Ruth Brandon > Quotes

“...Obduracy can be overcome by determination. More insidious, and far harder to destroy, was women's internalizing of the notion that they were somehow inferior to men, a complementary species designed (in W.R. Greg's words) to 'complet[e], sweeten, and embellish the existence of others'. [Women] still chose to become nurses rather than doctors, secretaries rather than bosses: to be ill-paid facilitators for people no more talented nor, in many cases, better educated than themselves, but who simply happened to be men. The notion that they might be their bosses' equals penetrated only very slowly; the possibility that they might even be their superiors, though accepted in theory, has perhaps still not wholly sunk in.”
― Ruth Brandon, Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres

“Books were my hobby, even as a child,' he told me. 'I read about every book in Milkwaukee Public Library before I was 15...Some of the books I didn't understand- but I read them just the same. I believed, you see, that my life work would be teaching, so I wanted to learning everything I could about every possible subject.”
― Ruth Brandon, The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini

“...As marriage was woman's business, unmarried women, though doubtless unfortunate, must simply be considered as business failures: harsh, doubtless, but in tune with the sink-or-swim capitalist times.”
― Ruth Brandon, Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres