All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins…”
Editor's note · Context
This quote critiques the societal contradictions surrounding women's roles as both virgins and mothers.
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Three things characterized this religion of the slave,—the Preacher, the Music, and the Frenzy.
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This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.