Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2: Today we are going to talk about Ruth Fulton Benedict,
Speaker 2: who was one of the first women to become really
Speaker 2: prominent in the field of anthropology. She had a big
Speaker 2: impact on that field, but I think in terms of
Speaker 2: like general name recognition outside of the world of anthropology today,
Speaker 2: she's probably overshadowed by some of her students, including Zoraineilhurston
Speaker 2: and Margaret Meade. We will be talking a bit about
Speaker 2: Margaret Meade in this episode two because her life was
Speaker 2: deeply connected to Benedicts, both personally and professionally. And while
Speaker 2: both of these women were really influential, they also faced
Speaker 2: a lot of criticism, both in their lifetimes and afterward.
Speaker 2: Some of this is because they were women working in
Speaker 2: a field that was at the time heavily dominated by men,
Speaker 2: and some of their ideas went against the trends and
Speaker 2: the standards of the day. But other criticisms were about
Speaker 2: like the actual content of their work.
Speaker 1: Some of those are more.
Speaker 2: Well founded, like you could have a whole podcast series
Speaker 2: picking it apart point by point. There are definitely plenty
Speaker 2: of academic texts that are full of very detailed criticisms
Speaker 2: of both of them. That is not what this episode
Speaker 2: is for. What we are doing here is taking a
Speaker 2: broader look at Ruth Benedict's life and influence.
Speaker 1: Ruth Fulton was born on June fifth, eighteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Margaret Meade wrote a biography of her that named her
Speaker 1: birthplace as Shenango Valley in the northern part of New York,
Speaker 1: but other sources say that she was born in New
Speaker 1: York City. Ruth's maternal grandparents lived in Norwich, New York,
Speaker 1: in Shenango County, and that is where she lived for
Speaker 1: part of her childhood, so if she was really born
Speaker 1: in New York City, that may be the source of
Speaker 1: that discrepancy.
Speaker 2: Ruth's mother, Bertise Joanna Shaddock Fulton, was a school teacher
Speaker 2: who had graduated from Bassar and her father, Frederick, was
Speaker 2: a surgeon, but Frederick died in March of eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine at the age of only thirty one, a few
Speaker 2: months before Ruth turned two. Ruth's little sister, Marjorie, was
Speaker 2: only three months old Frederick's cause of death was some
Speaker 2: kind of infection that he probably contracted on the job.
Speaker 2: He had apparently gone to Trinidad with the hope of
Speaker 2: recovering there, and then died about ten days after getting
Speaker 2: back home.
Speaker 1: This, of course, would have been hard for any family,
Speaker 1: and Ruth remembered her mother as grief stricken and always
Speaker 1: worried about money, which is understandable considering her husband's death
Speaker 1: at such a young age and because they had financial
Speaker 1: trouble without his income. But this whole thing seems to
Speaker 1: have been particularly hard on Bertise, truly devastated by her
Speaker 1: husband's death, and as his anniversary approached every March, it
Speaker 1: was like she relived it and then the whole family
Speaker 1: was traumatized all over again.
Speaker 2: So Ruth remembered her childhood as lonely and sad a
Speaker 2: lot of the time. She also contracted measles when she
Speaker 2: was a baby or a toddler, a little unclear on
Speaker 2: the exact age, but afterwards she was hard of hearing.
Speaker 2: She and other people described her as deaf or partially deaf,
Speaker 2: or in Mead's words quote just deaf enough to miss
Speaker 2: a great deal of what was being said. Before others
Speaker 2: recognized it, but nobody realized what was going on with
Speaker 2: her hearing until Ruth started school. That meant that, in
Speaker 2: addition to growing up in a home that was dominated
Speaker 2: by grief and anxiety, Ruth was really isolated. She often
Speaker 2: couldn't understand what people were saying to her, especially if
Speaker 2: it was noisy or if there were multiple people talking
Speaker 2: at once, and until someone noticed her hearing loss, she
Speaker 2: also didn't understand why so much of what was happening
Speaker 2: around her was so confusing. So the first mass produced
Speaker 2: hearing aids didn't hit the market until Benedict was in
Speaker 2: her twenties, and once they became available, she seems to
Speaker 2: have preferred not to use them. So in Ruth's childhood
Speaker 2: and teen years, she became withdrawn and very shy. She
Speaker 2: thought her sister, who was prettier and happier, was their
Speaker 2: mother's favorite. Ruth didn't really like to be touched, and
Speaker 2: except for an imaginary friend, she mostly played alone. But
Speaker 2: she loved to read and to write, and she came
Speaker 2: to enjoy her solitude. She later wrote of this quote,
Speaker 2: happiness was in a world I lived in all by myself,
Speaker 2: and for precious moments she also said that she learned
Speaker 2: that quote I could always without fail have myself for company,
Speaker 2: and that if I didn't talk to anybody about the
Speaker 2: things that mattered to me, no one could have take
Speaker 2: them away.
