THE DRESS OF GENIUS.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 312, 26 September 1908, Page 13

THE DRESS OF GENIUS.

Since quite a remote period it has been a privilege of the masculine genius to render his person an advertisement of his peculiar attainments (says a London paper). He has held a license to garb himself with eccentric discrimination, and to carry tho distinguishing marks of his talents up even to the crowning disorder of his flowing locks. Since women have commenced to climb those ladders of 1? mo once sacred to the firm tread of man, a question has arisen as to whether or no women of genius are entitled to include eccentricity as part of their stock in trade. In the earlier daye of feminine attainment in the arts and the sciences, it was a fact that women of genius showed a tendency to follow masculino precedent in the matter of an outward hall-mark of mental distinction; but it was found that what society would tolerate and even encourage

in man, it would not sanction in the case of a woman who had launched herself upon a distinguished career. Society declined to recognise the fitness of eccentricity in feminine genius. The short-haired woman had to resort to any expedient, even the frivolity of the "transformation," in order to cover the honourable crop which was the feminine hirsute retort to the "long-haired genius" of the opposite sex. At the present moment the woman of genius finds herself in the unfair position of having to stand judged by her works alone. The lady scientist, the lady doctor, the lady painter, the lady novelist, and the lady dramatist have been admitted to compete against the masculine ranks of the profession, but not to share in tho glamour cast by a carefully-thought-out and memorable weirdness of appearance. That women of genius are able to succeed without what are, after all, meretricious aids to fame may be a feather in their caps, and there can be. no doubt that to their less gifted sisters it is a source of satisfaction to feel that "quite an ordinary looking woman" may possess talents of the higher order. But at tho same time, while men of genius aro still very often better known to tho world by their dress than their deeds, the merely fashionable exterior which is expected in a woman often amounts to a handicap on genius.