[6:05 PM]

'I meant no animadversions against any one, and certainly intended no disrespectful allusions to your mother. I have known some sensible persons great adepts in that style of conversation, when circumstances impelled them to it; but it is a gift I cannot boast the possession of. I kept up my attention, on this occasion, as long as I could, but when my powers were exhausted, I stole away, to seek a few minutes' repose in this quiet walk. I hate talking where there is no exchange of ideas or sentiments, and no good given or received.' (Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall)

[6:11 PM]

This is a book about the history and sociology of different ways of knowing. It is also about the manner in which gender -- the cultural construction of femininity and masculinity -- has intersected with these processes. My main argument goes as follows: that in the methodological literature today, the 'quantitative' / 'qualitative' dichotomy functions chiefly as a gendered ideological representation; that within this gendering of methodology, experimental methods are seen as the most 'quantitative' and therefore as the most masculine; that these processes of methodological development and gendering cannot be separated from the ways in which both science and social science developed, and the social relations in which they were embedded; and that the goal of an emancipatory (social) science calls for us to abandon sterile word-games and concentrate on the business in hand, which is how to develop the most reliable and democratic ways of knowing, both in order to bridge the gap between ourselves and others, and to ensure that those who intervene in other people's lives do so with the most benefit and the least harm. (Ann Oakley, Experiments in Knowing: Gender and Method in the Social Sciences)

[7:51 AM]

I descended to the school-room with no remarkable eagerness to join my pupils, though not without some feeling of curiosity respecting what a further acquaintance would reveal. One thing, among others of more obvious importance, I determined with myself; I would begin with calling them Miss and Master. It seemed to me a chilling and unnatural piece of punctilio between the children of a family and their instructor and daily companion, especially where the former were in their early childhood, as at Wellwood House; but even there, my calling the little Bloomfields by their simple names had been regarded as an offensive liberty, as their parents had taken care to show me, by carefully designating them Master and Miss Bloomfield, &c., in speaking to me. I had been very slow to take the hint, because the whole affair struck me as so very absurd; but now I determined to be wiser, and begin at once with as much form and ceremony as any member of the family would be likely to require; and indeed, the children being so much older, there would be less difficulty; though the little words Miss and Master seemed to have a surprising effect in repressing all familiar, open-hearted kindness, and extinguishing every gleam of cordiality that might arise between us. (Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey)

[6:42 PM]

Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which he floated with loglike calm. (Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited)

[10:49 AM]

For the last six months I have been living on, as it were, turtle-soup and foie gras; I have been rowing and revelling and rioting to my heart's content. But now, alas, my pockets are empty and my pleasures are gone; I must either write a book or marry a wife, to refill the one and to recall the other.

Which shall I do? Hymen with a waving torch invites me -- but no, I am beloved by too many to give up my liberty to one. Fascinating as a pheasant, I will still be free as an eagle. Wail not then, O dark-eyed daughters of the west! Lament not, ye ruddy virgins on the east! Sit not in sackcloth, soft maids of the sunny south; nor weep upon the hill tops, proud damsels of the north; nor yet send the voice of mourning from afar, O ye mermaids of the island realm! Charles Townsend will not marry. He is yet too young, too frisky, too untamed, to submit to the sober bonds of matrimony. Charles Townsend will still be the handsome bachelor, the cynosure of neighboring eyes, the tempting apple of discord to the African fair. Charles Townsend, therefore, gets pen, ink and paper and sits down to write a book -- though his charming noddle is about as empty of ideas as his pocket is of pence. 'Regardez comme nous allons commencer --' (Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth in her juvenalia)

[9:37 PM]

The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God)

[9:30 AM]

Where might we go from here? I would start with the forthright assertion that the challenge of any discourse identifying itself as black feminist is not necessarily or most immediately to vindicate itself as theory. Its challenge is to resist the theory/practice dichotomy, which is too broad, abbreviated, and compromised by hedging definitions to capture the range and diversity of contemporary critical projects, including the range and diversity of the contributions of black women to that discourse. A far more valuable and necessary project would proceed from the commonplace asumption that no consideration of any intellectual project is complete without an understanding of the process of that project's formation. And thus any responsible accounting of the work of black women in literary studies would have to provide a history of its emergence and consider that emergence first on its own terms. (Deborah McDowell, "Transferences; Black Feminist Thinking: The 'Practice' of 'Theory,'" in "The Changing Same": Black Women's Literature, Criticism, and Theory)

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