Speaker 1: When she was young, Ruth also experienced some kind of
Speaker 1: recurring illness that she described as bilious attacks. About every
Speaker 1: six weeks, she would have a bout of intense vomiting,
Speaker 1: and this continued for years until she started menstruating, and
Speaker 1: at that point she started experiencing period pain on about
Speaker 1: the same cycle. This ran alongside cycles of depression and anger,
Speaker 1: and what she described as rages or tantrums as an adult.
Speaker 1: She said these tantrums ended after her grandmother made her
Speaker 1: kneel on the floor by a lit candle and pray
Speaker 1: to God that she would never lose her temper again.
Speaker 2: Ruth and her sister Marjorie were cared for largely by
Speaker 2: their grandmother and an aunt, while their mother tried to
Speaker 2: earn enough money to support them. Bertie took teaching jobs
Speaker 2: in a couple of different cities before being hired as
Speaker 2: a librarian in Buffalo, New York in eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: when Ruth was about twelve.
Speaker 1: After moving to Buffalo, Ruth and Marjorie got scholarships to
Speaker 1: Saint Margaret's Episcopal Academy for Girls, which they attended from
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred to nineteen oh five. Then the two sisters
Speaker 1: went on to Vasser together and they graduated in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh nine. Ri's degree was in literature. She graduated Phi
Speaker 1: Beta Kappa and won awards for her poetry and essays.
Speaker 1: After graduation, the sister spent a year in Europe with
Speaker 1: a couple of friends, and that was paid for by
Speaker 1: their friends' families.
Speaker 2: Soon after returning from Europe, Marjorie married Robert Freeman. Marjorie, Robert,
Speaker 2: and bertis All moved to Pasadena, California. Ruth stayed behind
Speaker 2: in Buffalo for about a year before rejoining her mother
Speaker 2: and sister. She spent some time in California teaching at girls'
Speaker 2: schools before meeting biochemist Stanley Benedict on a trip back
Speaker 2: to New York. They got married on June eighteenth, nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 2: It seems like Ruth was happy for the first year
Speaker 2: or so of their marriage. In a journal that December,
Speaker 2: she wrote, quote, five months ago, with all my consciousness
Speaker 2: of the power of loving that was the greatest part
Speaker 2: of me. With all the hunger and thrust of my love,
Speaker 2: I had no notion of its strength and depth and
Speaker 2: power of healing. No wonder the days seemed dreary and
Speaker 2: empty enough without this satisfying comradeship, this ardent delight, this
Speaker 2: transforming love. Now that I have it, it is what
Speaker 2: gives meaning to all of life. But Ruth's journals from
Speaker 2: their courtship and their early marriage also contain a number
Speaker 2: of references to her and Stanley hurting one another, without
Speaker 2: really going into much detail. She also wanted to have
Speaker 2: a baby, but they weren't able to. Then in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: Stanley was injured in a lab accident. He inhaled toxic
Speaker 2: gas that he was researching as a potential wartime weapon.
Speaker 2: This worsened some issues that he was already having with
Speaker 2: high blood pressure and insomnia. He and Ruth wound up
Speaker 2: at odds over where and how to live. She preferred
Speaker 2: the city. She wanted to be in Greenwich Village, and
Speaker 2: that was too noisy for him. He wanted to live
Speaker 2: out in the suburbs and spend lots of time at
Speaker 2: his summer cabin in New Hampshire. And that was just
Speaker 2: too isolated for her. She finally wound up renting a
Speaker 2: room in Greenwich Village and staying there during the week
Speaker 2: and then going back to Stanley on the weekends, which
Speaker 2: was really unconventional.
Speaker 1: I feel like that would even be considered unconventional now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know a number of people who for like
Speaker 2: work reasons, for the most part, have had residences in
Speaker 2: two different cities, but like, this was unheard of. Really.
Speaker 2: When she was.
Speaker 1: Living a few years into the marriage, Ruth was feeling
Speaker 1: bored and unfulfilled. She had been raised in a devoutly
Speaker 1: Baptist family, but she had left the church. A lot
Speaker 1: of her classmates at Vassar had been active in various
Speaker 1: causes like women's suffrage, but none of those causes had
Speaker 1: really captured her attention. She tried to folks on writing poetry,
Speaker 1: publishing under the name Anne Singleton, and took on other
Speaker 1: writing projects. Eventually, she started on a book that she
Speaker 1: called Adventures in Womanhood, planning to include biographies of Mary
Speaker 1: Wollston Craft, Margaret Fuller, and Olive Schreiner. She finished a
Speaker 1: draft on Mary Wollston Craft, but when she couldn't find
Speaker 1: a publisher who was interested, she put the project aside.
Speaker 2: In nineteen nineteen, still looking for something to keep her
Speaker 2: mind occupied, Ruth Benedict enrolled in a class at the
Speaker 2: New School for Social Research in New York City, which
Speaker 2: had been founded that same year. The new School was
Speaker 2: established by professors who had resigned from Columbia University after
Speaker 2: being censured for their opposition to the US involvement in
Speaker 2: the war. It was open to students regardless of sex,
Speaker 2: and was specifically focused on higher education for adults, especially
Speaker 2: on subjects that were related to social issues in political science.
