-The integrity of a writer – not the ethics of a narrative or its believability, but rather whether one will follow the writer anywhere, trust what is said, regardless of its place in the “real world.”
– Forward-thinking in terms of: (1) conceiving of women as an economic class throughout time – living in poverty; (2) chastity as a barrier to women writers, composers, actors. Pinpointed still-ongoing conversations regarding the low value given to topics of “women’s concerns” (domestic) vs. “men’s concerns” (war, conquest, adventure).
– The beginning of Beauvoir’s Second Sex picks up on the theme of the vast amounts written about women, sociologically speaking, by men. It would seem too much to add more, but there is actually a fundamental mystery because women haven’t written about themselves.
– Lady Murasaki – mentioned in a list of writers – how did she come to be exposed to the Western world? Emily Bronte should have written poetic plays.
– Shakespeare as the androgynous, incandescent mind, one which surpasses private complaints and is therefore only the work, the plays, which exist in full integrity, the man as author unapparent. Jane Austen similar, but not Charlotte Bronte – because you an hear her private bitterness breaking into the narrative of Jane Eyre. (Though I think those complaints are important, and should have been set down… But the point is that it’s better to be in a place where you can move past them.)