Papercut: Odd and Interesting Find at the Uni Library

Would you read a book with a title like this one?

I did.

It was a typical day and I scanned through the Classical Literature shelf I usually frequented.

This one was placed right beside 'The Portrait of a Lady' by James Henry, which was the first to catch my eye, but the stark contrast between the two themes only emphasized the oddity of this book.

I expected books of this nature to be banned because Philippines is comprised mainly of conservative and devoute Christians.

Anyway, the book is about Catherine (duh) a woman who cross-dresses, she gives herself a male name, and joins the army.

While in the army, she is made to endure the hardships of training up to which point she decides she cannot tolerate any more of it.

She sneaks away from camp only to meet a gang of men in the forest.

The men discover she is a woman and laugh at the absurdity of her actions.

They then proceeded to mutilate her genital to remind her that she is a woman, regardless of how she acts to the contrary.

She returns to the army camp after this incident and goes back to enduring her training.

One day she receives news that her mother is ill and dying.

This time she successfully sneaks out of camp and leaves the army for good to console her dying mother.

Seeing her mother in her death bed surrounded by squalid conditions in the filthy sick house and the realization that she has no one else in the world, leaves her devastated.

She leaves after her mother passes away and roams the countryside.

In one particular location, she finds a girl relieving herself and Catherine finds a passion in her awakened.

She approaches the girl, courts her, and has a sexual encounter with her.

Before long and at the behest of her lover's mother, the two are married under the assumption that Catherine is truly male.

As the days pass, Catherine's wife does not get pregnant and her mother-in-law begins to doubt his masculinity.

This causes tension, sours the relationship, and leads Catherine to become a drunkard frequenting pubs and rarely returns home.

The events boil over to the point the mother instructs her daughter to a ploy that divulges Catherine's true gender.

When it is made know, Catherine is arrested and branded a witch and a sodomizer.

She is imprisoned and finally beheaded at a public execution.

THE END