Speaker 1: Benedict's first class at the New School was Sex in Ethnology,
Speaker 1: taught by anthropologist and folklorist Elsie Clues Parsons, who became
Speaker 1: one of Benedict's mentors. Another mentor was anthropologist and sociologist
Speaker 1: Alexander Goldenweisser, who had been born in Ukraine and immigrated
Speaker 1: to the US in nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: Both of them had worked and studied with Franz Boas,
Speaker 2: and they encouraged Benedict to pursue a graduate degree at
Speaker 2: Columbia University, where Boas was teaching. We will get into
Speaker 2: this some more after a sponsor break before we talk
Speaker 2: about Ruth Benedict's work with Franz boas, we should talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about the development of anthropology as a
Speaker 2: field and the state of that field when she started
Speaker 2: studying it. So anthropology as a scientific and academic discipline
Speaker 2: was established primarily by Western European men. Interest in studying
Speaker 2: the cultures and peoples of the world really flourished alongside
Speaker 2: global exploration and colonization by European powers, and a lot
Speaker 2: of the people carrying out that research did so from
Speaker 2: the perspective that Western European culture was the pinnacle of
Speaker 2: human achievement. So from the beginning, a lot of this
Speaker 2: research was rooted in inherently racist ideas. It imagined humanity in.
Speaker 1: A hierarchy, with white people at the top and all
Speaker 1: other races lowered down. Cultures that had not had a
Speaker 1: lot of contact with Europeans were framed as primitive, with
Speaker 1: these allegedly primitive people supposedly in their natural state, unaffected
Speaker 1: by things like industrialization. Of course, not every single individual
Speaker 1: person working in anthropology was espousing these kinds of ideas,
Speaker 1: but by the late nineteenth century, a lot of the
Speaker 1: writing coming out of the field was really Eurocentric and
Speaker 1: either implicitly or explicitly to other peoples and cultures as
Speaker 1: less sophisticated, less developed, and generally inferior.
Speaker 2: One anthropologist who really pushed back on a lot of
Speaker 2: this was Franz Boas. He was born into a Jewish
Speaker 2: family in Germany in eighteen fifty eight and immigrated to
Speaker 2: the United States in eighteen eighty six. He started teaching
Speaker 2: at Columbia University ten years later, and he was enormously
Speaker 2: influential as both an anthropologist and a teacher. He argued
Speaker 2: that race and culture were not biologically determined, and that
Speaker 2: no one race or culture was superior to the others,
Speaker 2: either genetically or otherwise. He also argued that culture wasn't
Speaker 2: biologically determined at all, that instead, cultures arose from a
Speaker 2: collection of local, historical, and interpersonal influences. Some of Boas's
Speaker 2: ideas are summed up as cultural relativism. That's the idea
Speaker 2: that a culture's beliefs, values, and practices should be studied
Speaker 2: and understood from the point of view of the culture itself,
Speaker 2: not by making value judgments from outside that culture or
Speaker 2: comparing it to some kind of supposedly universal standard. In
Speaker 2: that case, universal usually really meant Western European. So that's
Speaker 2: not to suggest that Boas's work was perfect or that
Speaker 2: there's nothing to criticize about it. For example, as we
Speaker 2: mentioned in our episode on physical anthropologist W. Montague Cob,
Speaker 2: Boas carried out excavations of indigenous burial sites that he
Speaker 2: later admitted felt basically like grave robbing. He also represented
Speaker 2: a turning point in the field, not an ending point. So,
Speaker 2: for example, the term primitive and the idea that so
Speaker 2: called primitive cultures were in a more natural or authentic
Speaker 2: state that still showed up in his work in the
Speaker 2: work of some of his students. And while a lot
Speaker 2: of the people that Boas trained tried to be anti
Speaker 2: racist in their work, that did not necessarily extend to
Speaker 2: their treatment of other traits like gender or sexuality. Also,
Speaker 2: just in general, it's virtually impossible for a person to
Speaker 2: totally shed every single one of their preconceptions in all
Speaker 2: of their cultural baggage when studying another culture.
Speaker 1: So Boas and his students were still seeing and studying
Speaker 1: and interpreting the world through their own lenses, even if
Speaker 1: they really were making an effort not to. But he
Speaker 1: actively intentionally and prolifically tried to dismantle a lot of
Speaker 1: the racist ideas that were taken for granted within the field,
Speaker 1: and he trained a generation of other anthropologists to do
Speaker 1: the same. One of those anthropologists was Ruth Benedict. She
Speaker 1: started her graduate studies at Columbia in nineteen twenty one
Speaker 1: when she was thirty four. Boas became a mentor and
Speaker 1: a father figure. She and some of the other students
Speaker 1: called him Papa Frands. She admired and respected his work,
Speaker 1: but learning from him could also be challenging for her.
Speaker 1: In addition to his having a pronounced German accent, he
Speaker 1: was also known for mumbling when he talked. I saw
Speaker 1: him described as a notorious mumbler, which made it hard
Speaker 1: for somebody with hearing loss to undersod. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: But Benedict really impressed him, so much so that he
Speaker 1: convinced Columbia to accept her classes from the New School
Speaker 1: as part of her pH d work, allowing her to
Speaker 1: complete her degree in nineteen twenty three after only two years.
