Here is an example of how men and women write differently: two novels, both great works of literature in their own way, concerned, at least in part, with the same event, written forty years apart–Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. The Battle of Gettysburg forms almost the entirety of Shaara’s narrative; he covers the tactics, the strategy, the close combat, in depth. The focus is on masculine values: bravery under fire, personal honor, patriotism, comradery with one’s fellow soldiers, the duty a commander owes to his troops. If there is a female character in the book, I am not aware of it, save for (absent) wives and sweethearts. Gone With The Wind, by contrast, relegates Gettysburg to a paragraph. Nothing is the battle is reported, because the point of view is that of a young woman far from the front lines in Atlanta. Only the aftermath is shown. The values emphasized in that book are feminine: personal safety, rearing of children, romance and the finding of suitable domestic partners, continuity of the family, creating a pleasant and homey atmosphere, fashion, where one ranks in the social hierarchy. The male characters, with the exception of Gerald O’Hara, are largely ciphers to the female protagonist.
These books have very different agendas and very different attitudes on virtually every subject, yet neither is somehow “inferior” because of it. Both sides of the equation are necessary: without Joshua Chamberlain holding Little Round Top, then a freer, more equal nation may never come into being, and without Scarlett O’Hara shooting a Yankee looter stone dead in her entry hall, no woman would be safe to raise the next generation of Americans in peace. Chamberlain’s patriotism is the grand, abstract patriotism of the nation-state, while O’Hara’s patriotism is the small, humble patriotism of the hearth and home, yet both are necessary if a nation is to thrive. And art, all art, is impoverished whenever a point of view is silenced, whether out of some masculine chauvinism or out of a misguided “feminism” that, ironically, prioritizes “modern” pseudo-masculinity over traditional femininity.
Very well written, if i might say so. Perhaps more so than the article itself, which, whilst as a whole made some important points (and which prompted your contribution), at times seemed to lose itself in a series of literary names and references, as if seeking to cover every major female contributor in addition to some male writers. The spirit of inclusivity, perhaps.
Excellent comment.
And what you realise is that the patriotism of the nation can be churned into patriotism of the hearth, but the other way round is not so simple or a given.
HaHa so I think you are saying that the ‘male’ form of patriotism is thus “better” since it can be churned into patriotism of the hearth… how silly! No! You have missed the point of Margaret Drabble’s article I think… male and female are yin and yang and make a whole, the whole of the human experience, and so the ‘patriotism’ of the hearth is just as vital in its own way as the patriotism of the nation…. but maybe I’ve misunderstood you?
I don’t disagree that men and women complement each other.
But I would still say, someone willing to charge cannons and risk certain mutilation or death, all for the sake of country and his fellow soldiers, would also be happy to change nappies and cook food for his child.
The other way round, is rather more difficult, as the rather small number of women paying alimony, or demanding to be drafted in Ukraine, point out rather clearly.
That being said, taking care of the home and hearth is as critical as fighting for country, and I would suggest women are definitely better at the former. When I take my daughter to the doctor, female GPs are way better at dealing with her than male GPs.
The real problem is that the former role has been denigrated and treated as worthless, largely by modern women.
“Creating a pleasant and homey atmosphere” where the Blacks worked her land.
Tony Reardon
7 months ago
I am an inveterate reader and, now that I am retired, am able to indulge my habit. I have moved to an e-reader to save my marriage by stopping filling the house with books. This makes it very easy to get new books and I am tempted every day with offers from Amazon, BookBub, Penguin, etc. Being the male philistine that I am, I have adopted a filtering process whereby I skip over female authors unless I either know them already or their topic particularly appeals. This really does save a lot of time because it seems to me that the publishing industry is now vastly skewed female e.g. today’s Amazon offer 1 male author, 7 female.
My niece was visiting (very progressive and ‘woke’) and I told her this. She was horrified and expressed her disapproval. I asked her what male authors she had read in the last six months and she admitted that they were all female. So I continue to read history or popular science or detective fiction by males while she continues with Jane Austen. Each to his own.
I must admit I have been doing the same thing. It has meant I basically avoid fiction published in the past two decades and most new non-fiction books that aren’t history or philosophy. Men with a similar ‘lived experience’ to me i.e. white ‘cis’ straight and English have essentially vanished from publishing. At least I can still bear Barbara Tuchman.
