I've had this book for a while, but have only dipped it in here and there. I know I'll get so much more from it reading and discussing it here on SeniorNet.

It's interesting that the heading has a quote about solitude, which many of us are trying to understand with the current discussion of "100 years." I wonder if next month we will change our views or add to them.

Looking forward to the discussion, especially since i expect to be home the WHOLE month.

Like CH, I love retirement. I liked my job, but I don't miss it. It is so glorious to be unscheduled -- up to a point. I want just enough activity to make me relish the days when there is nothing going on.

Turning 60 -- most of my birthdays are pretty much the same, rather uneventful, neither horrible or outstanding. As for suicide, once in a family is enough. Someone commented that it is a selfish act -- yes, perhaps, but I hold strongly to the moccasin theory.

Please enlighten me -- why is this a feminist book?

Feminist -- one who believes in this

Not to belabour the issue, but isn't this pretty much accepted by most women. I don't know any women under 50 who would argue against it. I've never been in academia, but from what others who are or have been have told me, I agree with the other posters who say CH is on target in this area.

Re: The biography of Steinem -- I think CH expected to get more out of this piece of writing. While she admired Steinem, she didn't feel that she really got to know her. Also, she was disappointed that there was no carryover after the work was finished. No continued comaradie with those she encountered while writing. Five years work, a published book, and then nothing.

Suicide leaves a lot of baggage for those left behind, and I don't think it's an acceptable choice. But others have pointed out to me that sometimes it's not a choice, but is more the result of depression, chemical imbalances, and other illnesses.

Happy Bill and MeriJo -- I like your style.

Yeah, I'd have five houses too, if I wanted them and could afford it, but who would clean all those bathrooms?

Macou -- thanks for the reminder about AM Linbergh's "Gifts From the Sea." Yes, it was about renewal, wasn't it. I think solitude helps with that and wonder if the solitude that leads to renewal was the solitude that CH was seeking, and felt she didn't find.

Ginny, the definition I submitted earlier is from Am. Heritage Dict. To answer your question -"Pedln, so now by your definition are you saying Heilbrun IS a feminist and therefore this IS the writing of a Feminist?" In the paragraphs about her career at Columbia one can infer that she is a feminist -- an advocate of equal rights in all areas for women. But I don't find this book, so far, to be feminist. It is a book about one woman's trying to accept and make the most of her retirement and the aging process.

to Anneo: I love what you posted: Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination.!

~Marj

LOU, you're right. My life hasn't been what you'd call usual. Did I ever tell you about the night I spent in jail? ; )

Mal

"In both her writings and in conversation, Heilbrun had often mused about killing herself at 70, which the Bible suggests is the appropriate life span for a human being (not that, as an agnostic, she much cared what the Bible had to say.)"

Underlining mine.

Source:

A Death of One's Own

“What I (May Sarton) have done best—and what she (CH) thinks altogether new in my book—is to talk about solitude.” Page 134, Journal of a Solitude

“I entered into a period of freedom and only past sixty learned in what freedom consists: to live without a constant, unnoticed stream of anger and resentment, without the daily contemplation of power always in the hands of the least worthy, the least imaginative, the least generous.”

“Ours is a long marriage, and we have found solitude together. But had I not followed a fantasy, we would not enjoy it now in this stark barn, ”…

If we look past her suicide, Heilbrun gives some good advice in this book. She says that those who retire face the problem of "what to do with time and our life." She suggests that we find new "work" that is difficult concentrated, and where definite progess can be measured. Not measured in money or a salary, but where our talents continue to be used. Learning and producing should continue in some way that we ourselves can measure and take pleasure from. She seems to have tried to follow this advice herself for as long as she was able.

Lou, I am so with you, about CH and about loving authors, you are almost as infectious as our Ginny

Carolyn Heilbrun lived in a rarified, ivory tower environment. Though one might not think so, life in that environment can be just as competitive and mean as what one finds climbing up a corporate ladder. It's not just women who are affected by tenure anxiety.

