"... her work suggested a kind of infinitive incompletion - that a woman's work is never done; how the work of all the Marthas, and all the Marys too, all the work, both temporal and spiritual, in this world, and in preparation for the next, will never be over - always some conflicting demand will occur to postpone indefinitely any and every task. So ... there was no need to hurry!

Which was just as well, because she was ... almost ... worn out."

Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus, Picador, London 1984, pp 95, 96