Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Their Circle
- Book Review,
by Lois W. Banner
From Publishers Weekly
Banner (American Beauty; In Full Flower; etc.) offers here a joint biography of two major figures in American anthropology. Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead met in 1922, when Benedict was a teaching assistant and Mead a student at Barnard College. Two years later, they were lovers. From the 1920s until Benedict's death in 1948, they remained friends and intellectual collaborators. For each, anthropological research and personal experience were interconnected; not only did a variety of co-workers become lovers and friends, but their sexual experiences shaped their theoretical positions on such questions as the "normalcy" of heterosexuality or the role of culture in defining deviancy. Banner's is the first work to use previously restricted private letters and papers of Mead and Benedict. She also draws heavily on recent decades of writing on lesbian history and queer theory. The results are uneven, mostly due to Banner's determination to find sexual abuse and lesbian subcultures in Benedict's youth and same-sex erotics in Mead's girlhood. Banner's "gaydar" works better when analyzing the variety of relationships the two women formed as adults, especially the way their own attractions morphed into fieldwork theorizing. While Banner plays fast-and-loose with some sources, this chronicle of the lives of two modern anthropology titans is bound to raise considerable academic interest. 28 b&w illus. not seen by PW.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The influential social anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, unalike in age, appearance, and demeanor, met at Barnard College in 1922, when Mead was a student and Benedict a teacher, and again in Rome in September 1926. There their friendship, strained by Mead's affairs with men, erupted in a quarrel over the sibyls in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings, important players in Benedict's fantasy life. Their bond survived, and the friends and, despite both being married (unhappily), lovers remained important to one another (they lived together just twice, in 1928 and in the mid-1940s). Such details spark Banner's work throughout and are possible because of access to hundreds of letters and documents in the Benedict and Mead papers that were opened to researchers in 2000-01. Indeed, this is the first account of Mead and Benedict that draws upon those resources. In addition, Banner was the first scholar to use the papers of Benedict's sister and of other archives, domestic and foreign. Thus this engaging, fast-reading dual biography newly enlightens scholars and general readers alike. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Banner has intertwined not only the lives of Mead and Benedict, but all the assumptions about women and sex in the first half of the twentieth century. The history of anthropology has never been so plainly set forth. An amazing, invaluable, unprecedented book--a delight to read."
--Carolyn Heilbrun, author of Writing A Woman's Life
"A most amazing, magnificent, and very moving chronicle of Lesbian brilliance. Lois Banner continues to break down bigoted barriers and write real history."
--Larry Kramer, author of The Normal Heart
"Intertwined Lives is a luscious detective story in which Banner ingenuously finds the clues and breaks the codes critical to understanding these two giants of American intellectual life and the bond between them. Banner has written a rich and incisive biography of their relationship, but she has also written a book that helps us make sense of that pivotal cultural shift as the Victorian sexual system gives way to the modern. How did people born into the Victorian world, but coming of age in the modern, negotiate this transition? Here, Banner allows us to see Mead and Benedict up close as they grapple with, even as they help shape, a new order that holds both pleasures and terrors for hem. A canny book and a must-read for anyone interested in the history of sexuality and gender."
--Alice Echols, author of Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin
"Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict loved anthropology, and they loved each other. They concealed that second love during their lifetimes, but left ample clues for a bold and sensitive biographer to recreate the richness of their shared personal and professional lives. Lois Banner is that biographer."
-- Susan Ware, editor of Notable American Women
"Intertwined Lives is an enticing and gorgeous adventure story about two brilliant divas, whose intellectual travels also involved extraordinary experiments in friendship and sexual love. Banner's approach to these amazing women is both erudite and wonderfully imaginative."
--Christine Stansell, author of American Moderns
"An engrossing narrative....bringing Mead and Benedict to life and placing
then with their circle of friends in a lovely mosaic."
-- Christopher Carbone, Washington Post Book World
"A brilliant introduction to two women who stood in the vanguard of a new America."
--Jamie Spencer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A major work, impressive in its depth and breadth."
-- Joan Gartland, Library Journal
From the Hardcover edition.
Review
"Banner has intertwined not only the lives of Mead and Benedict, but all the assumptions about women and sex in the first half of the twentieth century. The history of anthropology has never been so plainly set forth. An amazing, invaluable, unprecedented book--a delight to read."
--Carolyn Heilbrun, author of Writing A Woman's Life
"A most amazing, magnificent, and very moving chronicle of Lesbian brilliance. Lois Banner continues to break down bigoted barriers and write real history."
--Larry Kramer, author of The Normal Heart
"Intertwined Lives is a luscious detective story in which Banner ingenuously finds the clues and breaks the codes critical to understanding these two giants of American intellectual life and the bond between them. Banner has written a rich and incisive biography of their relationship, but she has also written a book that helps us make sense of that pivotal cultural shift as the Victorian sexual system gives way to the modern. How did people born into the Victorian world, but coming of age in the modern, negotiate this transition? Here, Banner allows us to see Mead and Benedict up close as they grapple with, even as they help shape, a new order that holds both pleasures and terrors for hem. A canny book and a must-read for anyone interested in the history of sexuality and gender."
--Alice Echols, author of Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin
"Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict loved anthropology, and they loved each other. They concealed that second love during their lifetimes, but left ample clues for a bold and sensitive biographer to recreate the richness of their shared personal and professional lives. Lois Banner is that biographer."
-- Susan Ware, editor of Notable American Women
"Intertwined Lives is an enticing and gorgeous adventure story about two brilliant divas, whose intellectual travels also involved extraordinary experiments in friendship and sexual love. Banner's approach to these amazing women is both erudite and wonderfully imaginative."
--Christine Stansell, author of American Moderns
"An engrossing narrative....bringing Mead and Benedict to life and placing
then with their circle of friends in a lovely mosaic."
-- Christopher Carbone, Washington Post Book World
"A brilliant introduction to two women who stood in the vanguard of a new America."
--Jamie Spencer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"A major work, impressive in its depth and breadth."
-- Joan Gartland, Library Journal
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