I have recently been pondering Elizabeth Bennet’s comment in Pride and Prejudice concerning “accomplished young women.” Darcy and Miss Bingley are discussing the talents required of young women: music, singing, dancing, drawing, language, “a certain something in her air and manner of walking,” and “the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” When Eliza has heard their definition of accomplished young women, she remarks, “I rather wonder at your knowing any.”
I must agree with Miss Bennet’s view on the state of female dispositions, even today, but my definition of “accomplished” must differ from that of Austen. Things have changed a touch in two centuries; I do not expect an accomplished woman to play the harpsichord or dance a reel. No, if I were to meet a truly accomplished woman, I would see intelligence, a quick mind, a deft ability with language, and a heightened self-awareness that enables her to master her emotions quickly when faced with less accomplished members of either sex. Indeed, though I wring out my dislike on this page, I most respect those persons who can hide their real dislike for others behind a careful and considerate visage. This too is the mark of an accomplished woman.
I do not claim to achieve such subtlety nor mastery in any of the areas that I have mentioned. However, just as a gay man may make fun of other gay men, I am a woman, and as a woman, I claim my right to pronounce that women are in a deplorable state. I believe it to be nearly impossible to find a truly accomplished woman, not for some deficiency in the sex, but for the fact that evolution and popular culture are against us.
Intelligence, sadly, I believe to be a genetic inheritance rather than an influence of environment (thus explaining why so many geniuses come from horrid backgrounds and so many nitwits from pleasant and privileged environments). Therefore, I cannot offer any sage advice on how to increase intelligence amongst young women, except to say that the bearing and raising of children today is made so bothersome and difficult that any woman of reasonable intelligence would think twice before willingly entering into a contract of eighteen years.
The difficulty I observe in our culture is that women who wish to cultivate their mind must devote time and energy on higher degrees of education and pursuing careers that actually interest them. However, it is very difficult to write a dissertation or devote one’s full attention to one client when one is required to breastfeed, drive children to soccer practice, and participate in other activities required of the good mother. Our own society demands women care more for their offspring than for themselves, and the intelligent woman knows this is not always possible or advisable. Indeed, the intelligent woman would note that population is already full to bursting and consider raising one spectacularly gifted child the best course of action.
Where intelligence is a genetic toss-up, a quick mind can be honed by training. Participating in debates with one’s parents and friends, reading the best authors and watching news programs that challenge one’s intellect will build up a woman who is well-read, capable of understanding many arguments, and unafraid to challenge others’ assumptions. She will know and understand her opponent’s argument before the other has thought it, and like a chess game, be several steps ahead of the actual debate.
However, what I find when I survey the women about me is that many are entrenched in their own limited experience of the world. They are unable to fathom lives beyond their own because they have never had to imagine another world, another upbringing. I do not require hardship in the childhood of the accomplished woman, but those-who-have-not always know about those-who-have, while the reverse is less likely to be true.
Here I come to the quality most difficult to find in the accomplished woman: facility in language. How delightful it is to my ears to hear a woman who uses language as a tool to argue more precisely her point or express exactly how she is feeling or what she believes. But facility in language, both written and oral, is in severe decline. I find myself impressed if magazines use the words “their,” “there,” and “they’re” correctly. If an actress or another highly visible woman were to use a word like “aplomb,” I would be struck dumb. If she continued with words like “efficacy” or “virtuosity” or another neglected, delightful word in the English language, I should die happy. However, since Plain Speaking is so celebrated by our politicians and our media, the pressure to hone one’s oratory is negligible. Women, particularly young women, get away with, “It’s like… you know” and the lyrical, incisive words that might fill that ellipsis are replaced with a hand gesture, a shrug of the shoulders, or, worst of all, a flip of the head.
Self-awareness is the magical element in this search for the accomplished woman. A self-aware woman knows when and how she is forming her argument. She is aware of how she holds her body as she debates with another. She is aware of her gestures and uses them to punctuate rather than express her argument. The self-aware woman knows how to express herself. If she wishes to be kind, she softens her tone and adopts a gentle manner. If she wishes to cut, she knows how to sharpen her tongue and fill her voice with power so that her words - carefully chosen - have the weight of her conviction. In short, the self-aware woman, by nature intelligent, with a mind honed by her own acuity, and a proficiency in the English language, is the most formidable force I have ever hoped to encounter.
But as language degrades into slang and un-nuanced body language, and women are set lower and lower standards for expression and intelligence, I cannot see how the accomplished woman can survive. She will move in ever-smaller circles, find less and less to pique her interest as reporting becomes so biased or base that there is no point in reading or watching, and the classics will seem products of beautiful, bygone eras that she will fantasize about as her friends babble and flip their hair and her teachers become more ignorant creatures. In short, the accomplished, self-aware woman is an endangered species, even more so than in the 19th century.
