Chief Glory of Women

Virginia Woolf might have done her best to talk about what was not being said. In this regard, she quoted Pericles “The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of” (242). That, of course, begs the question: What is the chief glory of a woman? With all those books written on women, we are left wondering what could there possibly be left to talk about? (right now I am snuggling my baby who fell asleep on my chest, and I am beginning to suspect that the chief glory of a women lies somewhere around the snuggling of babies.) Unfortunately, Virginia Woolf never had that opportunity, and neither did any of the male authors, and that is why they couldn’t talk about it. They never experienced it for themselves. So perhaps Woolf and Pericles saw the chief glory of the women in terms of what is considered taboo, the things that are not to be talked about.

(stolen from my seminar paper)