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Utama Writing Biography: Historians and Their Craft
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Writing Biography [First Page] [-1], (1) Lines: 0 to 9 ——— * 467.91501p ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: PageB [-1], (1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Writing Biography Historians & Their Craft Edited by Lloyd E. Ambrosius [-3], (3) Lines: 10 to 28 ——— * 25.63501p ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: PageB [-3], (3) University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln & London 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Copyright © 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Chapter 5 copyright © 2004 by Nell Irvin Painter. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Set in Quadraat. Book designed by Richard Eckersley ⬁ 䡬 [-4], (4) Lines: 28 t ——— * 279.25p ——— Normal Pag * PgEnds: Ej [-4], (4) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Writing biography : historians and their craft / edited by Lloyd E. Ambrosius. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8032-1066-3 (cloth : alkaline paper) 1. Biography as a literary form. i. Ambrosius, Lloyd E. ct21 .w735 2004 808'.06692–dc22 2003019697 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Contents Lloyd E. Ambrosius Shirley A. Leckie vii 1 Introduction 1. Biography Matters: Why Historians Need Well-Crafted Biographies More than Ever R. Keith Schoppa 27 2. Culture and Context in Biographical Studies: The Case of China Retha M. Warnicke 53 3. Reshaping Tudor Biography: Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves John Milton Cooper Jr. 79 4. Conception, Conversation, and Comparison: My Experiences as a Biographer Nell Irvin Painter 103 5. Ut Pictura Poesis; or The Sisterhood of the Verbal and Visual Arts Robert J. Richards 133 6. Did Friedrich Schelling Kill Auguste Böhmer and Does It Matter? The Necessity of Biography in the Histor; y of Philosophy 155 List of Contributors 159 Index [-5], (5) Lines: 76 to 11 ——— * 37.97781p ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: PageB [-5], (5) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Introduction Lloyd E. Ambrosius [First Page] [-7], (1) Lines: 0 to 14 Between 7 and 9 September 2000, the Department of History of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln held its first Carroll R. Pauley Memorial Endowment Symposium on the topic "Biography and Historical Analysis." We invited six prominent historians in various fields to reflect on their experiences as biographers. From their different perspectives, these scholars offered their insights into the writing of biography as a form of historical analysis. Professors Shirley A. Leckie of the University of Central Florida, R. Keith Schoppa of Loyola College of Maryland, Retha M. Warnicke of Arizona State University, John Milton Cooper Jr. of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Nell Irvin Painter of Princeton University, and Robert J. Richards of the University of Chicago presented their original scholarly papers at the symposium. This volume is the product of their work. Chosen because of the diversity of their perspectives on the symposium's theme a reflection of their various personal and academic backgrounds, fields of expertise, and methodological approaches these six scholars offered a broad range of interpretations. The three women had written biographical studies of women from different social classes in England and the United States. Their subjects included U.S. soldiers' wives and a historian, English queens, and an African American slave who became a leading feminist and abolitionist. Like their female subjects, ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [-7], (1) viii Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 these authors focused on social issues of gender and race. Their studies shed new light on politics too. The three men had written biographical studies of men. Their subjects included a revolutionary Chinese leader, a U.S. ambassador, two U.S. presidents, and a German philosopher. While focusing on male political and intellectual leaders, they, too, addressed social issues of class, gender, and race. They, too, appreciated the cultural connections between the personal and public aspects of a subject's life. All six scholars, notwithstanding their diversity, agreed on one central point: Biography and historical analysis are inextricably intertwined. For them, biographical studies offer a way to analyze important historical questions. Moreover, they affirmed, biographers must use the best historical methodologies, utilizing all available primary sources and interpreting them in creative ways, to reveal the life stories of subaltern as well as prominent and powerful women and men. As requested, these six historians focused on the symposium's theme of biography and historical analysis. They analyzed the problems of conceptualization and methodology with which historians in various fields must deal. They addressed questions such as the following: How does the biographer sort out the individual's role within the larger historical context? How do biographical studies relate to other forms of history? Should historians use different approaches to biography depending upon the societies or cultures in which the subjects lived? What are the appropriate primary sources and techniques that scholars should use in writing biographies in their fields? The original contributions of this book come from the various answers that the six historians gave to these questions. A specialist in the American West, Shirley A. Leckie argued that biography is an important form of historical analysis that can enable readers to transcend their own personal experiences and encounter another person from a different time and place. For that to occur, however, the biographer must present the subject in such a way that "a living being walks off the pages." This requires empathy to recognize both internal and external influences, both the psychological dimensions and the environmental circumstances that shaped a person's life. While retaining a certain detachment from the subject to achieve as much historical objectivity as possible, so as to distinguish between fact and fiction, the biographer [-8], (2) Lines: 14 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [-8], (2) Introduction ix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 must see the world from that other person's perspective. This kind of personal understanding must be fully informed by research in all available records, both public and private. When, as is often the case for women or people of color, primary sources are inadequate to answer important questions about a person's life, biographers must make creative use of whatever is available. Historian Angie Debo employed this approach in her study of Geronimo, as did Leckie in her biography of Debo. Leckie urged historians to undertake biographical studies of other historians in order to explore the "participant-observer" relationship inherent in writing biography. Along with Leon Edel, she contended that a biographer must become a participant in the world in which the subject lived but at the same time remain outside that world as a critical observer. By doing this well, Leckie concluded, historians can write biographies that enable readers to experience the lives of others. Thus biography matters as a way of providing meaningful access to other people in different times and places. R. Keith Schoppa, whose specialty is modern China, stressed that culture and context of both the biographers and their subjects profoundly influence the renderings of the past that different people embrace as history. In Chinese history, he explained, the dominant understanding of relationships between individuals and groups has been quite different from that in the modern West. To avoid imposing an erroneous interpretation onto a Chinese subject's life, a Western biographer, like Schoppa himself, must therefore recognize this essential difference between the individual-group dynamics operating in the Chinese context and those operating in the West. He stressed the role of social connections and networks in defining the identity and controlling the life and death of Chinese people, such as Shen Dingyi, whom he studied. Emphasizing this difference between Chinese and Western cultures, Schoppa noted that individualism has contributed to the popularity of biography as a form of history in the West. Western cultural assumptions about individualism, which Western historians have shared, have encouraged the writing and reading of biography that features an individual rather than a group. But in China a person's identity derives from the group, from the inherited name, not from individual choice. The biographer of a Chinese subject [-9], (3) Lines: 20 to 2 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [-9], (3) x Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 must therefore recognize the reality of this cultural context and interpret that person's life story within the framework of social connections and networks. Schoppa illustrated this approach with his analysis of Shen's murder in 1928. Retha M. Warnicke, a specialist in Tudor England, likewise focused on networks in English history. She suggested that the contrast between the East and the West, which Schoppa had stressed, was not so great, at least in the early modern era. Especially in women's history, she emphasized, family and kinship networks were vitally important. These connections shaped not only the lives of queens, such as Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves, but also the workings of politics at the Tudor court. In early modern English history, she argued, customs and rituals of the time influenced perceptions of the royal family at the time and have continued to influence the way historians since then have written about the people of the Tudor era. Traditional beliefs about gender, which privileged men over women, and about religion, which exalted Protestantism over Catholicism after the English Reformation, have remained embedded in even recent biographies. To escape these prejudices, Warnicke urged historians to reexamine their own cultural biases as they rewrite their accounts of Tudor England. Reshaping Tudor biography, which she did with Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves, requires historians to take a fresh look at the available historical records, recognizing the falsehoods and prejudices within these documents and reading them without imposing the traditional stereotypes onto their content. This approach, Warnicke concluded, offers new insights not only into early modern women's history but also into English history in general. It enables the biographer to contribute not only to the social and cultural understanding of Tudor England but also to its political history. John Milton Cooper Jr., a specialist in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American history, shared his experiences as a biographer of Walter Hines Page and of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Like Leckie, he stressed the importance of acquiring an empathetic understanding of the subject (or subjects, in the case of a comparative biography) while not sacrificing scholarly objectivity in other words, striking a balance between personal empathy and critical detachment. He [-10], (4) Lines: 22 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [-10], (4) Introduction xi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 emphasized the need for sufficient primary sources but acknowledged that historians do not always have all the documents they would like for every biographical subject. If a person did not leave behind a collection of letters, diaries, or other private papers, historians must rely on the public record. Cooper observed that a biographer's own autobiographical experiences influence the choice of a subject and the particular perspective on that person's life. He emphasized that a biographer must enter into "conversation" with the subject, so as to allow that person to speak for himself or herself. What is now called "oral history," but which existed before it was given that name, has provided a way to engage in "conversation" with the subject or with others who knew that person. Using himself as an