{"id":4832,"date":"2009-10-30T20:28:46","date_gmt":"2009-10-31T00:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=4832"},"modified":"2009-10-30T20:28:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-31T00:28:46","slug":"before-the-revolution-frye-and-the-history-of-literary-studies-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/10\/30\/before-the-revolution-frye-and-the-history-of-literary-studies-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Before the Revolution: Frye and the History of Literary Studies (II)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stobie\"\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was an undergraduate in the 1970s there was a pioneering women\u2019s studies course on campus.\u00a0 It was interdisciplinary, and I believe it was team taught.\u00a0 The course was discussed among students \u2013 with the exception of those who were self-proclaimed feminists, a tiny minority \u2013 in much the same way that a Communist cell might have been discussed during the early years of the cold war.\u00a0 A rumour circulated that \u201cthere is a guy taking the course.\u201d\u00a0 When I started a tenure-track job in the late 1980s, female faculty comprised about one-quarter of my department, and gender issues came up frequently, and sometimes contentiously, in discussion about the curriculum, hirings, and occasionally about the conduct of meetings.\u00a0 With the sudden rise to prominence of feminist criticism and the institutional and societal concern with equity in the workplace, it was clear that a revolution was in progress.\u00a0 Things have changed so much since those days that it is hard to realize that they were only twenty years ago.\u00a0 In the last five years, my department (of nineteen full-time members) has hired ten new tenure-track faculty.\u00a0 That is in itself a remarkable fact, but it is also noteworthy that the gender ratio of those appointments is 3 men to 7 women.\u00a0 This was not the result of any conscious policy, but rather is a reflection of the feminization of English studies.\u00a0 As another example of this, I noticed that at several sessions at this year\u2019s Congress<\/a> that the graduate students and junior faculty in the room were almost entirely female.<\/p>\n

This personal reminiscing is by way of a historical preamble to a passage from Northrop Frye\u2019s Selected Letters<\/em> which provides an excellent illustration of the way things were before the feminist revolution.\u00a0 Frye is writing to Robert Heilman, chair of English at the University of Washington in 1951:<\/p>\n

Dear Robert,<\/p>\n

Thanks very much for your letter.\u00a0 If there weren\u2019t a catch, I could recommend the best teacher of Middle English that you or any other English department is ever likely to get.\u00a0 She\u2019s a wonderful girl named Margaret Stobie, now at Winnipeg, Manitoba, Ph.D., author of a Middle English grammar and of several articles ranging from scholarly notes in PMLA to studies in the metre of Hopkins.\u00a0 Excellent teacher.\u00a0 It\u2019s no doubt irrelevant to add that she\u2019s a great pleasure to look at.\u00a0 The catch is her husband Bill, a most agreeable and likeable chap, will get along in any society, probably do a good teaching job with elementary composition classes, but no scholarship and little promise of any.\u00a0 The conventions of modern society don\u2019t permit the woman to do the job and the man to wash the dishes, which is what\u2019s appropriate here: Bill would make an excellent faculty wife.\u00a0 They\u2019ve had a lot of jobs because people hire Bill to get Peg, and then a new administration comes in that fires all married women, which is why she\u2019s unemployed now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Margaret Roseborough Stobie, who was a friend of Frye from graduate school days, died in 1990.\u00a0 Those who want to see more details about her academic career can find information here<\/a> on the University of Manitoba Archives website; it is interesting to note that she was \u201cthe first woman appointed to the academic panel of the Canada Council.\u201d\u00a0 In Frye\u2019s comments to Heilman he clearly recognizes that the \u201cconventions of modern society\u201d are at odds with what is obviously appropriate and desirable, which is that Margaret Stobie should be hired for her own merit.\u00a0 Superficially, by today\u2019s standards, his letter might be considered a bit condescendingly sexist, but in the context of the time and the situation, I think it reveals his essential liberalism.<\/p>\n

Two additional comments: 1. An anecdote in John Ayre\u2019s biography of Frye indicates that Stobie was skeptical of Frye\u2019s archetypal method of criticism.\u00a0 2. William Stobie died in 2007, leaving the couple\u2019s fortune of $7 million to the University of Manitoba<\/a>, where they finished their teaching careers.\u00a0 The money, the largest bequest ever received by the university, is specifically designated for the purchase of books in the literary humanities.\u00a0 An article<\/a> in the National Post observes that \u201cThe Stobies donated the money without asking that their name be placed on any building on campus \u2013 a rare move for anyone giving a multimillion-dollar gift.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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