posted 11-23-2009 11:12 AM by
CastYouOut
Tillie Olsen
"Unclean; taboo. The Devil's Gateway. Three steps behind. Baby girls drowned. Buried alive with the lord, burned alive at the funeral pyre, burned as a witch on a stake. Stoned to death for adultery. Beaten, raped. Bartered. Bought and sold. Concubinage, prostitution, white slavery. The hunt, the sexual prey. Domestic confinement. Illiterate. Denied vision. Excluded from council, ritual activity, learning and language."
"'God is thy law, thou mine.' Isolated. Cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd; the private sphere. Bound feet: corseted, cosseted, bedecked; denied one's body. Powerless. Fear of rape and male strength. Fear of aging. Subject to. Fear of expressing capacities. Soft, attractive graces; the mirror to magnify man. Marriage as property arrangement."
"'Shut up! You're only a girl.' 'Why couldn't you have been born a boy?'
"A woman has to sacrifice all claims to femininity and family to be a writer."
"Woman can not create great music, art or poetry."
"'You must choose between your art and your fulfillment as a woman.'"
"'Woman, this is a man's realm. If you insist on invading it, unsex yourself - and expect the road to be made difficult.'"
"Perfection is terrible. It cannot have children."
AS-English makes me appreciate that we live in a 21st century.
xo
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