storm in the night.


Sasha Deane.

Women’s Studies Literary Fiction:

Her experience, without exception, was valid and she ought not be swept away by the tide of universalism. I was accepted as a mature age student into a private university, where I studied English literature and History. The area of particular interest to me being Women’s Studies, women in literature and women in history.

Even as a mature age student, whose children had grown to independence, I was not prepared for the challenges my world view would need to defend. Education can be a most liberating activity. I say can be, only because there is choice, choice between competing ways of interpreting the world. Choice makes demands, which for me required the tearing down of established ways of seeing the world.

My father ruled the house. It was, indeed, the gospel according to my father. Mother, of course, having learned her place from her own mother and her mother before, lived in the shadow of her husband. Over the years I watched my mother wither for want of light, a light I discovered at university and at once felt the liberty light alone brings. Colours exploded around me. What joy colour, after the black and white world taught me by my father and reinforced by my teachers.

These colours though, for many, represented unreconcilable differences and threatened established beliefs. With conflicting emotions, they fled to the “safety” of their binary existence declaring that only black squares or white squares exist in this game of life. I know, I should not inject personal feels, but I cannot help myself and I will not apologise, the contradictions are as flashes of blinding light in this utter darkness where I am forced to shield my eyes from: rape; the mutilating of her genitalia; her murder, for his honour; the throwing of acid in her face; her immolation, what, this too for his honour; her deprivation of education; the obscuring of women in society; the shame and the burden of being born female, which alone deserves a chapter but I will not indulge myself, I will say though that my sheets were not red in the morning, though this proves nothing. I cannot finish here without noting “her” subjugation to “his” will: father, brother, and her arranged husband.

For my part, my mind, no longer shackled will not endure the darkness that hitherto had been my experience. I will no longer be lost amongst the crowd of history or succumb to the conforming policies of a controlling body. Like a unique flower whose life is measured in days, I too have the right to be unique – to blossom as me.

In the end it was to Women’s Studies Literary Fiction that I turned my attention, and I offer Bouquet, a work of literary fiction; where handpicked experiences are, aesthetically, arranged to preserve ‘her’ life beyond its season.

Back Cover Blurb

On some occasions, a single flower is offered and happily received. On other occasions, a bouquet seems more appropriate. A bouquet may have: a flower, or two, which are not your favourites; flowers which, you believe, ought not be included; flowers, whose scent does not blend well; flowers whose position, you feel, is not correct. A flower may even be bruised, past its best, or damaged. The florist, nevertheless, assembled the bouquet this way—life is like this—a bouquet.

To View Bouquet

Click Fullscreen icon in iFrame embed.

 

A bouquet – freely given, a gift from the heart.

Delicately arranged by the reclusive author Sasha Deane; Bouquet, a work of Literary Fiction, is offered for your consideration.