"Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise"
About this Quote
A line like this lands with the snap of a proverb and the sting of an accusation: virtue, it suggests, is often less a shining moral achievement than a byproduct of social math. Angelou aims the spotlight at the way desirability is rationed - by beauty standards, class, race, and proximity to power - and how quickly society turns the resulting scarcity into a moral narrative. If you are ignored, you are "good". If you are pursued, your goodness becomes a test you are expected to fail.
The subtext is not really about "plain girls" at all; its real target is the smugness of a culture that confuses limited options with principled restraint. The word "virtuous" is doing double duty: it names sexual purity, but also the broader respectability politics imposed on women, especially those deemed unmarketable or invisible. Opportunity is framed as the hidden variable in moral judgment, turning chastity into something like an economic condition rather than a spiritual one.
Given Angelou's life and work - steeped in the politics of race, gender, and survival - the remark reads as a hard-eyed refusal to romanticize deprivation. It punctures the flattering story that the marginalized are morally superior because they are marginalized. The line doesn't sneer at women; it sneers at the system that rewards some with temptation and punishes others with invisibility, then congratulates itself for the "virtue" it has manufactured.
The subtext is not really about "plain girls" at all; its real target is the smugness of a culture that confuses limited options with principled restraint. The word "virtuous" is doing double duty: it names sexual purity, but also the broader respectability politics imposed on women, especially those deemed unmarketable or invisible. Opportunity is framed as the hidden variable in moral judgment, turning chastity into something like an economic condition rather than a spiritual one.
Given Angelou's life and work - steeped in the politics of race, gender, and survival - the remark reads as a hard-eyed refusal to romanticize deprivation. It punctures the flattering story that the marginalized are morally superior because they are marginalized. The line doesn't sneer at women; it sneers at the system that rewards some with temptation and punishes others with invisibility, then congratulates itself for the "virtue" it has manufactured.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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