quote · Legacy record
The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow… it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are ‘invisible’.
The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow… it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are ‘invisible’.
Approximate author period: c. 1938 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Joyce Carol Oates
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
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- Approximate author period: c. 1938 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1938; activity date not established; Wikidata Q217557, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q217557 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 211928; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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