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But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like; or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them; or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed togetehr and you want me to consider them in that light
- The beginning of the book.
- She addresses the question of asking her to speak about women and fiction and asks what it has to do wit a room of one's own. SHe say down on the banks of a river and wondered what it meant, thinking at first of Jane Austen and women fiction authors, but later, really digging deep
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I should never be able to come to a conclusion
This is when she is analyzing the meaning of women and fiction and thinks what they are like: such as women adn the fiction they write or the fiction written about them, but she will never know
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At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial--and any question about sex is that-- one cannot hope to tell the truth
This is when she addresses "women and fiction." After thinking about it, she says all she can do is offer an opinion: a woman must have a room of her own to write fiction. Because of this, the true nature will remain unsolved. She then offers to show them the conclusion she came to this conclusion
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One can only shwo how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
This is when she addresses "women and fiction." After thinking about it, she says all she can do is offer an opinion: a woman must have a room of her own to write fiction. Because of this, the true nature will remain unsolved. She then offers to show them the conclusion she came to this conclusion. However, she says that there is not much truth when a subject is controversial
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Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping
- She says that she'll speak her mind, but people won't regard it as all truth.
- She says that "I" is only a convenient term for smebody who has no real being. This is when she says fiction is likely to contain more truth than fact. She will tell her story, whether it be ficiton or fact
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Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Ston, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please--it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine OCtober weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground.
This is after she tells what she thinks about women and fiction. She tells them that she will tell them how she came to the conclusion. And, since fiction is sometimes more truthful than fiction, she will tell her story, regardless of whether people regard it as truthful. She is beginning her story with the setting. Her name she sets up as something.
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To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely as if he had never been.
This is after she tells what she thinks about women and fiction. She tells them that she will tell them how she came to the conclusion. And, since fiction is sometimes more truthful than fiction, she will tell her story, regardless of whether people regard it as truthful. She is beginning her story with the setting. Her name she sets up as something.
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There one might have sat the clock round lost in though. Thought--to call it by a prouder name than it deserved--had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until--you know the little tug-- the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?
This is after she tells what she thinks about women and fiction. She tells them that she will tell them how she came to the conclusion. And, since fiction is sometimes more truthful than fiction, she will tell her story, regardless of whether people regard it as truthful. She is beginning her story with the setting. Her name she sets up as something.
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Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say
This is after she tells what she thinks about women and fiction. She tells them that she will tell them how she came to the conclusion. And, since fiction is sometimes more truthful than fiction, she will tell her story, regardless of whether people regard it as truthful. She is beginning her story with the setting. Her name she sets up as something.
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Instict rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path.
This occurs in the context of when she is walking across a grass plot. But someone intercepts her and they express horror and indignation over seeing her there because she was a woman.
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Even the sorrow of Christianity sounded in that serene air more like the recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself; even the groanings of the ancient organ seemed lapped in peace.
This occurs after she is denied access to the library. She is angered and says that she will never ask for that hospitality again. She says if she had the right, she would not want to enter anyway.
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But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk. And to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past, before the war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these; but different.
This appears in the context when she says that novelists make believe that luncheons were good because of some talk. However, their food is not that extravagant. It sucks. She even talks about the pudding and how disgraceful it was. She also changes to watching a cat.
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Before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise, nor articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value of the words themselves.
This is when she is sitting down for lunch and she is telling the reader about the choice of food and how, in the girl school, the food sucks. She says how she listens not to the conversation, but to the murmur of things.
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In a sort of jealousy, I suppose, for our own age, silly and absurd though these comparisons are, I went on to wonder if honestly one could name two living poets now as great as Tennyson and Christina Rossetti were then.
This occurs after hte luncheon. She says they are waiting for dinner, but waiting isn't really necessary because that luncheon was filling. She continues to think about Tennyson's poems because "what poets they were" compare to our age. Modern poetry faces great difficulty that one cannot remember them
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Obviously it is impossible, I thought, looking into those foaming waters, to conpare them. the very reason why the poetry excites one to such abandonmnet, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now.
