good point, and while I do not think she should be classified as an incomparable intellectual given what little we know it would seem reasonable to think she probably had greater unrealized potential based on her gender in the same way that I look at someone like George Washington Carver and think what could he have achieved unobstructed by racism.
You raise a good point. My take on this is similar to yours in that if we can wax lyrical about an aristocrat who happens to be a woman, what about the genuises not even afforded the opportunity to engage with the high minds of the time. Literature like this tends to hyperfocus without context and that makes it uncomfortable to read as a fellow learned individual.
My point is Im not going to cry a river over some aristocrat who rubbed shoulders with the greats as compared to someone who had nothing but worked their way into recognition and forgotten by history.
I agree so much with that first paragraph. All these "women geniuses snubbed by 18th century sexism" are aristocrats (which makes sense because all the men geniuses are also aristocrats). The lack of discussion of people who didn't have the opportunities that, for instance, Ada Lovelace did, is a pretty big misstep imo.