Speaker 1: Her dissertation was the concept of the Guardian Spirit in
Speaker 1: North America, and it was drawn from existing research on
Speaker 1: the idea of the guardian spirit in indigenous cultures. She
Speaker 1: published it under the name Ruth Fulton Benedict, including her
Speaker 1: maiden name this way that was also unconventional.
Speaker 2: Her dissertation caught the attention of one of Boas's former students,
Speaker 2: Edward Sapiir. Sapiram Benedict bonded over anne anthropology and their
Speaker 2: shared love of poetry. They wrote poems to each other,
Speaker 2: and they wrote letters from about nineteen twenty three to
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five. Sometimes this was multiple letters every week.
Speaker 1: While studying under Franz Boas, Benedict also worked as his
Speaker 1: teaching assistant at Barnard College. Barnard had been founded in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty nine and was the first college in New
Speaker 1: York City to offer degrees to women. It was and
Speaker 1: is affiliated with Columbia University, which did not admit women
Speaker 1: as undergraduates until the fall of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: It's not a typo. Barnard is where Benedict met Margaret Mead,
Speaker 2: who at the time was a senior in college, and
Speaker 2: at first Mead was not impressed with Benedict at all.
Speaker 2: Ruth Benedict wore the same dress every day, and it
Speaker 2: was addressed that Mead did not think was very flattering.
Speaker 2: This was apparently because men wore the same suit to
Speaker 2: teach in every day, and Benedict thought that women should
Speaker 2: be able to follow the same standard. Benedict also had
Speaker 2: a really hard time speaking in front of the students,
Speaker 2: even though she had taught at girls' schools years before.
Speaker 2: She really struggled with her shyness and her hearing loss.
Speaker 2: It took her years to really be comfortable with public speaking.
Speaker 2: But then Benedict led the students on one of their
Speaker 2: regular visits to the American Museum of Natural History and
Speaker 2: Mead asked her for more information about one of the
Speaker 2: exhibits they were looking at. Benedict was clearly flustered, but
Speaker 2: said she would bring something to their next class, and
Speaker 2: she brought a copy of one of her own published papers,
Speaker 2: and Mead was so impressed that she gave Benedict another
Speaker 2: chance as an instructor. Mead eventually found Benedict to be knowledgeable, creative,
Speaker 2: and compassionate toward her students, and she started recommending the
Speaker 2: course to other students at Barnard. Benedict and Meade became
Speaker 2: friends and colleagues, with Benedict encouraging Meade to pursue an
Speaker 2: advanced to in anthropology, including giving her three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: of her own money, which she described as a no
Speaker 2: strings attached fellowship. Meade started graduate study at Columbia in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three, and that same year she got married
Speaker 2: to anthropologist Luther Cressman, and toward the end of nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty four, Benedict and Meade started having an affair. This
Speaker 2: was obviously something they kept secret, both of them were
Speaker 2: married to other people. As anthropologists, they both wrote about
Speaker 2: cultures that viewed gender and sexuality much different than in
Speaker 2: much of the United States, but in their own culture
Speaker 2: this was something that could have ruined their reputations and
Speaker 2: their careers. There was also the fact that Benedict was
Speaker 2: more than a decade older than Meade and had been
Speaker 2: her teacher. I'm actually a little fuzzy on whether Benedict
Speaker 2: was still Mead's teacher at this point. There was already
Speaker 2: a very well established trope of predatory life lesbians in media,
Speaker 2: so older women in positions of authority like teachers and
Speaker 2: headmistresses taking advantage of and corrupting their students and books
Speaker 2: and movies. This really damaging stereotype would make their affair
Speaker 2: seem particularly salacious if it was discovered. In nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 2: Mead also started an affair with Edward Sapier. While Sapier
Speaker 2: and Ruth Benedict were close friends, it seems like their
Speaker 2: relationship was platonic. Their letters to one another don't suggest
Speaker 2: that it was romantic, and when they met, he was
Speaker 2: married and devoted to his wife, Florence, But Florence died
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty four, and after that Mead pursued him.
Speaker 2: Sapier was the one to tell Benedict about this relationship,
Speaker 2: and she was deeply hurt by it. It seems like Sapierre, Benedict,
Speaker 2: and Luther Cressman all wanted more from Margaret Meade than
Speaker 2: she really wanted to give. She was an advocate of
Speaker 2: free love. This was one of a number of love
Speaker 2: triangles or in this case, quadrangles over the course of
Speaker 2: Mead's life.
Speaker 1: Although Benedict was really hurt over Mead's affair with Sapir,
Speaker 1: she didn't and their relationship over it. The two women
Speaker 1: wrote numerous letters back and forth after Mead left for
Speaker 1: field work and Samoa in nineteen twenty five, at a
Speaker 1: time when it was incredibly unusual for a woman to
Speaker 1: be sent to do field work on her own. When
Speaker 1: Meade returned to the US, she wrote one of the
Speaker 1: books that she would become famous for, Coming of Age
Speaker 1: in Samoa, a Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization.
