Elise Davies

“Patriarchy is a fiction in which all the main characters are male and the world is seen from their point of view. Women are supporting cast – or caste. It is a story we all live in, so powerful that it has replaced reality with itself. We can see no other narrative for our lives, no roles outside of it, because there is no outside of it. In this fiction, the vanishing trick has two main purposes. The first is to make what she does disappear (so he can appear to have done it all, alone). The second is to make what he does to a woman disappear (so he can be innocent). This trick is the dark, doublethinking heart of patriarchy.”
― Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life

“Kay saw clearly the cost to Eileen of her decision. ‘I thought it was rather tragic that she should give it all up,’ she said about her degree and career. ‘I don’t think I would have.”
― Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life

“Access to time, as to any other valuable good, is gendered. One person’s time to work is created by another person’s work in time: the more time he has to work, the more she is working to make it for him.”
― Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life

“I killed a plant once because I gave / it too much water. Lord, I worry / that love is violence.”
― José Olivarez, Citizen Illegal