Elizabeth Cary and Edward II: What do Women Want to Write?

… inconsistent with my being a woman to write of wars … between Medes and Persians, Greeks and Trojans, Christians and Turks.

Margaret Cavendish, The Life of William Cavendish

The young lady living in a village has only to be a damsel upon whom nothing is lost to make it quite unfair … to declare … that she shall have nothing to say about the military.

Henry James, The Art of Fiction