The Drunken Duchess of Vassar: Grace Harriet Macurdy, Pioneering Feminist Classical Scholar by Barbara McManus

Abstract

376 BOOK REVIEWS dominant “organizing” feature of works characterized by the modern generic category of the miscellany. Analyzing recurrent metaphors for the genre— bouquets, meadows, etc.—Fitzgerald defends randomness and heterogeneity as the aesthetics of the miscellany, discussing Aullus Gellius’ Attic Nights, in addition to Martial’s collection of epigrams, Pliny’s Natural History, and even Horace’s Carmina in light of such an aesthetic. In this book, Fitzgerald has reveled in the riotous garden of Latin letters and their afterlife, offering his readers a learned and lively analysis of the many-sided effects of varietas as a thematic and generic concept. If a book on variety necessarily involves ragged edges, messily defying the neat and formal evolution of a single argument, Fitzgerald’s agile handling of his own various interpretive angles brings a crisp lucidity to a fascinating subject. LOWELL BOWDITCH University of Oregon, bowditch@uoregon.edu * * * * * The Drunken Duchess of Vassar: Grace Harriet Macurdy, Pioneering Feminist Classical Scholar. By BARBARA MCMANUS. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2017. Pp. xxii + 281. Hardcover, $99.95. ISBN 978-0-81421327 -8. Grace Harriet Macurdy probably was never drunk in her life (she was a teetotaler) and far from a duchess (born in rural Maine in 1866 and growing up in working class family in Watertown, Massachusetts), but Barbara McManus’ title for her biography of this pioneering feminist Greek scholar and teacher captures Macurdy’s whimsy and spirit. A long-time professor at Vassar, Macurdy had a penchant for dresses of exquisite fabrics, jewelry and elaborate hats, as well as a slightly disheveled and absent-minded demeanor (4). The young women she taught affectionately called her “the Drunken Duchess” or “the Mad Queen,” which perhaps more than anything shows the splash that Macurdy made for years on Vassar’s campus. Yet, McManus’ biography is not some sort of biographical Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Macurdy’s life deserves to be told for two reasons. First, her career offers an example of the challenges faced by classicists generally as colleges and universities transitioned from a classics-heavy curriculum in the late 19th century to one of increasing options in the 20th . Macurdy’s engagement with the pressures of declining enrollments, changes in college graduation requirements, competition between departments for bodies, and the struggle to maintain healthy Ancient Greek enrollments is likely to sound familiar to all. Second, and BOOK REVIEWS 377 more importantly, Macurdy wrangled with challenges that many of our students encounter today—and her grace, generosity and stamina are humbling and inspiring. Her story is one of a 1st generation college-goer who delays her own career advancement to support the education of her younger siblings, who commuted to Columbia from Poughkeepsie to complete her PhD while teaching a full course load, who struggled with a physical disability (profound hearing loss), and who, despite choosing not to marry (so that she might continue to work), ended up mothering and raising a niece and two nephews. And she published! Her early work on Greek tragedy built on her dissertation research, but throughout her career she eagerly pursued new fields of study, publishing on early Greek culture and religion (inspired by the work of her friend Jane Ellen Harrison), and two groundbreaking books on Hellenistic queens and vassal queens. McManus’ analysis of these latter two books illuminates how much feminist classical scholars of today owe Macurdy, because she was not just (ha!) a female classical scholar, but she chose in her mature years to focus her attention on the women of the classical world, arguing for their place as worthy topics of investigation in their own right. McManus carefully delineates how Macurdy took pains not to render the queens she researched as caricatures or subordinate figures, but looked at them as powerful agents who had to work within the social constraints of their times. To do justice to them she looked at information that others did not (e.g., coins, inscriptions), probing any course that might yield a fuller picture. McManus touts this work as revolutionary, and indeed it may have been an initial step toward the study of ancient women as a legitimate field of scholarship. In addition Macurdy left us 70-odd...