..."to live without a constant, unnoticed stream of anger and resentment, without the daily contemplation of power always in the hands of the least worthy, etc..."

Instead of giving each gender a chance to reach our full potential as INDIVIDUALS (both male and female) they have just become strident anti-male and pro-career for women and pro-abortion, and children get lost in the equasion as an "inconvenience"---and I think it's just another box, and a very destructive box at that. A truly free person figures out his/her own needs and follows his/her own maps.

"We have to make myths of our lives." (Mary Sarton p. 75)

I would not agree with this statement. Why make myths of our lives? Are our lives that drab that we have to embellish them? Truth about anything has become almost non-existent in this day and age. There was a time when "truth" meant something. Have we become so jaded that we would rather look at our lives as "myths" rather than recognize the truth in them? I know from experience that sometimes "truth" hurts. But we can deal with truth, I'm not sure we can deal with myths if they got out of control.

"NEW YORK, NY—This fall (2000), Columbia University imposed perhaps the most flawed and unfair sexual misconduct policy found at any university in America.

"FIRE's (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) letter pointed out that under the new policy, a student in his senior year could be expelled from Columbia as a result of charges from an ex-girlfriend that he allegedly committed 'date rape' in his freshman year. He could be informed of those charges less than ten days before a hearing. He would not know the specific nature of the evidence alleged against him until the hearing officer described it to him immediately prior to the student's own testimony. Despite the grave seriousness of the charges and the ruin awaiting him from false conviction, the student would not have an attorney present to advise him and would not have the right to be present even to hear the testimony of either his accuser or the witnesses against him. He has no right to cross-examination, which, elsewhere in this society, is regarded as the principal way to test the believability of a witness and the truth of testimony. Indeed, the policy goes out of its way specifically to prohibit cross-examination. In short, the accused student lacks even the minimal information, time, and means to defend himself.

"Further, as FIRE wrote the trustees, the rules of secrecy imposed upon the accused make it impossible for him to investigate the charges against him, to refresh his recollection of events, or to obtain witnesses on his own behalf. If he did so, he would be subject to a new disciplinary violation for revealing the identity of the participants in the proceeding. In fact, he could only discuss the charges with his parents, or an attorney, if he scrupulously avoided revealing the names of either the accuser or the witnesses who testified against him."

Source:

Sexual misconduct policy at Columbia

See also:

"The creators of the new policy, who now hope to spread it to campuses around the country, maintain that women with accusations to make are uncomfortable sitting in the same room as the accused. This same argument has been made, we could note, on behalf of four and five year old child witnesses in sexual abuse cases in the criminal courts. It is certainly interesting now to hear plaudits for a university policy that seems to view adult women as having the same capacities, or lack thereof, as four and five year olds."

Due Process at Columbia. Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2000

And:

Men Against Violence at Columbia, 2003

I think you're right about the serenity. Perhaps this is what she means also, when she talks about "country solitude," expecting to experience peaceful, pastoral feelings. And in the statement above, I think she is saying that if you aren't at peace with yourself at home, in your everyday life, you're not going to feel that way in any other location either. It has to come from within YOU.

What fascinating things you do, Barbara. You have made your London trips sounds really fun and interesting. And haven't you been driving about the South a lot recently?

I have never driven to the West Coast and would love to do it from here in the U.S. center. But when i talk about it, my Seattle SIL says, "Yeah, but remember, you gotta drive back home, too."

Where is GINNY? I hope she's all right.

Mal

"Though she (Heilbrun) had confessed to being 'at the end of my sixties half in love with easeful death', she had waited seven years before quite consciously and unromantically deciding to write the ending of her own existence."

Source:

A woman true to her word on when to quit

I am still not clear on her concept of solitude - I am thinking she includes serenity with her solitude since she says, "But to seek solitude in unaccustomed surroundings, or in temporary surroundings, is to go in search of a fantasy."

Modern myths: I shop, therefore I am. You need not age (cosmetic companies, medical people). Happiness is youth and beauty. War is inevitable.

