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Famous Colette Dowling Quotes

“My father came first," says a Missouri painter who consistently faces a work slump whenever she commits herself to submitting paintings for a show. "My mother was defined by him. If she behaved well he would love her, buy her presents, and take care of her - she was a queen. He did take care of her. She behaved, she ran the house. He bought her presents all the time." "Was she smart?" I asked. "I don't know," the woman replied. "I think she may have been, once. She stopped thinking." One reason Mother remains shadowy is that she was intimidated by the forceful, vivid personality of her husband. The peacemaker, a kind of half-person who chooses to tag along safely behind her husband, Mother is protected from the more abrasive aspects of life in the world. Huge fights, open power struggles - these were not characteristic of the girl's relationship with her elusive mother. (...) Mother was there (...). But she was also not there. (...) Father is active; Mother is passive. Father is able to rely on himself; Mother is helpless and dependent.”

WomenFeministMothersPatriarchyGender RolesMothers And DaughtersSocietal ConstructsCinderella ComplexEmotional DependenceFinancial Dependence
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
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“Because of the way society sets them up, women never again experience the need to develop independence - until some crisis in later life explodes their complacency, showing them how sadly helpless and undeveloped they've allowed themselves to be.”

WomenFeminismPatriarchyGender RolesSocietal ConstructsCinderella ComplexEmotional DependenceFinancial Dependence
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
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“Other victims of neurotic dependency are battered wives. The fact that they are so often financially dependent upon the men who beat them makes for a vicious kind of entrapment. It's emotional dependency, though that puts a double lock on the trap. "There's a kind of panic that many women have about being able to make it in any way other than being dependent on their husbands (...) They've been taught their whole lives that they can't. It's a conditioning process." In situations in which they have no effect on their environments, animals begin to give up. (...) the same thing happens to humans. Stay long enough in a situation in which you feel you have no control, and you will simply stop responding. It's called learned helplessness. (...) Having been "shaped" to believe there is nothing she can do about the situation, the battered wife goes on being battered.Only after she begins to disengage from her belief in her own helplessness can she break out of the vicious cycle of dependency and its brutal effect on her life.”

WomenFeminismPatriarchyGender RolesViolence Against WomenDomestic AbuseMale PrivilegeCinderella ComplexEmotional DependenceFemale SocializationFinancial Dependence
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
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