She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings. She knew the Eiffel Tower was a hideous symbol of phallic oppression but when ordered by her commander to detonate the lift so that no-one should unthinkingly scale an erection, her mind filled with young romantics gazing over Paris and opening aerograms that said Je t'aime.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the tension between romantic ideals and radical beliefs.
Jeanette Winterson highlights the struggle of a committed romantic who grapples with the radical views of an anarcha-feminist. Although she recognizes symbols like the Eiffel Tower as oppressive, her heart is filled with the beauty of love and affection, illustrating a conflict between her beliefs and her emotional responses. This paradox points to the complexity of love and how it can coexist with revolutionary ideals, emphasizing the inherent struggle in reconciling personal values with larger political agendas.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the intersection of love and political beliefs in a literature class.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
Love can be angry... with a kind of anger in which there is no gall, like the dove's and not the ravens.
There's more, much more, to Christmas Than candlelight and cheer; It's the spirit of sweet friendship That brightens all year. It's thoughtfulness and kindness, It's hope reborn again, For peace, for understanding, And for goodwill to men!
As far as love is concerned, possession, power, fusion and disenchantment are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; favored old barren reason from my bed, and took the daughter of the vine to spouse.
Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it; the one brings fuel, the other blows it till it burns clear.
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