Speaker 1: That book came out in nineteen twenty eight, and although
Speaker 1: this book was about adolescence in Samoa, it included descriptions
Speaker 1: of sexuality among Samoan youth, and that's really what it
Speaker 1: became most known for.
Speaker 2: So this episode isn't about Mead, but it would be
Speaker 2: weird if we didn't mention that Mead's work and this
Speaker 2: book specifically have been the subjects of intense criticism. Mead's
Speaker 2: most vocal critic was New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman, who
Speaker 2: made totally different observations during his own field work in Samoa.
Speaker 2: He published two different books arguing that Meade's work was
Speaker 2: totally incorrect. Critics of Freeman's work have pointed out that
Speaker 2: he was working in a different part of Samoa, and
Speaker 2: that a lot had changed in the decades between when
Speaker 2: Mead did her research and when he did his, including
Speaker 2: there being an increasing influence from Christianity. This became known
Speaker 2: as the Mead Freeman controversy. It went on for decades.
Speaker 2: My basic read on it is that there are valid
Speaker 2: criticisms of both of them. Of course, Benedict had her
Speaker 2: own life and work going on during all of this,
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk about that after we pause
Speaker 2: for a sponsor break. In nineteen twenty five, Ruth Fulton
Speaker 2: Benedict started editing the Journal of American Folklore. She worked
Speaker 2: as its editor until nineteen forty. She also undertook field
Speaker 2: work among Puebloan peoples in the southwestern United States. Because
Speaker 2: of her hearing loss, she had to conduct most of
Speaker 2: this work through interpreters and choose those interpreters very carefully
Speaker 2: because they had to be willing to dictate everything they
Speaker 2: were interpreting to her while she wrote it all down
Speaker 2: word for word. This is a very time consuming and
Speaker 2: laborious process, but it also led her to be really
Speaker 2: pretty careful. In a lot of her field work. She
Speaker 2: tended to work in this like slow, methodical way.
Speaker 1: On Margaret Mead's voyage home from her field work in Samoa,
Speaker 1: she met New Zealand anthropologist Reo Fortune. We're guessing on
Speaker 1: that pronunciation, and she was immediately attracted to him. Benedict
Speaker 1: felt like she had to compete with Fortune in a
Speaker 1: way that she had not with Meaeds other partners, and
Speaker 1: then ultimately led to her ending their romantic relationship. Benedict
Speaker 1: and Meade continued to be called leagues and close friends
Speaker 1: for the rest of Benedict's life, though including Benedict eventually
Speaker 1: being named Guardian Timeade's daughter. In nineteen twenty eight, Benedict
Speaker 1: tried to publish a book of poetry, but again was
Speaker 1: rejected by publishers. She did keep writing poetry, but at
Speaker 1: this point she mostly stopped trying to do it professionally.
Speaker 1: A couple of years after that, she and Stanley separated.
Speaker 1: Apart from their other struggles, he really had not supported
Speaker 1: her going to graduate school or establishing her own career
Speaker 1: as an anthropologist. It was only after their separation that
Speaker 1: Benedict was paid for her teaching work at Columbia.
Speaker 2: Before that point, it was assumed that she didn't need
Speaker 2: to be paid because she was being financially supported by
Speaker 2: her husband.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty four, Benedict published Patterns of Culture, which
Speaker 1: is considered to be her most important work. This book
Speaker 1: compared three indigenous cultures, the Zuni of southwestern North America
Speaker 1: based on her own field work, the Dobu of Papua
Speaker 1: and nig Guinea based on fieldwork done by Margaret Meade
Speaker 1: in Reo Fortune, and the Quakwakawacta also known as the
Speaker 1: quaky Utle of the Pacific Northwest, based on fieldwork by
Speaker 1: Franz Boas. This book outlined her ideas about the relationship
Speaker 1: between culture and personality, including that culture was personality. Writ large,
Speaker 1: she described how the way a person lived and thought
Speaker 1: was extensively shaped by the culture they were living in.
Speaker 1: Each culture also had its own definitions for what was
Speaker 1: normal and what was deviant, and so that could only
Speaker 1: be examined for a particular person within the context of
Speaker 1: their own culture. Some of the specifics of this don't
Speaker 1: hold up as well today, like she labeled the cultures
Speaker 1: she was writing about using terms like Apollonian, Dionysian, and paranoid.
Speaker 1: But this book became a bestseller. It was translated into
Speaker 1: fourteen different languages. It helped popularize the idea of cultural
Speaker 1: relativism among lay people, and it introduced people to the
Speaker 1: field of anthem apology more generally, as was the case
Speaker 1: with her mentor Franz Boas, she was really trying to
Speaker 1: see passed the biases and eurocentrism of earlier work, and
Speaker 1: to get away from the assumption that traits that were
Speaker 1: common in European cultures were actually universal. In nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: Benedict was promoted to associate professor at Columbia, making her
Speaker 1: the first woman on the Columbia faculty to receive tenure.
