Sublime

she survived Auschwitz by disobeying his order to join the line with the elderly, the grey and the weak, and instead slipping into a line with younger people. She avoided the gas chambers a second time by trading food for hair dye so she wouldn’t be murdered for looking too old.

“I want [my daughter] to grow up in a society where she will have a comfortable and important place.”

Weil es nicht geht ohne die Omas. Die zur Abholzeit zum Kindergarten kommen und nachmittags zum Spielplatz, die die Hausaufgaben kontrollieren und Grießbrei mit Zucker und Zimt kochen, damit ihre Töchter und Schwiegertöchter arbeiten und Geld verdienen können. Das ist ein Netzwerk, das aus Frauen besteht. Sarah sieht das immer klarer, je mehr sie d

These women, whose essential distinction of motherhood was the dominant note of their whole culture, were strikingly deficient in what we call "femininity."

Full of kindliness and sympathy, St Cyres persuaded June to give up her flat in town and to come with her small boy to live at Manor Thatch. June had acquiesced at first. She was lonely and frightened and in debt. June St Cyres was one of those young women who can never live within their incomes, but she was shrewd enough to know that she could liv

Marie Souvestre, the founder and headmistress, was the daughter of the French philosopher and novelist Émile Souvestre. A committed feminist, she believed passionately in educating women to think for themselves, to challenge accepted wisdom, and to assert themselves. These were subversive doctrines to patriarchal Victorians, yet Allenwood succeeded

Widowed at twenty-two, Laura had one daughter, Peggy, to whom she devoted her life. When Peggy was sixteen, she confided to her mother that she was pregnant and that the lover who had promised to marry her had deserted her. “Well-meaning friends” advised an abortion and told Smith, “There is a way. Hide this thing from sight, send her on a journey.