The Equivalents
Page 37
“substantial…sze. 14 clothes”: Olsen to Sexton, 26 Jan. [n.d., but presumably 1961], Sexton Papers.
“Jesus God! You’re publishing everywhere!”: Quoted in Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 94.
“I suppose some would say”: Nolan Miller, Letter of Recommendation in Olsen application, 10 Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
most productive when her conditions: Dick Scowcroft, Letter of Recommendation in Olsen application, 12 Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
“writers who help”: Olsen to Sexton, “November, a late night note,” n.d. [presumably 1960], Sexton Papers.
“That was your first one”: Olsen to Sexton, 26 Jan. [n.d., but presumably 1961], Sexton Papers.
“As a writer”: Sexton to Olsen, n.d. [1961], Sexton Papers.
“leave writing”: Olsen to Sexton, 20 May [n.d., presumably 1961], Sexton Papers.
“It takes such time to build”: Sexton to Olsen, n.d. [presumably 1961], Sexton Papers.
by 1950, only 1 percent of Americans: May, Homeward Bound, 12.
Twenty percent of American workers: Ralph Brown, Loyalty and Security: Employment Tests in the United States (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958).
“We were an uneasy, shifty-eyed generation”: Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (New York: Vintage, 1993), 41.
CHAPTER 4: A Messy Experiment
“intellectually displaced women”: Hechinger, “Radcliffe Pioneers.”
“difficult, if not impossible”: Ibid.
“a group of gifted but not necessarily widely recognized”: Ibid.
“it was she”: Linda Gray Sexton, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994), 36.
“We were scared stiff”: Quoted in Yaffe, Mary Ingraham Bunting, Kindle ed.
federal R&D spending increased: Laura Micheletti Puaca, Searching for Scientific Womanpower: Technocratic Feminism and the Politics of National Security, 1940–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 86.
“the security of the Nation”: National Defense Education Act of 1958, Title 1: General Provisions, sec. 101.
“all of the males”: Quoted in Yaffe, Mary Ingraham Bunting, Kindle ed.
“I was deeply puzzled”: Mary Bunting, speech to Annual Women’s College Conference at Douglass, 7 March 1981, quoted in ibid.
“her awakening”: Mary Ingraham Bunting-Smith Oral History, Bunting Personal Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, 87.
“never been interested in women”: Mary Bunting, “New Patterns in the Education of Women” (speech at Old Guard Summit, 22 Oct. 1956), Bunting Professional Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.
“Well this housekeeping game”: Quoted in Yaffe, Mary Ingraham Bunting, Kindle ed.
The same could be said of their careers: I have drawn on several sources to describe Bunting’s biography and career trajectory. One is an oral history included in the papers of Mary Ingraham Bunting-Smith, 1959–1972, at the Schlesinger Library. Others are a profile of Bunting in Time as well as Yaffe’s biography. The former is “Education: One Woman, Two Lives,” Time, 3 Nov. 1961, 68–73.
“I didn’t have to worry”: Bunting-Smith Oral History, 17.
Bunting realized how many factors conspired: “One Woman, Two Lives,” 68.
“educated womanpower”: Mary I. Bunting, “A Huge Waste: Educated Womanpower,” New York Times, 7 May 1961.
number of women enrolled in college: Linda Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 44.
“incidental students”: Ibid., 5.
“climate of unexpectation”: According to the oral history in the Bunting-Smith Papers, Bunting first used this phrase at an American Council meeting in 1957. She continued to use this phrase frequently: for instance, in a speech to the AWA on February 17, 1960.
“GIs of Douglass”: Katheryne McCormick, quoted in Yaffe, Mary Ingraham Bunting, Kindle ed.
“The research of those years”: Esther Raushenbush, Occasional Papers on Education (Bronxville, N.Y.: Sarah Lawrence College, 1979), quoted in Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1.
“boiling very fiercely”: Bunting-Smith Oral History, 87.
“ways in which women”: Ibid.
“small book”: Ibid.
“in terms of men against women”: Ibid., 88.