I was brought up on Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton, but the current list of titles on a Waterstones store front does seem to agree with you, it just seems like the quality and content of writing has deteriorated, become more consumed by angst and regret.
Whinging about someone whinging too much is also whinging, agreed.
But I do feel a typical man like myself is able to deal with 80%female teachers or GPs writers with a lot more stoicism than certain women, who apparently feel oppressed EVEN when faced with situations where they are treated favourably, it seems.
Totally agree about skewed reviewing in papers. It’s yet another dreary, predictable exercise in box-ticking, all about ‘my experience of being a (usually black woman but LGBTREFUGEES also prominent) all screaming about underrepresentation no less.
I’m a ‘G’ in fact but long since stopped reading based on identity as it’s obviously no guarantee of quality or even interest. Nowadays it usually makes me less likely to read it.
A little bit of identity politics goes a very long way.
Dreary Drabble was OK in her time but the last book of hers that I read was ruined at the end when it suddenly morphed into sociopolitical waffle of the most embarrassing sort worthy of a Labour think-tank. I’ve never read anything by her since.
Too true. To me, writing a novel is a bit like acting, the less we can tell about the author’s private life or politics, the better it is. It doesn’t mean they can’t bring their experience to bear, but the story should stand independently of the author.
I’m hetero but I’ve enjoyed 3 books by Sarah Waters, where expression of her sexual identity was either absent (The Little Stranger) or treated lightly (Fingersmith) or used to devastating effect (Affinity). In the other books where it was unnecessary and became a tiresome distraction, I confess I gave up. I felt there was something self-indulgent there.
‘it seems to me that the publishing industry is now vastly skewed female e.g. today’s Amazon offer 1 male author, 7 female.’
I wrote about this for Quillette. The last few decades have seen a tremendous reversal in gender disparities in the publishing world, but no one talks about it.
That was an interesting piece, and the most interesting and unsurprising bit was what you pointed out a out the attitude and response of some of the female authors there. A mix if victimhood, misandry and aggression which is so typical.
I really fear for my daughter’s future. Both because she might turn into one of them, but more so because the men she meets would be the product of this culture.
I think there’s a victimhood mentality among a lot of women which is, in most areas, completely justified. But in certain sectors, such as publishing, women now undeniably hold the advantage.
One of the women I quoted in the piece who picked up on this early on was A.S. Byatt – Margaret Drabble’s sister.
Maybe there’ll be a fightback like at the end of the 19th Century when it seemed women authors had captured the novel. This led to self-consciously non-feminine styles and subject matter from Robert Louis Stevenson, Rider Haggard, Erskine Childers, John Buchan etc.
You might want to become just a little more inveterate and repeat the aphorism correctly: “to each his own.”
Katharine Eyre
7 months ago
This article focuses on the question of whether women have been held back in their creativity by domesticity and the inescapable biological fact of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding – and also on the value of these aspects of life in literature.
I think this is an important question, but a bit of a narrow view. Perhaps domesticity and biological necessity weren’t the biggest issue when it came to how women’s work was viewed – if it was viewed at all. Even in the 20th century, women’s work has still been seen as second best, inferior – a quaint pastime rather than an equally valuable contributions to literature and art. Regardless of whether the artist/writer was single and childless or married with children or what the subject matter of the work was.
Recently, I discovered the Austrian artist Isolde Maria Joham. She started out working with glass but then moved onto massive paintings which pitted humans against machines and cartoon characters in fantastical urban landscapes – a sort of statement on modernity which reminded me somehow of the “human vs. machine” work of Fernand Léger. For years and years, she was pretty much ignored by the Austrian art scene, until someone realised: “ooo, you know what, her work was actually a sort of painting prophecy of the future”.
Joham was married (to a sculptor, about 15 years her junior – how controversial) but did not have any children. She was free to create and had a loving, supportive spouse. And yet her work was still passed over for decades. That was nothing to do with domesticity and everything to do with a lingering suspicion about female creativity in general.
The happy ending: Joham’s paintings were finally given the publicity and the exhibition they deserved last year, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-A_4urM20
Joham died on the final day of the exhibition – as if she knew now that her life’s purpose was achieved.
Everybody should know about her!
Years (and years) spent in the Art Student’s League in NYC, and similar spaces, have shown me that there are vast numbers of truly talented artists out there. And some of them have something significant to say. But almost none of them have ever had a show. This is true across the spectrum of the many different identities they represented; gay, straight, Jewish, deaf, female, etc. To ever get a show and find any success is a bit of fortune that very few artists get to experience.