example, Cooper illustrated the "participant-observer" relationship that Leckie, following Leon Edel, advocated. Like Warnicke, he warned against accepting interpretations that appear in the documents without first questioning the reliability and biases of the sources, such as Edward M. House's diary for the Wilson era. Cooper recommended the methodology of comparative biography to explore two or more lives that ran parallel and intersected, as did those of Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson. He recognized the limits of this approach, however. Above all, he advised historians to become biographers by doing the research and writing the life stories of other people, for there is no substitute for one's own experience. Drawing upon her experience as the biographer of Sojourner Truth, Nell Irvin Painter, whose specialty is African American history, urged historians to use images as well as written documents. Especially in the case of subaltern subjects, for whom primary sources are typically scarce, the biographer must utilize all available materials, whether written or pictorial. She observed that in the Western intellectual tradition words have been regarded by scholars as more reliable sources of truth than pictures. This privileging of words over images, however, favors the elite over subaltern subjects, for wealthy and powerful people are more likely to leave a legacy of written documents. Because the slave Sojourner Truth, who became a leading abolitionist and feminist, was illiterate, she could not bequeath a collection of letters and diaries. She did, however, leave pictures that revealed her own presentation of herself. By using them, [-11], (5) Lines: 26 to 2 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [-11], (5) xii Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 along with written sources from Truth's contemporaries, Painter could gain better access to the way Truth saw herself and wanted others to see her. Combining black studies and art history, Painter advocated the revival of ut pictura poesis, "the sisterhood of the arts," literally, "as in painting, so in poetry." From this perspective, images would not merely supplement words as accessories but complement them on an equal basis. In subaltern biography, the use of portraiture enables historians to escape the racist or sexist stereotypes that the dominant culture has imposed upon women or people of color. Painter illustrated this approach with images of Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Duke Ellington. She compared their own carefully presented self-images with the "controlling images" both written and pictorial that flourished in the dominant white society. This approach to subaltern biography, Painter argued, permits the subjects to speak for themselves and presents their "symbolic webs of meaning" that words alone could not convey. Moreover, it allows historians to expand the "conversation" using Cooper's term to include persons other than the usually prominent white men. With this kind of creative methodology, a biographer can write the life story of an illiterate black woman as well as those of U.S. presidents. Robert J. Richards, too, advocated the removal of artificial boundaries. In particular, he argued that biography is a necessity in the history of philosophy. He emphasized the connection between the life-changing experiences of real people, such as Friedrich Schelling, and the shifts in their thinking. Ideas do not exist and develop on their own, unconnected with the scientists or poets who conceive them, Richards stressed, although one might get this impression from traditional accounts of the history of science and philosophy. He demonstrated this point by examining the allegation against Schelling that he was somehow responsible for the premature death of Auguste Böhmer, the daughter of his lover and, later, wife, Caroline Böhmer-Schlegel. Prior to Auguste's death, probably from typhus, he had embraced the ideas of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, including his "subjective idealism." More than the other Jena Romantics with whom he was intimately associated, he had attributed the external world to the ego, making it the projection of one's own self-consciousness. After Auguste's death, however, he shifted away from that egotistical view of the world and [-12], (6) Lines: 28 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [-12], (6) Introduction xiii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 acknowledged its own external reality. Deeply wounded by the death and the allegations, Schelling had experienced the impact of external events upon himself. He could no longer doubt their existence outside of himself or take full responsibility for these painful experiences, as Fichte's "subjective idealism" would require by its assertion that the outside world was merely a product of one's own consciousness. In other words, an intensely personal experience provided the motivation for Schelling to modify his ideas. As this case exemplifies, Richards concluded, the history of philosophy needs biography to explain the development of ideas. Emotions, not logic alone, propel changes in thinking, and thus shape the nature of intellectual history. Just as Leckie and Warnicke advocated the removal [-13], (7) of barriers between personal and public aspects of life, building upon the insight from women's history that the personal is political, Richards adopted this approach in the history of ideas. Biography matters in this Lines: 30 to 3 field too. Biography is thus essential in historical analysis. ——— All six historians focused on the multiple relationships that shape * 123.79001p the work of historians as biographers. Their essays, which comprise the ——— chapters in this volume, explored the overlapping connections between Normal Page autobiography and biography, between truth and subjectivity, between * PgEnds: PageB biographers and the people they choose as subjects, between these individual subjects and their society or culture, between biographers and their [-13], (7) own society or culture, between the personal and public aspects of the subjects' lives, and between various subjects and their legacies of historical records available to biographers. By examining all these relationships, the six historians offered insights from their own experiences as biographers into the important topic of biography and historical analysis. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Writing Biography [-15], (9) Lines: 34 to 4 ——— * 467.91501p ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: PageB [-15], (9) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 1. Biography Matters: Why Historians Need Well-Crafted Biographies More than Ever Shirley A. Leckie [First Page] [1], (1) Lines: 0 to 17 In September 1999, Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois–Chicago, attacked modern biography as "Minutiae without Meaning" in the New York Times. It had fallen into this sorry state, he maintained, because the old "master narrative models" had lost their meaning for contemporary readers. These included "the providential model," based on the idea that humans, tainted by original sin, inevitably repeat the failings of Adam and Eve, and the "wheel of fortune model," which sees cycles of luck and misfortune as determining life's outcome. Hence, modern biographers furiously collect details and then "invent or fabricate a meaning," based on their "favorite hobby horse," to hold their narratives together. But, in reality, Fish argued, they are "left with little more than a collection of random incidents, and the only truth being told is the truth of contingency, of events succeeding one another in a universe of accident and chance." 1 Since "cause and effect" remains the biographers' "stock in trade," Fish accused modern biographers of imposing on their work their own contrived "explanatory structure." 2 In the end, he concluded, every biography is actually autobiographical, but rather than revealing that fact to their reading audience, as true autobiographers do, they "can only get it wrong, can only lie, can only substitute their own story for the story of their announced subject." Such chicanery renders the medium "a bad ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [1], (1) 2 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 game," dishonest for its practitioners and a waste of time for readers who would be better served by watching wrestling on television. 3 Whether one agrees with Fish or not, he is right on one count. All biography is, in part, autobiographical. Few, if any, biographers would choose a subject if the themes of that life were not interesting enough to sustain research and writing over the course of years or even decades. 4 Thus, one can assume that some aspect of the theme explored resonates deeply within the author. As for the rest of his argument, Fish performed a service by challenging biographers to think more deeply about the value of their writing and the methods of their craft. Fish's essay will not diminish the number of biographies written or discourage avid readers from looking for the newest title. As William McFeely noted, biography has always mattered, for all of us share a "basic human curiosity about our fellow humans." 5 The late Barbara Tuchman, best known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning The Guns of August (1962) and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971), advised historians to exploit this human interest by using a biographical approach in their writings. As a "prism of history," biography attracts and holds the reader's interest in the larger subject. 6 If Tuchman saw biography as a tool of history, the Greek writer Plutarch, author of Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, most of which was written in the first two decades of the second century ce, saw biography as a study that revealed who humans are. History, by contrast, examined their deeds. 7 In any case, in his time and for centuries afterward, both history and biography centered on members of the elite or those who had achieved political, military, or intellectual fame. Nonetheless, Plutarch, like many since, responded to his subjects in personal terms. Noting that he had begun his studies for "the sake of others," he soon found the enterprise useful for himself, "the virtues of these great men serving me as a sort of looking-glass, in which I may see how to adjust and adorn my own life." 8 In that statement, he identified the strong interest humans have shown in extracting moral lessons from past lives. Although many readers of biography still seek moral inspiration, the British author Lytton Strachey rescued modern biography from the didacticism into which it had fallen during the Victorian era. In works such as [2], (2) Lines: 17 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [2], (2) Biography Matters 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Eminent Victorians (1918) and Queen Victoria (1921), he used Freudian concepts to identify the hidden drives behind individual acts. 9 Consequently, modern readers are now more likely to seek a deeper understanding of human motivation and behavior as opposed to lessons that inculcate virtue. We also seek knowledge about the human condition. As men and women, we do not simply live out the life of our species. Instead, we display a wide variety of native abilities, and our personalities and characters are shaped by our consciousness of our race and gender, environmental influences such as the class we belong to, our early education, indoctrination, and the choices we make. Well-written biography gives us a study of how these factors operate in the life of another person, based on the assurance that what appears in the work will rely on "discovery, not invention," according to Ira Bruce Nadel. 10 The finished product represents the biographer's attempt, within this restriction, to interpret the subject's life so that the personality of that individual is evoked. When that happens, according to Frank E. Vandiver, "a living being walks off the pages." 11 Then we experience the immense and often addictive pleasure of living someone else's life, while we go about the business of leading our own in the here and now. Everyone who writes biographies has been inspired by the work of those who have succeeded in explaining the dynamics of a personality and a subject's hidden motives so that "a living being walks off the pages." Among the works that have breathed life into a figure, for me, is Fawn Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. 