ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Mother of Genius: Women, Motherhood, and the Making of Exceptional Children

• In Event: Raising Exceptional Children: Psychology, Education, and Motherhood

English Abstract

This paper analyzes how Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer (1850–1919) theorized the relationship between motherhood and genius within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish and Ibero-American debates on degeneration and national regeneration. Previous scholarships described Gimeno’s position as moderate feminism and examined her work as a journalist and author of several books on women’s roles in society. However, it has not offered a systematic account of how her writings intertwine maternity, women’s intellectual vocation, and the production of exceptional children and “great men.” By analyzing her published work (non-fiction books and magazine articles) this paper combines critical feminist epistemology with intellectual history. I argue that Gimeno de Flaquer constructed motherhood as an explicitly intellectual vocation: ignorance became a moral fault while the cultivated mother was elevated to a pedagogical and spiritual authority. Within this framework, she proposed a specifically feminine form of genius (intuitive, moral, and pedagogical) recognized in women yet ultimately oriented toward shaping others. In her view, the exceptional child emerged from a triad of heredity, maternal influence, and environment, with the mother cast as the decisive mediator and hidden author of male greatness. Reading these ideas as a theory of maternal genius suggests that Gimeno de Flaquer framed domestic education as a meaningful arena for national improvement and how she situated women’s intellectual work within that horizon.

Author

• Victoria Molinari, Autonomous University of Barcelona