Alice Munro Quotes

The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.

The worst mistake of a woman is to go to the kitchen, because then she never gets out of there.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren’t supposed to work if they had families. What were they to do when the children were grown — watch raindrops coming down the windowpane?

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

To remain a spinster was to be societally “redundant,” but to marry, for a girl, was to be absorbed into the self of another, like a vanishing twin. A woman’s education was designed to coax her to sleep at sixteen and keep her unchanged and unconscious forever. It was an undoing. It wasn’t a start but a “finishing.”

Housewives run the home and sacrifice a lot, but many people forget that.

You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.

Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.

'Man cave' seems retrograde, but 'she shed' seems progressive. Or maybe it's just a place for me to eat embarrassing amounts of chocolate in private.

In our village women are left to clean the house and milk the cattle so when I first entered the ring, I had to hear the criticism of people.

I had turned into a trophy wife - and I sucked at it. I wasn't detail-oriented enough to maintain a perfect house or be a perfect hostess. I could no longer hide my boredom when the men talked and the women smiled and listened. I wasn't interested in Botox or makeup or reducing the appearance of the scars from my C-sections.

Why women will do all the household works? It should change.

As women, our identity becomes subsumed by the fact that we are wives, daughters and mothers, and that becomes our all-encompassing identity. It happens with women because we are naturally driven towards being caretakers and being sacrificing.

We're all diminished and restricted by sweeping statements defining boy and girl, our expectations and disappointments with ourselves, the way we look, what we enjoy, and the choices we make.

No matter how far they rise, women never stop being the caregiver. At the end of the day, women bear the emotional responsibility for their families.

If a female wants to do a man's job, no one will stop her from doing it, but women have duties to perform as mothers.

Across society, the lion's share of caring responsibility - whether for children or elderly relatives - still falls on women.

I always hated that clothing was gendered when I was young.

Some people don't have the luxury to see a future without the man, as they are dependent on him. That's because they put their education or priorities aside to be mothers or wives to somebody.

... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R's, a littlemusic and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.

Women understand that men must often be kept from soiling themselves with the dirty little details of life in order to accomplish the big shinny jobs unimpeded.

The ladies pass the timee with gossip and hearsay. This is what they have in place of freedom- gime and gossip. Their lives are small and careful. I do not wish to live this way. I should like to make my mark. To venture opinions that may not be polite or even correct but are mine nonetheless. If I am to be hanged for anything, I should like to feel that I go to the gallows on my own strength.

I feel there's so much pressure, especially for women, to declare what their life's going to be and what their career is, and are you married yet? Are you single? But you're 30. And girlfriends are so important. You can have a boyfriend or husband when you're 30, but you still need your girlfriends.

A woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing doesn't want to go to the movies to watch a film about a woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing.