Feminism

This is from a while ago, never posted it

I've finally finished reading A Room of One's Own (Virginia Woolf).

Some passages were particularly striking. (Since when do I sound like a brit???)

If Virginia Woolf were still alive, I'd be in love with her I think. I mean this in an entirely platonic sense, obviously. A Room of One's Own didn't offer any new information, but confirmed some of my deepest beliefs, or rather misgivings, about people and the way we work.

"Life for both sexes...is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By feeling that one has some innate superiority - it may be wealth, or rank, a straight...for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination - over other people."

• My favorite example of imagined superiority and pompous self-confidence is that that occurs in postings, after a not normally diligent student has studied the requisite, and come forth, shining and superior in their armor of knowledge. I have not yet heard a more comical tone of voice than the lofty for-once-in-my-life-i-know-it-all-and-am-master-of-the-universe tone in which they address all us lesser mortals. I of course know this tone quite well because I'm quite liberal in my use of it ;).
  
• Errare humanum est
  

"So tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts"

• Recognize this person? I certainly do. Couldn't have worded it better myself.

"...the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent....there must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed."

• What I wouldn't give for an incandescent mind. If I consumed obstacles and foreign matter like I have been mangoes, I'd be unstoppable.

"How are we fallen!Fallen by mistaken rules,/And Education's more than Nature's fools;/Debarred from all improvements of the mind,/And to be dull, expected and designed;/And if some one would soar above the rest,With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed,/So strong the opposing faction still appears,/The hope to thrive can ne'er outweigh the fears."Lady Winchilsea (1661)

• Lucky for me, the sentiments expressed in this poem have not been particularly relevant. As a child I was actually been debarred from anything that sickens the mind, which of course is the opposite end of the spectrum. Yes, barbies may promote a negative body image and are anatomically inaccurate, but hey, when you're 5, does it really make a difference? And if you're still playing with barbies beyond that age...well, get a grip.
• Of late though i.e. India, I've been introduced to this attitude, which I did note even know existed. Not in areas of academic achievement, but personality development outside academics. This poem would just about do it for anyone who lives in contention with their society.

"It was a thousand pities that the woman who could write like that, whose mind was turned to nature and reflection, should have been forced to anger and bitterness."

• Positive mental imaging people
• But again, like I mentioned before, its a war of attrition. Anger and bitterness sometimes just take over.