Bent, Not Broken
There’s something about My Brilliant Career that deeply resonates with me—and, I think, with many independent women today. What begins as a story about a young woman fighting against the limitations imposed on women—against marriage as an obligation, gender expectations, and the idea that a woman’s life should be defined by the roles society assigns her—slowly becomes something much more universal: the courage to choose your own life. Sybylla isn't simply fighting for a career. She is fighting for the right to become the person she knows she could be. And perhaps that is why this story feels so personal. This passage especially stayed with me: “My sphere in life is not congenial to me. Oh, how I hate this living death which has swallowed all my teens, which is greedily devouring my youth, which will sap my prime, and in which my old age, if I am cursed with any, will be worn away! As my life creeps on for ever through the long toil-laden days with its agonizing monoton...