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In Praise of Difficult Women

It’s the final week of my program at Evergreen. We’re doing our project presentations. One young woman in my class, Jessica Nash, spent the quarter researching “The Evolving Female Voice.” She shared some wonderful quotes that I want to post.

From In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
“I think quite frankly, that the world simply does not care for the complicated girls, the ones who seem too dark, too deep, too vibrant, too opinionated, the ones who seem so intriguing that new men fall in love with them everyday.”

“For a woman, it is never enough to be just an artist, just a talent: our art is our life, carrying on with charisma, is all that counts. I don’t mean that a woman has to be a great beauty to matter – Janis Joplin was far from anything of the sort, but she had great possession, great élan, she wore lame and feathers and wiggled a lot.”

From The Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia
“The very language and logic modern woman uses to assail patriarchal culture were the inventions of men.”

From In a Different Voice by Carol Gillagan
“The failure of women to fit existing models of human growth may point to a problem in the representation, a limitation in the conception of human condition, an omission of certain truths about life.”

From Wild, Succulent Women by Sark
“I write all my books lying down in pajamas and measure time by cups of tea.”

From Carolyn See
“Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version.”

From Virginia Woolf
“It is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex… yet it is the masculine values that prevail.”

Hmmm, I didn’t realize there were so many quotes. I had circled most of the quotes she gave us! Oh well. Maybe some blogger will find something interesting in the above modge podge. I loved them all.

posted by Scribbler @ Wednesday, June 02, 2004