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Critical journey
National Forum, Summer 1997 by Perry, Elisabeth Israels
Fortunately, the field has changed since then. Many scholars now realize that studying the masses neither invalidates nor makes less necessary a study of "notables." The biographical job will never be done: hundreds of women have never been studied, or, if they have been, not from a feminist perspective. And we cannot pick only those women with whom we agree or who seem most like us. I date the start of this turnaround from Eleanor Roosevelt's centennial in 1984, an event that led to a reevaluation of the social reformers of her generation who, out of a commitment to the principle of protective legislation for women, opposed the ERA.
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My kinship with Moskowitz created a personal dimension to my subject that not all biographers will share with theirs. Sometimes the kinship was an advantage. For example, it gave me entree to places closed to others. When I visited the Women's City Club of New York, its president at first refused me access to board minutes because I wasn't a member. After some thought, she decided that since I was a member's granddaughter I could read them after all.
But being related to Moskowitz was difficult in part. Some discoveries about family members disturbed me. I fretted over which to use, finally deciding to include only those that reflected or directly explained something in her life. Most difficult was reconciling being both granddaughter and critical scholar. I could not hide the relationship or pretend it was not relevant. Because I was a granddaughter, would I be able to maintain scholarly detachment? To colleagues who worried about this I said that, since I had never known her, I did not "love" her in the way one loves a grandmother. I think now that I may have compensated for my kinship by striving for standards of detachment higher than those an unrelated historian might have sought.
There were other ways in which my family relationship was not always to my advantage. My first grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities elicited the comment that I seemed to be "just writing a book about my grandmother." When my husband moved to a job at Indiana University, the department newsletter announced that his wife was writing "a history of her family." Indeed, some people thought I was a genealogist: why else would I be interested in my grandmother? I can smile about those remarks now, but at the time they hurt.
On the whole, the ledger on my kinship to my subject is more positive than negative. I had never felt close to my father or known or understood him well. Learning about the early death of his own father and the frequent absences of his mother helped me to understand him better. This knowledge has given me a certain peace about our troubled relationship. Writing about my grandmother also brought me closer to my daughter. Watching me discover my family relationship to the history of women and of feminism, she began as a teenager to express a transgenerational "bond of womanhood" with me. We have a strong friendship now, a rare phenomenon today between mothers and daughters. Finally, there is no doubt that my personal link to Belle Moskowitz gave me the drive to see the project through, despite its length and difficulty and despite the discouragement I often felt. Somehow I believed I owed her and her generation its completion. As reformers, advocates for women's rights and protection, and political activists, they deserved to be recognized. But Belle had been my grandmother, too. No future project I undertake will ever provide such a powerful stimulus.
