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Quote by Sofia Kovalevskaya

“She stood, holding the railing, white as a sheet, with eyes wide open and that uncomprehending, almost ecstatic expression you encounter on the faces of martyrs.”

Quote by Sofia Kovalevskaya

Book:Nihilist Girl
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Nihilist Girl

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Author

Sofia Kovalevskaya
Sofia Kovalevskaya

Russian mathematician known for her significant contributions to the field of mathematics. Sofia Kovalevskaya is considered one of the most outstanding female mathematicians of the 19th century, with her research in partial differential equations, differential geometry, and mechanics being pioneering. more

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“So many things can balk a woman from bearing (including a man who wields a powderless gun. Though I must say that in my whole life I’ve never heard a single husband take the blame for a barren house, not even when put to the proof with three childless wives in a row).”

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Book:The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: The Continuing Adventures of Judith Shakespeare
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“What if the work resisted restraint because it was not meant to be restrained? What if she had very nearly everything she needed for the book to take shape, except for the courage to let it find its own shape? She stopped wrestling with the work so she could dance with it instead. I watched the wheels turn right in front of me, and I saw in Austin a mind simultaneously at work and play. I saw a writer doing their job and a woman remembering who the hell she was and what she wanted.”

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Book:Full of Myself: Black Womanhood and the Journey to Self-possession
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“I knew that if I wrote what I wanted to write, it would be the end of our next flm with Channel 4. But I found it impossible to keep quiet. ‘The Great Indian Rape- Trick’, Parts I and II, were published in Sunday . The second essay ended with these words: Bandit Queen the flm seriously jeopardizes Phoolan Devi’s life. It passes judgments that ought to be passed in Courts of Law. Not in Cinema Halls. The threads that connect Truth to Half- Truths to Lies could very quickly tighten into a noose around Phoolan Devi’s neck. Or put a bullet through her head. Or a knife in her back. While We- the- Audience peep saucer- eyed out of our little lives. Not remotely aware of the fact that our superf-cial sympathy, our ignorance of the facts and our intellectual sloth could grease her way to the gallows. We makes me sick. With that, obviously, I made myself a whole lot of enemies. Phoolan Devi went to court to try to stop the film.”

FeminismVoyeurism
Book:Mother Mary Comes to Me
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“The ‘Rape- Trick’ essays did indeed mark the end of Pradip’s and my relationship with our commissioning editor at Channel 4. He reacted like a master whose servant had suddenly jumped up and bitten him. (Which, in a way, was true.) He denounced me publicly with a barrage of invective that made me laugh. He said I wrote like an ‘incontinent drunk trying to piss in a small pot ’. It didn’t strike him that it wasn’t a problem that women tend to have, even if they’re drunk. I had to submit the script he had commissioned me to write or return the advance I had been paid. I wrote it up as a comedy based on the Bandit Queen debate. I wish I still had a copy. One of the characters was an ex- nun who wore a polka- dot habit and ran a sewing centre for raped Christian women. She was the prototype for the character who would come to be called Baby Kochamma in The God of Small Things. I myself appeared in the script as a bitter, twisted feminist of the kind my ex- friend the commissioning editor had made me out to be. He was in it, too, as part of the Holy Feminist Trinity, who were all men. There was also a minor character who had reveries of a motorcyclist who did a circus act inside her spit- bubble.”

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Book:Mother Mary Comes to Me
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“...щойно хвороба читання вражає організм, вона ослаблює його так, що він стає легкою здобиччю іншого лиха, яке зачаїлося в чорнильниці та роз'їдає перо. Нещасний береться писати. *** - О Господи! - знову вигукнула вога на завершення своїх міркувань, - то що ж мені, зважати на думку протилежної статі, хоч би якою жахливою вона здавалася? *** Вона пригадала, як у подобі молодого чоловіка вимагала, щоб жінки були слухняні, цнотливі, з приємним запахом, у вишуканому вбранні. "Тепер мені доведеться самій заплатити таку ціну, - міркувала вона, - бо за своєю натурою жінки (з огляду на мій невеличкий досвід перебування в їхній статі) зовсім не є слухняними, цнотливими, пахучими й гарно вбраними. І яка дисципліна потрібна для виховання цих чеснот, без яких вони не зможуть насолоджуватися жодними принадами життя! *** І я ніколи не зможу влупити чоловіку по голові чи сказати просто у вічі, що він бреше, або вихоипити меча і проштрикнути його, або засідати серед рівних, носити герцогську корону, виступати під час процесу, винести комусь смертельий вирок, повести за собою армію, прогарцювати Вайтголлом на коні чи начепити на груди сімдесят дві медалі. Все, що я зможу, щойно ступлю на англійську землю, - розливати чай і запитувати в моїх лордів, який саме вони люблять. *** ... забороняти жінкам навчатися, щоб вони не могли посміятися з тебе; бути рабом якогось дівчиська у спідницях і походжати так, ніби ти володар світу... Боже, якиї дуреп вони з нас роблять і які ж ми насправді дурні! *** Те, що тиша глибшає після шуму, потребує наукового доведення. Але те, що самотність стає більш очевидною відразу потому, як вас любили, підтвердить багато жінок. *** Вона почала трішки більше сумніватися в своєму розумі, як і належить жінці, й трішки більше почала пишатися своєю зовнішністю, як це властіве жінкам. *** У чоловіка рука вільна, щоб він міг будь-якої миті вихопити меч, а жінка змушена притримувати рукою атлас сукні на плечі. Чоловік дивиться у світ прямо, ніби той викроєний для його потреб і пошитий відповідно до його вподобань. Жінка кидає обережний спідлоба, делікатно і ніби з підозрою. Якби вони носили те саме вбрання, можливо, й погляд у них був би однаковий. *** Кожна людина переживає коливання від однієї статі до іншої, і часто лише одяг стоїть на сторожі чоловічої або жіночої подоби, тим часом як під ним ховається зовсім інша стать, невидима ззовні. *** ...ілюзії розбиваються від зіткнення з реальністю, тож там, де панує ілюзія, немає місця справжньому щастю, справжній дотепності чи справжній глибині.”

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“There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilization.”

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“The dilemmas Friedan described were fundamentally “problems of privilege.” And those afflicted were generally quite keen to keep their privilege: Despite railing against suburban life, the women who sympathized with Friedan’s critique were generally disinterested in living in the kinds of households or communities these “other” women lived in (nor in having “others” move into their own neighborhoods). Nor did they have any interest in taking on the kinds of jobs these “other” women worked in. They wanted well-compensated and socially respected professional jobs, befitting their social status. And they ultimately achieved that goal by offloading unwanted domestic responsibilities onto other women—lower-income women, typically immigrants and women of color. Nonetheless, elite women sought to conflate their own interests with the interests of “women” writ large. The campaign to enhance the position of upper-middle-class women was (and continues to be) carried out in the name of feminism per se.”

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Book:We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
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