This occurs after hte luncheon. She says they are waiting for dinner, but waiting isn't really necessary because that luncheon was filling. She continues to think about Tennyson's poems because "what poets they were" compare to our age. Modern poetry faces great difficulty that one cannot remember them
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But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not recognize it in hte first place; often for some reason one fears it; one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew
This occurs after hte luncheon. She says they are waiting for dinner, but waiting isn't really necessary because that luncheon was filling. She continues to think about Tennyson's poems because "what poets they were" compare to our age. Modern poetry faces great difficulty that one cannot remember them
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Hence the difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of htis difficulty tha tone cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet. For this reason--that my memory failed me--the argument flagged for want of material. But why, I continued, moving on towards Headingley, have we stopped humming under our breath at luncheon parties?
This occurs after hte luncheon. She says they are waiting for dinner, but waiting isn't really necessary because that luncheon was filling. She continues to think about Tennyson's poems because "what poets they were" compare to our age. Modern poetry faces great difficulty that one cannot remember them
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Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men adn women show so plain in each other's eyes that romance was killed? Certainly it was a shock (to women in particular with their illusions about education, and so on) to see the faces of our rulers in the light of the shell-fire.
This appears in the context when she talks about poetry and how the past is better than the present. It was more poetic and better
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So ugly they looked--German, English, French--so stupid. But lay the blame where one will, on whom one will, the illusion which inspired Tennyson and Christina Rossetti to sing so passionately about the coming of their loves is far rarer now than then. One has only to read, to look, to listen, to remember.
This is when she talks about poetry of hte past and how the past poets were so much greater than the living poets. The living poets express a feeling that is torn out of them, making modern poetry
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But why say "blame"? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place? For truth..those dots mark the spot where, in search of truth, I missed hte turning up to Fernham.
This is when she talks about poetry of hte past and how the past poets were so much greater than the living poets. The living poets express a feeling that is torn out of them, making modern poetry
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Yes indeed, which was truth and which was illusion, I asked myself.
This is when she talks about poetry of hte past and how the past poets were so much greater than the living poets. The living poets express a feeling that is torn out of them, making modern poetry
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Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction--so we are told.
She considers the question of why modern poetry deteriorated and doesn't match up to past poetry. She asks if they should blame it on the war or something else
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It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason teh beauty fo the world revealed and yet soon to perish, the beauty fo the world whish is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
After comparing poetry, she goes back to her topic and describing her day, saying fiction must stick to facts adn the truer the facts the better the fiction
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We were all being shot backwards and forwards on this plain foudnation to make some pattern.
She is in the British Museum and describing the dismal streets int eh neighborhood of the Museum. This appears in the context of the London imagery as a factory
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Thus provided, thus confident and enquiring, I set out in the pursuit of truth
This is in ch 2, after her luncheon adn her sequal to the British Museum to research answers for Women and Fiction. This appears with the London as a factory imagery
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But, I continued, leaning back in my chair and looking at the vast dome in which I was a single but by now somewat harassed thought, what is so unfortunate is that wise men never think the same thing about women.
She is at the British Museum. She describes a student who is grunting of satisfaction of his work. She asks why are women ppor and writes Women adn Povertyt. Samuel Butler says, Wise men never say what they think about women
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Goethe honoured them; Musssolini despise them.
The chapter in the British Museum. She goes from women and fiction to women and povery and relates a quote that wise men never think the same thing about women. She talks about hte different views of women, sucha s half divine, shallow in the brain, etc.
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Drawing pictures was an idle way of finishing an unprofitable morning's work. Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top
This appears in Ch 2. After talking about the different viewpoints of women, she creates a characer, Professor von X, who is better and scrutinizes women. He was ugly. He was bitter; she says its prob cause his wife left him
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Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt.
Professor von X context who was angry adn she said it could be his wfe. He made jabs at his paper as if killing an insect
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They had been written ini the red light of emotion and not in the white light of truth
This appears after Professor von X whcih she angrily creates. She gets angry after reading something in a book about the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. She says its not inferiority. It is human nature. She draws cartwheels over the professor. She says anger changes writing because it incorporates emotions
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The most transient visitior to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy
At this point, she asks why are the professors angry (in the books she borrowed) and strolls off to et llunch. She begins to read the news and ponder about anger and writing. She says that a reader can become angry by reading somethign angry
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Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of maan at twice its natural size
This appears when she discusses anger in writing adn how professors in book emphasize inferiority in woemn. She then defends women by saying life for BOTH sexxes is hard. It's not about inferiority; its about superiority
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The looking glass vision is of supreme importance because it charges the vitality; it stimulates the nervous system. Take it away and man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of his cocaine
This is when she talks about the inferiority complex of men. They need women to be superior or at least feel superior. However, it you take women away, they are nothing; they shrink
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I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.
this is when she speaks of her legacy and how she has money. Money > the vote. Because with money she has more freedom. And the difficulty of living is lessened. Whenever she spends money, fear and bitterness goes. She is set
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They are driven by instincts which are not within their control
This is after she speaks about her inheritance and how she now has a new attitude of the other sex. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. She sayys. She kind of places both male and female on equal levels in terms of money , power, education, etc.
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But what I find deplorable, I continued, looking about the bookshelves again, is that nothing is known about women before the 18th century
- Ch 3
- she looks in history at the views of women and how they were portrayed. She then talks about what one must do to bring their woman in the works to life. Women in history did not impact historian's view of past. they exclude what peopel want: her age, etc. Women are often portrrayed shortly in man's life, but that's it
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I think, who declared that it was impossible for qany woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare.
This occurs in the context right before she creates Shakespeare's sister, Judith. She says that, what if a woman had the exact same talent as Shakespeare? What would happen to her
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How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare.
This occurs in the context right before she creates Shakespeare's sister, Judith. She says that, what if a woman had the exact same talent as Shakespeare? What would happen to her
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...any woman born with a great gift in the 16th century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at...
after Shakespeare's sister, Judith's, story
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(the chief glory of a woman is not be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked of man),...the desire to be veiled still possesses them
- after Shakespeare's sister, Judith's, story
- She begins to wonder what would have happened had she lived a free life adn survived. She would have been unnoticed. Men made the notion that publicity in women is detestable
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"the esentials of a woman's being," said Mr. Greg emphatically, "are that they are supported by, and they minister to, men"--there was an enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect that nothing could be expectied of women intellectualyl
This appears after she begins to consider a woman's room of her own--a quiet room. Her pin money waws enough to keep her clothed. She would be sheltereed from tyrannies. The word would not question her writing.
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any girl could read them for herself; and the reading, even in the 19th century, must have lowered her vitality, adn told profoundly upon her work. There would always have been that assertion--you cannot do this, you are incapable of doing that--to protest against, to overcome.
- This appears after she begins to consider a woman's room of her own--a quiet room. Her pin money waws enough to keep her clothed. She would be sheltereed from tyrannies. The world would not question her writing.
- This is after she considers a man who doesnt want his daughter to leave home
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Death would be better
She talks about Aphra Behn's life and how she had to work on equal terms with the men. She says girls could tell their parents that they want to be writers, but they would slam the door because death would be bettet
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"then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; mor eo fintercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character than was here within my reach
This is where she says that Jane Austen writes good books. She had less distractions and wrote novels. She says this because she thinks aboiut if women wrote, she'd have to be in a common sitting room instead of in her own
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I valued what was good iin Mrs. Fairfax and what was good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other and mroe vivid kinds of goodness and what I believed in I wished to behold
This is where she says that Jane Austen writes good books. She had less distractions and wrote novels. She says this because she thinks aboiut if women wrote, she'd have to be in a common sitting room instead of in her own
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I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature: it agitated me to pain sometimes
This is when she speaks about Austen, Bronte, adn how woman writers used to have to write n common dining rooms if they wanted to write. She then says that she wanted to behold more knowledge. She then goes on to say that human beings need action
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how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields
Thsi appears when she considers what would hvae happened to Charlotte Bronte if she received three hundred ayaer instead of 1500. She says that she put her own defects on her sex. These books, such as Emma, were written by women with mroe experience on life htan any man
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What one means by integgrity, in the case of the novelist, is teh conviction that he gives one that this is the truth
This apperas in the area where she considers the novel a looking glass into life. For the novel, life conflicts with something that is not life. We judge books as if its real life. What holds books together is their instances of survival (integrity). The novelist can convince people that others behave that way
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They have based it on the sentence that was current at the time
Thsis is when she mentions women and criticism and how they had to stay strong. She says only Em Bronte and Austen did it. They were deaf to it. They had no tradition behind them. She didn't know how to begin. So used a sentence that was current
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jane Austen looked at it and laughed at it and devised a perfectly natural, shapely sentence proper for her own use and never departed from it.
