1962: On language
Octavia Mallard—paper delivered at the Conference on Women and Language, Melbourne University
Language is the first architecture of power. The Church knew it; the monarchs knew it. They twisted words like ropes, binding whole populations through grammar and ignorance. Consider master and mistress. Both born of the same parent—magister, the one with knowledge, the one who guides. Yet the Church and Court conspired to split the child. Master became command, authority, headship. Mistress dwindled to two shadows: the servant or the concubine. One term buttressed law, the other titillated gossip.
It is not accident but design. Keep a population unlettered, feed them euphemism instead of sense and you will have no rebellion. Jesuit wisdom, in particular, understood this: mould the child’s tongue and you mould his thought. Prevent the girl from schooling and you not only keep her compliant—you ensure her brothers never hear dissent within their own homes.
That is why women’s education was feared, far more than their beauty or their supposed ‘wiles.’ An educated woman could pierce the veil, could see how words were bent to serve power over rather than power to. She might even say so aloud. Imagine the terror of that.
Master retains greatness because men retained the privilege of being magi, even when they were dunces. Mistress retained only the burden of being a body, even when she was sovereign. Such are the distortions of a language trained to obedience.
If you would liberate a people, you begin not with armies but with etymology. Trace words to their root and the edifice collapses. A master without a mistress is only half a word; a mistress without mastery is only half a truth.
You are here: States of Grace > Philosophy