12 The work is psychobiography, a category that many historians and biographers alike regard with suspicion, and with good reason. Neither historians nor biographers are usually trained professionals in the behavioral sciences. Moreover, many of the psychological or psychoanalytical theories that psychobiographers have often invoked have been discredited or at the very least subjected to scathing criticism. 13 But it was not Brodie's use of Erik Erickson's psychological theory that struck me most forcefully. Rather, although the women's movement of the 1960s had emphasized that "the personal is political," in the early 1970s that insight was applied largely to the female half of the population. Biographers of male figures described their upbringing and family life [3], (3) Lines: 25 to 3 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [3], (3) 4 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 but only as part of environmental influences. They might describe, for example, the effect of a father on a male figure, but domestic issues and concerns belonged to women, who appeared in supporting roles and often received only brief mention. The idea of separate spheres for men and women had been articulated in the emerging field of women's history, but, more important, it was accepted as a given in biography as a whole. What Brodie did was apply the insight that "the personal is political" to an intellectual giant in American history a true American philosophe. In the process, the sage of Monticello emerged from the pages of her book as a truly human figure for the first time. Jefferson, as Brodie noted in her opening survey of historical opinion, was an elusive figure, despite his extensive writings. She was not deterred in her investigation into his character. By reexamining the evidence that other scholars had used and by searching for "feeling as well as fact, for nuance and metaphor as well as idea and action," she offered a new interpretation of his life story. 14 It was one that was based on "the connections between his public life and his inner life, as well as his intimate life." 15 In describing Jefferson's reluctance to assume responsibility at critical points in his career, earlier writers had viewed Jefferson's withdrawals as an inexplicable flaw in his temperament or character. Brodie saw it differently. She noted, for example, that Jefferson's refusal to join the American delegation in France in 1776 stemmed, in all probability, from his wife's pregnancy. Since each successive pregnancy placed Martha Jefferson's life in jeopardy, he could not leave the country when she might die in childbirth. Brodie uncovered a similar situation, in which Jefferson resigned from the Virginia legislature in December 1781 and refused a seat in the Continental Congress. Again his wife was pregnant, and this time, after giving birth the following May, she never recovered, dying in September of that year. Jefferson's fears for her safety had been warranted, and his refusal to accept public responsibility had stemmed, Brodie surmised, from his concern with intimate family matters, an area that statesmen of his era seldom discussed publicly. 16 Brodie's biography aroused controversy when she argued that, during his widowhood, Jefferson fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemings, his late wife's half-sister. Brodie based her claim on the narrative of [4], (4) Lines: 31 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [4], (4) Biography Matters 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Madison Hemings (a son of Sally Hemings, who remembered Jefferson as an aloof father and master at Monticello), circumstantial evidence of the dates of Sally Hemings's pregnancies, and accounts from Jefferson's enemies. With dna evidence indicating in 1998 that either Jefferson or a very close relative fathered at least one of Sally Hemings's children, Brodie's conclusions about their relationship have greater credence today than they did in 1974. 17 Moreover, even if Brodie was wrong about the Jefferson-Hemings relationship (and I doubt that she was), and one of Jefferson's relatives actually fathered Sally Hemings's children, a deeper truth emerges from her work. Many of the slaves on Southern plantations were family members, and they and their owners were bound together by ties of love, guilt, and denial. Beyond that insight, Brodie was telling us that men, as well as women, make critical decisions in their lives on the basis of intimate or domestic concerns. Thus, attention to a man's private concerns could illuminate his public life in ways that standard political or military biographies of an earlier era had largely ignored. Although one would not turn to her biography for the best analysis of Jefferson's intellectual development and contributions to American political thought, or of his career as a party leader and president, one should not leave her out of those discussions. By considering the ties between the personal and the political and bringing them concretely into historical discussion, Brodie was a pioneering scholar who still deserves the gratitude of those who grapple with the task of writing biography. 18 The value of Brodie's insight was revealed to me in the early 1980s. At that time, my husband, William Leckie, and I were examining the immense correspondence of Benjamin and Alice Kirk Grierson in the Illinois State Historical Library in preparation for writing a biography of the couple that would include their children. Grierson was a cavalry commander who led a diversionary raid through Mississippi during the Civil War while General Ulysses S. Grant was assaulting Vicksburg, and led an even more devastating raid through the state in 1864. Later, Grierson commanded the Tenth Cavalry one of the units of "buffalo soldiers" in the post–Civil War frontier army. The deaths of three of seven children and the predisposition to manic-depressive psychosis of two surviving [5], (5) Lines: 37 to 4 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [5], (5) 6 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 sons haunted him and Alice Grierson. Army life, which required frequent moves and often the separation of school-age children from parents, exacerbated this couple's ongoing difficulties. Thus, Benjamin Grierson's entire military career was marked by severe turmoil as he struggled to reconcile his family's emotional needs with their financial requirements. That element became for us not a side bar but a vital part of his life story. 19 Although middle-class families, such as the Griersons, saw men and women as living and working in their "separate spheres," the lines blurred for this couple. We discovered that Alice Grierson often functioned as an informal, but very real, adjutant to her husband when he was away from various frontier posts. She not only sent him information regarding military matters but intervened on behalf of the buffalo soldiers. In her view, the soldiers were often unjustly confined to the guardhouse, and she wanted them released immediately. 20 Besides turning to biography to learn from an informed scholar his or her interpretation of a person's life in all its aspects, both public and private, readers want to know how a subject confronted the existential issues and questions that all humans face. These include more than "Why am I here?" and "What does my life mean?" At crucial times in their lives, individuals define or redefine themselves when circumstances force them to make difficult choices or when they remain unable to extricate themselves from their past. Louis Harlan, in his two-volume biography of Booker T. Washington, treated such issues in ways that are immensely instructive. 21 He gave his readers no simple answers but allowed the evidence to yield both insights and contradictions. In his interpretation, Washington, the last black leader born in slavery, grew up during Reconstruction and saw that African Americans could not protect their political rights in the South without an economic base. In his thirties, as he built Tuskegee, he split his public and private personas and became "willing to trade political independence for educational and economic gain." 22 Thus, Washington endorsed the idea that only the educated and propertied should vote, which was another way of saying that black men, most of whom were poor in the South, should avoid politics. His message comforted white Southern leaders, especially when he also advised members of his race [6], (6) Lines: 41 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [6], (6) Biography Matters 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 to eschew the drive for social equality, thereby pledging black acceptance of segregation. That was, Harlan informed us, the point of his famous speech at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895, when he counseled blacks to accept a Faustian bargain as the price of peace. Simultaneously, he told Southern whites, wedded to the New South dream, and Northern capitalists, who sought lucrative investments in the region, that members of his race wanted their share of the hoped-for but never-realized prosperity as the price of their compliance with segregation. 23 That said, Washington, as a black man, never took his own advice, despite his outward demeanor. Armed with contributions from industrialists and financiers, he began transforming Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute into the headquarters of his own political machine. At the same time, a product of his environment, he ran that school as if it were his own plantation. 24 A man of many masks, Washington had the intuitive ability to penetrate the facades of others. He played a variety of roles, depending on his objectives at any given time and the groups with which he interacted. In the end, Harlan found that the "wizard" of Tuskegee used the power of his political machine surreptitiously at times to maintain his power base, and at times to serve his people. To accomplish the first goal, he infiltrated the organizations of his rivals. To achieve the latter goal, he secretly financed suits against segregation in public facilities and against the grandfather clause, one of a number of methods that white authorities used in several states to prevent blacks from voting. 25 In that sense, the man who counseled accommodation also contributed to the emergence of the Civil Rights movement. It was, however, a movement that he never could have joined since it flourished in urban settings, and he remained throughout his entire, life the rural leader of a rural population. 26 Nonetheless, Harlan's attention to the discrepancy between Washington's public persona and his private realities, as well as the wizard's way of exploiting the best of a bad situation to extract the maximum possible gain, left a deep impression on me that affected my thinking about Elizabeth Bacon Custer's widowhood. The death of her husband, George Armstrong Custer, was a severe blow, for she was left entirely alone in the world with no parents or siblings but only grieving in-laws who had lost [7], (7) Lines: 47 to 5 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [7], (7) 8 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 three sons, a son-in-law, and a nephew at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. 27 And yet, in a very real sense, Elizabeth Custer's widowhood gave her a second life. Through her books "Boots and Saddles"; or, Life in Dakota Territory with General Custer (1885); Tenting on the Plains; or, General Custer in Kansas and Texas (1887); and Following the Guidon (1890) she transformed her imperfect husband into the model soldier and considerate comrade she wished he had always been. Her compatriots accepted her version because, as she understood so well, they needed a martyred rather than a discredited soldier as they wrestled with the complex moral problems of driving Indians from their land. At the same time, this woman, whose severest loss was that she never bore children, vicariously fulfilled her need to raise children by making her husband into a hero for boys. 28 Without in any way trivializing her sorrow over her husband's death and her fiftyseven years of widowhood and loneliness, the George Armstrong Custer that Elizabeth Custer resurrected in her books was closer to her desired ideal than the actual man. Consequently, by exploiting public sympathy and the predominant gender roles that made challenging her veracity an unchivalrous act, she reaped the benefits of being the widow of a hero and basked in the reflected glory she worked so hard to maintain. 