Respect

The previous post might seem a crying out of rage or a self-defending act of some crazy braburner or whatever you call it, and its full of clichés, I own it. It was triggered by a trifle, really, a boy, a sort of penfriend asking why I'm so reserved (did he mean dull) in person.
In response to this, I came upon a nice and somewhat more expressive (or impressive) passage in A. S. Byatt's Possession. It's not necessary for you to know in order to understand the quote, but I tell you anyway. It's a quite interesting book, actually the winner of the Booker Prize 1990 (now called Man Booker Prize), which I discovered due to a quote in Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. You see, there was a quote, I can't remember it now, which I liked so much that I tracked down the book, and here I am reading it. Actually, it's quite well-received among bookworms, and also appears on some postmodernism lists.
It is a story of two scholars investigating the correspondence of two 19th century poets, of course a male and a female. As it turns out, the 19th century poets and all their works are fictitious, i.e. they were written by A. S. Byatt (Antonia Susan, see, a woman), including tales, poems, letters, diary entries, biographies, whatever. So the story runs on two levels, time periods, or what. But of course it doesn't run lineally. Anyway, it's not exactly the story that matters here. The book is full of literature, literary thinking, philosophy, and gender issues. Now the latter is what I've been always concerned about, especially now that I started following a Hungarian blog addressing gender issues, roles, stereotypes, conflicts, and so on.
In Possession, the main issue, as in Woolf's A Room Of One's Own, is whether a woman can (is capable, allowed, accepted to) be a poet. Or, how should a woman live. And write.
Now, without further ado, I present the aforementioned quote by the fictitious Cristabel LaMotte.

I am my own riddle. Oh, Sir, you must not kindly seek to ameliorate or steal away my solitude. It is a thing we women are taught to dread – oh the terrible tower, oh the thickets round it – no companionable Nest – but a donjon.
But they have lied to us you know, in this, as in so much else. The Donjon may frown and threaten – but it keeps us very safe – within its confines we are free in a way you, who have freedom to range the world, do not need to imagine. I do not advise imagining it – but do me the justice of believing – not imputing mendacious protestation – my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I would not hop away – but oh how I sing in my gold cage –
Shattering an Egg is unworthy of you, no Pass time for men. Think what you would have in your hand if you put forth your Giant strength and crushed the solid stone. Something slippery and cold and unthinkably disagreeable.