“Between the devil and the deep sea. Behind us lies the patriarchal system; the private house with its nullity, its immorality, its hypocrisy, its servility. Before us lies the public world, the professional system, with its possessiveness, its jealousy, its pugnacity, its greed. The one shuts us up like slaves in a harem; the other forces us to circle, like caterpillars head to tail, round and round the mulberry tree, the sacred tree, of property. It is a choice of evils. Each is bad. Had we not better plunge off the bridge into the river?”

Woolf wrote her way out of this dilemma by demanding that women entering the professions take vows of poverty and chastity. By poverty she meant “enough money to live upon.” By chastity she meant “that when you have made enough to live on by your profession you must refuse to sell your brain for the sake of money” (Three Guineas 80).

Sometime during my senior year of college I went to the career councilor. I had fallen behind on writing my thesis and I was counting on this visit to diffuse my sense of failing. “All you have to do,” said the woman behind the desk, who had perfectly blown-out brown hair, nutmeg lipstick, a dark brown Anthropologie shirt, and rectangular maroon glasses frames, “is think of a product that you already really like, and you’re halfway there.”

“For example,” she continued, “Revlon is sending recruiters here on Tuesday. You just think, ‘I like that product, so probably it would be a good fit for me.'”

Afterwards, I walked slowly east on 111^th where it runs downhill alongside Morningside Park in full view of the illustrious stone rump of St. John the Divine, laughing hysterically. I would pause to consider that I had no future, then laugh hysterically again. I kept seeing that woman, the nutmeg lips, the pathological certainty.