There are innumerable reasons that could explain Joham’s earlier lack of recognition. “A lingering suspicion about female creativity…” isn’t neccessarily the most important one.
I googled her paintings. They’re not my cup of tea but they are something much more compelling; they look like she had a wonderful time painting them. That joy is better than any opinion.
Last edited 7 months ago by laurence scaduto
Caroline Watson
7 months ago
Oh dear, Margaret. You were one of my Northern grammar school heroines. Someone who was going to show me how to escape.
I’m sure it’s entirely possible to be a housewife-writer in North London. Less so in a tower block in Sheffield.
Social class and economics are the barriers to achievement. Not sex and most definitely not ‘gender’.
Catherine Conroy
7 months ago
Something obscure from my adopted country. I bought a book by a Bulgarian female author: Victoria Beshliiska, called ‘Clay’. The starting point for the book was that ostensibly, in the 17th century, while Bulgaria was occupied by the Ottomans, potters in the village of Tran (west of Sofia) were given a permit (signed by the Sultan) to travel all over Ottoman lands to sell their wares. I was excited by the concept, however, the book was overwhelmingly about some romantic entanglement between a girl and two boys in a village. I had to wait until page 110 to see a first mention of the pottery workshop, but by page 150, all there was of the travel was that the village got word that the potters had reached Plovdiv (a city in central Bulgaria). I had hoped to find out about the region at that time when mucht was happening such as the advent of the ‘prophet’ Sabbatai Zevi; the Ottoman empire’s worst defeat outside Vienna; Istanbul’s huge fire in 1660, etc… However, the book was just a dreary romance that involved no research and could have happened at any time in history. I couldn’t help but feel that a man would have handled it differently and I know I’d have preferred the alternative.
Since criticising is not good enough, I’m now working on potters from the same village in the same period but my first chapter will be devoted to a small group of villagers preparing to set out into Ottoman lands and their adventures will cover various encounters and the stories of people and places. The research so far is fascinating so even if it never comes about, I’m having a great time working through it.
Good luck.
The best work (in any medium) transcends the time and place to tell us something universal about the human experience, but it must have a base to start from.
Richard Craven
7 months ago
Because of the legacy publishing industry’s misandrist anti-White racism, I only read novels by White men.
I don’t particularly. Two of my favourite authors are Jane Austen and George Eliot, and I would very much like to read more of Edith Wharton’s work. Among non-White authors, I have in the past read and liked Zadie Smith, and suspect that I would like Wole Soyinka and Chimanonda Adichie. But this is a matter of conscience for me.
Josh Allan
7 months ago
The burgeoning of childbearing as a popular theme in literature seems to coincide, paradoxically, with a declining fertility rate. I wonder if more positive portrayals of parenthood in the broader culture might go some ways towards counteracting the prevailing myth that having children is a ‘bad thing’.
jane baker
6 months ago
I’m a reader. I’m not a writer. Joe Swift was my late Mums favourite TV gardener. I like domestic things. I became a young adult at the very worst time to be that sort of person. The overwhelming media message of that day that they trumpeted from it’s source in a number of fake fraud so called feminists was that cooking,cleaning all that was drudgery so if you liked it you were branding yourself a moronic drudge. I don’t think having to work 12 hour shifts most days each week until you are 70 is an exhilarating vision of the life path before any young woman. And you dont even get to be rescued by Prince Charming any more. You both HAVE TO WORK to keep the roof on the chateau over your head. And once women had listened,got a job in Tesco and stopped cooking then men took it up and amazed us all with their.Art,became TV stars,and it wasnt drudgery after all.
UnHerd Reader
7 months ago
Of the different issues and problems affecting society today, I’d put this one pretty close to the bottom. No fu*ks to give today or tomorrow.
Christopher Chantrill
7 months ago
If there is one thing that is problematic about women it is that they take themselves too seriously.
Men, on the other hand, know they are expendable.
