Has it really taken me this long to get round to George Eliot?
'You are not a woman. You may try -- but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.... [T]his is what you must be; this is what you are wanted for; a woman's heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, to a fixed receipt.'
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876)
Deronda's mother, formerly the singer and actress The Alcharisi, latterly the Princess Halm-Eberstein. I didn't see the more recent televisation but there was
an excellent version in 1970. This too does not appear available on DVD.
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