Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Carrie Lorig, The Book of Repulsive Women

Kate Zambreno, Heroines 

Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

Anne Carson, The Beauty of The Husband 

Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own 

Suzanne Scalon, Her  37th Year an Index 

from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

How could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain [ … ] Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. [ … ] Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a center of complete emptiness.