Here is an example of how men and women write differently: two novels, both great works of literature in their own way, concerned, at least in part, with the same event, written forty years apart–Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. The Battle of Gettysburg forms almost the entirety of Shaara’s narrative; he covers the tactics, the strategy, the close combat, in depth. The focus is on masculine values: bravery under fire, personal honor, patriotism, comradery with one’s fellow soldiers, the duty a commander owes to his troops. If there is a female character in the book, I am not aware of it, save for (absent) wives and sweethearts. Gone With The Wind, by contrast, relegates Gettysburg to a paragraph. Nothing is the battle is reported, because the point of view is that of a young woman far from the front lines in Atlanta. Only the aftermath is shown. The values emphasized in that book are feminine: personal safety, rearing of children, romance and the finding of suitable domestic partners, continuity of the family, creating a pleasant and homey atmosphere, fashion, where one ranks in the social hierarchy. The male characters, with the exception of Gerald O’Hara, are largely ciphers to the female protagonist.
These books have very different agendas and very different attitudes on virtually every subject, yet neither is somehow “inferior” because of it. Both sides of the equation are necessary: without Joshua Chamberlain holding Little Round Top, then a freer, more equal nation may never come into being, and without Scarlett O’Hara shooting a Yankee looter stone dead in her entry hall, no woman would be safe to raise the next generation of Americans in peace. Chamberlain’s patriotism is the grand, abstract patriotism of the nation-state, while O’Hara’s patriotism is the small, humble patriotism of the hearth and home, yet both are necessary if a nation is to thrive. And art, all art, is impoverished whenever a point of view is silenced, whether out of some masculine chauvinism or out of a misguided “feminism” that, ironically, prioritizes “modern” pseudo-masculinity over traditional femininity.
Very well written, if i might say so. Perhaps more so than the article itself, which, whilst as a whole made some important points (and which prompted your contribution), at times seemed to lose itself in a series of literary names and references, as if seeking to cover every major female contributor in addition to some male writers. The spirit of inclusivity, perhaps.
Excellent comment.
And what you realise is that the patriotism of the nation can be churned into patriotism of the hearth, but the other way round is not so simple or a given.
HaHa so I think you are saying that the ‘male’ form of patriotism is thus “better” since it can be churned into patriotism of the hearth… how silly! No! You have missed the point of Margaret Drabble’s article I think… male and female are yin and yang and make a whole, the whole of the human experience, and so the ‘patriotism’ of the hearth is just as vital in its own way as the patriotism of the nation…. but maybe I’ve misunderstood you?
I don’t disagree that men and women complement each other.
But I would still say, someone willing to charge cannons and risk certain mutilation or death, all for the sake of country and his fellow soldiers, would also be happy to change nappies and cook food for his child.
The other way round, is rather more difficult, as the rather small number of women paying alimony, or demanding to be drafted in Ukraine, point out rather clearly.
That being said, taking care of the home and hearth is as critical as fighting for country, and I would suggest women are definitely better at the former. When I take my daughter to the doctor, female GPs are way better at dealing with her than male GPs.
The real problem is that the former role has been denigrated and treated as worthless, largely by modern women.
I’ll be honest, I prefer a male author’s take on historical novels. It doesn’t mean that writing is feminine or masculine
Hilary Mantel?
Me too. I’ll take George MacDonald Fraser and Bernard Cornwell over Hilary Mantel and Helle Haasse any day.
“Creating a pleasant and homey atmosphere” where the Blacks worked her land.
I am an inveterate reader and, now that I am retired, am able to indulge my habit. I have moved to an e-reader to save my marriage by stopping filling the house with books. This makes it very easy to get new books and I am tempted every day with offers from Amazon, BookBub, Penguin, etc. Being the male philistine that I am, I have adopted a filtering process whereby I skip over female authors unless I either know them already or their topic particularly appeals. This really does save a lot of time because it seems to me that the publishing industry is now vastly skewed female e.g. today’s Amazon offer 1 male author, 7 female.
My niece was visiting (very progressive and ‘woke’) and I told her this. She was horrified and expressed her disapproval. I asked her what male authors she had read in the last six months and she admitted that they were all female. So I continue to read history or popular science or detective fiction by males while she continues with Jane Austen. Each to his own.
This is exactly why I only read novels by White men, and am very open about doing so.
The curse of identity politics
Ainsi soit-il.
Oh, I’m a total reading w***e – I’ll take any author to bed with me! (Or their work anyway.)
I must admit I have been doing the same thing. It has meant I basically avoid fiction published in the past two decades and most new non-fiction books that aren’t history or philosophy. Men with a similar ‘lived experience’ to me i.e. white ‘cis’ straight and English have essentially vanished from publishing. At least I can still bear Barbara Tuchman.