I think she didn't reveal her true feelings to anyone, least of all the readers of this book.

Paige, I've never read any May Sarton, but can see I'm going to have to, based on your recommendation -- "many women continue to find solace in her writing." Regarding CH's depiction of May Sarton -- the old saying -- "with friends like this, who needs enemies." I thought the article was unkind, and if it had been written before her death, I think Sarton would have been hurt. For that particular chapter I didn't like Heilbrun and I didn't think I would want Sarton for a friend. Who wants to be around someone who's going to yell at you all the time?

I don't know about you, but my computer has changed my life in many, many different ways. It's not just about accessing SeniorNet and being able to "interact" with other seniors, it's the fact that my computer is an outlet to a world that's now difficult for me to get out and reach. It also is a magnificent open door to creativity for me. Without it, my life of disability-enforced solitude wouldn't be half as much fun.

”But had I not followed a fantasy, we would not enjoy it now in this stark barn, where the wild turkeys come in groups to eat the corn we scatter on the snow, and the fire speaks to us of rural contentment.”

What this has to do with Carolyn Heilbrun I don't know, but she was right when she said there should be a computer in every senior's home.

Lola's Lament

I worry.
I have to because nobody else does . . .
Who knows who it could be at the door
'Specially in these times . . .
So I worry.
Sleep with my ears up, not soundly.
When I'm not watching I'm greeting.
People are not grateful enough
For visitors. I am. I worry
About them not being grateful enough . . .
Between the dangers
And the greetings I'm simply exhausted.

-- Arthur Miller

Day after day, the whole day through ----
Wherever my road inclined ----
Four-Feet said "I am coming with you!"
And trotted along behind.

-- Rudyard Kipling

"I never doubted the importance of recording the life of a person so completely focused on the lamentable dissimilarities of opportunity that race, class, gender and national origin enforce and reinforce in our culture".

Darn, I've been going back and rereading and would love to comment (argue? <BG>) on many of the posts, but the AARP Tax Prep class starts tomorrow and I've got to finish my homework.

I like this woman we're bashing around, except for some of the things she said about May Sarton. Will try to get back later, to defend her. Don't you think "England" was a happy chapter?

Darn, I've been going back and rereading and would love to comment (argue? <BG>) on many of the posts, but the AARP Tax Prep class starts tomorrow and I've got to finish my homework.

I like this woman we're bashing around, except for some of the things she said about May Sarton. Will try to get back later, to defend her. Don't you think "England" was a happy chapter?

Lou, she complained bitterly about the five years that she wasted on Gloria's autobigraphy and it sounds to me as if she did not like her. Who the heck is she to question GS "intorspection" when that is what she, herself, is sorely in need of?

"Heilbrun’s disenchantment with Trilling was on both personal and professional levels. She finds in Trilling’s writings little that would suggest his acceptance of women (as authors or characters) in the literary world. Generally, his remarks were condescending and indicative of a misogynous perspective. Heilbrun writes that “…he evidently could not imagine any literary work compelling his attention or admiration that was not demonstrably male in its characters and themes.” (Heilbrun, When Men…, 91)

On a personal level, Heilbrun felt that Trilling ignored her as a colleague because she was a woman. She wrote, “During all the years we were colleagues, he never once talked to me, except in the most routine way of politeness. I used to fantasize that we would one day engage in dialogue…” (Heilbrun, Reinventing…, 127)

Kress writes that Trilling “did not exactly turn his face away from Carolyn Heilbrun because he could not even see where she was.” (Kress, 58) His refusal to acknowledge her reinforced her perception of his misogynous perspectives and compelled her to confront him as a symbol of those perspectives. Susan Kress, in her biography of Carolyn Heilbrun, Feminist in a Tenured Position, writes, '…Heilbrun’s one-sided relationship with the symbolical figure of Lionel Trilling takes many forms: at times, praise amounting almost to adulation; then anger, which, though slow to show itself, gradually deepens; finally the transformation of some of Trilling’s key ideas for feminist purposes. She writes to Trilling, at Trilling, after Trilling, with Trilling in mind.' (Kress, 66)

