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Posted on 10/12/2003 7:24:20 AM PDT by Stew Padasso
Feminist scholar commits suicide at 77
Son says Heilbrun saw her life as `a journey that had concluded'
ROBERT D. MCFADDEN New York Times
Carolyn Heilbrun, a retired Columbia University literary scholar whose extensive writings included pioneering books and essays in the feminist canon and a dozen highly erudite detective novels under the pseudonym Amanda Cross, died at her home in Manhattan on Thursday. She was 77.
Heilbrun, who had written of taking her own life in a 1997 book, "The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty," committed suicide, said her son, Robert. She had not been ill, he noted on Friday.
"She wanted to control her destiny, and she felt her life was a journey that had concluded," he said.
Aside from serving as an instructor at Brooklyn College in 1959-1960 and as a visiting lecturer or professor at Yale, Princeton, Swarthmore and other colleges, Heilbrun spent her entire academic career at Columbia, joining the faculty in 1960 as an instructor of English and comparative literature and retiring in 1992 as the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities.
But she was best known as the author of nine scholarly books, including "Toward a Recognition of Androgyny," "Reinventing Womanhood" and "Writing a Woman's Life," and scores of articles that interpreted women's literature from a feminist perspective, and as the author of the Kate Fansler mysteries. Her heroine, like her creator, was a professor of literature and a feminist.
The novels were ostensibly murder mysteries in which the amateur sleuth sometimes sought clues in literary texts and a killer's motives in academic politics. Most were well received by readers, but some critics said the plots were thin and the social commentary thick, and that the real subjects were women's changing social positions, relationships with one another and struggle for independence.
The books offered scathing depictions of academic backbiting, observations on Ivy League social pretensions and thinly veiled, unflattering portraits of Columbia colleagues, including one professor who seemed to have been modeled after the writer Lionel Trilling.
Fearing that her mystery writing might be seen by colleagues as frivolous and might even jeopardize her chances for tenure, Heilbrun concealed the identity of Amanda Cross for six years. In 1964 her first novel, "In the Last Analysis," was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. "Winning would have blown my cover," she recalled.
But after the 1970 publication of "Poetic Justice," with its recognizable depiction of Columbia University's atmosphere after the student revolt of the late 1960s, Heilbrun's friends began to guess that she might be Amanda Cross. Her novels included "The James Joyce Murder," "Death in a Tenured Position," "No Word from Winifred" and "The Puzzled Heart."
Heilbrun graduated from Wellesley College in 1947 with a bachelor's degree in English. She was married in 1945 to James Heilbrun, a Harvard student who became a professor of economics at Fordham University. Enrolling in graduate school at Columbia, Heilbrun received a master's degree in 1951 and a doctorate in 1959. In addition to her son, of Brooklyn, and her husband, she is survived by two daughters, Margaret Heilbrun of Brooklyn, and Emily Heilbrun of Eugene, Ore., and two grandchildren.
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It seems to me that she lived her life for HERSELF only. The article says that "In addition to her son, of Brooklyn, and her husband, she is survived by two daughters, Margaret Heilbrun of Brooklyn, and Emily Heilbrun of Eugene, Ore., and two grandchildren." Don't they matter at all to her? Is her "journey" over now simply because she perceives her career over? Does she feel no responsibility at all for contributing to the "journies" OF THE REST OF HER FAMILY?
I guess not, but then isn't that the way of all feminist?
Stubbornly refusing to acknowledge other possibilities right up to the end.
We all do, though most won't admit it.
We may claim to be living to help others, but in fact that is a role we play only because it makes us feel best.
"Noble selflessness" or "Devotion to God's Will" are just smarmey faces we put on our real reasons, to fool others and to fool ourselves.
So9
What a glorious day that will be."
Amen! And might I add, what took her so long?
Not too far from this:
Don't care for that analysis?
Neither do the Hollyweirdo socialists & liberals who want rid of G.W. Bush and his moral example.
There's your bottom line for the emotion known as Liberal Hatred!
No Balls
Its very sad to see someone inflict such extreme pain on their family by committing suicide. Based on personal experience I believe all of those family members, plus others she knew, will carry deep scars the rest of their lives.
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