Quotes by Stephanie Staal

Regardless of the faps in years, place and circumstance, women across the ages have had to negotiate the borders of their identities; in this, we find a common ground.

The feminist story, she reminded me, is a counternarrative, a narrative of disobedience, a chronicle of battle, nto of surrender. Women who do not fit the mold are too often maneuvered, manipulated, and mangled into some culturally safe archetype. The makers of history transformed perpetua intoa cold, unfeeling mother - a villan of sorts. But who is to say that becoming a mother didnt also push Perpetua to become a martyr, didnt cause her to passionatley uphold her religious ideals because she wanted to offer her son the greatest gift she could - an ideal? Maybe, in the end, Perpetuas maternal instincts were precisely what gave her the strength to confront the burliest Roman gladiator and the to lie down with dignity?