# When Women Were Dragons
Author:: Kelly Barnhill
## AI-Generated Summary
None
## Highlights
> now I shall see to him. Tooth and claw. The downtrodden becomes the bearer of a heavenly, righteous flame. It burns me, even now. I find myself unbound by earth, unbound by man, unbound by wifely duty and womanly pain. I regret nothing. ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09BTZ5Z29&location=146))
> It is my thesis that every mass dragoning in history is followed by a phenomenon that I call a “mass forgetting.” And indeed, it is the forgetting, I argue, which proves to be far more damaging, and results in more scars on the psyche, and scars on the culture. ([Location 382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09BTZ5Z29&location=382))
> Despite my mother’s aversion to hard conversations, the nation went through a short, and only somewhat thorough, reckoning of what had occurred. This was difficult, given the assumed femininity of dragons, and the Mass Dragoning’s accepted connection to something as private as motherhood. Embarrassment, as it turns out, is more powerful than information. And shame is the enemy of truth. ([Location 890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09BTZ5Z29&location=890))
> In the end, though, their dragon wives did not remain suited for a life of homemaking. The lives they lived no longer fit. They found their gaze drifting elsewhere—beyond the limits of the house, beyond the limits of the yard, beyond the limits of the daily tasks of washing and straightening and keeping up appearances. They found that their vision had widened to contain the whole sky, and beyond the sky. The more they looked, the more they longed, and the more they longed, the more they planned, and finally the husbands returned home one evening to dinner in the oven, several meals in the freezer, and notes on the dining room table, still somewhat scorched, saying, “Thanks for trying, my love. But we both know it wasn’t going to work anyway.” ([Location 934](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09BTZ5Z29&location=934))