.....Take, for example, the very usual reproach that women nowadays always want to "copy what men do." In that reproach there is a great deal of truth and a great deal of sheer, unmitigated and indeed quite wicked nonsense. There are a number of jobs and pleasures which men have in times past cornered for themselves. At one time, for instance, men had a monopoly on classical education. When the pioneers of university training for women demanded that women should be admitted to the universities, the cry went up at once: "Why should women want to know about Aristotle?" The answer is NOT that all women would be the better for knowing about Aristotle -- still less, as Lord Tennyson seemed to think, that they would be more companionable wives for their husbands if they did know about Aristotle -- but simply: "What women want as a class is irrelevant. I want to know about Aristotle. It is true that most women care nothing about him, and a great many male undergraduates turn pale and faint at the thought of him -- but I, eccentric individual that I am, do want to know about Aristotle, and I submit that there is nothing in my shape or bodily functions which need prevent my knowing about him." [pages 26- 27]
-- more from, Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote the excerpted essay in 1947
2 comments:
When compared with your other quote of Miss Sayers, this one is quite telling. The woman is God's creature just as the man is, and He does not want her "identity merged into" the man's, as though all she was meant for was to be an appendage. That this was a common way of thinking about women in the 1940s is abundantly clear; it's unfortunate that we are seeing such a backlash against female freedom today-- a concerted effort to return woman to such a sub-existence.
it's unfortunate that we are seeing such a backlash against female freedom today-- a concerted effort to return woman to such a sub-existence.
Yes, it's awful. What Sayers writes about wanting, like any human might, to know about Aristotle reminds me of something Maya Angelou says. What Angelou says is just incredible because - when she was just 8 years old - she was raped by someone just as misogynistic as Aristotle; she says: "One needs to know Aristotle.... One needs it desperately.... Must! I mean desperately... if one is to be at ease anywhere."
And when Sayers writes, "What women want as a class is irrelevant," that makes me remember how Nancy Mairs writes. She writes: "I am a writer. Without modification. [Not just a woman writer. Not a 'real' writer, as a critic said of her."
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