How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed1 How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed by Djuna Barnes The American Modernist writer Djuna Barnes was a young reporter struggling to support her family when she wrote what she called her "stunt stories" € staging sensational events such as being rescued from a high window by firemen or entering the cage of a young zoo gorilla. In this article, which first appeared on September 6, 1914, she submitted to force-feeding in order to write about the experiences of hunger-striking women's suffrage activists. For more information, see the Wikipedia article on Djuna Barnes. I have been forcibly fed! In just what relation to the other incidents in my life does this one stand? For me it was an experiment. It was only tragic in my imagination. But it offered sensations sufficiently poignant to compel comprehension of certain of the day's phenomena. The hall they took me down was long and faintly lighted. I could hear the doctor walking ahead of me, stepping as all doctors step, with that little confiding gait that horses must have returning from funerals. It is not a sad or mournful step; perhaps it suggests suppressed satisfaction. Photograph and headline from The World Magazine, September 6, 1914. Every now and then one of the four men that followed turned his head to look at me; a woman by the stairs gazed wonderingly -- or was it contemptuously -- as I passed. They brought me into a great room. A table loomed before me; my mind sensed it pregnant with the pains of the future -- it was the table whereon I must lie. The doctor opened his bag, took out a heavy, white gown, a small white cap, a sheet, and laid them all upon the table. Out across the city, in a flat, frail, coherent yet incoherent monotone, resounded the song of a million machines doing their bit in the universal whole. And the murmur was vital and confounding, for what was before me knew no song. I shall be strictly professional, I assured myself. If it be an ordeal, it is familiar to my sex at this time; other women have suffered it in acute reality. Surely I have as much nerve as my English sisters? Then I held myself steady. I thought so, and I caught sight of my face in the glass. It was quite white; and I was swallowing convulsively. And then I knew my soul stood terrified before a little yard of red rubber tubing. The doctor was saying, 'Help her upon the table.' He was tying thin, twisted tapes about his arm; he was testing his instruments. He took the loose end of the sheet and began to bind me: he wrapped it round and round me, my arms tight to my sides, wrapped it up to my throat so that I could not move. I lay in as long and unbroken lines as any corpse -- unbroken definite lines that stretched away beyond my vision, for I saw only the skylight. My eyes wandered, outcasts in a world they knew. It was the most concentrated moment of my life. The hands above my head tightened into a vise. but quite without compassion. a devilish. with the funnel at the end.How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed Three of the men approached me. had gone out into absolute vacancy. all went out into a great blank as the doctor leaned down. and like answering vises the hands at my hips and those at my feet grew rigid and secure.the outraged will. too. I saw in my hysteria a vision of a hundred women in grim prison hospitals. Unsuspected nerves thrilled pain tidings that racked the area of my face and bosom. An instant that was an hour. felt my being burning with revolt at this brutal usurpation of my own functions. the inner interstices of my throbbing head. They set my heart at catapultic plunging. 2 . stopping to examine my throat to make sure I was fully capable of swallowing. one by the head. As I lay in passive revolt. through my nose into the passages of the throat. and sweat as cold broke out upon my forehead. and it seemed years that I lay there watching the pitcher as it rose in the hand of the doctor and hung. Yet how imagination can obsess! It is the truth that the lights of the windows -. All life's problems had now been reduced to one simple act -. meaningless motion that sunlight reflected from a mirror casts upon a wall.pictures of a city's skyline -.I reassured myself. It is utterly impossible to describe the anguish of it. at least. crawling hands of a watch. and every quart slid over and down into space. is one picture that will never go into the family album. The three took me not unkindly.the walls. a quizzical thought wandered across my beleaguered mind: This. There was no progress on this pilgrimage. my ears. as he trailed the electric bulb up and down and across my face. the electric light to my left took a hazy step or two toward the clock. which lurched forward to meet it. how they who actually suffered the ordeal in its acutest horror must have flamed at the violation of the sanctuaries of their spirits. the windows could not keep still. Unbidden visions of remote horrors danced