# Women in Art

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Anne Gordon Atkinson, Women in Art, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Published in the Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 4, number 2 (1991)
> © Association for Bahá’í Studies 1991
> 
> Women in Art
> Anne Gordon Atkinson
> 
> Abstract
> Though creativity has often been associated with women, historically and in the present there have been many
> impediments to achievement by women in art. Often relegated to the role of the “muse,” women have been expected
> to inspire men’s creativity but not develop their own. Household responsibilities, the rearing of children, poverty,
> and lack of education, support, and encouragement have been among the reasons there have been few “great”
> women artists. Often work by women was never discovered, was published or presented anonymously, or was
> credited to a male. The Bahá’í writings state that women should receive equal opportunities for education, should
> participate in all avenues of human endeavor, and should become proficient in the arts and sciences. Men are called
> upon to affirm that the capacity of women is equal to and even greater than theirs, in order to foster the development
> of women. In a world in which both sexes are free to express their creativity, great advances will be made.
> 
> Résumé
> Bien que des liens étroits se soient souvent développés, auf il des âges, entre la créativité et les femmes, que ce soit
> au cours de l’histoire ou même de nos jours, de nombreux obstacles ont empêché bien des femmes de parvenir à la
> consécration artistique. Fréquemment reléguées au role de muse, l’on attendait des femmes qu’elles inspirent la
> créativité masculine plutôt que de laisser cours à leur propre inspiration. Qu’il s’agisse de responsabilités familiales,
> de l’éducation des enfants, de la pauvreté et de 1’absence d’éducation, de soutien ou d’encouragement, de
> nombreuses raisons expliquent qu’il y ait eu peu de grands artistes féminins. Dans bien des car les oeuvres de
> femmes restaient dans l’ombre, n’étaient publiées ou présentées que de manière anonyme, ou étaient attribuées a un
> homme. Les Écrits bahá’ís indiquent que les femmes devraient béneficier des mêmes avantages que les hommes en
> ce qui a trait a l’éducation, devraient prendre part à tout léventail des activités humaines et devraient exceller dans
> les domaines des arts et des sciences. Aux hommes incombe la responsabilité d’affirmer très haut que le talent des
> femmes est non seulement égal au leur mais qu’il leur est aussi supérieur. Ce n’est qu’ainsi que pourra s’affirmer le
> talent féminin. Et dans an monde où les deux sexes auront toute liberté d’exprimer leur créativité, les progrés seront
> phénoménoux.
> 
> Resumen
> Aunque la creativi dad frecuentemente se ha asociado con la mujer, históricamente y en el presente han habido
> muchos impedimentos al logro de la mujer en el arte. Frecuentemente reducida al rol de “musa,” la mujer ha estado
> supuesta de servir de inspiración a la creatividad del hombre, quedando al margen de poder ella desarrollar su propia
> creatividad. Las responsabilidades caseras, la cría de los nifsos, Ia pobreza, y lafalta de educación, de apoyo y de
> estimulo, son algunas de los razones por lo cual han habido tan pocas “grandes” mujeres artistas. Ocurre que muchas
> obras hechas por mujeres nunca fueron descubiertos, fueron publicadas o presentadas anónimamente, o se les
> atribuyó a un hombre. Los escritos bahá’is declaran que la mujer debe recibir iqualdad de oportunidad en la
> educación, debe participar en todos los campos adelanto, y lograr habilidad en las artes y ciencias. El hombre es
> llamado a constar que la capacidad de la mujer es igual y aun mayor que el de ellos, fomentando así el desarrollo de
> la mujer. Llegado un mundo en donde ambos sexos obtienen libertad para expresar su creatividad, habrán grandes
> adelantos.
> 
> W      oman traditionally has played the role of the muse—the one to inspire (male) creativity, or the one whose
> creative acts were limited to procreation and crafts or hobbies within the home. She was certainly not
> encouraged to develop creative gifts to the point of being unavailable to those who needed and depended on her, or
> she was labeled “selfish” or “eccentric” if she did.
