Tag: women and power

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth Bennet is a #Nastywoman and Her #Nastiness Changes the World.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth Bennet is a #Nastywoman and Her #Nastiness Changes the World.

Posted by | Jul 20, 2021 |

If Donald Trump met Elizabeth Bennet he for sure would have called her a #nastywoman. Why? Because she would have openly and confidently spoken her truth to him and about him. She would have her voice with him and dare to openly question and criticize him. And that, to Donald Trump, makes a woman #nasty.  Elizabeth Bennet would not, however,  have fallen in love with Donald Trump, because unlike Mr. Darcy, Donald Trump doesn’t know how to give proper respect to a #nastywoman.  In Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, the main character, Elizabeth Bennet  has a voice, a mind...

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May Sarton: Leaping the Waterfalls (1912-1995 American)

May Sarton: Leaping the Waterfalls (1912-1995 American)

Posted by | Jul 13, 2021 |

Spending summer 2021 in New Hampshire, I drive through Nelson quite often these days. Each time I do, I think of May Sarton, her years here, who she was, her art, and all she accomplished. I always glance down the road at the cemetery where she now rests.* This post is one I wrote about May two years ago and it feels right to run it again since I feel so close to her these days. Enjoy! May Sarton: Leaping the Waterfalls I’d been duped. The gray-haired writer who moved to the small town of Nelson, New Hampshire in...

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Sonya Renee Taylor: The Map Back to Ourselves

Sonya Renee Taylor: The Map Back to Ourselves

Posted by | Jun 15, 2021 |

Since reading Sonya Renee Taylor’s book The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love and writing this post a little over a year ago, I have been keeping my finger on Taylor’s pulse, a pulse I value and need as I work to hold myself accountable and better understand systemic racism. (I highly recommend her recent TEDx talk Let’s Replace Cancel Culture with Accountability.) After Derek Chauvin was found guilty this past April, Taylor’s organization, also named The Body Is Not An Apology, stated on its Facebook page: “In @SonyaReneeTaylor’s second to most recent video, “Justice...

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Ada Lovelace: Math, Vision, and Ambition in a Woman Meets Certain Death in Victorian England

Ada Lovelace: Math, Vision, and Ambition in a Woman Meets Certain Death in Victorian England

Posted by | Jun 8, 2021 |

When I think of Ada Lovelace 1815-1852, widely recognized as the first computer programmer, I think of a woman with highly curious intellect, vision, superb math skills, and ambition with absolutely no where to apply them in Victorian England. She chose to find men who had position and power and apply her gifts through them, as that was one of  the only ways a woman could push her own agenda in that time, but the men she chose failed or betrayed her and she was left with nothing. I cannot begin to imagine this woman’s frustration. It boils my...

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The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women – And Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura (2021)

The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women – And Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura (2021)

Posted by | May 18, 2021 | ,

On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded a medical degree. She was the first woman in the United States allowed to earn one and she was determined to be a trailblazer. Many labeled Elizabeth an exception: “From all we have been able to learn respecting Miss B.,” it [a letter] concluded, “she is emphatically an exception”(Nimura 81). Elizabeth did all she could to make sure she was not an exception and by the end of her and her sister Emily’s lives: “The ranks of accomplished women doctors were growing, and the Blackwells could take much of the credit...

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