Her admirers, including Emerson, paid tribute, editing her papers, building monuments and marking her birthday even into the 20th century. It also dogged the career of multi-husbanded literary adventuress Mary McCarthy. The story is more complex, however. A self-described literary critic and '60s activist, Showalter has interlaced not only her own life as a women's studies pioneer, but also the lives of her most admired friends with the fortunes of her legendary adventuresses. She risks her nascent career by demanding a women's studies curriculum at Douglass College.
Feminist lives are neither prim nor grim but full of zest, courage and commitment.
Such is this riveting book's message. An escapee from Nazi terror and a major political philosopher, she believed that political concern for private behavior was one foundation of totalitarianism. Arendt also proposed that free politics depended on the expression of ideas by a plurality of voices, all raised in virtuoso debate across classes and generations. News Jobs AP Shopping Archives Entertain.