So many of these men benefited from a social arrangement defying both the moral and the physical laws of the universe in which the unpaid, invisible work of a woman creates the time and – neat, warmed and cushion-plumped – space for their work. We know that a male writer’s time to write was traditionally created for him by liberating him from the need to shop, cook, clean up after himself or anyone else, deal with mundane correspondence, entertain, arrange travel or holidays, care for his own children (except as a ‘helper’ who is thanked, as if it were not his job, or not his children) and so
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