This is when she speaks of women adn criticism and how they didn't know where to begin. So, they used the current sentence which was a man's sentence and not good for a woman. Because Austen laughed it, she created her own and got more said--more freedom
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I will only pause here one moment to draw your attention to the great part whcich must be played in that future so far as women are concerned by physical conditiosn. The book has somehow to be adapted to the body, and at a venture one would say that womn's books should be shroter, more concentrated, than those of men, and framed so that they do not need long hours of steady and uninterrupted work
- This is when she speaks of women adn criticism and how they didn't know where to begin. So, they used the current sentence which was a man's sentence and not good for a woman. Because Austen laughed it, she created her own and got more said--more freedom.
- She ends the chapter back at inaterruptions nand how they will always be present and men willl always seem different than women
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For interruptiosn there will always be. Augain, the nerves that feed the brain would seem to differ in men and women, and if you are going to make them work their best and hardest, you must find out what treatment suits them
- This is when she speaks of women adn criticism and how they didn't know where to begin. So, they used the current sentence which was a man's sentence and not good for a woman. Because Austen laughed it, she created her own and got more said--more freedom.
- She ends the chapter back at inaterruptions nand how they will always be present and men willl always seem different than women
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irst she broke the sentence; now she has broken the sequence. Very well, she has every right to do both thse things if she does them not for hte sake of breaking, but for hte sake of creating
She is speaking of Mary Carmichael and how she analyzes her work. She says that something isn't in order with the sentences. She was unhanding ehrselfShe has numerous facts adn manages to fit them all in one book. Not only that, but her book is about women liking women
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Married against their will, kept in one room, and to one occupation, how could a dramatist give a full or interesting or truthful account of them? Love was the only possible interpreter
She is talking about Mary Carmichael and how women like women. She supposes if men were represented as lovers of women but not friends, soldiers, etc. She says lit will be impoverished. The poet has to be bitter or passionate
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For if Chloe likes Olivia and Mary Chaarmichael knows how to express it she will light a torch in that vast chamber where nobody has yet been.
She analyzes Carmichael's works and realizes that something is different. She has two females liking each other and is destroyign the old order nad creating a new one
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But this creative power differs greatly from the creative power of men
She says that feminity is everywhere and it runs rampant. But, women have been indoors and when they let their creativeness run through, it is overcharged. She says that it would be sad if women wrote like men or lived or looked. They have too much likeness already
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And one must conclude that it would be a thousand pities if it were hindered or wasted, for it was won by centuries of the most drastic discipline, and there is nothing to take its place
She says that feminity is everywhere and it runs rampant. But, women have been indoors and when they let their creativeness run through, it is overcharged. She says that it would be sad if women wrote like men or lived or looked. They have too much likeness already
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It will be a curious sight, when it comes, to see these women as they are, but we must wait a little, for Mary Carmichael will still be encumbered with that self-consciousness in the presence of "sin" which is the legacy of our sexual barbarity. She will still wear the shoddy old fetters of class on her feet
This is when she analyzes women in the context of man. They should in no way be like man. They have so many similarities already. Education does othing but separate
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Perhaps she had done this unconsciously, merely giving things their natural order, as a woman would, if she wrote like a woman
This is after she analyzes woman in the context of man after noticing Mary Carmichael breaks the regualr order of things (sentences).
