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One author claims that there are a larger proportion of mentally defective
males and of geniuses. I don't know if the proportion of scientific
geniuses is really greater among men. We do know that men have been
rewarded for their genius and women have traditionally been married off to
bear children. Notable examples of this are Mozart's sister and
Mendelssohn's sister. Marie Curie almost never went to the university
because she stayed home for a while to work and help her sister get a
degree. However, thank God, she did go to the university in the end, and
became the first double Nobel Laureate. The first translator of Newton's
Pricipia into French was a woman, who was also a scientist in her own right.
She also shocked the court by her low gowns, and set the fashion for
toplessness at court for a century. My usual aphasia for names prevents me
from recalling her name. There were a number of brilliant female composers
in medieval and renaissance times. They were able to do this because they
were in cloistered convents. Incidentally the nuns played all manner of
instruments in the convents and loved the trombone.
A good example of how women have been suppressed is the short story "The
Yellow Wallpaper". Again the author escapes me. It was by a woman who was
married into a conventional Victorian household and whose creative side was
ignored. She went mad as a result and the story is a compelling account of
her descent into madness. Eventually she walked away from the marriage and
became a writer and lecturer. She was scandalous at the time. The story
was presented on Masterpiece Theater a number of years ago, but I originally
read it as a memorable gothic horror story.