If it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons.
CATALOGUE ENTRY — Bureau of Impossible Geography (continued) DOCUMENT CLASS: Structural Analysis SURVEYOR: Dr. Eleanor Hartley The walls of the Cité are not metaphorical. They are limestone — the same honey-coloured ashlar that characterises the best Georgian construction, though the architecture here refuses to settle into a single period. Medieval buttresses support Regency balustrades. Queen Anne red-brick detailing frames Pre-Raphaelite stained glass. Art nouveau ironwork, sinuous with organic curves, supports climbing roses that bloom in every season simultaneously. The effect is of a city that has been continuously inhabited for six centuries by women who never agreed on an aesthetic but always agreed on the principle of beauty as argument. The stones themselves are inscribed. Every block in the city wall bears a name — not carved but appearing in the grain of the stone as though the limestone itself remembers. During my survey I catalogued 1,847 names in a single section of th...
From the lore of Cité des Dames.