Today is another personal holiday for me: Virginia Woolf's birthday. I used to send out my holiday notes on this day, on cards with a quotation from Virginia Woolf, to honor the creative power of women. Now, years later, I no longer have any quotations in my memory.
What lingers on is the promise of going deeper into life, exploring the path of the individual. Certain women dared not only to do this but to tell us about it. So Virginia Woolf is what Mary Daly calls a "foremother."
Oh yes, then there's the "Angel of the House." This is the perfect Victorian wife, still subconsciously the prescribed role of woman - to be the ever nurturing one, taking care of the household, smoothing the way for the "real" creative work of the men of the house. Virginia Woolf warns us that to do our own real work, we must kill this Angel of the House.
Does that raise your eyebrows a bit? It does mine. Couldn't we reach a compromise? Isn't there a peaceful solution? Try it at your own risk.
Then there's A Room of One's Own. If you only read and reread one book by Virginia Woolf, this is the one. It's a way to shuck off the shame of being born female and begin to look at the road to creative freedom. What one begins to imagine - can come about.
1:19:22 PM 
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