Speaker 1: But her work at the university soon became challenging. The
Speaker 1: years she got tenure, Franz Boas retired, a number of
Speaker 1: faculty and students thought she was the best candidate to
Speaker 1: take his place. In a lot of ways. She had
Speaker 1: been acting as chair of the anthropology department under his direction,
Speaker 1: but instead Ralph Linton was named as his successor. While
Speaker 1: Linton had done his graduate work at Columbia, he had
Speaker 1: never become close to Boas, like so many other students had.
Speaker 1: He and Benedict really did not get along, and in
Speaker 1: a letter to Meade, she called him a swine. By
Speaker 1: this point, Ruth Benedict was a widow. Stanley Benedict had
Speaker 1: died in December of nineteen thirty six, she'd also started
Speaker 1: a relationship with Natalie Raymond. At one point, Benedict wrote
Speaker 1: in her journal, quote, loving Nat and taking such delight
Speaker 1: in her, I have the happiest condition for living that
Speaker 1: I've ever known. Although Benedict and Meade had not been
Speaker 1: romantically involved in quite some time, and Benedict had seen
Speaker 1: other people in the intervening years, they were still really close,
Speaker 1: and Mead seems to have been pretty upset about Benedict
Speaker 1: loving somebody else quite so much. Benedict and Raymond broke
Speaker 1: up sometime in nineteen thirty eight, and in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: nine Benedict met psychologist Ruth Valentine. By nineteen forty they
Speaker 1: were living together, and their relationship continued for the rest
Speaker 1: of Benedict's life. Benedict wrote a letter to Mead in
Speaker 1: which she said, quote, We've been comfortable together. I know
Speaker 1: she thinks God made me out of rare and spell clay,
Speaker 1: but she doesn't bother me about it.
Speaker 2: I love that. It's so cute. During these same years,
Speaker 2: Benedict started intentionally focusing her published work on combating racism.
Speaker 2: This really started after the November Program, also known as
Speaker 2: Krischtelnocht in November of nineteen thirty eight. Afterward, Benedict really
Speaker 2: felt that she had a duty to do more to
Speaker 2: educate people about racism. In nineteen thirty nine she took
Speaker 2: a sabbatical and wrote a book called Race Science and Politics,
Speaker 2: which was both anti racist and anti fascist, and then
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty she also joined the Committee on National Morale.
Speaker 1: Benedict and Gene Weltfish adapted Race Science and Politics into
Speaker 1: a shorter pamphlet called The Races of Mankind, paid for
Speaker 1: by the Public Affairs Committee. The pamphlet described all of humanity,
Speaker 1: regardless of race, as related quote the Bible story of
Speaker 1: Adam and Eve, father and mother of the whole human race,
Speaker 1: told centuries ago this same truth that science has shown
Speaker 1: today that all the people of the Earth are a
Speaker 1: single family and have a common origin. Science describes the
Speaker 1: intricate makeup of the human body, all its different organs
Speaker 1: cooperating and keeping us alive. It's curious anatomy that couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly have just happened to be the same in all
Speaker 1: men if they did not have a common origin. This
Speaker 1: pamphlet went on to say that human beings are quote
Speaker 1: what the Bible says, they are brothers in their bodies
Speaker 1: is the record of their brotherhood. Although fifty five thousand
Speaker 1: copies of this pamphlet were printed for members of the
Speaker 1: US Armed Forces, there were members of Congress who called
Speaker 1: it communistic and it wasn't ultimately distributed. There's also a
Speaker 1: film version of this pamphlet that was commissioned by the
Speaker 1: United Autoworkers CIO. This pamphlet is a pretty interesting read
Speaker 1: today because it is explicitly arguing against racism while also
Speaker 1: using language that is considered insensitive or even a f
Speaker 1: offensive by today's standards. Also, as you can tell from
Speaker 1: the passages we just read, it's written with a specific
Speaker 1: audience in mind, and some parts of it really don't
Speaker 1: hold up. Like quote, the Russians have welcomed cultural differences
Speaker 1: and they have refused to treat them as inferiorities. No
Speaker 1: part of the Russian program has had greater success than
Speaker 1: their racial program. As we talked about in our episode
Speaker 1: on Paul Robson and the Peakskill Riots, there were definitely
Speaker 1: black Americans who traveled or immigrated to the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and found it to be free from the kind of
Speaker 1: racial discrimination they experienced at home. But as we talked
Speaker 1: about in our episode on the Holadamor, Russia and the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union had a long history of oppressing people of
Speaker 1: non Russian ethnic identities, including Ukrainians.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty three, Benedicts started working for the Office
Speaker 2: of War Information, applying her study of anthropology to US
Speaker 2: interactions with people who were living and occupy and then
Speaker 2: this led to a focus on understanding Japan, both understanding
Speaker 2: how to approach Japan as a wartime enemy and understanding
Speaker 2: how to successfully occupied Japan once presumably the Allies won
Speaker 2: the war. Her research in this area became Report number
Speaker 2: twenty five submitted to the Office of War Information, and
Speaker 2: that was later adapted into the book The Chrysanthemum and
Speaker 2: the Sword, which was published in nineteen forty six. Ruth
Speaker 2: Benedict did not speak Japanese and had never been to Japan.
