A Quote by Anita Brookner
I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi.
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The way I was brought up ‘he needed killing’ is an airtight alibi.
I complacently accepted the social order in which I was brought up. I probably would have continued in my complacency if the happynecessity of self-support had not fallen to my lot; if self-support had not deepened and widened my contacts and my experience.
The ghetto was not only a place of refuge for a persecuted minority but a great experiment in peace, in self-discipline and in humanism. As such it still exists and refuses to give up in spite of all the brutality that surrounds it. I was brought up among those people.
If I had been brought up in America, I think I would still have had the same sort of job as a writer.
I think a fear of portraying something negatively ends up creating more stereotypes. Like a fear of going into these negative feelings that I have had and a lot of women that I've spoken to have had creates these sort of plasticky women.
I had several moms who knew and didn't bring gifts for the baby and instead brought me food, candles, journals - the women who were like, "Actually, I know this is a tough time for you, and it's much more important that I show up here instead of to the baby shower."
So much of the world is being brought up on these stories that Hollywood is coming up with and exporting all over. They have so much power and influence, so it's really important that they represent women properly.
Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I've eaten my share. That's lesson one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self.
Some people have an identity. I have an alibi. I have a shadow self.
We find the instinct to shut out competition deep-rooted even among banks and corporations, among corner grocers and haberdasheries, among peanut vendors and shoeshine boys-and even among young ladies in search of a husband.
Optimism has always seemed to me the cunning alibi of egoists, anxious to cover up their state of chronic self-satisfaction. They are optimists in order to avoid pitying other men and their misfortune. ~~ Yet pity is a vexed question.
All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections.
Saddest of all are the women who were brought up to believe that self-sacrifice is the highest female virtue. They made the sacrifice, often willingly, and they are still waiting for the blessing.
When my first husband died, what I tried to do is to sort of, you know, try to bring some rationale to the circumstance and think about worse circumstances, and also open the door to what other women experienced when all of a sudden they were left alone. And particularly if they had children.
There are many feminists who work in the media, and they think that feminism is very important. It is in their own lives, but mostly feminism has had an impact among privileged women in the advanced Western countries. For the most part, it hasn't begun to touch the lives of poor and working women in the Third World, and that distresses me.
People still think that a woman who doesn't have children or doesn't want children is really lacking in something. I've seen this over and over again in my life. I've had this thinking used against me repeatedly. I remember I had a therapist once, and I brought this up, and she said, "Well, I think women who don't have children feel very self-critical. They feel bad, so they think other people are critical in that way."
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