"Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History"

This week, I was reminded of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's oft quoted book title as I reflected on three of my favourite women ~ Anna, Scarlett and Nora.

While I was writing my June 21st post, I wanted to verify my Scarlett O'Hara quote. I was shocked and horrified to read entry after entry describing her as manipulative. Whaaat? 

Let's review . . .

Scarlett is a nineteen year old widow with a child. She is smack in the middle of General Sherman's March to the Sea. The same general who famously (or infamously) said "War is hell. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." While her relatives sit in a house in Macon she paid for, eating petit fours she provided, she is vilified for not being a lady. Her mother was dead, her father was crazy, her sisters feckless whiners. What was Scarlett to do? To use the current vernacular ~ she had to "man-up." And, man-up she did.

Unlike Scarlett, Anna Karenina is destroyed by making the grievous error of not just having an affair but actually falling in love. A victim of the 19th century requirement that women who refused to obey societal mores needed to be punished and usually ended up dead at the end of the book. Tough crowd.



And, now . . . the death of Nora Ephron. A woman of distinction and courage who famously said to the graduating class at Wellesley, “I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.”

An introspective week.

Made more hopeful by a quote from The Dalai Lama - “The World Will Be Saved By the Western Woman”.

I like the 150 year trajectory of women.

Day 56 Everyday Grateful ~

Sunny, then cloudy, then, misty, now, cool

Audrey came by with Goodwill wine glasses! Fun

I'm ready for summer!

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/06/screenwriter-nora-ephron-dead-at-age-71.html