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Clearly the mind is always alternating its focus, and bringing the world into differnet perspectives
She talks about hte mind being a mysterious organ adn thinks about the meaning of "the unity of hte mind" Sehs ays the mind can think will peole or separate itself. However, some mindstates are less comfortable than others. They begin to repress some things She talks about hte union of man and woman into one
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The obvious reason would be taht it is natural for the sexes to cooperate
She talks about hte mind being a mysterious organ adn thinks about the meaning of "the unity of hte mind" Sehs ays the mind can think will peole or separate itself. However, some mindstates are less comfortable than others. They begin to repress some things She talks about hte union of man and woman into one
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But the sight of hte two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes int eh mind correspoonding to the two sexes in the body and whether they also requre to be united in order to get complete satisfaction adn happiness
- At this point, she creates the mind as two powers in one: male and female
- in the male's brain, the man dominates; in the woman's, the woman.
- She says that man and woman have androygenous brains
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It is when this fusion takes place hta tthe mind is fully fertilised and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any ore than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought
- At this point, she creates the mind as two powers in one: male and female
- in the male's brain, the man dominates; in the woman's, the woman.
- She says that man and woman have androygenous brains
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Here I came to the books by living writers, adn tehre paused and wondered if this fact were not at hte root of something that had long puzzled me. No age can ever have been as stridently sex-conscious as our own; those innumeorable books by mena bout women int he British Musuem are proof of it. The Suffrage campaign was no doubt to blame
- The idea of androygynous minds and Coleridge' sidea about it.
- Shakespeare's mind was androygynous, (man-womanly)
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It must have roused in men an extraordinary desire for self-assertion; it must have made them lay an emphasis upon their own sex and its characteristics which they would not have troubled to think about had they not been challenged
- The idea of androygynous minds and Coleridge' sidea about it.
- Shakespeare's mind was androygynous, (man-womanly)
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And when one is challenged, even by a few women in black bonnets, one retaliates, if one has never been challenged before, rather excessively. That perhaps accounts for some of the characteristics that I remember to have found here, I thoguht,...
- The idea of androygynous minds and Coleridge' sidea about it.
- Shakespeare's mind was androygynous, (man-womanly)
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It was so direct, so straightforoward after the writing of women. It indicated such freedom of mind, such liberty of person, such confidence in himself. One had a sense of physical welleing in the presence of htis well nourished, well educated, free mind, which had never been thwarted or opposed, but had had full liberty fro birth to stretch itself in whatever way it liked
- The idea of androygynous minds and Coleridge' sidea about it.
- Shakespeare's mind was androygynous, (man-womanly)
- She takes a novel by Mr. A, which she is content to read after a woman's writing
- She then ponders on the letter "I". She said it dominates and she was looking for something other than I
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Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedon
Nearing the end of the book where she, as Mary Beton, finishes her theory of how she reached the conclusion that it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room to their own. She saids the sides are petty and people mature and don't believe in sides anymore. She talks about merit in writing. She emphasizes the freedom of writing
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Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaes. Women, then have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That si why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own
Nearing the end of the book where she, as Mary Beton, finishes her theory of how she reached the conclusion that it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room to their own. She saids the sides are petty and people mature and don't believe in sides anymore. She talks about merit in writing. She emphasizes the freedom of writing
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Men are the "opposing faction"; men are hated and feared, because they have the power to bar her way to what she wants to do--which is to write
This is after she talks about Shakespeare's mind and says that one wouldn't find a woman in that state of mind because life is made up of two factions. Men are the opposing one.
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If one is a man, still the woman part of his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her.
Idea of androgynous minds; after the taxi cab
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Moreover in a hudnred yearas, I though reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them.
The end of Chapter Two where she says it would be foolish to ask someone to provide her with answers about women because these views in a century would have changed completely.
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