I’ve long been familiar with the thing that G.K. Chesterton is reported to have said, that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly… “While you practice” was the explanatory clause to tack on if necessary; but it doesn’t seem to me likely that Chesterton would have added it. Because it makes a false distinction between the present and some future time, assumed to be qualitatively different… But who decides if you’re doing the thing for real or just practicing?
My son’s Suzuki violin teacher used to beg us not to use the word practice at all. She would ask her students, “Did you play your violin every day?” and we parents were supposed to speak after the same fashion. Even if no one saw evidence of improvement in musicianship on a given day, we were all encouraged to be satisfied nonetheless, because “You played. That’s good.”
What Chesterton did say, which is included in the whole article linked at bottom, is that “Somebody must renounce all specialist conquests, that she may conquer all the conquerors.” He calls the uproarious amateurishness of the universe “true sanity,” which sounds good, because it’s essentially how I myself approach life.
His hearty approval of what he sees as the way of women confirms to me that G.K. and I have the same personality style. But I’m not sure all of us women are alike in this… Do you think that some women actually prefer to be more focused, or specialized, in their pursuits? To the women reading this, I wonder if you feel that his statements below ring true of you. Chesterton has a very high opinion of the female sex, but how many women did he really know that well?
“There was a time when you and I and all of us were all very close to God; so that even now the color of a pebble (or a paint), the smell of a flower (or a firework), comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face. To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education; and closest to the child comes the woman—she understands. To say what she understands is beyond me; save only this, that it is not a solemnity. Rather it is a towering levity, an uproarious amateurishness of the universe, such as we felt when we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, as soon paint as run.
“To smatter the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful sciences, to juggle with pillars and pyramids and toss up the planets like balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human soul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever. This is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity. And the elegant female, drooping her ringlets over her water-colors, knew it and acted on it. She was juggling with frantic and flaming suns. She was maintaining the bold equilibrium of inferiorities which is the most mysterious of superiorities and perhaps the most unattainable. She was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother: that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
— G.K. Chesterton, from What’s Wrong with the World, the chapter on “Folly and Female Education.”
Gladsome Lights 
Women really do have a great ‘sense’ about things and are capable of so much more than society in general gives them credit for. We get on with things in the background and our influence can be stronger than even we understand.
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I appreciate Chesterton at times, but the passage you quoted irritated me no end, particularly the line about “the elegant female, drooping her ringlets over her water-colors.” That bespeaks a man conversant primarily with immensely privileged women: those freed from the constraints of necessity.
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I had to read this through a couple of time — and I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with it!
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Ah Chesterton! I love that picture! He looks good in that suit!
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I like this, though I don’t think we are used to hearing things expressed this way these days. I think it’s important that it’s in a chapter dealing with education, too.
I think what he’s getting at is that women naturally function differently than men. By the time men are men, they are often working on “higher level” tasks, those that require experience and undivided attention to do. Children are difficult to bring into this scenario.
Women, on the other hand, do a lot of the household “it needs to get done” stuff, laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc. Even training kids to do these things is a challenge. At the same time, though, we’re doing stuff, watching children or doing stuff with them.
Women are a lot better at seeing things more similarly to children. My little kids are still tickled to see rabbits hopping in our backyard, so if I see one, I’ll call over to my three-year-old “Come quick and look out the window here!” Men have a much harder time dealing with small children and all the types of attention that they need – note, for example, that there are almost no men who are kindergarten teachers! And how many times do we, as moms, fumble with something new for the sake of a child who wants to try it? But it’s getting kids on that beginning rung and then one or two steps up that gets them ready to really learn something in earnest; it prepares them to do well in school, or be ready to listen to the lessons dad wants to pass on.
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Having children opened up the world to me in a new way — I now had other people in the family who were always interested in everything, the way I am 🙂 and they didn’t think anything strange, that I showed them or told them, or thrilled over. Probably that quality is why I always feel it easiest to “be myself” with children.
I didn’t think about this aspect of what Chesterton is saying until reading your comment. Thank you, Katja!
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Gretchen, I had to come back to this post because I read it on my phone the other day with a smile. I remember rereading my Beverley Nichols books a few years ago and reading this Chesterton quotation in Nichols’ Down the Garden Path. I was so taken with it that I wrote it on a 3 x 5 card and it’s been on my desk ever since to encourage me to keep scribbling away even if it is only for my own pleasure. But your post made me want to know more and I spent an hour, when I should have been cleaning the kitchen after breakfast, getting lost in Google’s many responses and comments left there. Women certainly either love or hate Chesterton concerning his view of them. At my advanced age I do feel a little protective of him, guessing that if writing today he might not raise so many feminine hackles. Then again, he just might!
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