We were soundly taught and the curriculum carried no hint that we were young women and not young men. We were not corrupted by hom...e economics or dressmaking or cookery or any such soft substitute for hard thinking. We were compelled to take sciences whether we liked them or not, and mathematics and Latin were emphasized and excellently administered. Each year the student body petitioned for a course in home economics, for in that day no girl thought it possible that she might not marry, and each year the faculty sternly refused to yield to the request.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal "the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of t...hose candidates [for the ministry]." He said he didn't know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate's coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't think the question needs to be genderized. It would feel great to anyone. But whether you're a girl or a boy or a Martian,... you still have to go out and prove yourself again every day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see a girl dragged by the wrists Across a dazzling field of snow,... And there is nothing in me that resists. Once it would not be so....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am so tired of taking to others translating my life for the deaf, the blind,... the "I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges to live it" white women the "I want to live my white life with Third World women's style and keep my skin class privileges" dykesLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The restlessness that comes upon girls upon summer evenings results in lasting trouble unless it is speedily controlled. The right... kind of man does not look for a wife on the streets, and the right kind of girl waits till the man comes to her home for her.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The vines of her arms didn't cling to the ends of his clothes,... or did she plant herself in the doorway, hurl herself at his feet, or utter the word "Stay!" But as that fool began to go at the time when it was dark with swarming clouds, the slim girl blocked her lover's way with only a rising river made with her flood of tears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You haven't weighed the consequences for your love,... nor have you any regard for your friends. Why are you making such a jealous fuss now, prude, when it's too late? With your own hands You've brought down upon yourself these coals, their blazing points of flame as bright as Doomsday Fire. So enough now of your crying in the wilderness. You've erased the tracery on your cheek by covering it with your palm. Your sighs have kissed away the juice of your lower lip, tasty as nectar and at every instant, the tear that's stuck in your throat is making your sloping breasts tremble. Unkind girl, anger has become your lover, not I.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she be...came a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll. Had I married at twenty-one, I would have been either a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years. Think of it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »