Gloria Steinem, whose resentment of “the patriarchy” has not abated in thirty years, has aptly chosen her authorized biographer. Three years ago Carolyn Heilbrun noisily resigned her chair in Columbia University’s English department because, as a woman, she felt herself targeted. “In life, as in fiction,” Ms. Heilbrun told The New York Times, “women who speak out usually end up punished or dead. I’m lucky to escape with my pension and a year of leave.” The Times reporter ventured to remark that things were no longer so bad. Thirty-two years ago when Heilbrun had first come to Columbia there were no tenured female professors in the English department. Now eight of its thirty-two tenured professors and a majority of its junior professors are women. Heilbrun was not impressed. “Female doesn’t mean feminist,” she snapped. Having “survived” her long tenure at Columbia, Heilbrun planned to devote herself full-time to writing and “speaking out.” One of her first projects would be the writing of The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem.
In her mystery stories (written under the name Amanda Cross) Heilbrun has parodied several women more academically distinguished than herself (among them Wellesley College’s Mary Lefkowitz and Harvard University’s Helen Vendler) who are not her kind of feminist. By contrast, Heilbrun is remarkably protective of Gloria Steinem, who is very much her kind of feminist and who does not threaten her professionally. Even so, Steinem is physically attractive and that provokes and disconcerts Heilbrun.