“I was thinking much more”: Ibid.
“Every one of these neat little brick houses”: Quoted in Yaffe, Mary Ingraham Bunting, Kindle ed.
“I wish Harvard had a president”: “Down-to-Earth College President: Mary Ingraham Bunting,” New York Times, 29 April 1969, 28.
She secured a five-year, $150,000 grant: Press release, 20 April 1961, Institute Archives.
she was officially appointed: Bunting to Smith, 17 Jan. 1961, Bunting Professional Papers.
“a sweet kind of whirling dervish”: Kathie Olsen, interview by author, 16 June 2016.
“terrific”: Lily Macrakis, interview by author, May 2016.
“deplore[d] the lack of incentive”: “Radcliffe Institute for Research or Radcliffe Center for Continuing Scholarship,” press release, Nov. 1960, Institute Archives.
“This sense of stagnation”: “The Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study,” brochure, Nov. 1960, Institute Archives.
In 1960, the median full-time female worker: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 1961 to 2009 Annual Social and Economic Supplements, census.gov.
By the academic year 1952–1953: Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Amistad, 2006), 245–46.
upwardly mobile black women: Ibid., 251.
“waste of highly talented, educated womanpower”: Bunting, “Huge Waste.”
“a place to work free”: Ibid., 112.
“Dear Radcliffe, I love you!”: Chamberlain to Bunting, 21 Jan. 1961, Bunting Professional Papers.
“children are sick”: Lucie Hainier to Bunting, 22 Nov. 1960, Institute Archives.
CHAPTER 5: I Got It!
“preliminary applicants”: Bryant to the Executive Committee of the Institute, memo, 1960, Institute Archives.
“caliber of applicant”: Bryant to Bunting, memo, 30 Dec. 1960, Bunting Professional Papers.
women made up 33 percent of master’s: Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 44.
“anemic”: Sexton application to the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, 7 March 1961, Institute Archives.
“Amorality and the Protagonist”: Maxine Kumin application to the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, 29 Feb. 1961, Institute Archives.
“also were you going to become bohemian”: Oral history interview with Barbara Swan, 13 June 1973–12 June 1974, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
“I was running like a business”: Ibid.
Swan trained with Karl Zerbe: To describe Zerbe, the Museum School, and figurative modernism as a movement, I have relied on Judith Bookbinder’s Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2005).
“to be dissolved so completely”: Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” in The New York Intellectuals Readers, ed. Neil Jumonville (New York: Routledge, 2007), 146.
“one of the more gifted students”: Dorothy Adlow, “Barbara Swan Shows Group Show of Portraits,” Christian Science Monitor, 6 Nov. 1947, 4.
“They didn’t trust a woman”: Quoted in Bookbinder, Boston Modern, 221.
“absolutely categorized all women”: Quoted in ibid., 219–20.
“I was so deter
mined”: Quoted in ibid., 221.
“somber tonalities”: Oral history interview with Swan.
“There is a quivering vitality”: Dorothy Adlow, “Artist’s First Solo Display at the Boris Mirski Gallery,” Christian Science Monitor, 23 March 1953, 7.
“I was involved in the mother-child relationship”: Oral history interview with Swan.
“humanistic shot in the arm”: Edgar J. Driscoll, “This Week in the Art World: Barbara Swan’s Exhibit Humanistic Shot in the Arm,” Boston Globe, 10 Nov. 1957.
“bogged down”: Barbara Swan, “Premier Cru,” Radcliffe Quarterly, June 1986, 17.
“be all”: Swan to Mary Bunting, 22 Nov. 1960, Institute Archives.
“I feel that a woman artist”: Barbara Swan application to Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, 24 Feb. 1961, Institute Archives.
“permanent quarters”: “Fay House Reopens After Renovations,” Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, 9 May 2012, www.radcliffe.harvard.edu.
she expressed enthusiasm: Sexton application, Institute Archives.
“WOW! We’ll know she’s around”: Connie Smith, Notes on Sexton interview, 29 April 1961, Institute Archives.
