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There are so many stories that Abbot invites when he tells his own. Once upon a time in Flatland a woman suffered from St. Vitus's dance; her parents hid her disorder for fear that the Sanitary and Social Board would have their precious daughter exterminated. They prayed to St. Vitus and the Thirteen other Holy Helpers to cure their daughter's rheumatic fits.( I had looked up St. Vitus's Dance once before as it was in the lyrics of a David Gray song and I wanted to know what it meant. It sounded mystical to me. I looked it up again when it appeared on page 11 of Flatland. For anyone who is curious and didn't get a chance to look it up, St. Vitus's Dance refers to Sydenham's Chorea, a neurobioligal disorder caused by a bacterial infection, the auto-immune response to which interferes with the part of the brain (basal ganglia) which regulates motor movements. St. Vitus was a 4th century Sicilian martyr who is the patron saint of dancers, as well as those suffering from epilepsy and nervous disorders. It is said that he is one of "Fourteen Holy Helpers," prayed to in order to cure disease. A place, like Flatland, with so many Laws is bound to produce tales of defiance. In Flatland, Priests are the arrangers of marriage; as we have learned in Spaceland, marriage is best when freely entered into. Let us see what happens in the story of an equilateral that refuses to marry the female chosen for him in pursuit of another "less respectable" female. Is he then condemned to Isoselization or can his woman be doctored into nobility in one of the questionable State hospitals of Flatland. What happens when someone discovers or authors the book entitled, "The Deisoscelization of the Self?" Is this book a hoax or does it hold the secrets to free the lowest in the caste system from their deplorable existence? Will Isoceles' gather like Christains in the catacombs gather around the word of God? Will women be at these gatherings? When will a heroine emerge from Flatland to break the spell that has convinced women they have no brains or memory? Flatland has taken me to very real places as well as it has taken me to the world of fictional tales... I had this idea...maybe, I'm not the first...probably not...I had this thought that movement is a burqua. The women of Flatland are sentenced to constant motion so they may not be invisible and thus likely fatally pierce their neighbors. Also, the women are only permitted to leave the house to attend religious festivals. They cannot hold jobs. Are they only good for procreation?
Women under Taliban Afghanistan were forced to wear burqas and faced a punishment and likely execution if they did not. I read the play "Homebody Kabul" in a college literary analysis course once. Flatland recalled this play for me and thus Abbott called to my attention the very true story of the persecution of women around the world. This led me to look up what a burqua was again...why was it again women had to wear what one woman called a "moving prison?" I was led to Wikipedia where you had the option of viewing some video footage of a woman concealed in a burqua being publicly executed in an Afghan stadium...she was a mother of five children accused of murdering her abusive husband in a sneak attack as he slept. I watched this execution...it was a terrible, gritty, and real story. I guess I am trying to answer A's question about storytelling...that yes Flatland fits into storytelling, that one story breeds another, that truth breeds fiction as well as fiction breeds truth.