Powerful (Shmoop) Women
Flannery O'Connor with her pet peacock.
Shmoop has posted three of my biographies today: Emily Dickinson, George Eliot and Flannery O'Connor. I love that this three all happen to be iconoclastic women - all spinsters, all writers, all broads who knew perfectly well the speculation and gossip they provoked and just did not give two shits.
There is George Eliot (born Mary Anne Evans), atheist and free love advocate, who lived happily with her partner George Lewes for twenty years despite the fact that they never married.
Flannery O'Connor lived at her remote Georgia farm, tending her beloved peacocks and fueling herself on cocktails of coffee and Coca Cola, until a degenerative form of lupus took her life at the age of 39.
And of course there is Emily Dickinson, quietly penning poems in her room, floating around town in her dress of white, and talking her poor stunned visitors' ears off on the rare occasions she accepted a caller.
Here's to you, ladies. Thanks for making it easier for all of us to follow our own paths.
Posted on Friday, Dec 18, 2009