“Epithets with which I had been branded”: Kumin, Pawnbroker’s Daughter, 39.
“interests and attitudes and values”: Kumin, interview by Alice Ryerson and Martha White, Jan. 1962, 30, Institute Archives.
“I would say that the unhappiness”: Ibid.
“supremely and sublimely happy”: Ibid., 31.
“playing the triple role”: Kumin application, Institute Archives.
“fine teacher”: Frank A. Redinnick, Letter of Recommendation in Kumin Application, Institute Archives.
“Has many interests”: Smith, Notes on Kumin Application, 29 April 1961, Institute Archives.
“of a little known family of spiders”: Rosen to Bunting, 18 May 1961, Bunting Professional Papers.
“at long last”: Pavone to Bunting, 23 July 1961, Bunting Professional Papers.
“I hope that the present program”: Blanchard to Bunting, 23 Nov. 1960, Bunting Professional Papers.
“a simple style”: Levertov to Bunting, 5 Dec. 1960, Institute Archives.
loft above a ham-canning factory: Donna Krolik Hollenberg, A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 173.
“was ripe for such a conception”: Rene Bryant to Bunting, 30 Dec. 1960, Institute Archives.
37 percent of all college students: Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 44.
“Women are going back to work”: “The Married Woman Goes Back to Work,” Woman’s Home Companion, Oct. 1956, 42, repr. in Women’s Magazines, 1940–1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press, ed. Nancy A. Walker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998), 87.
nearly 40 percent of American women: In November 1960, 38.2 percent of women were in the workforce: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate: Women [LNS11300002], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, fred.stlouisfed.org.
“It’s liberating to read”: These alumnae are quoted anonymously in a memo from Rene Bryant to Bunting, 2 Dec. 1960, Institute Archives.
“pulling woman-the-homemaker”: Bethany M. Hamilton to Bunting, 23 March 1961, Institute Archives.
“seeing her child”: Lynne Gaines to Bunting, 13 Jan. 1961, Institute Archives.
“on those who have done”: Bethany M. Hamilton to Bunting, 23 March 1961, Institute Archives.
“Dear Mrs. Kumin”: Connie Smith to Kumin, 27 May 1961, Institute Archives (the language is the same in all of the acceptance letters).
the Sexton family went out for dinner: Anecdote from interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
“I think everyone must have thought”: Ibid. Sexton was quite candid about her disappointment and her elation in this interview; it thus serves as my source for her feelings about nearly missing, and then receiving, the grant.
“Hark Hark the lark”: Quoted in Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 145.
Her neighbors enjoyed: Interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
“flush and important”: Quotation is from Showalter and Smith, “Nurturing Relationship”; detail about December telephone line installation from Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton, “On Poetry,” Seminar for Radcliffe Institute, 13 Feb. 1962, Radcliffe College Sound Recordings.
“contributing”: Interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
first twenty-four women: Institute press release, 2 June 1961, Kumin Papers.
The vast majority of the women: “Ages of Children of Affiliate and Associate Scholars, 1961–1962,” Institute Archives.
Nine of them were married: Press release, 2 June 1961, Bunting Professional Papers.
It was a rare thing: Wendy Wang and Kim Parker, “Record Share of Americans Have Never Married,” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, 14 Jan. 2015.
“six rude answers”: Beryl Pfizer, “Six Rude Answers to One Rude Question,” in Walker, Women’s Magazines, 1940–1960, 142.
graduate student housing: Wittlin biography from press release, 2 June 1961, Bunting Professional Papers.
CHAPTER 6: The Premier Cru
preferred to host intimate dinners: Mary Lawlor, “Do Dishes? No, Rather Paint,” Boston Traveler, 13 May 1963.
each fellow’s stipend: Smith to Swan, 26 Sept. 1961, Institute Archives.
“pounced on each other”: Swan to Smith, 6 Oct. 1961, Institute Archives.
“exotic birds”: Brita Stendahl, “On the Edge of Women’s Liberation,” Radcliffe Quarterly, June 1986, 16.
