Life & Wisdom Quote by Marge Piercy

Strength here isn’t a personality trait; it’s a collision. Piercy frames “a strong woman” not as someone who simply endures, but someone who chooses a target precisely where resistance has been pre-installed. The line’s engine is its double “determined”: her will is mirrored by an opposing will, and the symmetry exposes how often women’s ambition is treated as a kind of social disturbance. Strength becomes relational, not innate. You’re “strong” because someone is actively trying to make you small.

The grammar is a little jagged (“not be done”), and that roughness actually helps: it reads less like a polished aphorism and more like a hard-won observation, the kind that comes from watching institutions stall, sneer, or quietly rewrite the rules. Piercy, a writer shaped by second-wave feminism, labor politics, and the long afterlife of “know your place,” is speaking into a culture that loves to praise women’s resilience while resisting women’s agency. The quote refuses the sentimental version of empowerment that celebrates grit without naming the gate.

Its subtext is also a warning about who gets to define “strength.” Women are often called strong when they absorb damage gracefully; Piercy shifts the compliment toward disruption. The “something” is deliberately vague, because it can be anything: getting published, getting divorced, running for office, refusing motherhood, demanding credit, demanding pay. The point is structural: if others are determined it won’t happen, the act becomes political. Strength is not the absence of fear; it’s the refusal to take the hint.