The Power and Joy of Being "Difficult"

I arrived at Columbia exactly 30 years ago today - not today, no, no, no, January, 30 years ago in January. I had come from four years at my first appointment, at Princeton, where I was recruited as part of affirmative action, which was just kicking in, of course, for higher education at that time.

And so for a long time I thought of myself and my friends as the first generation of women in the academy. And what I meant by that was that we were the first who were recruited. Let me hasten to add that certainly at Princeton and certainly at Columbia, we were not welcome.

But we were recruited, which made for an interesting and sometimes difficult situation. This is also a way of saying that at Princeton there had been no women in the English department before me. So I didn't have anyone to pattern myself on, or talk to. In fact, it took two years before another woman was hired in that department.

I had two very interesting years as the only woman in the Princeton English department, which I would not trade for anything because they gave me a first-hand glimpse of unreconstructed academic patriarchy. I have almost no autobiographical writings except a piece on alcoholism and a piece on being part of that generation in higher education to offer you. But I do have the Princeton years between 1970 and 1974.

The men hadn't learned to clean up their language. So I heard how they really talked about their graduate students, even about myself - they felt quite free. Because there was only one of me. So I really considered myself something of a feminist heroine by the time I got to Columbia.

And then I met Carolyn Heilbrun and Joanie Ferrante, and I understood, for the first time, that I was not the first generation. I was simply part of the first wave of women actually recruited, but they were the real pioneers. They were people who had been here for years, in fact, long before I got here.

And it was interesting - I was the first woman - and again, my generation always has those "first woman" titles because of affirmative action - I was the first woman hired by the College of the English department. The department was then divided into the prestigious College, where everyone you've ever heard of or had been told you should have heard of - starting with Lionel Trilling - were. They were all in the College, and they were all men.

Then there was the graduate program, which was where Joan and Carolyn were before the three divisions were brought together into one department. And last there was general studies, where Alice Fredman was. So, as I say, I was once again the first, except that I wasn't the first.

As soon as I got here, the men took me out to lunch basically to tell me about the women, and how difficult they were. I feel I can share this with you. I was then 32. Joan Ferrante was probably then 38. And it was explained to me that she was menopausal.

Menopausal at 38? Is this what Columbia does to you?

And I was told that Carolyn and Joanie, but Carolyn especially, were very, very difficult. Now, Princeton had taught me something. I knew to disbelieve every single word that they said. More recently, I have come upon the absolute best answer to that "difficult" description so often applied to ambitious, talented women.

I don't know if any of you saw a movie, a small movie, that came out in the last year, called The Mother. Let me also say, speaking of Mother, I'm not one. But it's just wonderful to look out across not just all these women's faces, but something we don't get to see very much in the academy, which is women that look like myself. Women, that is, who are in middle age and pushing past it, my own group, and even a few, dare I say, older.

In any case, Mother is about an older woman, about 60. Ann Reid is the English actress, whom I'd never heard of, who was truly astonishing in the role. Her husband, whom she loves but who has always called the shots, seems very sociable; he's a very nice guy. He drops dead within 15 minutes of the opening of the movie, while they are visiting her sons.

Well, the idea is, she's not an old, old woman. She should go home and, I don't know, volunteer a lot in her community or something. She has two daughters and a son. And so, she goes back and she's not happy. And they realize, "Oh, Mother's going to be a problem."

The son she is closest to, the child she is closest to, comes to see her and tries to pick her up and get her acting the way she should act at this new stage of her life. And she's just wonderful, this actress. Everything in her whole body expresses this kind of sullen reluctance to possibly going on doing everything they expect her to do. And he says, "Now, Mother, don't be difficult." And she looks at him and says, "Why shouldn't I be?" And I thought that that was Carolyn Heilbrun's motto.

I remember her telling me, after I first arrived at Columbia, a year or so later - I was, say, 33 or 34 and she was around 50 - and she said, "You know, the most wonderful thing happens to you when you're 50." We had met at the old Teachers Too lunch place, if any of you remember that from many years ago. And so we both had come from somewhere to be there. And she said, "I just walked by a crowd of construction workers and not one of them looked at me. I have learnt how true, what a great pleasure that is."

And finally, of course, we are here to salute the truly extraordinary prolonged and many-sided creativity and productivity that made her not just famous, but beloved. Not only within the academy, but so, so widely outside of it as well.

I would like to salute Carolyn and her extraordinary imperial candor - the only word I can use for it. Meaning, it swept away all obstacles. If you resisted, it happened anyway.

It was clarifying. It was sometimes traumatic. But it was always on target. Her amazing unpredictable and unquenchable capacity for mischief, connected of course to the candor. Her divine eccentricity, meaning she dared to be whoever she was on a given day or at a given time.

Nancy K. Miller - who invited these remarks and was a dear friend as well as a worthy successor to Carolyn - began her academic career in the French department at Columbia, about which she could really tell you stories, if she wanted to. I will say about the French Department - and this is not a story drawn from Nancy, but from one of my own graduate students, shared with Carolyn Heilbrun - it's a story about a brilliant young female student and the then-chair, who will be nameless though many of you will know who he was, the then-chair of the department. He was chasing her around his office. She was gay, he knew it, but did that matter? (laughter) He was chasing her around the desk. Then he realized that that wasn't working, and he tried to woo her. He said, "I see you as my heir; some day you will be seated in my chair."

She said, "Yeah, but the question is, will you be in it?" (laughter)