The two frequently traded clothing: Diane Middlebrook, “Remembering Anne Sexton: Maxine Kumin in Conversation with Diane Middlebrook,” ed. Nancy K. Miller, PMLA 127, no. 2 (2012): 292–300.
They were both poets: Kumin and Sexton, “On Poetry.”
“rabbit warren”: Swan, “Premier Cru,” 17.
mid-gesture, and probably mid-speech: Portrait accompanied Elizabeth Barker, “Typically Atypical,” Radcliffe Quarterly, June 1986, 6.
Swan was in awe of Niebuhr: Swan, “Premier Cru,” 17–18.
“Premier Cru”: Ibid.
Swan took care to pose Smith: Ibid.
“Radcliffe’s new baby”: Ian Forman, “Motherhood End Career? Not with Radcliffe’s New Baby,” Boston Morning Globe, June [2?], 1961, Institute Archives.
In one photo: Newton, “Years of Study, Writing Cheers Newton Lady Poets.”
Kumin sits with her arm around Daniel: Ibid.
“Do Dishes?”: Lawlor, “Do Dishes? No, Rather Paint.”
“We were pioneers”: Untitled reflection, Kumin Papers.
“reasonable, constructive, moderate”: “Education: One Woman, Two Lives,” Time, 3 Nov. 1961, 68.
Only 11 percent of families: These statistics come from the following three sources: Wendy Wang, “Breadwinner Moms,” Pew Research Center, 29 May 2013, www.pewsocialtrends.org; Sarah Jane Glynn, “Breadwinning Mothers Are Increasingly the US Norm,” Center for American Progress, 19 Dec. 2016, www.americanprogress.org; and “Black Women and the Wage Gap,” National Partnership for Women and Their Families, April 2019, www.nationalpartnership.org.
Even middle-class women: Premilla Nadasen, Household Workers Unite (Boston: Beacon, 2016), 65.
“which is more of a status symbol”: Both quotations from untitled reflection on Institute, Kumin Papers.
Two fellows used the money: These and other details from “Women of Talent,” Newsweek, 23 Oct. 1961.
one-third of all employed black women: Nadasen, Household Workers Unite, 2.
“Black and Hispanic women
”: The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation 2017 and by Race and Ethnicity, report, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, April 2018, iwpr.org.
“women of talent”: “Women of Talent,” Newsweek, 23 Oct. 1961.
“He doesn’t like a messy house”: Interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
She swam her laps: Pool details from Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 150–51.
“the frightening world”: Quoted in ibid., 151.
There is a photo of Sexton: “Women of Talent,” Newsweek, 23 Oct. 1961.
Sexton was unusually happy: Sexton to Olsen, 11 Nov. 1961, Sexton Papers.
“It is more work”: Sexton to Olsen, 5 Jan. 1962, Olsen Papers.
“status symbol”: Interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives. Linda, Anne’s eldest, contests Anne’s assessment of how Kayo and his mother (Anne’s mother-in-law) viewed Anne’s poetry. Linda remembers both her father and her grandmother supporting Anne’s work, even if they didn’t understand it. She doesn’t recall the Radcliffe grant changing their views dramatically. See Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 152.
“first reading”: Middlebrook, Anne Sexton, 152, 161.
Sexton lay down: Kumin and Sexton, “On Poetry.”
“The Fortress”: Sexton describes the composition in interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
“the leaves have been fed”: Anne Sexton, “The Fortress,” in Complete Poems, 66-67.
“woman’s dying”: Anne Sexton, “The Operation,” in Complete Poems, 57.
“You’ve got to be hard”: Interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
It wasn’t until she received: Linda disputes this; see note above.
“being a woman”: Interview with Sexton, Jan. 1962, Institute Archives.
“Yes. Much better”: Ibid.
“I don’t think that many of us”: Macrakis, interview by author, May 2016.
“opposed to country clubs”: Roiphe, Art and Madness, 73.
“anti-Smith girl”: Ibid.
“There were certain things”: Macrakis interview.