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Madeleine L'Engle
Commencement Speech 1991
It is a very special pleasure for me to be here at
Wellesley College today, a pleasure that goes back to my
childhood.
I was born on the island of Manhattan and grew up in New
York, a solitary, only child, with parents almost old enough
to be my grandparents, with full lives of their own, so when
I wasn't in school I had a lot of time to myself. When I was
in fourth grade I was put into a school which is still in
existence, so it will be nameless, which was supposed to be
one of the best schools in the city. In that school it was
very important that one be good at sports. One of my legs
was longer than the other -- still is, so I was clumsy and
not a good runner. Any team which had the misfortune to have
me on its side automatically lost. The kids would choose
sides and the unlucky team to get me would let out anguished
groans, and I can't blame them. I was hardly an asset to
team sports. However, for some reason which is still not
clear to me, my home room teacher decided that since I
couldn't run relay races, I wasn't very bright. She simply
accepted the other students' assessment of me, and I
couldn't do anything right. I quickly learned that there was
no point in doing homework for her, because she was going to
hold it up in ridicule to the class, or put it down. So I
would go home and dump down my school books and not look at
then again, say wryly to myself that I was the dumb one, the
unpopular one, and then I would move into the real world,
where I read stories, wrote stories, and tried in my own way
to find out what human relationships were all about.
It was also in fourth grade that I learned about the
perfidy of the adult world, and the earlier this is learned
the better; it can come as a terrible shock if it doesn't
hit you till later. I learned it in French class, which was
being taught by a very large French woman'. I needed to be
excused, and I raised my hand, and my French teacher
wouldn't let me leave the room. Three times I raised my
hand, each time a little more desperately than the time
before, and three times she refused to let me go. When the
bell rang for it I ran, and I didn't make it. Now, to wet
your pants in fourth grade is really pretty horrendous. My
mother came for me, and here was this little wet mess. I
told her what had happened, and she went to the principal.
The principal called in the French teacher, and the French
teacher said, "Well, Madeleine never asked to be excused. of
course if she'd raised her hand I'd have let her go. She's
just ashamed of wetting her pants, a big girl like that.
Tell her not to lie about it next time. So there was a grown
up lying, and being believed, and I, only a child, was not.
And that made me determined never to be like that French
teacher. No matter what it cost I was going to stay on the
side of truth.
The next year there was a poetry contest which was open
to the entire school, and judged by the head of the English
department. The entries weren't screened, or I'd never have
got one in. My poem won the contest, and my home room
teacher predictably said, "Madeleine couldn't possibly have
written that poem. She's not very bright, you know. She must
have copied it from some place."
So my mother went up to school, bearing the large body of
work I had produced when I should have been doing homework,
and it had to be conceded that Madeleine could have written
that poem after all.
I was taken out of that school and sent to another, where
I had a homeroom teacher on her very first teaching job. She
was the first person to see any potential in this shy,
awkward child. She affirmed me, gave me extra work to do. I
remember she had me write a sequel to the Oddessey with
Telemachus as the hero. Her honoring of me helped the other
students to see me as something more than the girl who was
bad at relay races. I didn't have instant popularity, but I
began to make friends. I did my homework with enthusiasm,
because my teacher challenged me.
Her name was Margaret Clapp, and she was to become the
eighth president of Wellesley. So I had the benefit of being
taught by a woman who was not only a great educator, but a
great person, and perhaps it is only a great educator who
understands that part of education is affirming each person
she encounters as being intrinsically valuable. my previous
teachers had estimated me as worthless; Miss Clapp gave me a
sense of value, that it was all right to be me, that my lack
of athletic skills was more than compensated for by other
skills, that imagination was important.
Miss Clapp also helped me into a creative realism. I gave
up some impossible dreams of making the longest oil the
highest jumps in gym; I accepted that I had a bad knee and
that this would prevent me from being a great athlete, but I
also accepted that not everybody has to be a great athlete.
I learned to be willing to be who I was, not the plastic
model of who I had thought I wanted to be. It was not that I
didn't attempt the impossible. I did. But it was the
impossible in areas where I already showed promise. My
sequel to the Oddessey was probably pretty terrible, but it
was a good example of the right kind of impossible, the
impossible that called into play the gifts I already had,
the gift of gab, the gift of putting words together
articulately, the gift of imagination.
I hope that you have encountered teachers who understand
the importance of imagination, that part of the brain which
goes beyond cognition to intuition. A recent article in the
New York Times dealt with the discovery that there is far
more to the brain than the conscious part which is concerned
with facts and proof, and that many, if not most major
discoveries have been made with the intuitive part of the
brain when the scientist is thinking, but has relaxed, so
that the whole brain can work, and not just the conscious,
controllable area.
Of course this is a masculine discovery, new to the male
of the species but not to the female. Women have been
allowed by society to be far more whole then men; we have
not been forced to repress our inner selves, our intuitive,
imaginative, numinous side. We have been allowed to go down
into the darkness of unexpectedness, whereas men have been
forced by society to limit themselves to the reasonable, the
rational, the provable.
