10 Things Said About Women

About a guest surrounded by men at one of her parties ...

Dorothy Parker:

“That woman can speak eighteen languages and she can't say "no" in one of them.”

Parker (1983 - 1967) was an American writer best known for here caustic wit and fabulous one liners. She was one of the founder members of the Algonquin Round Table - a circle or writers famed for their bitchiness. Although she survived three marriages and a number of suicide attempts she later became heavily reliant on alcohol. Although at the time she deplored her fame as being simply a "wisecracker" many of her best lines have survived to this day.

Mrs. Patrick Campbell:

Do you know why God withheld the sense of humour from women? That we may love you instead of laugh at you.”

Campbell (1865 - 1940) was a British actress who retained the name from her first marriage even after marrying for the second time. Most notably she was the first person EVER to play the role of Eliza Doolittle in the play Pygmalion (later to be made in to the musical My Fair Lady”). This was despite the fact that she was 49 at the time - George Bernard Shaw wrote the part for her. Not that he was in any way repaying a favour - Frank Harris said of Shaw that he was “The first man to have cut a swathe through the theatre and left it strewn with virgins”.

Max Beerbohm

“You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.”

Beerbohm (1872 - 1956) was an English parodist and was part of the Oscar Wilde set of the late nineteenth century. He was greatly in demand on the dinner party circuit but was a victim of the very milieu in which he had made his name. By his thirties he was no longer considered a wit - "nothing special, in fact a bit of a bore" to paraphrase ABBA. He regained some measure of his early success with the advent of radio broadcasting - but was popular amongst the working rather than upper classes.

Mae West

“I used to be Snow White… but I drifted.”

The woman who famously never said “come up and see me some time”, West was made famous by her own risqué reputation and her uncanny ability to see a double entendre almost anywhere. Starting in Vaudeville she moved to Hollywood and appeared in numerous films. She returned to the stage in later life when the cinema roles dried up and even had a go at recording a few rock and roll albums.

Rudyard Kipling

“A Woman is only a woman

But a good cigar is a smoke.”

Kipling (1865 - 1936) was born in India and much of his famous work is set there. The Jungle Book is by far his best known work, thanks to it's, ahem, reworking by Walt Disney. For much of the latter part of the twentieth century his reputation had suffered at the hands of persons of a politically correct nature who have accused him of being a standard bearer of British imperialism. He is, however, the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Indeed, he was the first English language author to receive the prize, so ya boo sucks to all the PC folk!

Charlotte Whitton

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Fortunately, this is not difficult.”

Whitton (1896 - 1975) was in many ways a woman born before her time and one wonders how well she would have done in life had she been born a century later, so remarkable are her achievements. In 1951 she became the first woman to be made Mayor of a major Canadian city. Whitton dismissed a new design for the flag of Canada as a "white badge of surrender, waving three dying maple leaves". Although ahead of her time she had to hide her lesbianism, something which was not revealed until 1999. Certainly, there would have been no way for an openly lesbian woman to run for public office in the 1950s, such was the discriminatory nature of time.

Walt Disney

“Girls bored me - they still do. I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known.”

Disney (1901 - 1966) was a hugely innovative and influential animator, winning twenty six Academy Awards for his work. He lost the rights to an early cartoon character - Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and determined to create a new character to which he would hold all rights. He based his new character on a pet mouse he once had, scribbled out a character that would become Mickey Mouse, and the rest as they say is history. After dying of Lung Cancer his body was frozen using the new science of Cryonics. So, he may come back and give us some new characters to laugh at. One wonders what he would make of Ratatouille.

Noel Coward

“Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.”

Coward (1899 - 1973) made his entrance in to society early. At the ripe old age of 14 he became the lover of a painter called Philip Streatfield and joined a society salon run by a Mrs Cooper. He lived on her property but in the farm house rather than the hall because he was from a lower social order (despite the fact most people recall him as "posh" these days!). He was homosexual - but certainly not gay - and hated the "scene" with a vengeance. He wrote over 50 plays, so at least we can safely say he was "theatrical".

Florynce Kennedy

“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

Kennedy (1916 - 2000) founded the Feminist Party in 1970. She did get married, but wasn't keen, saying of it “Why would you lock yourself in the bathroom just because you have to go three times a day?” Very much a feminist she once remarked that if men could get pregnant, then abortion would be a sacrament. She was one of the most remarkable black American women of the twentieth century - and one who was difficult to forget. She often wore a cowboy hat with pink sunglasses!

William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

“I would rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, and Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself.”

The man, the guy, the immortal bard, Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) heaped a whole pile of scorn on women in his plays. To be fair to him, he poured a whole heap on many people, male and female alike. He is, however, known for leaving his wife only the second best bed in his will. Many people see this as a final, dashing insult but others think that it was probably the marital bed - and so then something which may have had some good memories at least to the long suffering Ann Hathaway