"Feminists are in love with Charlotte Brontë. Yet the great summation of the travails of Charlotte's Jane Eyre was: "Reader, I married him." Reader, I married the boss. No, listen, that's just not good enough! Charlotte Brontë was a flaming racist. If you want to know where she stands, compare her with her sister, the antiracist Emily Brontë, who said, "I am Heathcliff": I am that man of color, who had been a street urchin. And that's just the beginning of what I think we have to do, not only if we are white, but whoever we are. We have to identify entirely with those with less power than ourselves: not only are we "with them"; we are "them." That way lies power for all of us, the end of the divisions, the end of the hierarchy and the flowering of real diversity and individuality."
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Novelists from EnglandPoets from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandWomen born in the 19th century
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Selma James, "The Challenge of Diversity" (1990) collected in Sex, Race and Class: the Perspective of Winning (2012)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB
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Charlotte Brontë
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