" It can almost be called a love/hate relationship except that it is difficult to interpret her emotions as going to either extreme. Lionel Trilling represents for Heilbrun the personification of both the intellectual she hoped to be as well as the misogyny she sought to transform in academia. On the one hand, she seeks his approval and acceptance as a colleague and, on the other hand, criticizes him for his recalcitrance in failing to accept women as equals. What frustrated Heilbrun the most seemed to be that Trilling never acknowledged her, never recognized her worth as a respected colleague. Frustrated by his recalcitrance, Heilbrun adapted some of Trilling’s ideas within a feminist framework

"Heilbrun writes, 'He [Trilling] believed that ‘we fulfill ourselves by choosing what is painful and difficult and necessary,’ and I urged young women to join in that ‘we.’ Enacting feminism, and a high sense of self, has never been easy or comfortable for women; it is painful and difficult, but it is also, I urged them, necessary. The question, I went on to say, is one of transformation, both of institutions and of women’s consciousness.”(Heilbrun, When Men…, 60) "Heilbrun reinvented Trilling’s ideas and converted them into feminist principles. Heilbrun’s obsession with Trilling’s misogyny was magnified by his proximity to her personal circumstances within Columbia. Trilling was not only resistant to feminism in literature; he also was resistant to it in Columbia. Heilbrun saw him as the embodiment of a male- dominated institution that did little to foster or support academic excellence among women. She writes that Trilling “allowed” her to have tenure in 1966 because of her “silence” (ie., non-radicalism).

"Susan Kress summarizes the significance of Heilbrun’s action that day, '…she could not help but be aware of the University’s shortcomings and of the ways she herself did not fit its mold. We do not know how many moments it took for Heilbrun to transform herself from an observer to a participant. Taking her place between the students and the police on the steps of Low Library, she stands for all those faculty, and especially those women faculty, who for the first time, were publicly questioning their institutions.' (Kress, 82- 83) "In 1972, Heilbrun wrote an article in the Saturday Review entitled “The Masculine Wilderness of the American Novel,” in which she directly attacks Trilling’s ideas about women in fiction. This was the same year that would become a full professor at Columbia. In the article, she criticizes his ideas presented in a 1957 essay, “Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen.” As Kress writes, 'Her decision to take on Trilling in a public arena took enormous courage and must have seemed like nothing less that an attack on the institution of which Trilling, to Heilbrun’s mind, was the most illustrious representative.” (Kress, 100) She was taking on Trilling but, by extension, the male- dominated academic and literary world he represented. " 'Heilbrun argues that mind is not a transcendent category as he had implied, but is, instead, formed by gender, race and culture.' (Kress, 160) "Heilbrun felt that her gender presented more of an obstacle than her race or religion and this obstacle was what she needed to overcome. "Heilbrun had not been raised practicing Judaism. In fact, she felt that her parents were embarrassed of their religion perhaps because it was not accepted in early twentieth century America. About her mother she writes, 'From an early age, therefore, my mother identified all that limited her life as Judaism.' (Heilbrun, Reinventing…57)

"She writes, “I discovered (in the Jewish religion) that to a Jew women are, in fact, seen as vile – there is no other word.” (Ibid., 63)"

"She began to correlate her Jewishness with her feminism and to understand that these were related experiences for her. Being an outsider as a Jew gave her the strength to struggle from the outside as a woman.

Amanda Cross and Columbia University

"Although there are differences between Heilbrun and the fictional Fansler, there are many similarities between them. Kate Fansler is a WASP but is also a professor of literature at a prestigious university in New York City who struggles within a male-dominated environment. Through Fansler, Heilbrun can speak with a hidden voice about what she finds wrong with academia. As Kress writes, 'An alias grants her a secret self not bound by the same rules, categories, and biases as her professional self, and she has the power to choose the precise moment when that disguise will be triumphantly discarded; moreover, as a writer of mystery stories, she holds sway over an imaginative world that demands moral action, a world where villains can be brought to task, injustice exposed.' ( Kress, 72)

"Poetic Justice, the third Cross novel, was written in 1970, soon after the student occupations on the Columbia campus. In this novel, the protagonist, Kate Fansler, begins questioning her loyalty to the academic institution she belongs to as she disagrees with its response to student unrest. One of the principal characters in this novel, Clemance, is a 'thinly disguised Lionel Trilling.' (Kress, 98) He is a former teacher and present colleague of Fansler’s who opposes her views. He turns out to be the murderer in the novel.

". . . . in May 1992, she resigned from Columbia University at age 66 apparently because of continuing frustration with the English Department and the Administration. The reason she gave for her resignation was that her department had not awarded a woman she supported with tenure and that several of her graduate students were not admitted to the doctoral program. To Heilbrun, this was symbolic of a larger problem, As Kress writes, 'But more than this, Heilbrun charged that her colleagues ignored her, failed to acknowledge her. She was an invisible woman suffering a kind of death in a tenured position.' (Kress, 146)

"Despite her years of service to the university and her significant accomplishments, she continued to feel powerless in what she believed to be a male-dominated institution. She had certainly received at least nominal recognition from the University by the time she resigned, but that was no longer enough. She did not feel that the recognition was accompanied by respect and a real ability to effect change within Columbia."

WORKS CITED

Heilbrun, Carolyn G. When Men Were The Only Models We Had. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002

Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Reinventing Womanhood. New York:W.W. Norton, 1979.

Kress, Susan. Carolyn G. Heilbrun:Feminist in a Tenured Position. Charlottesville:University of Virginia Press, 1997.

Source:

Finger Upon the Soul

We're discussing Cleopatra in The Story of Civilization discussion. Cleo didn't accomplish what she did in a very, very male world by lashing out at Caesar and Antony and other men in power.

Maybe a problem with feminists is that they think they must put on pants, zip up the fly and act just like men to achieve what they want. I think there's a female way of accomplishing things and a male way. Acting like a woman if you want to be accepted in a male world is part of the female way, in my opinion, and you don't have to lower your principles or sell out to do it, either.

Why is everyone so down on her? I'm either very simplistic or.....I don't know. I like her - She's telling me things that are comforting to me. Where's the elitism - where's the selfishness - where are all these traits I've been reading about on this board? Are they coming later? LOL Well, I'm going to keep reading and enjoying with the same plan.......pretending not to have read the posts.

I'm not very good at reading between the lines, or delving, so have accepted CH's writings as straightforward and true. What was her motivation for writing? To share with her readers what it was like to grow old. And to pass on a little advice -- try email, she says, experience having a pet -- expecially one that will force you into some activity, and friendship without sex, with a member of the opposite, can be very satisfying.

I don't take this book to be an autobiography, but more a collection of random experiences, which she tries to further enhance with literary anecdotes. She's honest, she tells us when things don't work out, and what she doesn't like. She is "not afraid to tell you who I am.," and I admire her for that.

I loved the chapter on England, especially her comment about looking at England without the literature is akin to Mozart without the music. She seemed to find something positive about many of her trips there, including getting the portrait of Duncan Grant (who is Duncan Grant?), but it would be only natural that one would find a visit with one's friend and her family to be more enjoyable than the other visits. That would be my choice.

NOw to a lovely soak and a chance to read the next section. I've been burning the midnight oil for three nights working on tax problems, so am looking forward to a change in reading material. I'm no expert now, but can probably keep you out of the hands of the IRS.

"I have believed, in the words of a first-rate woman scholar who lived to be eighty and was always falling in love with someone, that marriage for a woman spoils the two things that make life glorioius: learning and friendship."

"Had I been granted one wish for my later years, it would have been for the obliteration of the instant, contiguous memory." (page 115)