madly through my mind. holding my hands down at my hips. it burned and burned. every drop seemed a quart. held in the rough grip of callous warders while white-robed doctors thrust rubber tubing into the delicate interstices of their nostrils and forced into their helpless bodies the crude fuel to sustain the life they longed to sacrifice. He had inserted the red tubing. playacting. but I could not tell what it was. I had lapsed into a physical mechanism without power to oppose or resent the outrage to my will. The pit of my stomach had lapsed long ago. one by the feet. A dull ache grew and spread from my shoulders into the whole area of my back and through my chest. I struggled against surrender. It was milk. Then suddenly the dark broke into a blotch of light. as the liquid slowly sensed its way along innumerable endless passages that seemed to traverse my nose. He sprayed both nostrils with a mixture of cocaine and disinfectant. the men. and the liquid had reached my throat. I was conscious only of head and feet and that spot where someone was holding me by the hips. Still my heart plunged on with the irregular. Now I abandoned myself. They seared along my spine. The spirit was betrayed by the body's weakness. for all things are alike when they reach the stomach by a rubber tube. There it is -. I was in the valley. bound and shrouded on tables just like this. Oh. was detached and moved as the room moved.to swallow or to choke. It was the futile defiance of nightmare. I. Still the liquid trickled irresistibly down the tubing into my throat. In it was the liquid food I was to have. It was ice cold. And I knew then that I was fainting. one sprawled above me. My utter hopelessness was a pain. Things around began to move lethargically. this ridiculous perturbation! -. There arose the hideous thought of being gripped in the tentacles of some monster devil fish in the depths of a tropic sea. inhuman menace. The doctor's eyes were always just before me. As it reached my throat. If I. The fourth stood at a distance. looking at the slow. having finished their minor roles in one minor tragedy. It was over. At least one could if the nerves did not betray. 'Be careful -. The little. but I only smiled. deprived us of the right to die. gently. shapeless. I had shared the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex. They gripped my throat with strangling bonds. It may be copyrighted outside the U. The four men. One could still choke. I asked myself. I know. (see Help:Public domain). I stood up. Was my body so inept. were already filing out at the door. He had forgotten all but the play. The doctor had removed the towel about his face. even with grim death at their elbow? Think of the paradox: those white robes assumed for the work of prolonging life would then be no better than shrouds.what then? Would they -. as to be incapable of further struggle? Was the will powerless to so constrict that narrow passage to the life reservoir as to dam the hated flow? The thought flashed a defiant command to supine muscles. Ominous shivers shook my body.S.ruthlessly persist. wordless anger arose to my lips. then.' he said. red mustache upon his upper lip was drawn out in a line of pleasant understanding. 'Isn't there any other way of tying a person up?' I asked. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1. And if one insisted on choking -. 3 . a dull.' shouted the doctor in my ear. then. At least I have never heard of a militant choking herself into eternity. 1923. Still the liquid trickled irresistibly down the tubing into my throat.the callous warders and the servile doctors -. swaying in the returning light. the linen envelope encasing the defiant victim a winding sheet. Limits surely there are to the subservience even of those who must sternly execute the law.' 'Yes. 'That thing looks like -.How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed Science had.you'll choke. The torture and outrage of it burned in my mind. ) File:Flag of the United States. Deadlyhead. which was based on Image:Red copyright. (Original SVG was based on File:PD-icon.php?title=File:PD-icon.0/ .php?oldid=3779844 €Contributors: Celithemis.svg €License: Public Domain €Contributors: Various.org/w/index.png by Duesentrieb.org/w/index.0 Unported //creativecommons.Article Sources and Contributors 4 Article Sources and Contributors How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed €Source: http://en. Zscout370.svg €Source: http://en.wikisource. See log.png by Rfl.jpg €License: Public Domain €Contributors: World Magazine File:PD-icon.org/licenses/by-sa/3. Licenses and Contributors Image:Djuna Barnes Clipping.wikisource. Technion.wikisource. Indolences.php?title=File:Djuna_Barnes_Clipping.svg €Source: http://en.svg €License: Public Domain €Contributors: Dbenbenn. 1 anonymous edits Image Sources.jpg €Source: http://en.php?title=File:Flag_of_the_United_States.org/w/index. License Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.org/w/index. Jacobolus.wikisource.