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A Room of One's Own
poems showed traces of that disturbance. Here is Lady Winchilsea, for example, I thought, taking down her poems. She was born in the year 1661; she was noble both by birth and by marriage; she was childless; she wrote poetry, and one has only to open her poetry to find her bursting out in indignation against the position of women:
How are we fallen! fallen by mistaken rules,And Education's more than Nature's fools;Debarred from all improvements of the mind,And to be dull, expected and designed;And if someone would soar above the rest,With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed,So strong the opposing faction still appears,The hopes to thrive can ne'er outweigh the fears.
Clearly her mind has by no means "consumed all impediments and become incandescent". On the contrary, it is harassed and distracted with hates and grievances. The human race is split up for her into two parties. 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.
Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed,The fault can by no virtue be redeemed.