29 It was a stunning achievement, but it came at a very high price: her ability to live a fully autonomous life. Still, just as Booker T. Washington never transcended his rural South of the Reconstruction era and its tragic aftermath, so Elizabeth Custer, a quintessential Victorian woman, never surmounted her view of herself as a family member first and an individual second. I have learned from Brodie, who emphasized the importance of researching the private as well as public concerns of all individuals, and Harlan, who was willing to confront the discrepancy that often existed between public and private faces and the inability of some figures to transcend their larger environments. But other scholars have also affected my thinking about writing biography. In Writing Lives: Principia Biographica, a theoretical work, the late Leon Edel, best known for his five-volume work on Henry James, set down his thoughts on the medium and the pitfalls inherent in its practice. The most difficult problem a biographer confronts, according to Edel, is dealing with himself. He has to be a "participant-observer," meaning [8], (8) Lines: 53 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [8], (8) Biography Matters 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 that he has to play contradictory roles. As a participant, he must struggle to see the world as his subject saw it. At the same time, he must remain an "observer," for only then can he maintain the detachment needed to "distinguish between fact and fiction." This is important, for once the biographer crosses the line and incorporates fiction, "the enterprise is doomed." 30 While maintaining this balance between empathy and detachment, the biographer must also explain the dynamics of the personality that emerges. Edel characterized this last as discovering "the shape under the rug," or the hidden myth of a life. 31 To demonstrate his meaning, he subjected Ernest Hemingway's life, among others, to a brief analysis. Hemingway presented himself as pugnacious and unemotional, especially with other men. Beneath the surface, Edel argued, he was the opposite, for "a manly man doesn't need to prove his masculinity every moment of the day." Edel concluded that Hemingway's life and art were masks that deflected attention from his true self-concept, which was based on his fears and insecurities. 32 The story of what lay behind those masks "the shape under the rug" was the true subject of Hemingway's life story. The same holds true for all life writing, Edel maintained, for "the biographer who writes the life of his subject's self-concept passes through a facade into the inner house of life." 33 William McFeely's Pulitzer Prize–winning Grant: A Biography accomplished Edel's goal. On the surface, Ulysses S. Grant was modest, unassuming, and relaxed among common folk. McFeely, however, saw him as a man driven by an intense fear of falling back into the failure and obscurity that had characterized his earlier life, except for a brief period during the U.S.-Mexican War. During the Civil War, his willingness to wage total war and to endure the title "Butcher Grant" catapulted him into the prominence that made him a strong candidate for the White House. McFeely stated that Grant "had forced himself out of the world of ordinary people by the most murderous acts of will and had doomed himself to spend the rest of his life looking for approval for having done so." He wanted the presidency, for "he had heard those cheers and he could not do without them." 34 Once he assumed the presidency, Grant gravitated toward members of [9], (9) Lines: 57 to 6 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [9], (9) 10 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 the creditor and entrepreneurial classes as a way of distancing himself, McFeely maintained, from ordinary men. McFeely saw this tendency displayed during a crisis in 1874. With the nation in the throes of the worst depression it had yet experienced, Grant vetoed a bill to expand the currency. He thereby killed a measure that would have alleviated the suffering of farmers and laborers many of whom had fought under him at places like Spotsylvania Court House or Cold Harbor in favor of "a policy that brought still greater profit to the successful." 35 In doing so, Grant not only repudiated himself in terms of who he really was a man who had failed repeatedly at business in his earlier life but he demonstrated the fundamental weakness at the core of his presidency. He affiliated himself so completely with the entrepreneurial class that he turned a blind eye to the corruption that infiltrated almost every aspect of his administration. 36 Nor did McFeely find that the Hero of Appomattox displayed presidential courage when it came to upholding the constitutional rights of black men and women in the South. Instead, as violence, especially the murderous events in Mississippi, increased, Grant, concerned about politics, could not bring himself to take the strong measures that were needed to ensure justice for newly enfranchised blacks. Thus, for all intents and purposes, McFeely found that Reconstruction, as a noble experiment designed to bring about a "new birth of freedom," had failed even before Grant left office. 37 Subsequent biographers have offered less critical views of Grant, both as a commander and as a president. Brooks Simpson interpreted him as a figure who achieved "triumph over adversity" and who was not callous about wartime losses. 38 Jean Edward Smith pointed out that during postwar Reconstruction, Grant strove to win passage and ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to extend voting rights to black men and, despite continuing white Southern intransigency, fought hard for passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act to curb white violence against African Americans. Smith blamed the U.S. Supreme Court rather than Grant for weakening federal protection of newly enfranchised blacks in the South. 39 These new interpretations are exactly what we expect, for the writing of biography, like the writing of history, is always an unfinished business. Nonetheless, whatever the persuasiveness of the new views about Grant, McFeely's [10], (10) Lines: 63 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [10], (10) Biography Matters 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 work remains a riveting example of how one author sought to decipher the dynamics behind an often impenetrable personality. Edel's counsel that biographers look for the shape beneath the rug played a role in my interpretation of Angie Debo, the Oklahoma historian who pioneered in ethnohistory. The hidden myth of her life, I became convinced, stemmed from her attachment to the "Oklahoma spirit." In Oklahoma, luck as well as hard work and fortitude played a role in the making and unmaking of fortunes. Some families, for example, acquired the better land in the various runs that opened Oklahoma Territory to nonIndian settlement beginning in 1889. Later, luck smiled on a fortunate few when they discovered oil on their property. 40 Nonetheless, adherence to the "Oklahoma spirit," as Debo's parents informed their children, demanded cheerful stoicism in the face of whatever fortune decreed. Since the Debos farmed poor land, they eventually sold it to enter into a hardware business that quickly failed. Years later, they discovered that the new owners of their former homestead had located oil on the property. Debo told a friend that her father, Edward Debo, never expressed regret about selling his quarter section. Instead, whenever he passed the site, he recalled the good times they had enjoyed at their old home. 41 Edward Debo's message was clear: One never expressed anger or resentment over one's fate but instead rose above it. 42 Later, when Angie Debo was dismissed from West Texas State Teachers College shortly after she injured her chairman's pride by becoming the first female faculty member in the college to earn her doctorate, she fell into despondency. She had no way of acknowledging her anger and resentment except by turning these emotions inward. But when she began investigating the fate of the Five Tribes of Oklahoma the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles following the termination of their separate republics and their tribal lands, she found her life's work. She could speak out on behalf of American Indians and the injustices they had experienced in a way that she could never have spoken out for herself. That channeling of unacceptable emotions into research, writing, and, later, activism on behalf of native peoples as they sought self-determination allowed Debo to sustain her own personal myth. In oral history interviews, she saw herself as a woman of equanimity who was [11], (11) Lines: 67 to 7 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [11], (11) 12 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 free from anger and resentment, despite gender and class discrimination and years of poverty and professional marginalization. 43 In addition to counseling the biographer to search for "the life of his subject's self-concept," Leon Edel also reminded biographers to place their subjects securely within the historical context of their times. Indeed, biography was a part of history and demanded "the same skills." But beyond that, no subject ever lived outside of human time and history. Therefore, Edel concluded, "No biography is complete unless it reveals the individual within history, within an ethos and a social complex." 44 One author who has demonstrated his ability to weave biography and history together so that the two illuminate each other is Garry Wills. In Reagan's America, he narrated President Ronald Reagan's life. Simultaneously, based on his own painstaking research, Wills compared and contrasted the factual information with the often inaccurate passages in Reagan's autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me? 45 Throughout the Reagan biography, Wills also provided a larger historical context that contradicted much of Reagan's personal mythology. By including descriptions of army campaigns against native peoples, federal road-building projects, and governmental railroad subsidies, as well as New Deal programs that sustained the Reagan family during the Great Depression, Wills underscored the discrepancy between Reagan's version of the American past and the historical record. Ironically, the federal government that played such an important role in the larger historical context of Reagan's life was the same entity that Reagan castigated to achieve its highest office the presidency of the United States. 46 Toward the end of this remarkable work, Wills asks us, as readers, to think of ourselves as drivers who cannot see the road ahead when we try to use history as a means of discerning the future. "To steer at all, we must go forward looking into the rearview mirror, trying to trace large curves or bending forces in prior events, to proceed along their lines. But what happens if," he asks, "when we look into our historical rearview mirror, all we can see is a movie?" 47 His message was clear; Reagan's psychological needs and projections created a fiction of his own life and American history that he used to navigate the United States. More important, large numbers of Americans served as his "complicit" public. [12], (12) Lines: 73 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [12], (12) Biography Matters 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Preferring comforting myth to troubling reality, they accepted his more optimistic version of the past and present, rather than engaging in the more strenuous activity of grappling with a host of difficult problems that had no easy solutions. 