"Women are at last becoming persons first and wives second, and that is as it should be"
About this Quote
Sarton’s line lands with the quiet force of a door finally closing on an old script. “At last” carries the fatigue of waiting: generations of women asked to treat personhood as an optional accessory, permitted only after the role of wife was secured. By flipping the order - persons first, wives second - she isn’t just praising progress; she’s insisting on a hierarchy of value. The sentence is built like a correction, the verbal equivalent of moving a nameplate to the right spot on a desk.
The subtext is sharper than the tone suggests. “Becoming persons” implies that the culture has long withheld full membership, as if women needed to qualify for humanity through marital status. Sarton refuses that logic without melodrama. The calmness is strategic: it makes the claim sound like common sense, not a plea. Then she seals it with “as it should be,” a phrase that reads almost domestic in its plainness while functioning as moral gavel. No debate, no hedging.
Context matters: Sarton wrote across the decades when second-wave feminism was challenging marriage as a default destiny, while still grappling with the emotional reality that many women did want partnership - just not at the cost of selfhood. As a poet, Sarton understood identity as something cultivated, not bestowed. The line doesn’t reject marriage; it demotes it from definition to choice. That demotion is the revolution.
The subtext is sharper than the tone suggests. “Becoming persons” implies that the culture has long withheld full membership, as if women needed to qualify for humanity through marital status. Sarton refuses that logic without melodrama. The calmness is strategic: it makes the claim sound like common sense, not a plea. Then she seals it with “as it should be,” a phrase that reads almost domestic in its plainness while functioning as moral gavel. No debate, no hedging.
Context matters: Sarton wrote across the decades when second-wave feminism was challenging marriage as a default destiny, while still grappling with the emotional reality that many women did want partnership - just not at the cost of selfhood. As a poet, Sarton understood identity as something cultivated, not bestowed. The line doesn’t reject marriage; it demotes it from definition to choice. That demotion is the revolution.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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