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About this quote

What does it mean?
Talented women of the past were likely driven to ruin by societal rejection and internal conflict.
In plain terms
A gifted girl writing poetry would be stopped by others and her own doubts, harming her health.
What can you take from it?
Society often destroys women's creative potential.

Where it applies

  • historical study
  • gender studies
  • creative struggles

Putting it to work

  • advocacy
  • support systems
  • creative freedom

Questions to consider

  • How does society treat talent?
  • What stops creativity in women?

Another view

Some women may have persisted despite these odds.

More from Virginia Woolf

  1. I would venture to guess than Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

    Permalink to quote #22
  2. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

    Permalink to quote #24
  3. Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible;…

    Permalink to quote #21

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