Lady Geniuses,

or as might in these latter days be said, Genius Ladies, like--Sappho, Sei Shonagon, Sor Juana de la Cruz, Emily Dickinson, Marie de France, Colette, (and, my personal predilection) Françoise Sagan--as well as three or four of my favorite painters, are all identifiably female, and that has something ineffably to do with their being blazing geniuses, but you can't say exactly what. And I left out Mesdames de Sévigné et de Lafayette, George Sand, Germaine Greer, Virginia Wolfe, Carson McCullers, and Christine de Pisan, but the same irrelevant stereotype applies.