48 My praise of Wills's work does not mean that his interpretation is unassailable. Reagan remains a contested figure. New biographies have praised him for restoring a sense of confidence to Americans during his presidency. Some credit him with bringing the Cold War to an end, an event that had not yet happened when Wills's book was originally published. The debate will go on and new interpretations will emerge, not only because new voices will enter the discussion, but also because these voices will have experienced the particular currents of their time. That, in turn, will affect their analyses and evaluations. 49 The excellent biographies of the recent past and the increasing sophistication of many of biography's most able practitioners help account for the form's continuing popularity. Biography matters because we need it for inspiration, consolation, and companionship, which we derive when "a living being walks off the pages" and we feel that we actually know another human being more intimately than we know many of the individuals with whom we interact daily. At the same time, we also want to know how others have made the difficult choices that confront all of us as human beings and how they lived with the often-unintended consequences of those choices. We also value biography as a way of encountering the personal myths of others, so that we might reflect on our own personal mythmaking and perhaps achieve a deeper understanding of ourselves through others. Finally, we want to understand the extent to which history molds individuals and, in turn, is influenced by individuals. All these are popular and important reasons that biography matters to the general public and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future. But there is another reason that biography matters today more than in the past, and it is because of its interrelationship with history. Scholar Gerda Lerner, like Wills, argued that history gives a sense of direction to life. In much of the world, she noted, religion, which passed from generation to generation in rural and agrarian societies, had traditionally served as the way people infused their lives with meaning. Now, however, many [13], (13) Lines: 79 to 8 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [13], (13) 14 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 people have moved from rural areas to increasingly urbanized regions. 50 In that context, history matters more than ever. As Lerner reminded us, "In a world in which personal contact with different generations is often severed," history can "link people to past generations and root them in the continuity of the human enterprise." 51 Since our view of the future, moreover, is derived largely from our interpretation of the past, the prevailing beliefs about history affect the future and carry immense power. Those outside the academy understand that fact, which, Lerner observed, explains the "culture wars" of the 1980s and 1990s. More than ever, historians need to bridge the chasm that has opened between them and the public. For without historians' insights, the public will formulate its views on the basis of myth or, as Wills noted, the movie that replaces the rearview mirror of history. 52 History was never easy to write, but it is now a more complex and taxing enterprise than ever, and one fraught with new challenges. In part, this gulf between historians and the public has opened because many scholars, aware that their predecessors celebrated a Eurocentric and often ethnocentric view of the past, have struggled to weave into their narratives the stories of people of color and women as well as men. Moreover, they have sought to show race, gender, ethnicity, and class as social constructs, dependent upon time, place, and changing ideology. This new history demands more of its readers, making the historian's task of reaching the general public even harder than before. The effect of these developments is obvious in the study of the American West. Historians who chronicle the entry of non-Indian people into the Trans-Mississippi West have witnessed an ongoing debate between adherents of the Old Western History and those of the New Western History. The former, still reflecting the attitudes, if not always the actual ideas, of Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," have interpreted their nation's past as the story of courageous settlers moving westward into free land to achieve freedom and economic and social mobility. 53 When the Bureau of the Census announced in 1890 that the frontier had closed, Turner warned that the United States now faced a turning point. No longer could the nation look to free land in the West as the solution to lack of opportunity [14], (14) Lines: 85 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [14], (14) Biography Matters 15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 and mobility in the East. The New Western Historians, by contrast, have argued that non-Indian movement into the American West represented conquest rather than settlement. Moreover, they have seen no broken past of the American West as a result of the Bureau of the Census's declaration that the frontier had closed in 1890 and the nation no longer had within its midst areas of unsettled land. Instead they argued that the problems that persist in the region often stemmed from the earlier period when EuroAmericans seized the land and its resources from native and Hispanic peoples. To make matters worse, they added, these newcomers to the West created a caste system that relegated people of color to inequality and sought to destroy their culture. 54 The ideas of the New Western Historians have won widespread, although not universal, acceptance among academics. Certainly, their essays appeared frequently in academic journals. The general public, however, has preferred the Old Western History, which revolves largely around prospectors, cowboys, and cavalrymen. Wild West, a celebration of the traditional Turnerian story, still boasts sales that total more than 150,000 bimonthly. Old West and True West also enjoy large circulations. The Western Historical Quarterly, the foremost scholarly journal in the field, by contrast, prints about 2,500 copies of its periodical every three months. 55 How do professional historians, especially those who wish to incorporate some of the insights of the New Western Historians into their work, bridge this gap and reach that larger audience? Clear and well-written revisionist history is one way of attacking this problem. Here Patricia Limerick has achieved a high standard of readability by using humor and self-disclosure and by having a wide-ranging knowledge and strong convictions. 56 Another way of reaching a wider audience is to exploit the readers' strong interest in other people by writing biographies that tell the story of the American West from the perspective of individuals who belonged to groups that have been marginalized in the past. In other words, biographers need to tell the story from the perspective of those who stood on the other side of Turner's frontier. To succeed in their task, they must incorporate the more complicated context of current historical studies into their works. At the same time, they must write their works to the [15], (15) Lines: 89 to 9 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [15], (15) 16 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 highest literary standards with a minimum of jargon so that they can engage the reader and win as wide an audience as possible. Biographers who attempt to write the life story of individuals who come from groups that have been marginalized because of their race, gender, ethnicity, or class face problems that writers of more conventional biographies those of "representative men" do not confront. Sources are often lacking, especially for the subject's early years. When sources are available, intricate questions of interpretation often arise. Nonetheless, such problems can be surmounted. In the only biography that she wrote, Angie Debo indicated some ways in which to do this. In 1976 the University of Oklahoma Press published Debo's Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place. Estimating the Chiricahua Apache's date of birth as about 1823 and finding little information on his childhood and upbringing, Debo narrated a probable account of his early years. She based it on the oral history interviews she had conducted with other Chiricahua; the published memoirs of Apache Jason Betzinez, a member of the closely related Mimbres band; and the writings of anthropologist Morris Opler, the foremost authority on the culture of the Apaches. When it came to the ongoing conflicts that affected Geronimo's life, Debo found the record more complete. For the most part the sources originated from Euro-American incursion into Apache land and U.S. government attempts to curb Apache raiding south of the U.S.-Mexican border, according to the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. At a deeper level, Debo maintained, the conflicts arose because Geronimo and Euro-Americans, coming from different cultures, "never arrived at the same definition of truth." U.S. authorities and military leaders saw Geronimo as "a liar whose word could never be trusted." By bringing to bear the insights of the ethnologist, who understands that different cultures often assign different meanings to behavior, Debo discovered that, measured by his own standards, Geronimo was "a man of essential integrity." When he promised "with oath and ceremony mere poetic trimmings to the white man he kept his pledge." 57 The significance of his life story lay in the cultural divide that neither side was capable of bridging. In 1992 historian Julie Roy Jeffrey published a work that delved into [16], (16) Lines: 95 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [16], (16) Biography Matters 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 the subject of gender ideology as a factor in non-Indian penetration into the West, and its effect on native people. Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman told the story of a female missionary from Auburn, New York. Influenced by the Second Great Awakening and thoroughly imbued with a sense of the superiority of middle-class family life and its prevailing gender roles, Narcissa Whitman worked with her husband, physician Marcus Whitman, in Oregon Territory in the late 1830s and 1840s, trying to bring Christianity to the Cayuse Indians. Her efforts to spread the gospel failed to convert a single member of that tribe, largely because she never transcended her ethnocentrism. 58 In 1847 the futility of her effort became apparent when the Cayuse murdered her and her family, [17], (17) following an outbreak of measles. That disease, which claimed the lives of many native people, left the missionaries and their children with few Lines: 103 to 1 casualties. Jeffrey's work is notable because, in the Turnerian school, Narcissa ——— Whitman has been a celebrated figure. As one of the first white women 14.0pt PgV ——— to cross the North American continent in 1836 (Eliza Spalding was the Normal Page other), she has long served as an icon of the westward movement. Jef* PgEnds: Eject frey's biography, by presenting Narcissa Whitman as a woman thoroughly imbued with a sense of superiority, exposed the cultural arrogance that [17], (17) often persisted among non-Indian settlers in the West. This immensely readable and poignant work brings that message home to readers with an immediacy that will prove beneficial when they turn to the more difficult analytical works dealing with conflict and accommodation between and among Americanos and Hispanos (or the original Hispanic peoples, an admixture of Spanish, Mestizo, Pueblo, and nomadic Indian ancestry) and the migrants who moved northward from Mexico over succeeding decades. Although the male icon of the West has been the cowboy in the image of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, no region of the United States has been more ethnically diverse than the Trans-Mississippi West. Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard A. Garcia's César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit (1995) explored the life of a Mexican American, or Mexicano, who transformed his personal quest for acceptance into a larger struggle the 18 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 attainment of social justice for farm laborers who worked for a pittance in the western "factories in the field." 