Speaker 2: Since the US was at war with Japan, going there
Speaker 2: for field work was out of the question, so this
Speaker 2: research was what she described as quote culture at a distance.
Speaker 2: She drew from her early education studying literature. As she
Speaker 2: examined and analyzed Japanese media and historical documents, she interviewed
Speaker 2: people who had immigrated from Japan and Japanese prisoners of war.
Speaker 2: She basically immersed herself in Japanese cult as much as
Speaker 2: she could without leaving the United States. Like the Races
Speaker 2: of Mankind pamphlet, Report Number twenty five was written for
Speaker 2: a specific audience, this time the US government and military,
Speaker 2: and it was for a specific purpose, which was to
Speaker 2: help political and military leaders understand their wartime enemies. They
Speaker 2: could make strategic decisions that would ideally help win the war,
Speaker 2: and then after the war was over, make decisions that
Speaker 2: would help make the occupation go as smoothly as possible,
Speaker 2: like without a lot of uprisings or insurgency.
Speaker 1: Although Benedict tried to approach Japan in a way that
Speaker 1: was sympathetic and compassionate, her work suggested that culture was
Speaker 1: learned that also meant that it could be changed. She
Speaker 1: thought changing it was necessary and agreed that Japan needed
Speaker 1: to be democratized. She thought an occupation by Allied forces
Speaker 1: after the war would be necessary, but that the occupation
Speaker 1: should be compassionate and fair. She was also one of
Speaker 1: the people who strongly advocated for the Japanese emperor to
Speaker 1: remain as a figurehead after the Japanese surrender to help
Speaker 1: ensure stability during the occupation, although this also meant that
Speaker 1: he never faced any kind of prosecution or accountability for
Speaker 1: war crimes committed by Japan during the war.
Speaker 2: And the Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Benedict framed Japanese culture
Speaker 2: as a collection of dualities. The chrysanthemum represented beauty and order,
Speaker 2: and the sword stood for death and discipline. One point
Speaker 2: that became a big takeaway was that, in her view,
Speaker 2: Japanese culture was focused more on shame, while American culture
Speaker 2: focused more on guilt. This sort of shame culture guilt
Speaker 2: culture dichotomy is really a pretty small part of the book,
Speaker 2: but it really took off like it's one of the
Speaker 2: things that has really stuck around. The Chrysanthemum and the
Speaker 2: Sword is really not an accurate look at Japanese culture today,
Speaker 2: and realistically it was also pretty limited in what it
Speaker 2: said about Japanese culture in the nineteen forties. There are
Speaker 2: also some glaring gaps, like she doesn't discuss the impact
Speaker 2: of the US atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima
Speaker 2: or Nagasaki, something that she argued wasn't yet fully felt
Speaker 2: in Japan at the time she wrote it. She also
Speaker 2: doesn't acknowledge that Japanese immigrants to the United States and
Speaker 2: their American born children who were US citizens were held
Speaker 2: in concentration camps during the war. That's something we covered
Speaker 2: in more detail in a two parter in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: So today this book is seen more as an example
Speaker 2: of how the United States viewed Japan and itself after
Speaker 2: the end of World War II. This book was also
Speaker 2: widely discussed in Japan after it was published. There were
Speaker 2: meetings in symposia and ongoing discussions within Japanese academia and
Speaker 2: among other Japanese commentators. A lot argued that it was
Speaker 2: at best superficial. Some suggested that Benedict had cherry picked
Speaker 2: details to kind of line up with her pre existing
Speaker 2: ideas or to make her work more acceptable to American authorities.
Speaker 2: At the same time, though this book became a best
Speaker 2: seller in Japan, selling at least two million copies there
Speaker 2: by the start of the twenty first century, it became
Speaker 2: part of a genre called nehan genron or works about
Speaker 2: Japan and Japanese identity, and that's a genre that existed
Speaker 2: before World War two, but became incredibly popular in Japan afterward,
Speaker 2: and as a final note on the Chrysanthemum and the
Speaker 2: Sword in it, Benedict wrote, quote, the tough minded are
Speaker 2: content that differences should exist. They respect differences. Their goal
Speaker 2: is a world made safe for differences, where the United
Speaker 2: States may be American to the hilt without threatening the
Speaker 2: peace of the world, and France maybe France, and Japan,
Speaker 2: maybe Japan, on the same conditions. This statement is very
Speaker 2: frequently paraphrased as the purpose of anthropology is to make
Speaker 2: the world safe for human differences, and attributed to Ruth Benedict,
Speaker 2: although she never really said this shorter version. In nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six, Ruth Benedict received the annual Achievement Award of
Speaker 2: the American Association of University Women. In nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: she was elected president of the American Anthropological Association, and
Speaker 2: that same year became a Fellow in the American Academy
Speaker 2: of Arts and Sciences. In nineteen forty eight, she became
Speaker 2: the first woman to become a full professor at Columbia University.
