Zhu Shuzhen 朱淑真
12th century · Song China
For a woman to play with writing is truly a fault. How much worse to sing of the moon and chant to the wind. Wear a hole through an iron inkstone, and what have you achieved? Break gold needles at your embroidery: that is what counts as merit.
女子弄文誠可罪，那堪詠月更吟風。
磨穿鐵硯成何事，繡折金鍼卻有功。"Reproaching Myself," the first poem, in the Complete Song Poems
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Yu Xuanji 魚玄機
860s · Tang China · On seeing the names of the newly passed candidates. Women could not sit the examinations
Cloud peaks fill my eyes in the clear spring weather. One by one the silver strokes come alive under the brush. I hate these silk robes that hide my lines of verse. I lift my head and envy, uselessly, the names on the list.
雲峰滿目放春晴，歷歷銀鉤指下生。
自恨羅衣掩詩句，舉頭空羨榜中名。"Visiting the South Tower of Chongzhen Temple and Seeing Where the New Graduates Wrote Their Names," in the Complete Tang Poems
Sor Juana Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
1691 · Mexico City, New Spain · After listing what she found out while frying eggs and boiling down syrup
But, my lady, what can we women know, if not the philosophies of the kitchen? Lupercio Leonardo said it well: one can perfectly well philosophize and cook the supper. And I often say, seeing these little things: if Aristotle had cooked, he would have written a great deal more.
Pero, señora, ¿qué podemos saber las mujeres, sino filosofías de cocina? Bien dijo Supercio Leonardo: Que bien se puede filosofar y aderezar la cena. Y yo suelo decir, viendo estas cosillas: Si Aristóteles hubiera guisado, mucho mas hubiera escrito.
"Reply to Sor Filotea"
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