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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“Finally, a woman who has experienced her own mother as a destructive force--however justified or unjustified the charge--may dread the possibility that in becoming a mother she too will become somehow destructive. The mother of the laboring woman is, in any case, for better or worse, living or dead, a powerful ghost in the birth-chamber.”

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Book:Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
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“Institutionalized motherhood demands of women maternal 'instinct' rather than intelligence, selflessness rather than self-realization, relation to others rather than the creation of self. Motherhood is 'sacred' so long as its offspring are 'legitimate' -- that is, as long as the child bears the name of a father who legally controls the mothe.r”

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Book:Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
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“If he is to know 'his' children, he must have control over their reproduction, which means he musut possess their mother exclusively...it cuts back to the male need to say: 'I, too, have the power of procreation--these are my seed, my own begotten children, my proof of elemental power.' In addition, of course, the children are the future receivers of the patrimony.”

FeminismMotherhoodPregnancyPatriarchy
Book:Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
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“We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.”

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Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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