The private sphere was long regarded as women's "proper place" whereas men were supposed to inhabit the public sphere. Although feminist researchers such as V. Spike Peterson have discovered roots of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in ancient Athenian times, a distinct ideology that prescribed separate spheres for women and men emerged during the industrial revolution. Even writing was traditionally considered forbidden, as "In the anxious comments provoked by the 'female pen' it easy enough to detect fear of the writing woman as a kind of castrating female whose grasp upon that instrument seems an arrogation of its generative power".