We live in a culture that wants to put a redemptive face on everything, so anger doesn't sit well with any of us. But I think women's anger sits less well than anything else. Women's anger is very scary to people, and to no one more than other women who think: Oh, goodness, well, if I let the lid off, where would we be?
Claire MessudNobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account, I tailor it, I adapt, I try to provide an outline that can, in some way, correlate to the outline that people understand me to have -- that, I suppose, I actually have, at this point. But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It's the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.
Claire MessudThe apartment was entirely, was only, for her: a wall of books, both read and unread, all of them dear to her not only in themselves, their tender spines, but in the moments or periods they evokedโฆ Her self, then, was represented in her books; her times in her records; and the rest of the room she thought of as a pure, blank slate.
Claire MessudI wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.
Claire MessudAnyway, these books I love, theyโre all books by menโevery last one of them. Because if itโs unseemly and possibly dangerous for a man to be angry, itโs totally unacceptable for a woman to be angry. I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.
Claire Messud