False Dawn Summary
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

False Dawn Summary

Man's inhumanity to man is allowed full reign here, since no law enforcement agency exists. In a 1980 symposium on postholocaust literature, Yarbro warned feminists away from the idea that a holocaust, "even a miniholocaust," would be a welcome way to start with a clean slate and begin to establish female equality. Once anything like that occurs, she declared, history shows that "any small rights that you may have had for anyone but the physically strongest are gone, kaput, zowie. You do not see them again.

If you want to be reduced to a state of chattel again . . . the best thing you can do is to get yourself a holocaust, even a small one. You're going to find out how it feels to earn your bread on your back." Thea is spared that fate, but she is raped once, quite brutally, and the scar that remains is a major...

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