"The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart"
About this Quote
Her pivot is strategic: "has gone". Not "should go", not "must go" - past tense, declarative, almost legislative. It reads like a reclassification of reality, the kind reform movements rely on when moral argument alone isn’t enough. Cooper’s profession matters here. As an educator, she frames emancipation in terms of resources and activities, the language of access rather than abstract rights. Education becomes both proof and engine: women can do more because they have been systematically denied the tools that would make "more" visible.
The line "as many resources as men" is less assimilationist than it sounds. Cooper isn’t claiming women become valuable by mimicking men; she’s dismantling scarcity logic itself, the idea that public life is a male inheritance with limited seats. "Possibilities swell" is a deliberately embodied metaphor: expansion where there was tightness, breath where there was constraint. Beneath the uplift is a harder subtext: if this life "has gone", then those still enforcing the old one are not guardians of tradition - they’re obstructing history.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South — Anna Julia Cooper, 1892 (essay collection). |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Cooper, Anna Julia. (n.d.). The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-old-subjective-stagnant-indolent-and-wretched-36099/
Chicago Style
Cooper, Anna Julia. "The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-old-subjective-stagnant-indolent-and-wretched-36099/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-old-subjective-stagnant-indolent-and-wretched-36099/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
