The Woolfmother outed herself as a snob and a racist and an anti-Semite, failing us because mothers are obliged to fail. But her writing about women inspired us and gave us courage because our imaginations were bigger than hers. Our imaginations projected us into sentences intended for upper-middle-class Englishwomen. They propelled us into a future in which we were artists and scholars and our lives were experimental adventures. In that future we could destroy the Woolfmother, rip her to pieces, and end up motherless and weeping. Or we could frame her, put her up on a wall, and keep her under
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