Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. All their plans and visions seem vanished, and they know not where; gone and they cannot recall them. They do not even remember them. And they are left without the food either of reality or of hope. 

Later in life, they neither desire nor dream, neither of activity, nor of love, nor of intellect. The last often survives the longest. They wish, if their experiences would benefit anybody, to give them to some one. But they never find an hour free in which to collect their thoughts, and so discouragement becomes ever deeper and deeper, and they less and less capable of undertaking anything. 

From Cassandra (49)
The Feminist Press, 1979
Written in 1852

Read-alikes:

• Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
• Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
• Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes or the Loving Huntsman