1880: Thoughts on origins
Delivered privately at Anetis Lodge by Jeanne d’Anatis
Our subject this evening is original thought, though I must already confess my suspicion that the phrase is something of a trespass upon language. The term “original” suggests a pristine source, a spring untouched by any tributary, yet we are none of us born in so pure an isolation. I have heard it said—chiefly by men convened for their own amusement—that women are derivative minds, inventive perhaps in embroidery but not in philosophy. They say this, I suspect, because their own originality consists chiefly in declaring each other’s opinions for the second time, but with differing emphasis.
Every woman of cultivation must, at some dismal dinner, have heard some minor scholar—one of those fellows with a pocket Latin and a poor digestion—expound upon “the maternal instinct of imitation.” “The female mind, like the ivy,” writes Algernon Veers in Systems Natural and Not (Bristol, 1869), “finds glory in borrowing structure from the walls of men.” This remark, which would have withered in any more ventilated intellect, is repeated still, and often by women eager to disclaim its insult as an anomaly. Yet, I ask you, on what scaffolding does Mr. Veers suppose his own thoughts climb?
It is curious how men claim a monopoly upon the origin of ideas while admitting no responsibility for their maintenance. Aristotle, who was otherwise clever, maintained that the female is a “deformed male”—a proposition I suspect he made shortly before dinner, and regretted later, though his disciples did not. Much the same notion persisted into our century beneath the linguistic refinements of so-called “moral science.” Professor Davenant of King’s College declared just last spring that the mind of woman is “impressionable to the point of genius but creative only by contagion.” I am not altogether offended by this, since “contagion” describes well enough how all ideas travel—from one nervous system to another, in that grand epidemic of thought which spares no intellect, masculine or feminine.
Permit me a small digression—not a confession, I assure you, for confession has no audience but God. When I was a girl, I was made to copy, in a fine black hand, a tract entitled For Wives and Scholars to Be. Its author, the Reverend James Tharpe (without irony), instructed that “original speculation is perilous to domestic virtue” and that “the mind of woman must learn its alphabet from man if it is to speak coherently.” I remember taking some comfort in the word alphabet. For surely, if men would grant us letters, they could not restrain us forever from composing our own sentences.
I return to the matter of “origin.” Who among us can trace precisely the line dividing the learned from the self-born? When a thought rises in the mind—a true, living thought—it does not wear a label of its lineage. Yet we are schooled to suspect ourselves. I, at least, was trained to consider caution a species of virtue. The governess, the curate, the father—all instruct with one moral premise: that docility ensures wisdom. Thus each of us has been drilled to recognise anything impetuous or self-arising as unsafe. How then should we not interpret originality as sin masquerading as insight?
Suppose we invert the question. What if the unoriginal were the sin—but one so habitual as to pass for grace? Mr. Leigh of the Quarterly Rationalist wrote that “the feminine world thinks by quotation.” Is this not true of his world also? The weekly prints proclaim it daily: “Mr. Gladstone said—,” “Professor Haughton remarked—,” “It is authoritatively stated—.” Tradition itself is merely the most finely aged plagiarism. Instead of arguing that women do not think originally, we might argue more simply that human thought does not, by nature, originate at all; it reorganises. What then distinguishes the thinker is not invention but arrangement. And arrangement—the ordering of what already exists—is a talent in which women, as every household knows, excel.
I am reminded of a passage from Madame Duplessy’s Letters on the Intellectual Conduct of Ladies (Paris, 1824): “The mind of woman, denied pure authorship, has perfected the art of composition by rearrangement; she makes from the rough marble of convention a liveable shape, and calls it modesty.” It was not meant as satire, but it might have been. Duplessy understood how intellectual constraint breeds refinement. A woman barred from public speculation will learn to conduct philosophy through embroidery, margin notes, and moral suggestion—the subtle channels by which forbidden waters nonetheless irrigate the field.
Still, there remains the question of judgment. Who is authorised to declare an idea “original”? Men form societies for the purpose: the Royal, the Antiquarian, the Statistical, the Horticultural—all devoted, in practice, to stamping with their own imprimatur what might otherwise pass unnoticed. Do we envy them their charters? I cannot. In any field where thought must pass through a committee, originality will soon expire of polite suffocation.
I receive letters from women across Europe and the Colonies—ladies of intelligent habits, many leading quiet lives among books, some even daring to write them. From the Punjab came a note last winter: “Is it vanity,” wrote one Mrs. Ellerton, “to hope that a thought which occurred to me while boiling rice may count as something not entirely second-hand?” Vanity? No, merely the proof of education. For education teaches us to doubt precisely what deserves our confidence.
The male scholar’s mind resembles a map of the Empire: each idea a territory already subdued and coloured. The female mind, they say, is uncharted. Yet I would rather be uncharted than incorrectly mapped. We are told the rational world is built, stone upon stone, by masculine constructors. Very well—let it stand. The wind of our ideas will pass through its corridors all the same.
There is, of course, a danger in too open a faith in inward originality. The Romantics, with their bellies full of clouds, pursued “pure inspiration” with the fervour of angels and the housekeeping sense of lunatics. Samuel Day-Morton, that vague poet of Cornwall, declared that “the only true thought is one unlearned.” He accordingly ceased reading. His verse declined in exact proportion to his virtue. One must not therefore mistake ignorance for purity. To have read, to have absorbed, to have been instructed by others—none of this diminishes originality. It defines the boundaries within which genius must find its own exit.
I would hazard that the most “original” thought ever produced by a woman—or a man, for that matter—must appear unoriginal to contemporaries. “New ideas resemble errors until they earn tenure,” wrote the philosopher Renfaut in his posthumous Survival of Minds (Geneva, 1847). If that is true, then the female intellect, restrained and mistrusted, may in fact be the most promising nursery of what the next century will call new. The girl obliged to think quietly may learn, quite by accident, how to think deeply.
You will forgive, I hope, the sober tone. But ladies, I wish to dissociate seriousness from masculine prerogative. Indeed, we must cultivate it as our own manner of protest. The wit of men—so often mistaken for originality—is merely facetiousness under duress. They cannot, poor souls, bear silence long enough for thought to mature. We can. We must.
At the close of Memoirs of a Minor Philosopher (anonymous, Oxford edition of 1853) the author concludes, “He who would have a new thought must first endure the suspicion of having none.” Adapt the pronoun, and you have perhaps our condition described—a condition melancholy enough but not without use. The world presumes women empty because they wait before speaking. Let us continue to wait, but with deliberation, not docility.
In truth, no mind—male or female—ever invents entirely; originality lies in the motive for rearrangement. If a man observes the world to command it, and a woman to understand it, then her intellectual structure, though denied its patent, is yet the sounder edifice. To think as oneself is an act of quiet insurrection. Whether history honours or ignores it is a matter of noise, not merit.
We must cease to seek “authority” for our originality; it will never arrive from without. The true origin, if one exists, is not where the thought begins but where it is believed despite contradiction. Every woman here has known that moment: the inward declaration “I think this—let them say what they wish.” There—at that inward syllable—begins not borrowed thinking, but the authorship of self.
So then, when next someone congratulates you for your “pretty originality,” thank him with studied politeness, as one thanks a customs officer who has examined too little luggage. Smile and say nothing. For silence, properly handled, is not deference but copyright.
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