I had cataract surgery this week, and am not yet up to spending a lot of time looking at a screen. I should be posting as usual within a few days.
Meanwhile, here’s an interesting quote from a mystery novel I’m rereading, Death at Whitechapel by Robin Paige. It refers to American-born Jennie Jerome (Lady Randolph) Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill, upon starting up her literary magazine, The Anglo Saxon Review. She had received submissions for the first issue from the likes of Henry James, Algernon Swinburne, and the Duke of Devonshire:
“One critic wrote that it was ‘presumptions’ to think that a mere woman could bear so significant an editorial burden. Another thought that while Lady Randolph was ‘splendidly fit’ to handle the editorial side of the review, her management skills would be proven sadly lacking. Jennie bridled at both these criticisms, but she did not take them personally. They were the sort of thing that small-minded men wrote about large-minded women.”
Reminds me somehow of “she was warned, she persisted.”
Women still have to prove their capacity and doggedness while men’s are assumed! How long? ‘Til women rule the world, perhaps?
Implicit bias tests re race have received a lot of press lately, at least in liberal circles. There is also implicit bias re gender. It will take a long time, but the only solution to that is to keep working at it.
Here’s to a speedy recovery!
Thanks. Believe it or not, I just this week got my new bifocals that work with my new implants to make everything clear and lovely.