59 Because Mexican Americans in the United States have faced intense discrimination, especially in a part of the West that had belonged to Mexico until 1848, Griswold del Castillo and Garcia have performed a valuable service for general readers and historians alike. The general reader can profit from a clearer understanding of the difficulties Mexican Americans have faced by viewing them through the engaging and moving prism of Chávez's life. Moreover, after reading this biography, that reader, very likely, will be more interested in learning about the larger context of U.S.Mexican relations and the way that shifts in that relationship have affected [18], (18) Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the southwestern borderland. 60 This increased interest results because, in their prizewinning biography, the Lines: 109 authors have brought César Chávez to life as the most prominent leader of his ethnic group in America and also as one who spoke for the rights ——— of all working Americans. 14.0pt P ——— Because the West is the part of our nation that has given us our origin Normal Pag myth, we need biographies of historians who have written about that area. * PgEnds: Ej The general public often views history as facts waiting to be discovered in a repository somewhere. Presumably, once historians find the facts [18], (18) and put them down on paper, the past will have yielded its secrets. Many have little understanding that both history and biography are the result of constant interpretation and reinterpretations based on new questions and concerns that arise in every decade and generation. Learning more about the life of historians would inform a wider audience of the true nature of historical inquiry and its value to their lives. Some progress has been made in this area. In 1997 Allan Bogue published his magisterial Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down, which shed light on Turner's world. Significantly, Turner came of age as the work of the historian was becoming professionalized through training in university seminars. 61 Although Bogue did not discuss at length the gendered nature of this process, it was obvious in Turner's relations with students such as Louise Kellogg. A protégée of the master, Kellogg spent her working life at the Wisconsin Historical Society, rather than teaching Biography Matters 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 at the University of Wisconsin. In Turner's view, which was shared by his colleagues, academic jobs should go to men, rather than women. 62 The work that explores more fully the tie between the writing of the history of the West and the importance of gender as a social construct that governed the opportunities for female scholars has not yet been written. When it is, the approach must be biographical. Even a cursory examination of the works of female historians such as Annie Heloise Abel, Angie Debo, and Mari Sandoz shows that they were far less wedded to the idea that non-Indians moved onto "free land." Instead, they realized that the land belonged to native people who called it their home. Moreover, when these women wrote about native peoples, they described them as agents and actors on the historical stage rather than mere foils for the white man's saga of conquest. 63 Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff defined history as "vicarious experience." By this they meant that it gives individuals "a second life extended indefinitely into the 'dark backward and abysm of time.' " 64 Biography gives us instances of "vicarious experience." An author who succeeds in evoking a life gives us a precious gift that should not be discarded or denigrated as "minutiae without meaning." At the same time, those of us who labor in the libraries and offices in which we write biographies must be humble about our abilities and mindful of our responsibilities. The biographies we produce are our works in the sense that no other person would have written the same life story of any one individual. If we have done our work well, our biographies will not be "definitive," in the sense of defining a person once and for all. Instead, our greatest accomplishment will be to present a portrait of that individual that will motivate others to conduct their own research into the existing evidence of the life that was lived. When those new biographies are written, all of us will be richer for the insights they will disclose. "All biography," Leon Edel informed his readers, "is, in effect, a reprojection into words, into a literary or a kind of semiscientific and historical form, of the inert materials, reassembled, so to speak, through the mind of the historian or the biographer. His," Edel continued, "becomes the informing mind. He can only lay bare the facts as he has understood them, in a continuous and inquiring narrative." Without that "informing [19], (19) Lines: 120 to 1 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [19], (19) 20 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 mind," the subject would enjoy, at best, only a flicker of afterlife. Edel quoted novelist Joseph Conrad's statement on this point: "The dead can live only with the exact intensity and quality of the life imparted to them by the living." 65 There is no other way, and that is why biography has always mattered. Today, because professional historians need the biographers' life stories as a way of helping bridge the gap between themselves and a larger reading public, biography matters more than it mattered in the past. As our globe becomes smaller and our communities more diverse, biography, which breathes life into dry census data and puts faces on demographic tables, will become the means by which to weave the stories of new groups into our national fabric. In the "intensity and quality of the life imparted" lies our best hope for the revitalization of history as an academic discipline that will reach and engage the larger audience and bring to it the perspectives of those who, for far too long, have been relegated to history's margins. Notes 1. Stanley Fish, "Just Published: Minutiae without Meaning," New York Times, 7 September 1999, Section A, p. 19. 2. Fish, "Minutiae without Meaning," p. 19. 3. Fish, "Minutiae without Meaning," p. 19. 4. For a discussion on this point, see Newell G. Bringhurst, Fawn Brodie: A Biographer's Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), xiii–xiv. 5. William McFeely, "Why Biography?" in The Seductions of Biography, ed. Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff (New York: Routledge, 1996), xiii. 6. Barbara Tuchman, "Biography as a Prism of History," in Telling Lives: The Biographer's Art, ed. Marc Pachter (Washington dc: New Republic Books, 1979), 134. 7. Catherine N. Parke, Biography: Writing Lives (New York: Twayne, 1996), 6. 8. Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men, trans. John Dryden et al., 3 vols. (New York: John Wurtele Lovell, [1880?]), 1: 375. For a slightly different translation, see: Greek Lives: A Selection of Nine Lives, trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xiii. 9. Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918); Queen [20], (20) Lines: 131 t ——— 2.62411p ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [20], (20) Biography Matters 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Victoria (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921). For a discussion of Strachey's use of Freud, see Leon Edel, Writing Lives: Principia Biographica (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 84. 10. Ira Bruce Nadel, Biography: Fiction, Fact, and Form (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), 55. 11. Frank E. Vandiver, "Biography as an Agent of Humanism," The Biographer's Gift: Life Histories and Humanism, ed. James F. Veninga (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983), 16. 12. Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974). 13. See Cushing Strout, "The Uses and Abuses of Psychology in American History," American Quarterly 28 (1976): 324–42. 14. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 16. 15. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 15–25; quote, 25. 16. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 126–29, 162–68. 17. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 127–28, 229–33. 18. For excellent recent works on Jefferson, see Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 1995), and Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996). 19. William H. Leckie and Shirley A. Leckie, Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin Grierson and His Family (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984). 20. Leckie and Leckie, Unlikely Warriors, 155–56, 161–62. Linda Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 9–39, identified the idea of separate spheres as an imperfectly realized ideal that many women exploited to expand their power even within the public sphere. 21. Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). 22. Harlan, Washington: Black Leader, 157–75; quote, 158. 23. Harlan, Washington: Black Leader, 204–28. 24. Harlan, Washington: Black Leader, 254–87. 25. Harlan, Washington: Black Leader, 288–303. 26. Harlan, Washington: Wizard, 435–37. 27. Shirley A. Leckie, Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 191–206. [21], (21) Lines: 153 to 1 ——— 11.60022pt ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [21], (21) 22 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 28. The first and third of Elizabeth Custer's books were published by Harpers & Bros.; Charles L. Webster published the second. One critic suggested that "Boots and Saddles" was suitable Sunday-school reading. Norman Fox, "Christianity and Manliness," review from untitled newspaper, 30 April 1885, "Boots and Saddles" Scrapbook of Reviews, Custer Collection, box 7, Monroe County (Michigan) Historical Commission Archives. More important, by 1901, Charles Scribner & Sons had condensed Custer's three books into The Boy General, a textbook that purported to teach children civic virtues, including "lessons in manliness that mean more than dates and statistics." See "Opinions of the Press on The Boy General," brochure issued by Scribner Series of School Reading, 1901, Brice C. W. Custer Collection (private collection, copy in author's personal collection). The Boy General was edited [22], (22) by Mary E. Burt. 29. Leckie, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, 195–313. 30. Edel, Writing Lives, 62–66. Lines: 191 t 31. Leon Edel, "The Figure under the Carpet," Telling Lives, ed. Marc Pachter ——— (Washington dc: New Republic Books, 1979), 30. The essay in this work is a slightly revised version of the chapter "Myth" in Edel's Writing Lives, 159–73. * 24.5002 ——— Normal Pag 33. Edel, "Figure under the Carpet," 32. * PgEnds: Ej 34. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), xiii, 32. Edel, "Figure under the Carpet," 27. 2. For information on Grant's military career after he became lieutenant general of the Union army, see 152–215. 35. McFeely, Grant: A Biography, 396–67. 36. McFeely, Grant: A Biography, 319–99. 37. McFeely, Grant: A Biography, 416–25. 38. Brooks Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 416–25. 39. Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 542–72. 40. I am indebted to essays in The Culture of Oklahoma, ed. Howard F. Stein and Robert F. Hill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993). Among those that most influenced my perception of Oklahoma attitudes are Howard Lamar, "The Creation of Oklahoma: New Meanings for the Oklahoma Land Run," 29–47; J. Neil Henderson, "Spa in the Dust Bowl: Oklahoma's Hidden Paradise," 131– 42; and Pat Bellmon, "The Passing of Grit: Observations of a Farm Girl, Now a Spectator on the Land," 186–97. 41. Sara Doyle to Angie Debo, 28 March 1958, Angie Debo Papers [hereafter [22], (22) Biography Matters 23 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 adp], Manuscript Collections, Edmon Low Library, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma. 42. Angie Debo, "The Debos," unpublished family history, adp; typescript of interviews conducted with Angie Debo by Glenna Matthew, Gloria Valencia Weber, and Aletha Rogers, 11 November 1984, p. 1, adp. 43. See Shirley A. Leckie, Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), esp. 43, 71–83, 89, 178–86. 44. Edel, Writing Lives, 4. 