There are plenty of decent self-published books on Kindle. You don’t have to feed the publishing industry these days.
“today’s Amazon offer 1 male author, 7 female.”
And yet the ladies will find a way to complain how they are oppressed.
I find books by women to be one long series of complaints.
I was brought up on Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton, but the current list of titles on a Waterstones store front does seem to agree with you, it just seems like the quality and content of writing has deteriorated, become more consumed by angst and regret.
Whinged the man… manfully. Unlike those complainy women. Professor Henry Higgins whinged about it best: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
Whinging about someone whinging too much is also whinging, agreed.
But I do feel a typical man like myself is able to deal with 80%female teachers or GPs writers with a lot more stoicism than certain women, who apparently feel oppressed EVEN when faced with situations where they are treated favourably, it seems.
Totally agree about skewed reviewing in papers. It’s yet another dreary, predictable exercise in box-ticking, all about ‘my experience of being a (usually black woman but LGBTREFUGEES also prominent) all screaming about underrepresentation no less.
I’m a ‘G’ in fact but long since stopped reading based on identity as it’s obviously no guarantee of quality or even interest. Nowadays it usually makes me less likely to read it.
A little bit of identity politics goes a very long way.
Dreary Drabble was OK in her time but the last book of hers that I read was ruined at the end when it suddenly morphed into sociopolitical waffle of the most embarrassing sort worthy of a Labour think-tank. I’ve never read anything by her since.
Too true. To me, writing a novel is a bit like acting, the less we can tell about the author’s private life or politics, the better it is. It doesn’t mean they can’t bring their experience to bear, but the story should stand independently of the author.
I’m hetero but I’ve enjoyed 3 books by Sarah Waters, where expression of her sexual identity was either absent (The Little Stranger) or treated lightly (Fingersmith) or used to devastating effect (Affinity). In the other books where it was unnecessary and became a tiresome distraction, I confess I gave up. I felt there was something self-indulgent there.
‘it seems to me that the publishing industry is now vastly skewed female e.g. today’s Amazon offer 1 male author, 7 female.’
I wrote about this for Quillette. The last few decades have seen a tremendous reversal in gender disparities in the publishing world, but no one talks about it.
That was an interesting piece, and the most interesting and unsurprising bit was what you pointed out a out the attitude and response of some of the female authors there. A mix if victimhood, misandry and aggression which is so typical.
I really fear for my daughter’s future. Both because she might turn into one of them, but more so because the men she meets would be the product of this culture.
I think there’s a victimhood mentality among a lot of women which is, in most areas, completely justified. But in certain sectors, such as publishing, women now undeniably hold the advantage.
One of the women I quoted in the piece who picked up on this early on was A.S. Byatt – Margaret Drabble’s sister.
I’m given to understand that they’re estranged from one another.
Maybe there’ll be a fightback like at the end of the 19th Century when it seemed women authors had captured the novel. This led to self-consciously non-feminine styles and subject matter from Robert Louis Stevenson, Rider Haggard, Erskine Childers, John Buchan etc.
You might want to become just a little more inveterate and repeat the aphorism correctly: “to each his own.”
This article focuses on the question of whether women have been held back in their creativity by domesticity and the inescapable biological fact of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding – and also on the value of these aspects of life in literature.
I think this is an important question, but a bit of a narrow view. Perhaps domesticity and biological necessity weren’t the biggest issue when it came to how women’s work was viewed – if it was viewed at all. Even in the 20th century, women’s work has still been seen as second best, inferior – a quaint pastime rather than an equally valuable contributions to literature and art. Regardless of whether the artist/writer was single and childless or married with children or what the subject matter of the work was.
Recently, I discovered the Austrian artist Isolde Maria Joham. She started out working with glass but then moved onto massive paintings which pitted humans against machines and cartoon characters in fantastical urban landscapes – a sort of statement on modernity which reminded me somehow of the “human vs. machine” work of Fernand Léger. For years and years, she was pretty much ignored by the Austrian art scene, until someone realised: “ooo, you know what, her work was actually a sort of painting prophecy of the future”.
Joham was married (to a sculptor, about 15 years her junior – how controversial) but did not have any children. She was free to create and had a loving, supportive spouse. And yet her work was still passed over for decades. That was nothing to do with domesticity and everything to do with a lingering suspicion about female creativity in general.
