"As long as I live I will have control over my being"
About this Quote
A vow like this doesn’t read as inspirational decor; it reads as a legal claim staked on the body. “As long as I live” sets the terms with stark clarity: life itself is the boundary of negotiation. And “control over my being” is broader than “my work” or “my choices” - it’s existential, a refusal to let anyone else author her identity, sexuality, reputation, or future. Gentileschi isn’t asking for autonomy; she’s declaring it as a condition of survival.
The line lands harder when you remember what it meant to be a working woman artist in 17th-century Italy, where patronage ran through male gatekeepers and a woman’s credibility could be shredded by rumor as efficiently as by a knife. Gentileschi’s biography (including her public rape trial and the way her testimony was scrutinized, doubted, and sensationalized) turns the sentence into something like counter-testimony. It’s not only defiance of an attacker or a court; it’s defiance of a culture that treated women’s bodies and narratives as communal property.
Subtextually, Gentileschi is also asserting artistic sovereignty. Her paintings, especially the ones where women seize agency with physical force, don’t just depict power; they argue for it. “My being” includes the right to make images on her terms, to profit from them, to be taken seriously as a professional rather than a curiosity.
The intent is compact and radical: if control is the one thing you can’t outsource, then keeping it becomes both ethic and method.
The line lands harder when you remember what it meant to be a working woman artist in 17th-century Italy, where patronage ran through male gatekeepers and a woman’s credibility could be shredded by rumor as efficiently as by a knife. Gentileschi’s biography (including her public rape trial and the way her testimony was scrutinized, doubted, and sensationalized) turns the sentence into something like counter-testimony. It’s not only defiance of an attacker or a court; it’s defiance of a culture that treated women’s bodies and narratives as communal property.
Subtextually, Gentileschi is also asserting artistic sovereignty. Her paintings, especially the ones where women seize agency with physical force, don’t just depict power; they argue for it. “My being” includes the right to make images on her terms, to profit from them, to be taken seriously as a professional rather than a curiosity.
The intent is compact and radical: if control is the one thing you can’t outsource, then keeping it becomes both ethic and method.
Quote Details
| Topic | Free Will & Fate |
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