45. Garry Wills, Reagan's America (New York: Penguin Books, 1988). See 36, 41, 58–60, 70, 74, 82–85, 103, 143, 149, 199–203, 263, 267, 280–4, 295–96, 324–31, 339–43. For Reagan's statements about his life, Wills quotes extensively from [23], (23) Ronald Regan, Where's the Rest of Me? With Richard G. Hubler (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1965). 46. Wills, Reagan's America, 93–111, 332–43. Lines: 218 to 2 47. Wills, Reagan's America, 460. ——— 48. Wills, Reagan's America, 466–67. 49. Reagan's America was published in 1987 under the title Innocents at Home: * 24.50021p ——— Normal Page was changed with the 1988 Penguin edition. For a recent biography that is fairly * PgEnds: Eject balanced, see William E. Pemberton, Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan's America, which emphasized the naïveté of the American public, but it Reagan (Armonk ny: M. E. Sharpe, 1997). 50. Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters: Life and Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 200. 51. Lerner, Why History Matters, 200. 52. As renowned scholars gathered at the Wellesley College forum, "The Future of History," in April 2000, they heard warnings of a discipline that "is in danger of becoming too fragmented to be meaningful to students and too obscure to have much impact outside academe," according to Elizabeth Greene, "Plotting a Future for History," Chronicle of Higher Education, 28 April 2000, Section A, 18. See also David Oshinsky, "The Humpty Dumpty of Scholarship," New York Times, 26 August 2000, Section A, 17, 19. 53. Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Frontier and Section: Selected Essays of Frederick Jackson Turner, ed. Ray Allen Billington (Englewood Cliffs nj: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 37–62. According to Lerner, Why History Matters, 202, the narrative of American History, as traditionally taught in schools and colleges, "used the doctrines of American exceptionalism [23], (23) 24 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 and Manifest Destiny and the myth of the triumphant conquest of the West as a legitimizing explanatory system." 54. Patricia Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 18, emphasized continuity, stating that "the conquest of Western America shapes the present as dramatically and sometimes as perilously as the old mines shape the mountainsides." 55. Richard W. Etulain, Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 151–52. 56. Patricia Limerick, Something in the Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 333–43. 57. Angie Debo, Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), xi. 58. Julie Roy Jeffrey, Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). 59. Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard A. Garcia, César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995). Carey McWilliams, "The Mexican Problem," Common Ground 8 (spring 1948): 3–17, coined the phrase "factories in the field." 60. David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), another prizewinning work, achieved a very high level of scholarship, but many sections are theoretical as the author analyzes arguments about legal issues and debates over affirmative action. Thus it presupposes a depth of understanding on the reader's part that is usually lacking in a popular audience. However, were I teaching a course on ethnic minorities in the southwestern United States, I would assign César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit to my students, and once we had discussed the issues raised in this work, I could then assign Walls and Mirrors. The clearly written and moving biography would have elicited student interest, and, even more important, a measure of student empathy for the situation Mexicanos and Mexicanas have faced in the U.S. borderlands of the Southwest. 61. Allan Bogue, Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997). 62. Bogue, Strange Roads, 123. 63. See, for example, Annie Eloise Abel, The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1915); Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940); Mari Sandoz, Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas: A Biography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1942). [24], (24) Lines: 247 ——— 11.60022 ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [24], (24) Biography Matters 25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 64. Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff, The Modern Researcher, 5th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 40. 65. Edel, Writing Lives, 43. Selected Bibliography Bogue, Allan. Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Bringhurst, Newell G. Fawn Brodie: A Biographer's Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Brodie, Fawn M. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. Debo, Angie. Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976. Edel, Leon. Writing Lives: Principia Biographica. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Etulain, Richard W. Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Griswold del Castillo, Richard, and Richard A. Garcia. César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. . Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Hood, Edwin Paxton. The Uses of Biography, Romantic, Philosophic, and Didactic. London: Partridge and Oakey, 1852. Jeffrey, Julie Roy. Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Lerner, Gerda. Why History Matters: Life and Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Limerick, Patricia N. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987. McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. Nadel, Ira Bruce. Biography: Fiction, Fact, and Form. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984. Pachter, Marc, ed. Telling Lives: The Biographer's Art. Washington dc: New Republic Books, 1979. Parke, Catherine N. Biography: Writing Lives. New York: Twayne, 1996. [25], (25) Lines: 272 to ——— 5.3002pt P ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [25], (25) 26 leckie 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men. Translated by John Dryden et al. 3 vols. New York: John Wurtele Lovell, 1880? Rhiel, Mary, and David Suchoff. The Seductions of Biography. New York: Routledge, 1996. Strachey, Lytton. Eminent Victorians. London: Chatto & Windus, 1918. . Queen Victoria. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921. Veninga, James F., ed. The Biographer's Gift: Life Histories and Humanism. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983. Wills, Garry. Reagan's America. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. [Last Page] [26], (26) Lines: 314 ——— 370.8110 ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [26], (26) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 2. Culture and Context in Biographical Studies: The Case of China R. Keith Schoppa [First Page] [27], (1) Robert Rosenstone, observing the essential relationship between historians and the past as they interpret it, concluded that "History does not exist until it is created. And we create it in terms of our underlying values. Our kind of vigorous, 'scientific' history is in fact a product of our history, our special history that includes a particular relationship to the written word, a rationalized economy, notions of individual rights, and the nation-state. Many cultures have done quite well without this sort of history, which is only to say that there are as we all know but rarely acknowledge many ways to represent and relate to the past." 1 Perhaps the most telling clause in Rosenstone's historiographical reflections is the parenthetical "as we all know but rarely acknowledge." Historians and biographers-as-historians are rooted in their particular cultures and contexts. Their created histories in subject matter, approach, interpretation, methods, nuance will reflect to some degree or other the culture and context that constitute their "special history." But, as in most endeavors, people rooted in a particular culture take that culture and its values as the norm and often quite unthinkingly assume its universal applicability. In his presidential address to the American Historical Association more than thirty years ago, noted China specialist John K. Fairbank argued that "historians in America have been, like historians elsewhere, patriotic, genetically oriented, and culture-bound." 2 Lines: 0 to 18 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [27], (1) 28 schoppa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 How do we see this American culture-boundedness in biographies? One of the four elements of American culture noted by Rosenstone, individualism, is at the center of our public ethos. Biography as a genre of historical writing obviously is congruent with that ethos. In the modern West, with its glorification of the individual, a biographer usually focuses on his or her subject's individuality, those aspects, attitudes, and abilities that separate the subject from the masses. Thus, in Nell Irvin Painter's masterful biography of Sojourner Truth, we find, among others, the following listings in the index under Truth: "anger of," "anxiety of," "canniness of," "clothing of," "drinking of," "guilt of," "humor of," "magnetism of," "public speaking of," "sexuality of," and "vulnerabilities of." 3 In other words, Painter strove to let us know who Truth was as an individual. Note one other point. The listings detailing anger, anxiety, guilt, sexuality, and vulnerabilities suggest that Painter intended to open Truth's psyche as well as can be done long after her death. Modern Western biographers often probe for explanations for life decisions and developments in the individual himself or herself by exploring the subject's psyche. Indeed, based upon the centrality of the individual and the importance of such concepts as individual fulfillment and self-realization, it can be said that psychology is the social/behavioral science par excellence in the modern West. In the last several decades biographers have, to some degree or other, used psychological insights and explanations to shed light on their subjects. In a 1981 forum on the "new history" published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Miles Shore wrote that the "highest expression of the biographer's art lies in the elucidation of the nuances of motivation and relationship that form the personal myth and make it possible to see the psychological unity within which action takes on meaning." 4 In the American Historical Review, Thomas Kohut argued more categorically that the psychological dimension "remains a historical subject of decisive importance. . . . Because it is not possible to comprehend people without dealing with the psychological, historians . . . have always written about it, even if they have rarely acknowledged the fact." 5 As they stand, the statements by Shore and Kohut are blanket generalizations. Shore would likely argue that his stipulation about the "highest [28], (2) Lines: 18 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [28], (2) Culture and Context in Biographical Studies 29 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 expression of the biographer's art" applies to any biographer and to any biographical subject; so too with Kohut's claim of the "decisive importance" of the psychological dimension. In their presentations, both scholars seem oblivious to the substance of Rosenstone's caution that there are "many ways to represent and relate to the past." Their pronouncements may indeed be appropriate for Western cultures. But can they apply to subjects in non-Western cultures in which values, customs, outlook, and priorities are drastically different? As a measure of the chasm between Western and Eastern cultures, for example, take the meaning of the word "sincerity." Shore and Kohut would know what the word means in the West, as it fits neatly with their emphasis on psychology "being true to one's inner feelings." But in traditional East Asian cultures it has had a strikingly different meaning, which represents a different social reality from that of the West. Sincerity in East Asia was "being true to one's social role." Thus, willingly marrying the fiancé to whom a woman's parents betrothed her when she was still a child was an act of "sincerity," the proper fulfillment of the social role of a daughter and woman. In feudal Japan a warrior-vassal committing ritual suicide (seppuku) at the behest of his lord showed "sincerity," dramatically underscoring his social relationship with the lord. The crucial social feature here is one's relationship to others. Sociology, not psychology, would be the social science par excellence in East Asia. This West/East, psychology/sociology difference is, not surprisingly, reflected in the perceived reasons that people in these two broad cultural arenas have for reading biographies. In a review published in the New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton stated that "Biography . . . by focusing on one life . . . eliminates the complications that weigh down accounts of entire societies, and it adheres to a narrative line that shows individuals in action. It restores agency to history, giving readers a sense of closeness to the men and women who shaped events. It deals with motivations and emotions. It even answers a voyeuristic desire to see through keyholes and into private lives." 