Carolyn G. Heilbrun - Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem

FASCINATING.
Newsday

In Writing a Womans Life, Heilbrun noted that there still exists little organized sense of what a womans biography or autobiography should look like. How, she asked, are we to view childhood? How do we deal with the mother-daughter relationship while avoiding Freud and Oedipus? How does the process of becoming a sex object operate, and how does a woman cope with the fact that her value is determined by how attractive men find her? By examining such issues in Steinems life, Heilbrun gives this biography its resonance.

The Washington Post Book World

Carolyn Heilbrun helped pioneer the field of womens biography and autobiography. [She] helped found academic feminism, but she has always remained slightly apart, allied to no camp, entirely pleasing no one with her insistence that literature and life are linked, that we are the stories we tell.

The New York Times

The contrasts, commitment, and complexities of this notable woman are explored in great and colorful detail. This story is sure to be well read. And it probably also promises to be just the first of many biographies about this fascinating figure who helped women redefine their roles.

Milwaukee Journal

Admiring but analytical, [this book] probes the contradictions that created an icon of the womens movementthe glamorous feminist who helped change society despite fears of both confrontation and public speaking.

The Dallas Morning News

Writing in a straightforward style, Heilbrun illuminates the life of a major spokeswoman of the womens movement during the last twenty years. When Heilbrun seeks to illuminate Steinems inner life and motivations, including her relationships with men, she is at her most interesting.

The Charlotte Observer

An admiring yet searching biography of outspoken womens movement pioneer Gloria Steinem [Heilbrun] plunges readers in the 1970s heyday of the contemporary feminist movement.

Publishers Weekly

The portrait is nuanced and thoughtful, respectful of Steinems work but prepared to question some of her explanations. Heilbruns goal is at once to understand how Steinem became the woman she is, and what her life can teach us about childhood and family, self and society. Heilbrun captures readers interest and imagination.

Booklist (starred review)

BY CAROLYN G. HEILBRUN

The Garnett Family

Christopher Isherwood

Toward a Recognition of Androgyny

Reinventing Womanhood

Lady Ottolines Album (editor)

Writing a Womans Life

Hamlets Mother and Other Women

The Education of a Woman:
The Life of Gloria Steinem

Copyright 1995 by Carolyn Heilbrun

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

http://www.randomhouse.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96527

eISBN: 978-0-307-80213-2

v3.1

T O P ENELOPE H EILBRUN D UUS
B ORN O CTOBER 12, 1994

AND

I N MEMORY OF HER GREAT-GRANDMOTHER
E STELLE R OEMER G OLD
B ORN N OVEMBER 29, 1895

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A BIOGRAPHER , trying to mold some version of truth from the scattered evidence of a life, incurs countless debts. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with the many who contributed to my writing of this book; I am eager to acknowledge, even with a sense of inadequacy, my profound appreciation of all those whose cooperation with me made this biography possible.

Gloria Steinem, whom I met for the first time only two weeks before beginning work on this book, answered questions over many hours, gave me access to all her papers, urged those I wished to interview to talk to me, and was patience personified with all my endless requests and queries. She had no right of approval over the contents of the manuscript. Her cooperation was the more gracious in that, during the course of our many meetings, she frequently differed from me and my interpretations.

Susanne Steinem Patch, Gloria Steinems sister, apart from granting me valuable interviews, answered more questions than I dare to remember, particularly but not exclusively about events preceding Gloria Steinems birth. Her graciousness throughout has been elegant.

To all those who with great generosity and patience allowed me to interview them, sometimes more than once and for extended periods, my debt is profound.

Kathleen Banks Nutter, a noble research assistant, worked for months in the Sophia Smith Collection of Smith College on the numerous and totally unorganized papers of Gloria Steinem, who had kept her memorabilia in no particular order in cardboard boxes, not yet cataloged in any way. Kathleen, an experienced archivist and a historian, rendered these papers useful to me; I am beholden.

Mary Thom, who is writing a history of Ms. magazine, has been wonderfully generous in her guidance, on which I have depended sometimes shamefully. Joanne Edgar deserves special thanks for answering endless picky questions day and night, and for much kind advice. Pat Carbine offered me valuable documents, and, often on a moments notice, the benefit of her recollections.

Steinems support staff has tolerated my endless questions and requests with astonishing patience and good humor. I heartily thank Diana James and Amy Richards.

Special thanks are due to Frank Musial, for information on the Youth Festivals; to Seymore Rothman of The Toledo Blade for important information and clippings; to Susan Nerheim, who chased down my sudden research requests, many of them odd and all needed yesterday, with marvelous efficiency; to Professor Patsy Yaeger of the University of Michigan, who drove me to Toledo, Ohio, and Clark Lake, Michigan, and helped in the exploration of places where Steinem and her family had lived; to Ron Grele, director of Columbias Oral History Project; to Carol Polsgrove, who has published (W. W. Norton) a book on Esquire magazine under the editorship of Harold Hayes, and who told me about letters at Wake Forest and Michigan universities concerning Steinem.

Many thanks also to the following:

Bella Abzug, Robert Benton, Andy Bernstein, Sallie Bingham, Mary Kay Blakely, Ivy Bottini, Ruth Bower, Susan Braudy, Donna Brunstad, Jacqueline Ceballos, Phyllis Chesler, Blair Chotzinoff, Jane McKenzie Davidson, Slavenka Drakuli, Nora Ephron, Brenda Feigen, Clay Felker, Jo Freeman, Marilyn French, Betty Friedan, Vivian Gornick, Tom Guinzberg, Betty Forsling Harris, Aileen Hernandez, Koryne Horbal, Ann Hornaday, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Devaki Jain, Mim Kelber, Flo Kennedy, Jayne Keyes, Kristine Kiehl, Juanita Kreps, Kitty LePerriere, John Leonard, Robert Levine, Suzanne Braun Levine, Sally Lunt, Harriet Lyons, Philip Mandel, Wilma Mankiller, Jim Marshall, Juliet Mitchell, Robin Morgan, Carla Morganstern, Marion Moses, Barbara Nessim, Jane OReilly, Joan Palevsky, Mary Peacock, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Stan Pottinger, Denise Rathbeen, Carmen Robinson, Phyllis Rosser, Herb Sargent, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Barbara Seaman, Donna Shalala, Alix Kates Shulman, Patsy Goodwin Sladdin, Margaret Sloan, Liz Smith, Ann Snitow, Tom Stoddard, Ellen Sweet, Franklin Thomas, Marlo Thomas, Sheila Tobias, Mary Jean Tully, Edie Van Horn, Alice Walker, Rebecca Walker, Nancy Wechsler, Judith Wenning, Judith Wheeler, Ellen Willis, Ming-Ji Bhang, and Mortimer Zuckerman.