> In an essay entitled “From Muse to Heroine: Toward a Visible Creative Identity,” Anne Griswold Tyng
> describes the fate of one creative woman:
> 
> Alma Schindler (1879–1964) “the most beautiful girl in Vienna,” had ability she might have developed as a
> composer; at twenty-two she married Gustav Mahler, win was forty-one and already a famous composer–
> conductor. On the eve of the marriage, Mahler wrote to Alma:
> 
> How do you picture the married life of a husband and wife who are both composers? Have you my
> idea how ridiculous and, in time, how degrading for both of us such a peculiarly competitive
> relationship would inevitably become1 What will happen if, just when you’re ‘in the mood’,
> you’re obliged to attend to the house or to something I might happen to need? . . . You must
> become ‘what I need’ if we are to be happy together, i.e., my wife, not my colleague.
> 
> Alma agreed to Mahler’s demands. But, married three years, she wrote in her diary: “It came to me
> suddenly that I am living what only appears to be a life. I hold so much inside of me, I am not free—I
> suffer—but I don’t know why or what for.” For his part, Mahler was unable to compose without her
> presence to nourish an inspire him. (Architecture 172–73)
> 
> After Mahler died, Alma became the lover of painter Oskar Kokoschka and eventually married architect Walter
> Gropius, from whom she was divorced and then married poet/novelist/playwright Franz Werfel. She had affairs with
> other noted men. “Nine published songs remain as fruits of her own creativity (Tyng, “From Muse to Heroine” 173).
> Tyng further notes:
> 
> The steps from muse to heroine are accomplished by very few. Many women trained as architects marry
> architects. No longer the women behind the man, the woman architect in partnership with her husband may
> nevertheless be barely visible beside (or slightly behind) the hero.
> The man’s creative output and recognition are often inflated; credit by the partner wife is
> frequently omitted. This situation is compounded by the woman’s projection of her own potential for
> visible achievement onto the real-life man who acts and is perceived as the hero-animus. The two are
> further bound in work and love by the man’s projection of his anima or generative source of creativity onto
> his real-life partner. (“From Muse to Heroine” 176–77)
> 
> How do we restore, create, and sustain a female presence in the arts? How do we nurture ourselves as
> women artists? It is only recently that scholars, historians, aesthetic theorists, art critics, and artists themselves have
> looked at and taken seriously the voice and role of women in art. Half the voice of humanity has been suppressed,
> ignored, undeveloped, unheard.
> When we turn, for example, to literary history, we find no texts in the Old English period that have
> definitively been written by women, hardly any works by medieval women, and very few by Renaissance women.
> No doubt some women wrote, but their works perhaps were not considered worth saving, have been handed down or
> published anonymously, or were never discovered. We know that it is likely, however, that most women did not
> write because they did not have access to the education or social acceptance that would facilitate such activity and
> because they were confined to the home with all that required of them, were constrained by cultural definitions of
> femininity, had little experience in public life and no expectation of an audience that would encourage and foster
> their creativity.
> Those who did write (or create works in any artistic field) were generally spiritually unusual—solitary
> visionaries or rebels against social conventions. They were also distinctively concerned with the problems creativity
> posed for women and plagued by the images of women that men had constructed for them. They often had to
> confront the misogyny of male theologians who sought to censure and silence them. As well, they had to confront an
> ideal of courtly life that glamorized and glorified them in ways that were at times problematic.
> The Anglo-Saxon culture that predated Christianity in England was oblivious of or hostile to women. One
> of the few lyrics attributed to a woman from this period—a piece called “The Wife’s Lament” c. 900)—begins with
> a complaint:
> 
> I make this song sadly about myself,
> about my life. I a woman say
> I’ve been unhappy since I grew up.
> (Norton Anthology 5)
> 
> In Beowulf, the major epic of the age, women are objects of exchange, servants to men, monsters, or
> mothers of monsters. Embedded in even the most chivalric texts are images of women as monsters or witches; any
> beautiful lady, these romances hint, might be a sorceress. Behind even the highest praise of women often were
> implied criticism and secret hostility.
> As the religious and civic upheavals of the seventeenth century created new belief systems, urbanization,
> and the ascendancy of science and rationalism, women’s lives and views of women began to change. Many women
> lamented what one expressed—the fact that men “refuse to let us know / what sacred Science doth impart” (Norton
> Anthology 47), and novelist Sarah Fielding explained in a preface to one of her books published in 1744, “Perhaps
> the be excuse that can be made for a woman’s venturing to write at all, is that which really produced this book;
> distress in her circumstances: which she couldn’t so well remove by any other means in her power” (Norton
> Anthology 49–50). With the abolition of the patronage system, women began to seek publication on the own, though
> many were financially dependent on male relatives. Certainly in many cases hostility towards men was felt, since
> men had the power to prevent a woman from pursuing creative endeavors. Lady Winchilsea, born in 1661, writes
> with indignation about the position of women as defined by men:
> 
> Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,
> Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed,
> The fault can by no virtue be redeemed.
> They tell us we mistake our sex and way;
> Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing, play,
> Are the accomplishments we should desire;
> To write, or read, or think, or to enquire,
> Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time,
> And interrupt the conquests of our prime,
> Whilst the dull manage of a servile house
> Is held by some our utmost art and use.
> (Quoted in Woolf, A Room of One’s Own 62)
> 
> There emerged a new image of woman, the satiric portrait of the female artist that constituted a reaction
> against their growing visibility. Attack frequently explained why many women were unable to write, publish, or
> produce artworks, and those who did, felt it necessary to apologize or justify their efforts. “Puritan scorn for so-
> called scribbling women is aptly) demonstrated by Thomas Parker’s 1650 condemnation of his sister: ‘Your printing
> of a book beyond the custom of your sex doth rankly smell’ “(quoted in Norton Anthology 52).
> Female erudition was satirized. In 1645, the American Puritan John Winthrop bemoaned the lot of a
> woman who had “fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding, and reason, which had been growing
> upon her diverse years, by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, an written many books”
> (quoted in Norton Anthology 52–53).
> Toward the end of the century Samuel Johnson assumed that creativity and femininity were contradictory
> terms when he compared a woman preacher to dancing dog, or when he condemned portrait painting as improper in
> women because “public practice of any art. . . staring in men’s faces, is very indelicate in a female” (quoted in
> Norton Anthology 53).
> Taking a look at why it has been so hard for women to achieve success as artists, we see that society has
> not sanctioned the kind of dedication it takes for a woman really to advance in an art form. In her book The Obstacle
> Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Works, Germaine Greer examines some of the reasons behind this
> reality. She notes that most women who became famous as painters were related to better-known male painters. The
> participation of these women in the graphic arts “was probably a filial and submissive response to the family
> environment and family pressure. . . . Women artists before the nineteenth century seldom expressed their own
> creativity: they imitated the modes of self-expression first forged by integrated, self-regulating (male) genius, most
> often when they were already weakened by eclecticism and imitation (13). Greer further comments that art history
> “abounds with the names of sisters who worked with or for their brothers, not only painting for them, but copying
> and engraving their works, travelling with them and keeping house for them (Obstacle Race 28).
> To Greer, “To be truly excellent in art was to be de-sexed, to be a woman only in name, to inhabit a special
> realm that no other women could enter, to be separated from all other women, or it was to express true femininity in
> grace, delicacy, sweetness and so forth, and be condemned to the second rank” (Obstacle Race 75). Greer also looks
> at the manifestations of the oppression for women artists and its pathology, noting
> 
> the signs of self-censorship, hypocritical modesty, insecurity, girlishness, self- deception, hostility towards
> one’s fellow strivers, emotional and sexual dependency upon men, timidity, poverty and ignorance. All
> these traits of the oppressed personality are only to be expected; the astonishing and gratifying thing is that
> so many women conquered all of these enemies within some of the time, most often when they were young,
> before marriage and childbirth or poverty and disillusionment took their toll. (Obstacle Race 11)
> 
> Anne Garlin Spenser, an American social reformer, comments wryly, “when her biographer says of an
> Italian woman poet, ‘during some years her Muse was intermitted’, we do not wonder at the fact when he casually
> mentions her ten children” (from the author’s notes).
> Reminded constantly of their inadequacies and the impediments to creativity posed by lack of education,
> domestic preoccupations, and the resentment that confinement breeds, women expressed such sentiments as the
> following verse by Mary Oxlie:
> 
> Perfection in a woman’s work is rare;
> From an untroubled mind should verses flow;
> My discontents make mine too muddy show;
> and hoarse encumbrances of household care,
> Where these remain the Muses ne’er repair.
> (Norton Anthology 56)
> 
> Anne Bradstreet, a well-educated, prolific writer of the Puritan period in America and who was also the
> mother of eight children, refers to her “foolish, broken, blemished Muse,” a talent “made irreparable” by nature, for
> “men can do best, and women know it well” (Norton Anthology 60). But at the same time she allows herself a flash
> of anger and independence:
> 
> I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
> Who says my hand a needle better fits
> if what I do prove well, it won’t advance,
> They’ll say it’s stolen, or else it was by chance.
> (Quoted in Norton Anthology 60)
> 
> When her brother-in-law arranged without her knowledge to have her book The Tenth Muse printed in
> London, he wrote a foreword carefully explaining that her verse was “the work of a woman, honoured and esteemed
> where she lives, for. . . her exact diligence in her place, and discrete managing of her family occasions, and. . . these
> poems are but the fruit of some few hours, curtailed from her sleep and other refreshments” (quoted in Norton
> Anthology 60).
> It was not until Mary Wollstonecraft’s book A Vindication of the Rights of Women came out in 1792 that
> misogynist images in literature were criticized. Her impassioned plea against the miseducation of women and her
> argument for female political, economic, and legal equality fell on deaf ears for the most part. She was denounced as
> a “hyena in petticoats” and a “philosophical wanton” (Norton Anthology 138).
> It is no wonder such figures as Táhirih (Qurratu’l-’Ayn), a Persian poet and the first woman in Iran to
> discard the traditional veil, was strangled in 1850 and thrown into a well. She was the victim of religious persecution
> as well as societal denunciation of women (Root, Táhirih). Or that the American poet Emily Dickinson hid away in
> her father’s house and never married, hiding 1,776 poems that did not find an audience in her lifetime (Norton
> Anthology 839).
> Maria Edgeworth, writing both an attack on and a defense of “literary ladies” in 1795, describes some of
> the problems such a calling presents:
> 
> Literary ladies will, I am afraid, be losers in love as well as in friendship, by their superiority.—Cupid is a timid,
> playful child, and is frightened at the helmet of Minerva [the goddess of wisdom]. It has been observed, that
> gentlemen are not apt to admire a prodigious quantity of learning and masculine acquirements in the fair sex—we
> usually consider a certain degree of weakness, both of mind and body, as friendly to female grace. I am not
> absolutely of this opinion, yet I do not see the advantage of supernatural force, either of body or mind, to female
> excellence. (Quoted in Norton Anthology 190)
> Despite the fears that education and creative activity might alienate men and lead to other hardship and
> disaster, a great clamoring for emancipation was raised. We have the brilliant speeches by Sojourner Truth, for
> example, who spoke out for the cause of women’s suffrage, racial equality, and spiritual themes. Here, art took the
> form of oral tradition—luckily preserved in part.
> Illiterate and born into slavery, Sojourner Truth spoke for oppressed people with humor and courage in
> such speeches as “Ain’t I a Woman?”:
> 
> Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that
> ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be
> in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
> That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches,
> and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives
> me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and
> gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as
> much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen
> children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but
> Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
> Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [Intellect, someone
> whispers.] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with woman’s rights or negro’s rights? If my cup won’t
> hold but half a pint, and your’s holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-
> measure full?
> Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause
> Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God
> and a woman. Man had nothing to do with Him.
> If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone,
> these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking
> to do it, the men better let them.
> Obliged in you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say. (Quoted in
> Norton Anthology 253)
> 
> The twentieth century has seen a much greater proliferation of women artists as great social changes
> occurred and the world experienced the profound impact of wars between nations, technological advancement, and
> greater numbers of women in the work force. Still, writers sensitive to the plight of women in general and in the
> creative fields in particular felt a need to voice the ramifications of inequality.
