WOMEN AND GENIUS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 71, 24 March 1928, Page 8

WOMEN AND GENIUS.

EFFECT OF EMANCIPATION.

(To the Editor.)

While I agree with "Sweet Seventeen" ,w there are many women of intellinenw A - noteworthy that after the complete socikl . intellectual emancipation of the female which has been going on now for well-niM, generations, the number of really women of the first class has not The George Sands, George Eliots Bonheurs, the Charlotte Brontes all belonV? the period when women were not emanchSJS as they are now. What has the present to show on the score of female geniuS That there are a few intelligent and women going about is, of course not t« lZ denied, but it is difficult to recall more tU one who could be quoted a* showing an int? lectual calibre which could take its pla<»7» that of the front rank of men in the department. In the authoress of we undoubtedly have, even more than in women of earlier generations mentioned ahn» an intellectual power and flexibility of intli lect which may truly be termed masculS" Otto Weimnger, m his book "Sex and Ch£j£ ter, remarks upon the fact that in bothMU sexes you usually find more or less of fl!1 ingredient of the opposite sex. This may fc! slight and almost inappreciable, or it mav h! an important factor. It may manifest LSt also m various ways, physically, morally intellectually, but the appearance at £2 intervals of a woman with an muscular development, an exceptional strewS of purpose (a Lady Macbeth, a Jeanne d'j£J? or of intellectual perception, approaching equalling that of the first rank of men m same department, may fairlv be regarded a. examples of lusus naturae rather than as i>Ji! eating any general potentialities on the partnf the female sex. Had there been anvit.;" approaching real equality in mental disposiS between the sexes this equality shown itself in the course of the last half century in an unmistakable manner atvf fkj. it certainly has not done. ' S.G™