Echo
Over themselves
Wollstonecraft asks for power over oneself, not over men. The later sentences specify what that power needs: a body, a room, a definition, a chair.
1 · Mary Wollstonecraft
I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.Truth answers a room full of men by inventorying the work her body has already done.
2 · Sojourner Truth
I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.Woolf names the material conditions. Money, and a door that locks.
3 · Virginia Woolf
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.Beauvoir moves the argument from circumstances to the making of a person. One becomes.
4 · Simone de Beauvoir
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.Chisholm, in a century that still had not set the chair, tells you to carry one.
5 · Shirley Chisholm
If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.