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Proud Man
Originally published in England in 1934, this searing, still timely novel offers and incisive critique of the sexual politics and militarism of England, and the West as a whole.
Proud Man is told from the perspective of a "Genuine Person" who has been thrown back in time thousands of years from a peaceful future society. The Genuine Person comes from a people that are androgynous, self-fertilizing, and vegetarian; they live without a national government and artificial social divisions of gender and class. Taking on first female, then male form, the "Genuine Person" confronts the deeply troubled reality of England in the 1930s, still battered after one World War and on the road to another.
Proud Man is told from the perspective of a "Genuine Person" who has been thrown back in time thousands of years from a peaceful future society. The Genuine Person comes from a people that are androgynous, self-fertilizing, and vegetarian; they live without a national government and artificial social divisions of gender and class. Taking on first female, then male form, the "Genuine Person" confronts the deeply troubled reality of England in the 1930s, still battered after one World War and on the road to another.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
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About the author
Katharine Burdekin
10 books33 followersBritish novelist who wrote speculative fiction dealing with political, social, and spiritual issues.
She was the sister of Rowena Cade, creator of the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. Many of her novels could be categorized as feminist utopian/dystopian fiction.
She also wrote under the name Kay Burdekin and under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. Daphne Patai unraveled "Murray Constantine's" true identity while doing research on utopian and dystopian fiction in the mid-1980s.
She was the sister of Rowena Cade, creator of the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. Many of her novels could be categorized as feminist utopian/dystopian fiction.
She also wrote under the name Kay Burdekin and under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. Daphne Patai unraveled "Murray Constantine's" true identity while doing research on utopian and dystopian fiction in the mid-1980s.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 17, 2016
This is one of the stranger books I've read in my time. Swastika Night and The End of This Day's Business were deeply philosophical, but they were airport novels[1] compared to Proud Man which is...
I have no idea what to even say about this book.
The narrator, a sexless human from, presumably, the far future, has no name that they are willing to give to subhumans (read: us), but goes by Verona (clever, Burdekin). They arrive in our time, and live both as a man and as a woman, exploring and commenting on gender roles and subhuman psychology as they go.
Speaking of the psychology, this is a book clearly written by someone who read a lot of Freud. Everything, and I mean everything, comes back to sex and mothers and childhood trauma.
You can see Burdekin thinking her way through certain ideas even more than in the other two novels, and she didn't exactly hide the fact that the other two were extended thought experiments (The End of This Day's Business more than Swastika Night, but still...). For example, she spends a long time in the beginning talking about same-sex relationships as "deviant" and "perversions", but also says that the government should encourage them as a way to control the population, and later says they're quite harmless. She also acknowledges the existence of gay people in every day society a lot more than other novels I've read from this time period. I have no idea what Burdekin actually thought about gay people. I suspect maybe she didn't know either. (Daphne Patai refers to the female companion and housemate that she raised children with as her "friend" throughout the afterward of The End of This Day's Business. Since Patai interviewed her companion (though not Burdekin who was long dead by then) and presumably used this term at her request, I shall not insinuate about things that we know nothing about.)
I also suspected that she didn't know how she felt about the society she created in The End of this Day's Business. Burdekin seems to have spent a lot of time sorting out her own mind in novel form. I'm not complaining--I find her stuff really interesting--but I am rather surprised that she managed to get it published. Maybe that's my own ignorance of other experimental literture talking, though.
So yeah. Not exactly a book I can recommend in the 'go out and read this you'll love it' sort of way, but not something I'm sorry to have read either.
(Now I want to read Quiet Ways by the same author, but when I looked it up on World Cat, the only libraries that had it were in the UK. Somehow I doubt ILL covers international shipping, and even if they did I'd feel guilty asking them to.)
[1] I have nothing against airport novels. They are a perfectly respectable way to pass the time. They simply don't tend toward the abstruse and philosophical as a rule is all I'm saying.
I have no idea what to even say about this book.
The narrator, a sexless human from, presumably, the far future, has no name that they are willing to give to subhumans (read: us), but goes by Verona (clever, Burdekin). They arrive in our time, and live both as a man and as a woman, exploring and commenting on gender roles and subhuman psychology as they go.
Speaking of the psychology, this is a book clearly written by someone who read a lot of Freud. Everything, and I mean everything, comes back to sex and mothers and childhood trauma.
You can see Burdekin thinking her way through certain ideas even more than in the other two novels, and she didn't exactly hide the fact that the other two were extended thought experiments (The End of This Day's Business more than Swastika Night, but still...). For example, she spends a long time in the beginning talking about same-sex relationships as "deviant" and "perversions", but also says that the government should encourage them as a way to control the population, and later says they're quite harmless. She also acknowledges the existence of gay people in every day society a lot more than other novels I've read from this time period. I have no idea what Burdekin actually thought about gay people. I suspect maybe she didn't know either. (Daphne Patai refers to the female companion and housemate that she raised children with as her "friend" throughout the afterward of The End of This Day's Business. Since Patai interviewed her companion (though not Burdekin who was long dead by then) and presumably used this term at her request, I shall not insinuate about things that we know nothing about.)
I also suspected that she didn't know how she felt about the society she created in The End of this Day's Business. Burdekin seems to have spent a lot of time sorting out her own mind in novel form. I'm not complaining--I find her stuff really interesting--but I am rather surprised that she managed to get it published. Maybe that's my own ignorance of other experimental literture talking, though.
So yeah. Not exactly a book I can recommend in the 'go out and read this you'll love it' sort of way, but not something I'm sorry to have read either.
(Now I want to read Quiet Ways by the same author, but when I looked it up on World Cat, the only libraries that had it were in the UK. Somehow I doubt ILL covers international shipping, and even if they did I'd feel guilty asking them to.)
[1] I have nothing against airport novels. They are a perfectly respectable way to pass the time. They simply don't tend toward the abstruse and philosophical as a rule is all I'm saying.
February 7, 2017
Cinsiyetsizlik temelinde akan bir roman. Kimi zaman kopmalar yaşasam da Swastika Geceleri gibi iyi bir feminist distopya.
January 12, 2023
Incredibly interesting and very different to most other books I've read. 'Proud Man' posits that we are just sub-humans and that real humans are beautiful healthy genderless vegans who can read minds and, because of their understanding of the 'self' and 'not-self', are selfless and required to do whatever other people wish them to do. I will definitely be thinking about this for a long time. Thanks to my lecturer for recommending it.
July 7, 2025
Not without minor problems but basically a blast to read - clear sighted, incisive, bold, inventive, honestly quite funny in places. A must for fans of feminist SF, it should be right up in the pantheon with A Female Man.
June 28, 2023
An exceptional dystopian novel of ideas covering gender, politics, religion, and law. A critique of 1930's England by an upper-class English novelist who despised the idea of privilege.
July 20, 2012
This is an extraordinary book from 1934. Although it does have some of the aspects of Burdekin's later more political works (highly discursive, sketchy characterisation) in this case they are neutralised because we see everything from an alien, "human" perspective that is consciously detached from the "subhuman" culture it has been projected in to. The narrator is extremely gentle, and there is tenderness and comedy in the story (for example, the fashionable London party scene). As Burdekin archly notes, "Brave New World" does not succeed in escaping the limits of its author's culture, but this novel does. This book deserves to be reprinted and better-known, and I wish more of Burdekin's work was available, unfortunately surviving copies of "The Devil, Poor Devil" will always be hugely expensive until she gets famous and has a full reprint.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews