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Carolyn Heilbrun
An only child, Carolyn Gold was born in East Orange, New Jersey in 1926. She spent her childhood in Manhattan, "roller skating for hours or devouring biographies." She attended the Birch Wathen School, then came to Wellesley. When interviewed in 1984 at the time she received the Alumnae Achievement Award, Heilbrun confessed that as a city dweller, she often was lonely and miserable at Wellesley. "I went to classes religiously and to movies four times a week. I'd walk to the movies in Natick and Framingham and Wellesley Hills. But there were bright spots. I was asked to help edit the yearbook and two faculty members – Charles Kirby Miller and Mary Curran – encouraged me to write, and I ended up winning an Atlantic Monthly short story contest." She met her husband, James Heilbrun, while he was a student at Harvard. They wed the evening before he left for service in the Pacific during World War II. After a series of jobs in publishing and radio in New York, she enrolled in Columbia to study English Literature (M.A. 1951; Ph.D. 1959). Heilbrun began teaching English Literature at Columbia in 1960. With the exception of brief spells as a visiting professor, Heilbrun remained at Columbia until 1993. Encyclopedia Britannica summarized her scholarly works as follows: "The Garnett Family (1961), about the British literary family that included noted translator Constance Garnett, and Christopher Isherwood (1970). Heilbrun also edited Lady Ottoline's Album (1976) and coedited The Representation of Women in Fiction (1983). In Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (1973) and Reinventing Womanhood (1979), she examined the role of androgyny in creative writing and the effects of rigid gender roles. Hamlet's Mother and Other Women (1990) is a collection of her feminist literary essays. Later nonfiction works by Heilbrun include The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem (1995) and The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty (1997)."
The student who nominated Heilbrun "first read her book Redefining Womanhood as a freshmen in high school, and it had a profound impact on how I look at my life as a woman and factored into my decision to attend Wellesley. One issue that she addressed in her book, and which I also keep in mind as I prepare to enter my career, is that feminism must incorporate women from all classes, races, and educational backgrounds. While the "token woman" in a corporation or politics deserves recognition, she should also strive to create more opportunities for other women with her power. Heilbrun creates, in my opinion, a very pragmatic approach to feminism and life for women of all ages." Written by Wilma Slaight
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Carolyn
Heilbrun, Class of 1947, is important both to feminist scholars
and to mystery buffs.
In
her late 30s with three children and fearing that she would never
get tenure at Columbia; Heilbrun wanted to create "someone whose
destiny offered more possibility than I could comfortably imagine
for myself." A lover of British mysteries--"they were so intelligent"
-- she created Kate Fansler, a rich, thin, beautiful English professor
at a big city university. Fansler, the lead in the mysteries Heilbrun
writes as Amanda Cross, first appeared in 1964's In the Last
Analysis . Heilbrun did not reveal that she was Amanda
Cross until after she got tenure at Columbia--and was the first
woman in the English Department to do so.
