Girls should try harder to get to the top
SIR – I enjoyed Brian Sewell and missed him when he left the stage. Richard Ingrams (Notebook, November 27) proposes a moveable feast of “theys” who disliked him for his various idiosyncrasies, including dismissal of female artists, and has brought in God and the Church of England to support his polemic against anyone who may not be totally ad idem with Sewell. Ingrams refers to the “argument about the gender of God”: as God is an Absolute, or perfect being, by definition God cannot be gendered. Aquinas wrote that “we know God by analogy with a loving father”. This was an attempt to combine the authority of the father with the idea of absolute love; approaching meaning rather than defining God, and considered today to be more metaphor than analogy. If Ingrams believes that male and female have essentially different qualities, it follows that God must also contain all possible female qualities. As far as the female artist or composer goes, given that painters and sculptors trained in workshops or travelled alone to find mentors, there was no means within the social structure for a girl to do more than painting within the family. We know what happened to Alma Mahler: Gustav required her to give up composing when she married him. That, one hopes, would not happen today. Mother Julian’s music is still admired: she was safely in a convent with no husband to consider. Gwen John, whom the more famous Augustus considered a better painter, deferred too much to her lover Rodin, who put his work first: her weakness, or a female weakness? I think it is true that men tend to be more single-minded and goal-directed, openly aiming to get to the top. Society supports them in this; little boys are allowed to be boastful in a way that girls are not. So girls, try harder. Yours faithfully, Jacqueline Castles London W2
