She showed how to remain anchored in the achievements of the past while embracing her own century. She demonstrated endless admiration for art and beauty—and endless contempt for intellectual and spiritual vulgarity. She impressed generations of women as a thinker unafraid of men, and unaware she ought to be. She stood for self-improvement—for making oneself into something greater than what one was expected to be. She symbolized the writer who ranged widely without falling into either overspecialization or dilettantism.
