. . . Virginia Woolf’s famous dictum, in
her essay “Professions for Women” from the collection Women and Writing, that
writers must kill the Angel in the House. By the Angel, Woolf meant the female
— more specifically, the mother and wife — whose role in life was to be the
gracious hostess-cook-and-mender, smoother-over of family tensions, and
graceful supporter of the endeavors of husband and (male) children. Woolf had
to kill the Angel, she said, because its top priority is self-suppression and
conciliation, while to write one has to display “what you think to be the truth
about human relations, morality, sex.”
Stephanie
Doty
Women’s
Issues Matter
May
16, 2014
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