6 Contrast this view with that of a 1995 piece in the Beijing Review, the semiofficial English-language periodical from the People's Republic of China: "Many biographies are of considerable historical value, presenting [29], (3) Lines: 22 to 2 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [29], (3) 30 schoppa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 an important way to understand political figures and political life. The wide attention to such works indicates the public's interest in China's destiny and future, as well as their growing awareness of governmental and political affairs. . . . However[, the trend of writing about leaders as ordinary human beings] has produced some works that overemphasize trivialities to the neglect of significant historical events. Readers are becoming bored by such works, with sales drastically declining." 7 Darnton emphasized the psychological and emotional attraction of biographies for Western readers. First of all, they simplify history, "eliminat[ing] the complications that weigh down accounts of entire societies." They "restore agency to history." Is this important for understanding the past? No, its main thrust (at least as it is described here) is to give readers a "sense of closeness" to biographical subjects. Heralding the psychological dimension that attracts readers to biographies, Darnton noted their inclusion of motivations, emotions, and lives behind closed doors. The Beijing Review article, in contrast, argued that the appeal of biographies to a Chinese readership stemmed from people's interest in current issues in China's modernizing polity. Nothing about enhancing the "closeness" of the reader and the biographical subject appeared here: Biographies are didactic, giving people information to help them understand contemporary developments. The piece positively frowns on probing the individuality of the subject, on the kind of personal, even voyeuristic appeal of biographies for "bourgeois" Westerners, noting that the declining sales of Chinese biographies emphasizing such "trivialities" indicated a bored reading public. The crucial question that any biographer must answer is this: What is the most appropriate way to deal with the biographical subject so as to express in the most meaningful and coherent way the salient aspects of his or her life within its own cultural context? Vast differences in social values, priorities, and contexts, underscored by the ascribed diverse appeals of biographies in China and the United States, suggest that biographers dealing with subjects in cultures different from their own may need to ask different questions, have different emphases and priorities, and perhaps use different approaches. In this chapter, I will argue that this is indeed the case. [30], (4) Lines: 28 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [30], (4) Culture and Context in Biographical Studies 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 It is a commonplace to say that while the basic social unit in the modern West is the individual, in China it is the group. But the social reality is much deeper than is apparent in this simple generalization. It is when one is asked to describe the group in each society that one comes to see that there is a fundamentally different definition for both the individual and the group in these two cultures. For while in the modern West it is accurate to say that other than in the family individuals precede the group, in China the group precedes the individual. Put another way, in the West individuals make up a group; in China a group is composed of individuals. Because in the West individuals "make up" a group, they can also, as independent actors, freely make demands on the group or even leave the [31], (5) group. In China, because the group has precedence over its individuals, maintaining the group and its harmony is of primary concern. The group Lines: 34 to 3 constrains individuals, for they cannot make claims of individual "rights" within the group without threatening the group's unity and cohesion. In ——— this sense, the individual in traditional Chinese society was a much less 14.0pt PgV ——— "independent" actor than an individual in Western society. Contemporary Normal Page poet Bei Dao ends his "Notes from the City of the Sun" with the line * PgEnds: Eject "Living, A net." A Chinese individual is constrained by groups and his or her relation[31], (5) ships within groups as if he or she were linked to others by invisible threads that tied them all into a net. As in the West, individuals can leave the group, but in the process they will tear or break the net, and social and personal damage can be severe. Thus, in approaching a Chinese individual as a biographical subject, one must focus much attention not simply on the individual but on those people in the various groups that hold him or her in their nets. While the biography of a Westerner might likely consider people who play a large role in the subject's life or who help provide context and support, their presence would not likely loom so large because of the difference in the Western understanding of the greater autonomy or degree of "separateness" of the individual. Thus Nell Irvin Painter described the "networks" of Truth's antislavery feminism, but they seem to have existed primarily for her individual benefit; Painter told us that "those networks sustained her materially and spiritually, steadily 32 schoppa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 broadening her horizons." 8 By contrast, in China networks tended to be constraining rather than liberating. What kinds of relationships within groups create the particular dynamics of Chinese society on which a biographer must focus? Basic social identity comes not only from one's family and his or her place in it but from social connections and the networks that develop from them. An American journalist has written that the Chinese "instinctively divide people into those with whom they already have a fixed relationship, a connection, what the Chinese call guanxi, and those with whom they do not. These connections operate like a series of invisible threads, tying Chinese to each other with far greater tensile strength than mere friendship." 9 Connections and their logical next step, networks, were established in various ways. Some relationships were certain to bring "connections." Friends obviously had close connections; the only one of the five Confucian bonds that was a bond suggesting equality rather than hierarchy was friendship. Certainly, for this reason friendship was more celebrated in Chinese literature than any other social relationship. If a person came from the same hometown or county or even province (in Chinese, "native place"), he or she would have a built-in connection with everyone else from that place. The connection was stronger further down the hierarchy of place county or town or village, for example. Academic and scholarly ties were also significant sources of connections. The men who received civil service degrees in the same year shared a type of alumnus connection. Teacher-student relationships endured throughout life, taking on an almost master-disciple dynamic. Certainly social connections are important in every culture, and any biography must consider them. But Chinese culture has, it seems to me, developed connections to the nth degree. They are immensely practical social realities. From the bureaucracy of the traditional state to that of the Communist state to that of the post-Communist state, people have used their personal social connections to get what they want or need. The person who uses connections to gain certain ends expends social capital and builds up social debts to the dispenser of favors or the facilitator of actions. Repaying those debts through reciprocal actions further nurtures [32], (6) Lines: 38 t ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TE [32], (6) Culture and Context in Biographical Studies 33 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 the connection, making its "tensile strength" very great indeed. The accumulation and repaying of obligations is a continual social reality that a skillful biographer must take into consideration. China's most famous twentieth-century sociologist, Fei Xiaotong, has written about the importance of connections and networks in the fundamental structure and processes of Chinese society. Networks may include many people, but it is important to note that their structure is dyadic, based on the connections between two people, and then two others, and so on. The strength of any two connections varies. Similarly, individuals may find themselves a part of a number of networks. The strength of the personal connections to people in each network also varies. This situation has definite ethical implications. Noting that Chinese society is structured as "webs woven out of countless personal relationships," Fei argued that "to each knot in these webs is attached a specific ethical principle." In this society, "general [ethical] standards have no utility. The first thing to do is to understand the specific context: Who is the important figure, and what kind of relationship is appropriate with that figure? Only then can one decide the ethical standards to be applied in that context." 10 Thus, there is no universal ethic to be applied to all people and in all situations. Ethics in China were traditionally determined by connections; they varied with particular people and situations. The biographer of a Chinese subject must be aware of this reality while interpreting the actions of that person. These kinds of social realities and relativities gave Chinese social life considerable fluidity, in many or perhaps most cases providing a considerable challenge for the biographer. A person's social identity and place in society largely depended on those to whom he or she was connected. In the end, if someone with whom a person had spent years establishing and cultivating connections was kicked out of power, lost a job, was incapacitated, or died, then he or she was back to square one in trying to establish his or her own social position. Developing and nurturing personal connections was understandably a full-time, lifelong undertaking. Thus, though I, as a modern Western biographer of an early twentiethcentury Chinese man named Shen Dingyi, was interested in the individuality of my subject, my primary focus necessarily had to be on questions [33], (7) Lines: 47 to 5 ——— 0.0pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [33], (7) 34 schoppa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 of social relationships. In the fluidity that was and is Chinese society, the biographer must be continually concerned about context, because the subject is embedded in different social networks in various arenas of life and action. One must analyze as carefully as possible the sources of individual connections and attempt to judge the relative strengths of connections between the subject and those with whom he or she had guanxi. This requires an awareness of the various networks of which the subject was a part, of the strength of each network in its effect on the subject, and of social dynamics within the networks. One must be aware that the subject likely played different roles in each connection and network, and that these different roles gave different identities. The biographer of a Chinese subject must not assume that the modern Western conception of human development with stages of infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, early adulthood,