Female authors' comments on female voices

In Charlotte Bronte's "The Professor", an Englishman takes up a post in a Belgian school. His room was next to the playground & Bronte writes his experience:

"I could hear the voices of the children in their hours of recreation, & my reflections were disarranged by the not quite silvery, in fact the too often brazen sounds, which penetrated into my solitude. When it came to shrieking the girls beat the boys hollow."

Dorothy Sayers' in her "Gaudy Night", writes about her heroine visiting a women's college in Oxford. She writes about her experience thus:

"The first thing to strike her was the appalling noise in the dining hall. Two hundred female tongues, released as though by a spring, burst into high, clamorous speech. She felt that if the noise continued for one minute more, she would go quite mad. Within a week, the effect had worn off."

Universal Sisterhood of Spirituality

Hell with You is Liberation

Liberation without You is Hell

Pleasure without You is Grief

Grief with You is Ultimate Pleasure

Akka Mahadevi to Lord Shiva.

If I worship You from fear of hell,

Burn me in hell.

If I worship You from hope of heaven,

Exclude me from heaven.

If I worship You for Your Love,

Show me Your Eternal Beauty.

Rabia of Basra to Allah.

Punitavati aka Karaikkal  Ammaiyar, was a beautiful woman, who prayed to Lord Shiva to make her hideous so that she might not attract the men who saw her & her prayer was granted.

Julian of Norwich, in one of her "shewings" prayed to be allowed to experience the pains of Jesus Christ on the Cross & her prayer was granted.

Kodai aka Andal adorned herself with the garlands meant for Lord Krishna. When her father reproved her, the Lord admonished him in a dream & wanted to be worshipped with the garland worn by her.

St.Teresa of Avila famously said "More tears are shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones." meaning one should never ask God for worldly boons, because God knows exactly what we need.

Brambley Hedge: A Murine Utopia

Richard ("Seagull") Bach, bored with media saturation about evil, war, malice & crime, wondered what if a culture grew up without evil, crime or war? So he imagined such a world peopled with anthropomorphic ferrets & "Curious Lives" was born.

Similarly, Jill Barklem, has created a magical feel-good world of mice in her popular "Brambley Hedge" books. They are eight in number & deal with a birthday picnic for Wilfred, a wedding of Poppy & Dusty, the adventurous discovery of a maze of tunnels by Primrose, a Snow Ball in the Ice Hall, the discovery of a secret staircase by Primrose & Wilfred & subsequent mid-winter celebrations by them in the grand costumes found in the magnificent room at the top of the staircase, a trip to the High Hills to deliver blankets to the needy Voles, a journey on boat along a river to fetch salt from the Saltapple mice & ending with a surprise gift of a new house for Poppy & her babies.

As Jill Barklem says in her introduction, creating the books was very hard work as she made sure that each flower must have the correct number of petals & be growing in the right place at the right time. Everything the mice make or do must be possible for them, living where they do.

The result is there for all to see, a meticulously detailed world, (reminiscent of the art of Brueghel), lovingly created, free from all unpleasantness & an unalloyed visual delight. The popularity of these books is also attested by a range of china, named after them.