> Virginia Woolf, hypothetically speculating on whether Shakespeare’s sister could have produced the body
> of writing that he did, explored in A Room of One’s Own the necessary conditions for a woman to be able to create.
> Woolf was one of the first to articulate the great difficulty women have in obtaining the necessary freedom from
> household details and economic cares in order to justify a calling such as writing. Here, she considers the moment
> when the middle-class woman began to write as a “change of greater importance than the Crusades or the War of the
> Roses” (Woolf, A Room 68). Her essay reminds us that our times are not so different from Shakespeare’s in some
> ways—women are for the most part still bound to fulfil expectations that prohibit development and creativity, and
> they still lack both the physical space and the financial means to be able to produce work of consequence.
> “Intellectual freedom,” says Woolf,
> 
> depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been
> poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual
> freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry. (A
> Room 112)
> 
> Woolf herself, an accomplished professional writer with a supportive husband and literary circle, asks in
> her diary, “Is the time coming when I can endure to read my own writing in print without blushing—shivering and
> wishing to take cover?” (Woolf, A Writer’s Diary 11). I think this speaks to the great fear of criticism and being
> vulnerably exposed that most women experience when engaged in creative work.
> A 1971 article entitled “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” came as a major shock to some,
> and its author Linda Nochlin forced readers to ask questions that most people had previously avoided. As well as
> insisting that we take a different look at the definition of a great artist, she pointed out that the soil wasn’t very
> hospitable for the growth of women artists.
> Ravenna Helson, who has examined creativity in women over time, notes that in the 1950s, “it was
> generally agreed that women were not sufficiently independent, assertive, ambitious, original, or abstract-minded to
> be creative. They were—and should be—more interested in their families than in fame or scientific advances”
> (“Creativity in Women” 46). Gradually, because of the women’s movement and other social trends, she says that
> “we realize that social roles have not been structured so that very many women would ever become high achievers”
> (“Creativity in Women” 46).
> Helson goes on to explain that initiating change and being creative are manifestations of power—hence, in
> a patriarchal society, it is not seen as natural or appropriate for women to be creative, and to find images of feminine
> power, women often have to go to very ancient history or myth. Yet,
> 
> there is the persistent idea that creativity involves both masculine and feminine characteristics. One reason
> to be puzzled that there are “so few” creative women is that women have what we think of as creative
> interests—art, music, literature, religion. I suggest that women have these interests because they involve
> feeling and relationship, which women take seriously. But one reason they take feeling and relationship
> seriously is that they are dependent and often feel conflict about dependence. The same conflict over
> dependence that contributes to a girl’s creative interest is also a factor that holds her back in actualizing her
> potential. (“Creativity in Women” 47)
> 
> Helson further describes the problems of identity that women have as creative persons—problems with
> establishing egalitarian intimate relationships, dealing with children, finding role models, and avoiding
> disadvantages in the world of work. Most women are more comfortable where there is a minimum of institutional
> credentialing, status, and bureaucracy, she says, and concludes, quoting Nancy Chodorow, “liberal sociocultural
> conditions, flexible arrangements, and congenial and challenging work” lead to a flowering of creativity in women
> (“Creativity in Women” 51).
> The Bahá’í teachings, which emphasize equality of the sexes and the importance of the role of women in all
> arenas of life, pinpoint the revelation of Bahá’u’lláh as the cause behind the awakening of women and men to the
> need for full equality. Bahá’u’lláh says, “In this Day the Hand of divine grace hath removed all distinction. The
> servants of God and His handmaidens are regarded on the same plane” (quoted in Women 3).
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains that “woman has been denied the opportunities which man has so long enjoyed,
> especially the privilege of education” (Promulgation 75). He further states: “. . . in the estimation of God there is no
> distinction as to male and female” (Promulgation 133). Describing the past as a time when man has dominated,
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá speaks about the shifting of balance and predicts: “Hence the new age will be an age less masculine,
> and more permeated with the feminine ideals . . . an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of
> civilization will be more properly [evenly] balanced” (quoted in Star of the West 3.3: 4 and Women 13).