The happy ending: Joham’s paintings were finally given the publicity and the exhibition they deserved last year, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-A_4urM20
Joham died on the final day of the exhibition – as if she knew now that her life’s purpose was achieved.
Everybody should know about her!
Years (and years) spent in the Art Student’s League in NYC, and similar spaces, have shown me that there are vast numbers of truly talented artists out there. And some of them have something significant to say. But almost none of them have ever had a show. This is true across the spectrum of the many different identities they represented; gay, straight, Jewish, deaf, female, etc. To ever get a show and find any success is a bit of fortune that very few artists get to experience.
There are innumerable reasons that could explain Joham’s earlier lack of recognition. “A lingering suspicion about female creativity…” isn’t neccessarily the most important one.
I googled her paintings. They’re not my cup of tea but they are something much more compelling; they look like she had a wonderful time painting them. That joy is better than any opinion.
Oh dear, Margaret. You were one of my Northern grammar school heroines. Someone who was going to show me how to escape.
I’m sure it’s entirely possible to be a housewife-writer in North London. Less so in a tower block in Sheffield.
Social class and economics are the barriers to achievement. Not sex and most definitely not ‘gender’.
Something obscure from my adopted country. I bought a book by a Bulgarian female author: Victoria Beshliiska, called ‘Clay’. The starting point for the book was that ostensibly, in the 17th century, while Bulgaria was occupied by the Ottomans, potters in the village of Tran (west of Sofia) were given a permit (signed by the Sultan) to travel all over Ottoman lands to sell their wares. I was excited by the concept, however, the book was overwhelmingly about some romantic entanglement between a girl and two boys in a village. I had to wait until page 110 to see a first mention of the pottery workshop, but by page 150, all there was of the travel was that the village got word that the potters had reached Plovdiv (a city in central Bulgaria). I had hoped to find out about the region at that time when mucht was happening such as the advent of the ‘prophet’ Sabbatai Zevi; the Ottoman empire’s worst defeat outside Vienna; Istanbul’s huge fire in 1660, etc… However, the book was just a dreary romance that involved no research and could have happened at any time in history. I couldn’t help but feel that a man would have handled it differently and I know I’d have preferred the alternative.
Since criticising is not good enough, I’m now working on potters from the same village in the same period but my first chapter will be devoted to a small group of villagers preparing to set out into Ottoman lands and their adventures will cover various encounters and the stories of people and places. The research so far is fascinating so even if it never comes about, I’m having a great time working through it.
Good luck.
The best work (in any medium) transcends the time and place to tell us something universal about the human experience, but it must have a base to start from.
Because of the legacy publishing industry’s misandrist anti-White racism, I only read novels by White men.
Without being as broadly political about it, I tend to prefer novels written by men.
I don’t particularly. Two of my favourite authors are Jane Austen and George Eliot, and I would very much like to read more of Edith Wharton’s work. Among non-White authors, I have in the past read and liked Zadie Smith, and suspect that I would like Wole Soyinka and Chimanonda Adichie. But this is a matter of conscience for me.
The burgeoning of childbearing as a popular theme in literature seems to coincide, paradoxically, with a declining fertility rate. I wonder if more positive portrayals of parenthood in the broader culture might go some ways towards counteracting the prevailing myth that having children is a ‘bad thing’.
I’m a reader. I’m not a writer. Joe Swift was my late Mums favourite TV gardener. I like domestic things. I became a young adult at the very worst time to be that sort of person. The overwhelming media message of that day that they trumpeted from it’s source in a number of fake fraud so called feminists was that cooking,cleaning all that was drudgery so if you liked it you were branding yourself a moronic drudge. I don’t think having to work 12 hour shifts most days each week until you are 70 is an exhilarating vision of the life path before any young woman. And you dont even get to be rescued by Prince Charming any more. You both HAVE TO WORK to keep the roof on the chateau over your head. And once women had listened,got a job in Tesco and stopped cooking then men took it up and amazed us all with their.Art,became TV stars,and it wasnt drudgery after all.
Of the different issues and problems affecting society today, I’d put this one pretty close to the bottom. No fu*ks to give today or tomorrow.
If there is one thing that is problematic about women it is that they take themselves too seriously.
Men, on the other hand, know they are expendable.