So much for her Perseverance -- as to her Sense of duty, it evinced itself thus; she liked to learn, but hated to teach; her progress as a pupil depended upon herself, and I saw that on herself she could calculate with certainty; her success as a teacher rested partly, perhaps chiefly, upon the will of others; it cost her a most painful effort to enter into conflict with this foreign will, to endeavour to bend it into subjection to her own; for in what regarded people in general the action of her will was impeded by many scruples; it was as unembarrassed as strong where her own affairs were concerned, and to it she could at any time subject her inclination, if that inclination went counter to her convictions of right; yet when called upon to wrestle with the propensities, the habits, the faults of others, of children especially, who are deaf to reason and, for the most part, insensate to persuasion, her will sometimes almost refused to act; then came in the Sense of duty and forced the reluctant Will into operation.

A wasteful expense of energy and labour was frequently the consequence; Frances toiled for and with her pupils like a drudge, but it was long ere her conscientious exertions were rewarded by anything like docility on their part; because they saw that they had power over her, inasmuch as by resisting her painful attempts to convince, persuade, control; by forcing her to the employment of coercive measures, they could inflict upon her exquisite suffering. Human beings -- human children especially, seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are duller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and his bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over that instructor and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the very young, very healthy, very thoughtless know neither how to sympathize nor how to spare.

(Charlotte Brontë, The Professor)

I had occassion today to re-read Virginia Woolf's famous 1924 essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown , in which Woolf boldly proclaimed to the world that sometime around the month of December 1910 that human character underwent a profound change. Relationships had changed as Woolf saw it, those between "masters and servants, husbands and wives [and] parents and children."

The rigid boundaries defining these relationships had collapsed, but other boundaries were also being compromised, those defining religion, politics and even literature. For Woolf, December 1910 saw human character being transformed and for her the virus of change was Modernism and Modernism's carrier was none other than WOMAN.

This new woman had come to infect and take over the pre-existing feminine form of the day. She was a figure representing multiple races and served as the point at which new ways of being, acting, thinking, living and seeing would emerge. Woolf clearly suggests in other novels such as { To the Lighthouse } that this new woman whom she poses in the form of Lily Briscoe, did not seek knowledge. Rather, she was more interested in unity.

I wondered while reading the essay today if this woman is still in existence today in whole or in part or whether another type of feminine form has completely replaced her. My own answer to the self-posed question is that the woman of 1910, albeit more independent than her former peers has long been pushed to the curb.

Today we see a new kind of woman. I am one of these; one, more endowed with a strong sense of self, more demanding of her rights, more outspoken, more prone to defiance when told to follow the norm in order to follow what works for her, more angry and frustrated perhaps, but one who seeks to forge a life out for herself on her own terms.

This new woman operates in the post-modernist sense. She accepts that differences are a part of life and that to fight it would ruin her. This new woman has toppled the one whom Virginia Woolf saw emerge in 1910. She understands that the shadow of the past still lingers where it concerns race and gender; that which tries to seperate her from her peers and that which keeps on trying to place her in a subordinate position to men Today, this woman is the dominant feminine form for she has learned through a long hard struggle to embrace and I daresay, promote difference.

Here's an excerpt from the Editor's Choice Smithsonian that I found humorous:

"...Years ago I learned never to put athletic socks in with dressy socks. The outcome is always ugly.

Athletic socks are bullies, always throwing their weight around. Put with gentle-tempered dress socks, athletic socks can clear out the drawer in a week's time and leave you with perhaps a single blue and black nylon sock.

The rest of the dress socks just disappear, only to be discovered later, hidden under the handkerchiefs, slumped under an ottoman, wedged in an old coat pocket or caught smuggling themselves out of the house in my gym bag.

Meanwhile, back in the sock drawer the victorious athletic socks begin bickering among themselves, splitting up, going their own way...

The sock drawer is a rough neighborhood, a place where survival is always on the line.

What baffles me is that socks seem to have it in for men only. [Women] never complain about a missing vagrant sock.

[Their] sock drawer is impeccable, everything neat and tidy, row after row of happily matched socks all rolled up in cute little bundles. Not a misfit among them.

Of course women suffer more than men do from another mysterious effect...But that's another story."

Harry Middleton "Those strange goings and comings in the sock drawer at night." (Editor's Choice Smithsonian 1990)