I’m not done with Ruth, yet, either. I would LOVE your input.

I have to admit that I’m in the middle of re-reading Midwife’s Tale after far too long and am seeing that Separate Sphere aspect in a much different light than I did a decade ago. What I’ve read and what has been written since about the ways that women constructed and asserted their own political identities would take a similar type of biography much further.

It was more in the way that she put the biography together that I found radical rather than in the content. Also, as a psuedo-former-archivist, I found the way that she essentially said “here’s a document that you guys have dismissed, here’s the story it tells, and here is why that story is important” wonderful. I had many a fight in as an archival student and employee over just such an issue!

I agree that Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale is a revolutionary biography of someone who was overlooked for years by male genealogists and historians. However, it’s a pretty conservative book in that it’s very much invested in seeing Martha Ballard in a “Separate Sphere” apart from “men’s business,” a strange decision when after all it’s politics–Ephraim’s and Martha’s loyalist politics–that got them ridden out of town on a rail in their 50s and forced to start over on the Maine frontier in the 1780s. I think I like Nell Painter’s 1996 bio of Sojourner Truth better, but then it’s not a stretch to see Truth as a political creature, and therefore as one who conforms more to the “Great Man” paradigm. So, Painter’s book is a more traditional bio in that sense.

The problem with biography is that it does tend toward that Great Man paradigm, and the more popular (as opposed to academic) the biography the more that is true. So the entire genre should really be re-thought to make it useful as something other than a sophisticated form of hero-worship.

Yet, I still think that biography is a useful tool, if done correctly. Historical monographs are describing ideas and events from a collective perspective. Biography focuses on the individual’s experience of what those monographs describe. How does a particular person, whether famous, extraordinary, or one of the crowd, participate and make sense of their period of time? How do they negotiate their multiple identities? If they are extraordinary in some way, what conditions in their lives or personalities allowed them to become extraordinary? What might that say about the opportunities or limits for others of their class, gender, race, or whatever factor might be of importance? Also, sometimes the lives of extraordinary people can show, by contrast, the lives of the ordinary people.

Perhaps I should add that I’ve written a biography myself, and that I seem to be working my way toward writing another one.

I’ve wondered that myself about independent and moderate Republican women. Do you think women may diss Hillary when they’re around men who support either Obama or McCain/Romney, but then they may secretly pull the lever for the old girl? Kind of the opposite of the “Bradley effect” for African American candidates, maybe? (Or maybe just enough to counteract the people who will vote against Hillary just because they’re uncomfortable with ambitious women.)

One point of contention was the candidates’ descriptions of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. When asked if Ronald Reagan was right to appoint O’Connor to the Supreme Court, the candidates generally dodged the question.

“This is a history-making woman, and they all said such terrible things,” said Katherine. “That made me feel like none of them were thinking, ‘Well, that’s going to offend some women out there.’”

And although they said they wouldn’t vote for Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, they respected her historical position.

“I don’t think I’ll vote for her, because I don’t agree with her policies,” said Joy. “But it is a monumental step that a woman as strong as she is has come as far as she has.”

Could it be that independent and moderate women who don’t agree with Clinton’s policies might decide to support her after all, when no one is looking?

O’Connor was a really pathbreaking figure, but because her biography was inconvenient/out of step with modern conservative ideology, it’s all down the memory hole. I have heard her talk about how she was only offered secretarial jobs after coming out of Stanford Law with honors, and had to *volunteer* in a law office before she could secure paid employment. How tragic it will be if her (voluntary!) departure from the Court and replacement by Samuel Alito leads to the undoing of all manner of women’s civil rights. She resigned for a reason no man has ever used in leaving the court (so far as I know–no many in recent history anyway)–she had to care for a sick family member. But as I understand it, her husband (who suffers from Alzheimer’s I think) was already too far gone by the time she left the Court to enjoy or appreciate her retirement. Tragic all the way around.

Pretty crummy for a fellow Arizonan too, to shank O’Connor like that. (An Arizonan who graduated at the BOTTOM of his class at Annapolis!)

All four candidates summarily dismissed Sandra Day O’Conner’s appointment as unworthy, due to her not being fervantly pro-life in her rulings. They didn’t even bother to add a perfunctory, “but she was an important, respected legal figure and a pathbreaker for women.”

Do they KNOW that O’Connor graduated second in her law class only to former Chief Justice Rehnquist, and while he had a choice of plum jobs as a young attorney, her only employment opportunities were secretarial? I’ll bet she could kick these losers’ asses in any courtroom.

And these guys couldn’t find it in their hearts to give a nod to the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court?

Not like I was going to vote for any of these bozos anyway, but I thought they might show a little — what’s the word — class or respect… It just demonstrates that that in appointing O’Conner, Reagan, for all his wrongness, was actually more progressive than the conservatives claiming his legacy all these years later.

O’Conner’s fellow Arizonan Barry Goldwater must be turning in his grave to see JOhn McCain out-pandering his competition to win the hearts of the religious right.

My message to the candidates, in the words of my third grader: “YOU ALL SUCK!”

Sis, I have to say that I’m surprised to hear that there has been no biography of Zora Neale Hurston–but it looks like there’s been only 1 major bio, in addition to a more recent lavishly illustrated authorized biography. Surely Parker has had a literary biography–no?

I wonder if we need to consider the sub-genres of biography here–literary biographies presuppose that an author wrote some pretty terrific or important things, a supposition that works very well with a feminist viewpoint. I can think of a number of great feminist literary biographies–Diane Wood Middlebrook’s now 15-year old book on Anne Sexton, for example. As Mary suggests, the conventions of American historical biography may force its women subjects into a narrower range of possibilities. (Is American historical biography in the main political biography, and therefore it’s harder to see women as the subjects? Even great recent feminist biographies like Nell Painter’s Sojourner Truth fits into the category of a political biography, as does the Mankiller bio and some of the recent Pocahontas stuff that James mentions.)

Please have them write full-length scholarly biographies of: Ann Petry, Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Yolande Du Bois, oh, and Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, Lois Weber … I have more.

And if any of them decide to write an umpteen-millionth biography of Virginia Woolf instead, please shoot them.