Quotation added by staff

Why not add this quote to your bookmarks?

  ...has been quite different, I enter into the painfulness of your struggle. I can imagine the hardship of an enforced renunciation."
"No," said the Princess, shaking her head and folding her arms with an air of decision. "You are not a woman. You may try--but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern cut out--'this is the Jewish woman; this is what you must be; this is what you are wanted for; A woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.   ' That was what my father wanted. He wished I had been a son; he cared for me as a make-shift link. His heart was set on his Judaism. He hated that Jewish women should be thought of by the Christian world as a sort of ware to make public singers and actresses of. As if we were not the more enviable for that! That is a chance of escaping from bondage."
"Was my grandfather a learned man?" said Deronda, eager to know particulars that he feared his mother might not think of.
She answered...   Eliot, George

Excerpt from Daniel Deronda · This quote is about women · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

• Biography
• 1 Fan
• This quote in blogs