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Quote by Kate Zambreno

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Heroines

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Author

Kate Zambreno
Kate Zambreno

Kate Zambreno is an American writer born in 1977. Her works are known for their unique literary style and profound exploration of female experience. more

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“It's difficult not to read Vivien(ne) as this pathetic spectacle of illness and dependence. The ultimate grotesque of femininity, like Freud's hysteric/housewife (both Dora and her mother). But channeling her, imagining an interior life, I can sense her early inner spirit and see it squelched and doomed into sickness and submission. Under different circumstances and with more strength and less of a mother who crafted her as an invalid from childhood., she could have been an author. Maybe.”

FeminismMental HealthMental IllnessWomen Writers
Book:Heroines
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“The idea of women as a reserve army of labour is double-sided, in a sense. Women are a spare resource for employers in times of expansion; they are also a spare resource for politicians to call upon in times of recession. When it ceases to be convenient to spend money on public services, responsibility is handed back to those two euphemisms for unpaid female labour, 'the community' and 'the family.”

FeminismWomen S RightsWomen S Liberation
Book:Sweet Freedom: The Struggle for Women's Liberation
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“We are struggling to change the values and priorities of men alongside us, as well as the way they conduct themselves - in short, to change the world. All the while, we are fighting to assert our own interpretations of what we are doing and our own definitions of what we are, against the man-made versions, which tend to ridicule, belittle or ignore our efforts and achievements.”

FeminismWomen S RightsWomen S Liberation
Book:Sweet Freedom: The Struggle for Women's Liberation
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“Woman was an idol of belly-magic. She seemed to swell and give birth by her own law... Man honored but feared her. She was the black maw that had spat him forth and would devour him anew. Men, bonding together, invented culture as a defense against female nature... from this ... has come the spectacular glory of male civilization, which has lifted woman with it. The very language and logic modern woman uses to assail patriarchal culture were the invention of men. Hence, the sexes are caught in a comedy of historical indebtedness. Man, repelled by his debt to a physical mother, created an alternate reality, a heterocosm to give him the illusion of freedom. Woman, at first content to accept man's protections but now inflamed with desire for her own illusory freedom, invades man's systems and suppresses her indebtedness to him as she steals them.”

FeminismSocial CritiqueFeminism Criticism
Book:Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism
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