Self-expression is apparently not art(?)

A move from companionship to transportation. It is not enough to be happy inside the home--she's ready to move beyond it.

This reminds me of Iris Young's "Five Faces of Oppression." Young argues that we often neglect to see the many faces of oppression, and that we misrepresent reality by comparing dissimilar experiences of oppression as existing under the same general umbrella of subjectivity. Anyone who experiences even one face of oppression is oppressed, but many individuals and groups experience oppression differently because they may experience different combinations of the faces of oppression. One face of oppression which often goes overlooked is "powerlessness."

Powerlessness is a distinction between technical freedom and actual self-possession and choice. Examples Young gives are that although we are technically allowed to choose our employer, many employees are placed at the bottom of the totem pole, where they are dictated to, rather than consulted about their own work. Those who work menial jobs, for example, in which the minutia of their jobs (what to do and how to do it) are strictly controlled are powerless. In contrast, professionals such as doctors, teachers, managers, etc. are given a degree of freedom and choice about how to best go about their work, and they might even have employees working under them, whose work they get to control. This freedom gives one "respectability" in the eyes of society and one's own eyes. If someone does not have access to professionalization, they are denigrated for this lack of "respectability," by the implication that they are inferior to professionals. This, of course, becomes a vicious economic and psychological cycle.

This system of oppression through powerlessness is what Woolf is referencing here. Although she is employed, society has denied her the freedom allotted to most literary professionals, most of whom are men. She is employed, but she is not a professional because she is denied the freedom and respectability that being a professional connotes.

Arguably, indeed. Grand claims like this seem questionable to me, especially since I had never heard of Willard prior to this piece. However, that in and of itself demonstrates the historical erasure of women who were, indeed, important in their day. I'm curious whether any of you recall reading about Willard in your U.S. history textbooks, because I certainly do not, but that may have been because, as the editors point out above, the temperance movement has been largely reduced to a mockable footnote in American history.

I don't think it was necessary to include that it was her fiance who made these decisions which destroyed so much of what she had worked for. Certainly, it adds an element of human interest, but to mention that it was her fiance seems to imply that this was largely the result of a domestic drama. I think it is important to remember that even if it had not been Fowler, he could have been replaced by literally any other man at the time and there is a fair chance that the results would have been much the same. This situation resulted from a society that denigrated and oppressed women for being women, not just for being a woman who refused to marry Fowler, in particular. It was surely an extra twist of the knife that these changes were implemented by a man she had once trusted, but we shouldn't forget that this is a system which allowed #historicalshitheads like Fowler to destroy the work of women on a whim.

I do wonder what the reasoning was for this (I mean, besides the blatant "women and the lower class are too stupid to understand our Great Books and/or will lead lives that do not require a 'polite' education"). We've already read arguments that the "polite" education supposedly improved the virtues as well as the mind, right? Wouldn't all of society benefit if women and the lower class were virtuous, as much as possible?

This was an excellent logical grasp at authority for women. Since they were expected to be models of morality within the family (though they were denied the authority of the pulpit or even of the home), these women were able to turn that moral authority outward to shine it on social justice issues in the name of God.

I think this is key. Women were held to exacting (actually, impossible) standards regarding morality, while completely disregarded intellectually. However, restrictions on women did not stop there, but continued into a swirling confusion of contradictory stereotypes:, for example, that women are naturally inclined to corrupt men through seduction and lasciviousness, yet are also naturally innocent, naive and in need of protection. Some early feminists mistakenly began their argument for women's rights with the premise that women deserved recognition for their moral authority, while giving in to accusations that they were not as intellectually capable. This naturally left any of their arguments suspect, as they were admitting (even if only for the sake of humility) that they might not be able to match the arguments of men intellectually. By positing that men and women are equal in terms of BOTH intellect and morality, Grimke builds herself a more sturdy rhetorical platform.

I like the use of this word, here. It implies that those who silence women are STEALING FROM JESUS. Quite the materialist view of religion.

This is an important claim that was a prominent argument in the Seneca Falls convention, notably as an argument of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?"