A Quote for Women’s History Month
Today’s quote about women and history, in honor of Women’s History Month, is from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The protagonist, Catherine, is answering an inquiry from her friend Eleanor about the type of reading she enjoys:
I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?”
“Yes, I am fond of history.”
“I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.
Filed under: Holidays, Selves and Identities
[...] Women’s History Month is coming to a close, but I wanted to make sure I included the poem “Heroines” by poet and lesbian icon Adrienne Rich in my series of quotes about women and history. I am cutting here for purposes of length and copyright, but that is doing some injustice to Rich’s work. I urge you to find either of her works in which the poem appears, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far or The Fact of a Doorframe, and read the whole thing: Exceptional/even deviant/you draw your long skirts across the nineteenth century/Your mind burns long after death/not like the harbor beacon but like a pyre of driftwood/on the beach/You are spared illiteracy/death by pneumonia/teeth which leave the gums the seamstress’ clouded eyes/the mill-girl’s shortening breath by a collection/of circumstances/soon to be known as class privilege/The law says you can possess nothing/in a world where property is everything . . . . You draw your long skirts/deviant/across the nineteenth century registering injustice/failing to make it whole How can I fail to love/your clarity and fury how can I give you/all your due/take courage from your courage honor your exact/legacy as it is recognizing/as well/that it is not enough? Bookmark to: [...]