Women and Work...
I am doing some reading for an essay that I am writing on the Pre-Raphaelites (an art movement starting about 1848) for my Uni course. It has a lot about feminism starting up at that time, and I've just read a great quote from Barbara Leigh Smith who published Women and Work in 1857 (I'm assuming this is a book not a magazine, they don't really say).
"WORK - not drudgery, but WORK - is the great beautifier. Activity of the brain, heart and limb, gives health and beauty, and makes women fit to be the mothers of children. A listless, idle, empty-brained, empty-hearted, ugly woman has no right to bear children.
To think a woman is more feminine because she is frivolous, ignorant, weak, and sickly, is absurd; the larger-natured a woman is, the more decidedly feminine she will be; the stronger she is, the more strongly feminine. You do not call a lioness unfeminine, though she is different in size and strength from the domestic cat, or mouse."
I am picturing this strong woman, larger than life with legs like tree trunks berating the stick thin catwalk models of today... it's great.
I think I've said it before on LJ, but I am really loving reading history... and I plan to continue studying it even after the theory component of my course is complete.
"WORK - not drudgery, but WORK - is the great beautifier. Activity of the brain, heart and limb, gives health and beauty, and makes women fit to be the mothers of children. A listless, idle, empty-brained, empty-hearted, ugly woman has no right to bear children.
To think a woman is more feminine because she is frivolous, ignorant, weak, and sickly, is absurd; the larger-natured a woman is, the more decidedly feminine she will be; the stronger she is, the more strongly feminine. You do not call a lioness unfeminine, though she is different in size and strength from the domestic cat, or mouse."
I am picturing this strong woman, larger than life with legs like tree trunks berating the stick thin catwalk models of today... it's great.
I think I've said it before on LJ, but I am really loving reading history... and I plan to continue studying it even after the theory component of my course is complete.