Women in Dark Times

Patriarchy has been very efficient in countering the noise of feminism with epithets – ‘shrill’, ‘hysterical’ – intended to send women’s voices scurrying back, abject, underground

whom she will take to task in the course of her life.

‘Something is moving inside me and wants to come out . . . In my “soul” a totally new, original form is ripening that ignores all rules and conventions.

wanted to act not herself, but – like and unlike – beyond herself

to become somebody else

suffering is not a failure, but the springboard for, a way of loosening, something else

In fact the discipline and the inner torment are the reverse sides of the same coin.

She is referring to one of a number of childhood figures who made her deeply ashamed of herself