Proposition one: time is a man, space is a woman.
Interpretation
This quote uses gendered metaphors to illustrate the relationship between time and space.
Angela Carter's quote suggests that time, characterized as masculine, embodies qualities such as action and directness, while space, described as feminine, contains the notions of containment and nurturing. This juxtaposition invites reflection on how we perceive and interact with these two fundamental dimensions of existence, revealing deeper insights into their intertwined nature.
In practice
In a discussion on gender roles in literature, this quote can be introduced to explore metaphors used by writers.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver.
Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.
Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written β heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
The humanity that is given to other people isn't given to us. There is an expendability that comes along with being African American.
I cannot accept that to be realistic means to tolerate misery, violence and hate. I do not believe that the hungry man should be treated as subversive for expressing his suffering. I shall never accept that the law can be used to justify tragedy, to keep things as they are, to make us abandon our ideas of a different world. Law is the path of liberty, and must as such open the way to progress for everyone.
The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead.
The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.
Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don't like the way things are, they aren't interesting enough for you, so you deccide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.