Important books

[pjthompson]

Here's a famous quote that, sadly, I think is still true:


"This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room."

—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Comments

[maggiemotley.livejournal.com]

It always makes me growl when critics slate Jane Austen because she focuses on the lives of women rather than on the war men were fighting at the time.

Grrrr.

[pjthompson]

Yet at the time she was writing, the things she wrote about were a life and death struggle for women, especially women of her class. If they didn't get married, they'd either starve or have to live out their life as a charity case in somebody else's household. There just weren't any other options.

But of course that's not important like war is. :-)

[pjthompson]

Oh--and here's another one that made my blood boil when I heard it. It was an after-opera show and a couple of old canards (male) were talking about how Puccini never attained the mastery of Verdi because Puccini's operas were "merely about the suffering of women."

I won't repeat the rude and rather pointed comment I said to the radio.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I agree - and not just regarding books. :(

[pjthompson]

Amen, Sister May.