Ellen Key Quotes

Our culture has created two almost irreconcilable descriptions of a 'good woman.' The first is the individual achiever; the second, the self-sacrificing domestic goddess.

That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.

In my generation, except for a few people who'd gone into banking or nursing or something like that, middle-class women didn't have careers. You were to marry and have children and be a nice mother. You didn't go out and do anything. I found that I got restless.

I think there are a lot of rules for women. We have a lot of expectations and a lot of rules for women. So we're expected to march in a straight line, and when we don't, all hell breaks loose.

None of my sisters are in the movies, nor are my nieces going to be. That's how Dutt 'sahab,' my dad, brought up the girls in the family, and I am just carrying his thought forward.

I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the '40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy.

Most women would say they relate to 'Hedda Gabler' - there's a part of her in them. Ibsen was writing about a deep ambivalence that many women feel about domesticity. I think about myself and friends of mine - we have some of Hedda's qualities and traits.

I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.

Culturally, it is commonplace for African women to work.

Having one's traditional role questioned is not a very comfortable experience, perhaps especially for women, who have been able to remain children, and to benefit from work they did not and could not do.

I was sent to a nice Church of England girls' school and at that time, after university, a woman was expected to become a teacher, a nurse or a missionary - prior to marriage.

We try to do too many things that used to be in the men's domain, and we try to do them like men's. I'm a prude - I guess you can tell that - but I think, 'Why would you do that?'

I have been a chief only because my father wished it. I always would have preferred to be married and have a family like other women.

Some people are sure to say that women who spend their time with philosophers are bound to become self-willed and arrogant, deserting their households for the company of [other ] men, practicing speeches, talking like sophists, when they ought to be sat at home spinning

A woman’s good goes to her husband and her bad to her kin.

The common man thinks that the marriage is like appointing one to do his work. The husband thinks so! The husband’s family thinks so. Every one thinks that a girl is coming to the family to do work. Even the girl’s family trains the girl to do the household work

In our world marriage was the best option for any woman. No girl ever chose to have a career unless she couldn't get a man. It was very much a tertiary life.

I think, especially growing up in the South, we are taught that women are supposed to be soft, gentle and kind of just goes along with everything and is submissive.

All of the Arabic women I grew up listening to or watching had a very strong character.

Women do feel like they're in a box. Society, Hollywood, some men-they want to wrap women up in a neat little package.

No man can understand why a woman shouldn't prefer a good reputation to a good time.

'Who Fears Death' addresses the push and pull in African culture that powerful women face when their culture has certain duties and beliefs that can stifle them.

Massachusetts women as a rule adhere too strongly to old-time conventions.

I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.

I think women have long been defined by their roles as procreators and wives, and we're expected to serve, take care of, say 'Yes,' and not ruffle any feathers. Women, in particular, are sometimes not allowed to consider who they are outside of the roles that they play.