Episode 246: “Best of” Series – “Are Women Human” by Dorothy L. Sayers, Ep. 9

Today’s episode of The Literary Life podcast is one in our “Best of The Literary Life” series. This week’s remix is a conversation from 2019 between Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins in which they discuss Dorothy L. Sayers’ essay “Are Women Human?“ They explore the ideas that Sayers wrestles with in the essay, including: the Victorian view of women, the significance of the industrial revolution, the human need for meaningful occupation, and the early feminist movement and women’s suffrage.

Angelina and Cindy also discuss the history of women’s work inside and outside of the home and how they have been impacted by industry and our production-consumption culture. They take a fascinating look at the effects of the Enlightenment on women in the modern western world, as well as the problem of over-generalization and categorizing people according to classes. Finally, Cindy and Angelina highlight the importance of asking yourself the question: “Who am I supposed to be as a mother and a woman?”

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Commonplace Quotes:

Many poets are not poets for the same reason many religious men are not saints. They never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.

Thomas Merton

I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said vespers, and put some oatmeal in the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark, the rain surrounding the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it, all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gulleys and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside. What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone in the forest at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that the rain makes by itself all over the ridges and the talk of the water courses everywhere in the hollows. Nobody started it. Nobody’s going to stop it. It will talk as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks, I’m going to listen.

Thomas Merton

Villon

by Siegfried Sassoon

They threw me from the gates: my matted hair 
Was dank with dungeon wetness; my spent frame 
O’erlaid with marish agues: everywhere 
Tortured by leaping pangs of frost and flame, 
So hideous was I that even Lazarus there
In noisome rags arrayed and leprous shame, 
Beside me set had seemed full sweet and fair, 
And looked on me with loathing. 

But one came 
Who laid a cloak on me and brought me in 
Tenderly to an hostel quiet and clean;
Used me with healing hands for all my needs. 
The mortal stain of my reputed sin, 
My state despised, and my defilèd weeds, 
He hath put by as though they had not been.

Book List:

(Amazon Affiliate Links are included in this post.)

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

Seeking God by Esther De Waal

Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers

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Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CindyRollinsWriter. Check out Cindy’s own Patreon page also!

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