I, too, went to a women’s college, Smith college. One
great advantage of a women’s college is that whatever there
is to be done, we women do. If there is a magazine to be
started, we start it. If there is an officer to be elected,
one of us will be elected. I left college and went to New
York to earn my living with the assurance that all doors
were of course open to me, and that's a good attitude to
have. If you expect doors to be open, they're likely to be
open. If you expect them to be closed, they're likely to
slam in your face. And I left college having majored in
English literature, having spent four years with great
writers, with an understanding that intellect and intuition
were equally important.
In Greek mythology the intellect is masculine, Apollo
driving the chariot of the sun across the sky, whereas
wisdom is feminine, Sophia, or better, Hagia Sophia, holy
wisdom. It is quite possible to be intellectual without any
wisdom whatsoever, and this is always disastrous. And wisdom
without intellect can be too otherworldly to be effective.
It is when the two work together that true maturity can be
realized. It is when the two work together that our
wonderful minds can turn us towards truth. Intellect alone
wants facts, provable facts; intellect working with wisdom
can understand that truth goes far beyond and transcends
facts. One of my early home room teachers accused me of
"telling a story." She was not complimenting me on my
fertile imagination; she was making the deadly accusation
that I was telling a lie. It is only when the brain is
limited to the cognitive alone that story can be confused
with untruth, whereas story is one of the most potent
vehicles of truth available to the human being.
Now, when I am talking about male and female I am not
talking about men vs women, because we all have a marvelous
combination of male and female within us, and part of
maturing is learning to balance these two components so that
they are the most fertile. It is only then that we are able
to make creative choices and to understand that we do indeed
have choices.
I have had the pleasure of living with my two
granddaughters during their college years, and not long ago
we were having dinner with several of their classmates, and
one young woman said that their Women’s Studies professor
had told them that any woman who married and had children
and who wrote, was a martyr. My granddaughter, Charlotte,
looked at me, asking, "Gran, were you a martyr?" I replied,
"No, Charlotte, I was not a martyr. I chose my own
conflicts. They were indeed conflicts, but I chose them. No
one forced me to marry, to have children, to continue to go
on writing. It was my free choice. So there's no way I could
be a martyr.
Don't fall into martyrdom! That's a choice, too. So is
being a victim. I don't like that word. When bad things
happen it is up to me to choose to be a victim or to get on
with it. Terrible things can happen to us, rape, accident,
bereavement; life is precarious and full of the unexpected,
but we do not have to become victims, no matter what
happens. That is a choice, and one we do not have to make.
If we chose to remain ourselves, full of potential, then we
can take whatever happens and redeem it by openness,
courage, and willingness to move on. As women it is our
responsibility to use all parts of ourselves, male and
female, intellect and intuition, conscious and subconscious
minds.
From my college reading of Aristotle's Poetics I remember
particularly this phrase, "That which is plausible and
impossible is better than that which is possible and
implausible," and that has had a profound effect on my adult
life. When we believe in the impossible, it becomes
possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
We can balance the male and female within us like an acrobat
in the circus, and that balancing act is one of the most
important choices open to US. We can dare to enter the
vulnerable intimacy of friendship and love. Some of you will
choose the underrated job of homemaker, of wife and mother.
Some of you will go single-mindedly after a career. Some of
you, like me, will make the difficult choice of choosing
both but then, as I used to tell my children, nothing that's
easy is really worth very much, and just because it's
difficult is no reason not to try.
Remember that one of the glories of being human is that
we are fallible. We are the creatures who learn by making
mistakes. I don't know about you, but I learn by what I do
wrong, not by what I do right. An ant does not have this
privilege. In ant societies if an ant deviates from the
pattern that ant is a goner. Ants do not have the freedom of
choice that we have.
so my hope for all of you is that you have been affirmed
as valuable during these college years, and that you leave
here knowing who you are, what your strengths are, and what
your weaknesses are, and that the greatest human beings are
a marvelous mixture of both. I hope that you know that you
have choices, and that you have the freedom to discover what
is true for you, and to follow that choice. Miss Clapp gave
me the gift of being willing to know myself, with realism,
and with hope. She was the first person to help me to know
where and how I could break through the possible to the
impossible, and to understand that it is when we plunge into
something difficult that we are given whatever tools we
need. She helped to start me on what has been and is still a
fascinating journey, full of unexpected joys and sorrows and
challenges. So I hope the same for you, that you will use
fully the Apollo, the intellect, which is a great glory, and
rejoice equally in Sophia, the wisdom which makes the
intellect creative instead of destructive. Women are needed
in a world which is hung up on the literal, the provable. So
go out there with courage and imagination and be fully
whoever you are, because that is who you are meant to be.
Then the impossible becomes possible, and you will give hope
wherever you are.
Go, and God bless you.
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