What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Dayang returns, this time as a university student who attends Cambridge and is invited to join a women’s society at the school called The Homely Wench Society. She learns about the society from the welcome email. In 1949, Giles Rutherford, then president of the Bettencourt Society, called for the men of the society to find the “homeliest wench” at the university to join him at their annual dinner (to which they usually invited the most attractive women). The men made a list of candidates, who eventually found out about the list and formed a society of their own to crash the Bettencourters’ dinner. They pranked the men by causing a disturbance that mimicked a haunting; when the men went to investigate, the “homely” women invited themselves to the party. Since then, the Homely Wench Society has become its own organization, though the membership had dwindled.

To join, Dayang must write her own response describing who she sees as the “homely wenches” of today and why she is one of them. Dayang struggles to think of an answer to the question, especially because the Wenches tell her that her answer is a “key” to unlock worlds and ask her to “make it as full a bigarurre as it can be” (224).