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen forty eight, Benedict launched the Columbia University
Speaker 1: Research in Contemporary Cultures program that was funded by the
Speaker 1: US Office of Naval Research. She planned to collaborate with
Speaker 1: Margaret Meade and others to study contemporary cultures at a distance.
Speaker 1: This is also sometimes described as a study of national character.
Speaker 1: This was a huge four year project, bringing in one
Speaker 1: hundred twenty scholars of sixteen nationalities representing fourteen academic disciplines.
Speaker 2: But Benedict died before it really got under way. Had
Speaker 2: a heart attack in September of nineteen forty seven, shortly
Speaker 2: after returning from a trip to Europe to speak at
Speaker 2: a seminar in Czechoslovakia. Doctors told her she had to
Speaker 2: rest and keep her mind off of work for the
Speaker 2: sake of her heart. Margaret Meade was with her and
Speaker 2: wrote of this period quote in the five days she lived,
Speaker 2: she never referred to work again, but put all her
Speaker 2: effort into staying quietly alive until Ruth Valentine got back
Speaker 2: from California.
Speaker 1: Ruth Valentine was there by the end. Ruth Benedict died
Speaker 1: on September seventeenth, nineteen forty eight, at the age of
Speaker 1: sixty nine. Ruth Valentine was the executor of her estate
Speaker 1: and Margaret Meade was her literary executor. Meade lived until
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, and in nineteen fifty nine she published
Speaker 1: an Anthropologist at Work, Writings of Ruth Benedict. This book
Speaker 1: included her own thoughts on Benedict's life and work, in
Speaker 1: addition to selections from Benedict's writing. One thing that's included
Speaker 1: is Benedict's piece on Mary Way host Kraft that she
Speaker 1: had written back in the nineteen teens. On October twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, Ruth Benedict was honored with a postage stamp. Today,
Speaker 1: the Association for Queer Anthropology, which is a section of
Speaker 1: the American Anthropological Association, awards an annual Ruth Benedict Award
Speaker 1: Quote to acknowledge excellence in a scholarly book written from
Speaker 1: an anthropological perspective about a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender topic.
Speaker 2: That is Ruth Benedict.
Speaker 1: Do you have some listener mail as well?
Speaker 2: Have a listener Facebook comment from Kelly and it is
Speaker 2: about our recent episode on Hasukura Sunanaga, and Kelly wrote,
Speaker 2: just listen to this. I researched it recently due to
Speaker 2: another podcast. Throughout the episode, you pronounced the Spanish missionaries
Speaker 2: name so Leto. It is, in fact, so Tello. Your
Speaker 2: pronunciation made me go back and check my sources think
Speaker 2: I had transposed the letters. But this time it wasn't me, No, Kelly,
Speaker 2: it was not you, thank you, It was me. It
Speaker 2: was me here. So it's embarrassing to make silly mistakes
Speaker 2: in front of everyone, and then you're on a podcast
Speaker 2: and they just stay out there for the remainder of
Speaker 2: time wherever. So I'm sorry for making this mistake.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 2: What's funny to me about this one is that I
Speaker 2: actually finished writing that episode almost a week before we
Speaker 2: recorded it, which is unusual. So every morning I would
Speaker 2: get up to and get to my desk and I
Speaker 2: would read back over that outline and like make little
Speaker 2: minor copy tweaks and stuff like that. And I did
Speaker 2: that like every day for like three or four days
Speaker 2: in the row before we actually recorded it, and somehow
Speaker 2: overlooked the fact that I consistently spelled this guy's name
Speaker 2: wrong the entire time, and also at some point in
Speaker 2: the middle of the episode flipped to two syllable and
Speaker 2: how I had typed out Hasakorusnanaga's name. That one we
Speaker 2: caught when we were recording, though I don't know how
Speaker 2: I managed to consistently make the same mistake throughout the
Speaker 2: whole entire episode, but I am sorry for having done
Speaker 2: that and not caught it in my many many rereads
Speaker 2: of that episode. Thank you Kelly for spotting it and
Speaker 2: letting us know.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's one of those things that starts
Speaker 1: where I don't know about you. You may not have
Speaker 1: this problem, but I do know other people who have
Speaker 1: worked as copy editors sometimes do. It's like you have
Speaker 1: to fight it a lot because your brain autocorrect stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you never realize you've done it, and then
Speaker 1: it's too late and you have relearned it the wrong way.
Speaker 2: Yep, this is absolutely true. And there also are just
Speaker 2: a number of regular English words that you or I
Speaker 2: or both of us have suddenly realized we've been saying
Speaker 2: wrong our entire lives, Like in the middle of recording
Speaker 2: an episode, uh what never Yeah, probably because one or
Speaker 2: the other of us learned that word by reading and
Speaker 2: made a mental pronunciation for it thirty five or more
Speaker 2: years ago. That has just been with us that whole time.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I'm sorry for somehow flipping those letters around.
Speaker 2: Thank you again for letting me know if you would
Speaker 2: like to write to us about this or any other
Speaker 2: podcast where at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. We're
Speaker 2: all over social media at misson History. That's we'll find
Speaker 2: our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, and you can subscribe
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Speaker 2: History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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