> The advancement of women is intimately linked with the Bahá’í Faith. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá affirms that “the
> greatness of this wondrous Age will be manifested as a result of progress in the world of women. This is why ye
> observe that in every land the world of women is on the march, and this is due to the impact of the Most Great
> Manifestation, and the power of the teachings of God” (quoted in Women 22–23). And ‘Abdu’l-Bahá issues a
> warning: “. . . the assumption of superiority by man will continue to be depressing to the ambition of woman, as if
> her attainment to equality was creationally impossible; woman’s aspiration toward advancement will be checked by
> it, and she will gradually become hopeless. On the contrary, we must declare that her capacity is equal, even greater
> than man’s” (Promulgation 76).
> Of course, the realization of equality will not happen overnight. In terms of the art world we now have
> anthologies and exhibitions devoted to bringing to light women’s works previously lost to history or ignored (though
> such works usually are not studied except in the context of Women’s Studies, as if women are still considered a
> subspecies of humanity). There is also a National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. There is a
> movement to take seriously what was once ignored or criticized, to find that greatness where it existed and to
> celebrate it. But have we really changed the climate for women artists?
> For many women, there are constant issues of self-esteem, fear of failure and fear of success, fear of
> criticism, and (worst of all) fear of eternal loneliness as we approach our education, career, creative work, and
> publication, exhibition, and performance. For a sex socialized to put others’ needs before their own, independence
> and self-actualization can be very threatening.
> Men, who are often denied access to the feeling and intuitive parts of themselves, are also held back from
> creative directions; many would-be artists are pointed towards more “practical” careers. It is no wonder that people
> (of either sex) who are actualizing their creative potential are viewed suspiciously and with a degree of envy or
> misunderstanding.
> The Bahá’í writings are clear on the mandate for women, “She must become proficient in the arts and
> sciences and prove by her accomplishments that her abilities and powers have merely been latent” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
> Promulgation 283). What will happen when she does this? War will cease, the Bahá’í writings predict, and the bird
> of humanity will fly toward a new apex with both wings equally developed. The male poet Rimbaud expressed it
> thus:
> 
> When the unending servitude of women is broken, when she lives by and for herself, when man—hitherto
> abominable—has given her her freedom, she too will be a poet! Women will discover part of the unknown.
> Will her world of ideas be different from ours? She will discover things strange and unfathomable,
> repulsive and delicious. We shall take them into ourselves, we shall understand them. (‘The Poet” 204–5)
> 
> Perhaps the time is coming when women and men will understand each other, will be mutually supportive, will
> allow creativity to flourish and to enrich our communities. Women have much to offer to such a world.
> 
> Works Cited
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during His Visit to the
> United States and Canada in 1912. Comp. Howard MacNutt. 2d ed. Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust,
> 1982.
> 
> Greer, Germaine. The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Works. New York: Farrar, Straus,
> Giroux, 1979.
> 
> Helson, Ravenna. “Creativity in Women: Outer and Inner Views Over Time.” In Theories of Creativity. Mark A.
> Runco and Robert S. Albert, eds. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990.
> 
> Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” excerpted from “Women in Sexist Societies:
> Studies in Power and Powerlessness.” Art News 69 (January 1971): 22–39.
> 
> Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, eds. New York: W. W. Norton,
> 1985.
> 
> Rimbaud, Arthur. “The Poet as Revolutionary Seer.” In The Modern Tradition. Richard Ellmann and Charles
> Feidelson, Jr., eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
> 
> Root, Martha. Táhirih the Pure. Rev. ed. Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, 1981.
> 
> Tyng, Anne Griswold. “From Muse to Heroine: Toward a Visible Creative Identity.” In Architecture: A Place for
> Women. Ellen Perry Berkeley, ed. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
> 
> Women: Extracts from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of
> Justice. Comp. Research Dept. Bahá’i World Centre. Thornhill, ON: Bahá’í Canada Publications, 1986.
> 
> Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1957.
> ———. A Writer’s Diary. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1954.
>
> — *Women in Art (Used by permission of the curator)*