In the comments to my favorite personal work of cruelty, a woman asks:
Just out of curiosity, is there any way, in your cosmology, for a single woman to be acceptable at all, ever? Or is one simply doomed to being whorish, despondent, and defiant?
“Whorish, despondent, and defiant” is a great turn of phrase. Pity that the rest of the question is such a quintessentially feminine mess.
I’m very pleased with my response, and I hope you will be, too:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman who is a writer, must be whorish, despondent, and defiant.
That should make some pretty little heads asplode with incomprehension.
