Awards

• Winner of Triangle Awards (Lesbian Nonfiction) 2000

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9781558491816

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A respectful interpretation of a singular relationship between two world-famous anthropologists. . . . Feminist scholars, anthropologists, and students of that post-WWI era when gender roles were in motion will appreciate this complex tale . -- Kirkus Reviews

This book offers both respectable fieldwork and a respectful interpretation of a singular relationship between two world-famous anthropologists. Since Margaret Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, wrote a memoir of her parents (With a Daughter's Eye, 1984), the lesbian link between Mead and Ruth Benedict has been no secret. Lapsley (Women's Studies/Univ. of Waikato, New Zealand) casts a fresh eye on a complex friendship that lasted 25 years. Mead and Benedict first met in 1922, when Mead was a student at Barnard College and Benedict was a teaching assistant to famed anthropologist Franz Boas. The two women probably became lovers a year or so later, but their love affair deepened into an intellectual and emotional compatibility that survived Mead's three husbands, Benedict's failed marriage and later lesbian commitments, and even a kind of triangle with linguist Edward Safir. Beginning with the duo's early years, Lapsley echos their professional insights by trying to frame their experiences within the culture that formed them. Part of this includes the accepted romantic attachments between young women in college prior to marriage and the so-called Boston Marriages of women in womanly careers (social work, teaching) that marked the early 1900s. Lapsley follows Mead to Samoa, New Guinea, and Bali and Benedict in her struggles to establish herself in a chauvinist academic sphere at Columbia/Barnard. Throughout their long history was the need to hide any hints of lesbianism, which, in the climate of the 1920s and even later, would have destroyed careers and reputations. The important question, of course, is, how fundamentally did these lesbian relationships influence the conclusions of their ground-breaking research? Significantly is the answer posed here, at least for Mead. Feminist scholars, anthropologists, and students of that post-WWI era when gender roles were in motion will appreciate this complex tale of two friends who stuck it out. (Kirkus Reviews)

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