Reading Female Fury

Women's anger is condemned, denigrated, laughed at, punished. Yet, there it is, women are angry.

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -

In Corners - till a Day  ...  Emily Dickinson

Reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel, Lolly Willowes, by Sarah Waters:

Again looking forward to Virginia Woolf, the novel asserts the absolute necessity of "a room of one's own", and Laura gains a clear-sighted understanding of the combined financial and cultural interests that serve to keep women in domestic, dependent roles: "Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament . . . the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilisation" have robbed her of her freedom just as effectively as have her patronising London relatives. It is this analysis that informs her conversation with Satan near the end of the novel, in which she unfolds her memorable vision of women as sticks of dynamite, "long[ing] for the concussion that may justify them". If women, Townsend Warner implies, are denied access to power through legitimate means, they will turn instead to illegitimate methods – in this case to Satan himself, who pays them the compliment of pursuing them and then, having bagged them, performs the even more valuable service of leaving them alone.

Let us now take a deep breath in honor of Jamaica Kincaid, whose ouvre is a single, multiply modulated, expression of fury. This is a woman who is a willing slayer of daffodils.

Do not be shocked and outraged what women are thinking of doing to the unspeakable manwhore abcessing, stinking, rectum of the world.