Show KA KATHLEEN NORRIS S Womans Woman's IS Genius Is for Living TOT NOT LONG AGO I said in one of I these articles that an Important important Im im- element in a successful marriage was the quality all good wives have the quality of apparently apparently apparently accepting what is presented them by the different members of the family apparently agreeing to it and then gradually and gently breaking it down This process is entirely familiar to all intelligent women It is dimly visualized by some men but not clearly That the little woman without crossing them or starting a row does somehow manage to keep things going with a maximum of happiness for all concerned Is all they want to know Mens Men's way Is to do a thing at once do it twice over if necessary hammer and nail nafI it down And then they show an Innocent surprise and have been showing it for hundreds hundreds hundreds hun hun- of years that somehow it all come unstuck Some years ago a national magazine magazine maga maga- zine asked me to answer a provocative provocative provocative tive article by Albert Wiggam The article was entitled Where Are the Women Geniuses and it contended contended contended con con- tended and truly that there arent aren't any No Real Genius No no woman has ever written a great literary classic a play an opera a symphony Rosa Rusa Bonheur Sappho Chaminade Jane Austen and Ge George rge Eliot usually are rushed to the fore when this question question ques ques- tion is raised but having sampled or seen the works of at all of them I am obliged to agree with Professor sor Wiggam Perhaps Miss Austen comes closest to genius but it S e 4 jI y I I V show an innocent surprise would be a bold typewriter that dared place her works beside those of Dante G Goethe ethe Shakespeare Milton Dickens or the great company company com corn pany of ot the Russians Of ot Sappho I know nothing and I dont don't think the people who cite her as a genius do either Pride and Prejudice I read re-read last year Its It's a n fine tense story but musty in its household morals as genius never becomes musty stiff in its language Its It's a book in which the lives of several helpless love love hungry hungry marriage awaiting girls are described but what the Bennetts wore or wanted to wear what they ate at any single meal or what furnished any anyone one of their rooms Miss Austen does not deign to say They dont don't take walks or raise flowers or read books or get jobs they languish about suffering at every slight from Indifferent and godlike males and are thrown into ecstasies at every smile But Bu yet its it's good reading I recommend it Different Interpretation What I said in my countering article in defense of women was this That mens men's Interpretation of the word genius ought to be entirely entirely en en- different from that of women Unfortunately it isn't Unfortunately Unfortunate Unfortunate- ly we have fo followed lowed like sheep their proud designation of their fellowmen fellowmen fellowmen fellow- fellow men as geniuses when half of them them tenths tenths nine of them them them-aren't aren't arent geniuses at nt all Genius lives Most of the geniuses of my childhood are as forgotten as the roses of yes yes- The genius of women goes far tar deeper than that of at men and real geniuses are almost as rare But while the man wants the imitation the copy the superfluous thing that thatis is art woman wants the real thing She doesn't spend her energy on the musical composition that drains her dry or the book that exhausts her physically as well as mentally or the great statue that steeps her herin herin herin in plaster dust for years No her masterpiece Is the living thing The clean and happy children children children chil chil- dren about the supper table The tired man rested and content at atthe atthe atthe the end of ot the day among those who love him The delicious seven- seven pound bundle that her hands are the first to touch is her poetry The acid little wail of the new born is isher isher isher her music or the sound of the children children children chil chil- dren shouting in a Saturday back back- yard Her marble is touched by her own lips as she stoops over the coffin of some loved old companion who has gone home This sounds perhaps like the flippant flippant flippant flip flip- pant answer of at an offended woman to a too serious critic But I do donot donot donot not mean it so I mean It as a sincere sincere sin sin- cere tribute to the name of woman It Is my profound and sorrowful belief that this quality in women women- this content with the fact rather than any interpretation of the tact fact this putting first th the pictures and the music the statues and plays take second place might have had hada a profound effect upon our whole world history had it been sooner recognized In one of his timely poems about a great politician whose unselfish action In one of our social crises cost him high political power the American poet Vachel Lindsay said sleep on oh eagle forgotten forgot forgot- ten who kindled the flame Far better to live in mankind than to live In a name There Is ultimately ultimately ulti tilt the finest reason for being That is a womans woman's genius and her opportunity To live forever inthe in inthe inthe the continental betterment of man man- kind |