Inventing Herself by Elaine Showalter

Women who become feminist icons and leaders tended to define themselves in opposition of their mothers. The ones who really nailed patriarchy weren't one the whole ones with authoritative fathers but the ones with troubled, contradictory mothers.

You aim your feminism less at men than at the picture of the women you don't want to be, the enemy within. 

In their relationships with men, the consciously sought male doubles, or twins, with whom they could form an intellectual, political, or professional partnership. 

What has been forbidden to women is the open admission of the desire for power and control over one's life. 

[Mary Wollstonecraft] was also a good manager and forceful organizer, the sort of person who takes control of people's lives while they offer feeble, passive resistance. In her twenties she tried out many roles in an effort to find a use for her restless intelligence and a outlet for her stifled sexuality and passion. 

I think her preoccupation with herself makes her so compelling, so curiously modern. 

Trapped in the emotions impasse of the exceptional woman who believes she can love only an even more exceptional man. 

The greater her achievements as an emancipated woman the more exacting were her standards and fewer the men who came up to them; and fewer still those who were willing to try. 

Like many women born after her, Wollstonecraft decided that travel would be a good remedy for unrequited love. 

Childbirth, despite medical advances, is a confrontation with mortality for women as war is for men. 

I knew I should never find a being who could keep the key of my character, that there would be none on whom I could always lean, from whom I could always learn, that I should be a pilgrim and sojourner on earth. - Margaret Fuller

Three things seem to me to have taken the place of the old powers that moved society. Science has taken the place of Theology, the Press has taken the place of the Ruler, and Fiction has taken the place which painting and drama occupied in other ages. There are the three living powers of our age whose rule is just beginning. - Olive Schreiner

Monogamy...such an ideal, almost never attainable today needs at least four things: love, respect, intellectual likeness, and command of the necessities of life." - Eleanor Marx

Of course Oscar Wilde's career ended abruptly and tragically as that of the most puritanical or depressed New Women. But he was never, as they were, the prisoner of principle. 

Regarding Charlotte Perkins Gilman: For her, being a transition woman did not mean choosing between love and work, but setting priorities. She survived, no, more, she soared in a world that conspired to deny her flight. She ultimately accomplished what she set out to do: create a loving and sustained intimate relationship with a partner and leave behind a legacy of a lifetime of valuable work. 

Feminist expected to serve their society but they also expected to be having a better time than any women in the world ever had before. They defined their aims as turning away from the intellectualism of life to the life itself. 

Perhaps this makeshift time filler of a job is our life work afterall. - Ruth Benedict

Go! Live the life you covet for your child. 

Margaret Mead had frequently expressed her conviction that one could sustain more than one deeply loving intimacy at a time. 

Growing up was defined as a loss of faith in movements and ideologies and a greater reliance on individual solutions and individual success. 

The woman who wishes to be famous should not marry rather she should attach herself to one more women who will fetch and carry for her in the immemorial style of wives. 

Feminism, for Vera Brittain, meant not a sense of identification with other women but rather a desire to enter the world of men. 

Live, work, act. Don't sit here, and brood and grope among insoluble enigmas. 

You must learn to live without love if you want to live with it. - Mary McCarthy

I think what matters most to me is to live in an age where there is conscious change going on and where I as a woman can play a part in it. I don't need to be a leader. I don't need to be a martyr. I just need to have some chance to go from my space, whatever that meant, into a wider world. - Margaret Fuller

The first exercise of the free woman is to design her own mode of revolt, a mode which will reflect her own independence and originality. 

Men would rather be ruined by one of their own sex than saved by a woman. - Rebecca West

Amelia Earhart was to me an image of everything a woman should be...she is a woman alone. Not a woman handholding in a group or whining about men, a woman alone. - Camille Paglia

Sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted.