For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman's intelligence was a man's deception.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

Avoid popularity; it has many snares, and no real benefit.

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.

I would not send a poor girl into the world ignorant of the snares that beset her path nor would I watch and guard her till deprived of self-respect and self-reliance she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself .