"William Seymour was a cabman…In 1875, he was accused of daring to steal two pieces of meat from a butcher’s shop in Liverpool, which as an honest man he denied. When brought to trial, William Seymour was accused of crimes beyond the theft of meat: he was found to be one Margaret Honeywell, who, having been married off at fourteen, had brazenly left her husband, dared to run away to London, and conspired to earn her living independently as a cabman."
Although categorized as novel, the framework of this book is anything but traditional. It is not constructed as a traditional novel, and it is certainly not people with characters interested in behaving traditionally. The book is a celebration of women who thumbed their nose at patriarchal expectations and misogynistic demands to behave “like women.” While the narrative does take a slightly more traditional approach to novelistic structure by telling more involved stories that play out over an extended period of time, some of the most fascinating tales are brief capsule snapshots of mostly unknown historical figures like William Seymour. Within the expressionistic treatment of theme-as-plot which characterizes the text, the tale of Seymour is a heroic highlight of the multiple ways in which women have carved their own paths through the limitations imposed upon them by male dominance, Of course, it is also an illustration of how often these victories of empowerment in action were short-lived.
"X was jovial and generous. X would throw a shoulder to a wheel without complaint, could make a room roar with laughter. It wasn’t that. It was what X was not. X was not a willing housewife. X remained unmoved by squalling infants, would not wear skirts that swaddled the stride, had no desire to be pursued by the hot breath of young men, failed to enjoy domestic chores, and possessed none of the decorous modesty of maidenhood."
In 1883, a man named Guglielmo Cantarano published his study of a notorious young Italian woman identified only as “X.” The description above paints a visceral portrait of what the unnamed girl was like. The key point being that she exhibited none of the attributes typically associated with threats to the patriarchy like demanding equality, making fiery speeches, joining in marches, etc. The threat she posed to the continuance of male dominion was situated not in those things she did, but in those things she didn’t do. The story is emblematic of the paradox that lies at the heart of being a woman in a society run by men. If one acts a certain way, they are doomed. If one doesn’t act a certain way, they are doomed. The road to contentment for women in the world shaped and formed for them by men is narrow and treacherous. So treacherous that “X” wound up being sent to an asylum to deal with the insanity clearly manifested by her rejection of matrimony and motherhood.
"In the autumn of 1914 Virginia Woolf opened the newspaper. On the third page she was instructed that there had been no female of first-rate literary ability since Sappho...She sighed. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples."
Although the title of this tome features ancient poet Sappho in the lead role, the protagonist of the novel is really Virginia Woolf. This actual moment in Woolf’s personal history did occur. There actually was at some point in British history some journalist that made the absurd assertion about the absolute dearth of first-rate female writers in the roughly 2500 years since Sappho lived. So profoundly was Woolf impacted by the unlikelihood of ever actually seeing such a contention made publicly on the printed page that the assertion would show up in a scene in her 1921 novel Monday or Tuesday. In that book, a little context is offered before the quote is mentioned verbatim when another character begins listing some names that were apparently considered by the newspaper writer—whoever he was—as second-rate at best: Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, for instance. That sigh which issues forth from Woolf in the quote above is an expression of the persistent presence of shock and disbelief at how deeply misogyny is ingrained into the fabric of everyday existence. The impact of misogyny—officially defined as contempt for, hatred of, prejudice toward or aversion to women—is demonstrated in equally sigh-inducing ways on nearly every single page of this unusual novel.
