{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/qr4nk36x4z/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Spacks, Patricia Meyer, 2007 November 30"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["Spacks, Patricia Meyer, 2007 November 30. Oral Histories Documenting Yale University Women (RU 1051). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.\n\n https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/2559."]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/archival_objects/801934"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library."]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["mssa.ru.1051 (EAD ID)","RU 1051 (Call Number)","ru_1051_2012-a-054_spacks_patricia_meyer_audiorecording.mp3 (Digital Object ID)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2007 November 30 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["The materials are open for research. (Accessrestrict)","Patricia Meyer Spacks was born November 17, 1929, in San Francisco, California, and grew up mostly in Florida.  She went to college at the age of fifteen graduating summa cum laude from Rollins College in 1949. After obtaining a Masters in 1950 from Yale, she went to the University of California at Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in English Literature in 1955.  From 1954-1956 Spacks was an instructor at Indiana University, where she met her husband.  She followed him first to Cambridge, England, and then to the University of Florida, where she found work as an instructor in English, 1958-1959.  Her daughter was born there.  During this time, with the encouragement of Aubrey L. Williams, she wrote her first book, The Varied God.   Patricia Spacks moved with her family to Wellesley College in 1959 when she was hired first as an instructor, then as Assistant and Associate Professor. Awarded tenure early, she remained at Wellesley until 1979, serving as Chair of the English Department from 1968-1971.  Recruited to Yale in 1979, Spacks served as the first female Chair in English from 1981-1985.  She was appointed Neil Gray Jr. Professor of English in 1989.  She left Yale in 1989, to become the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where she served as Chair from 1991-1997.  Patricia Spacks retired in 2005. \n\nPatricia Spacks has been the recipient of many honors and distinctions for her research and for services to her subject, including the Outstanding Faculty of Virginia Award, 1995; the Francis Andrew March Award, 1996; and an honorary Phi Beta Kappa, 1998. In 2000 she was elected the first Scholar in Residence in the Humanities at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She has been president of the Modern Languages Association, 1994, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001-2006.  In addition Spacks has served on, amongst others, the boards of the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Humanities Center.\n\nPatricia Spacks is the author of many books and articles, including The Varied God (University of California Press, 1959); The Female Imagination (Knopf, 1975); The Adolescent Idea: Myths of Youth and the Adult Imagination (Basic Books, 1981); Gossip (Knopf, 1985); Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1995); Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self (University of Chicago Press, 2003); and Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (Yale University Press, 2006). (Bioghist)","Patricia Spacks talks about her background and upbringing, in particular her relationship with her father set within the context of expectations for young women of the period.  She gives a lively account of the different intellectual, social and emotional challenges of her student years at Rollins College, Yale University, and the University of California at Berkeley.  She recalls those teachers, like Bertrand Bronson at Berkeley, who encouraged her intellectual development.  Throughout the interview Spacks describes the pleasures and challenges of teaching in both mixed and single-sex environments.  She recounts her experiences as a young mother when she was teaching at the University of Florida and Wellesley College.  Spacks details her awakening to feminism and in particular how she came to write The Female Imagination.  Her experience of Yale culture, especially in the context of being the first female Chair of the Department of English, is described at length, along with the ways in which she believes her gender influenced both how she was expected to do the job and how she actually did it.  The challenges of chairing the English Department, the difficulties of the tenure system for both male and female junior faculty, and the best means of nurturing women (particularly women graduate students) at that time are all addressed. Spacks explains why she left Yale and what she brought from her Yale experience to her work at the University of Virginia.  In the last part of the interview she reflects on her work as president of the Modern Languages Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the challenges of being a public intellectual and defender of the humanities in contemporary America, and the future of the academic profession and the position of women within it. (Scope and Content Note)","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026amp;f8e0bd12-015a-462b-be2a-e8362e75312b (Other Finding Aid Note)","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software. (Processinfo)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["The materials are open for research.","Patricia Meyer Spacks was born November 17, 1929, in San Francisco, California, and grew up mostly in Florida.  She went to college at the age of fifteen graduating \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003esumma cum laude\u003c/title\u003e from Rollins College in 1949. After obtaining a Masters in 1950 from Yale, she went to the University of California at Berkeley where she earned her Ph.D. in English Literature in 1955.  From 1954-1956 Spacks was an instructor at Indiana University, where she met her husband.  She followed him first to Cambridge, England, and then to the University of Florida, where she found work as an instructor in English, 1958-1959.  Her daughter was born there.  During this time, with the encouragement of Aubrey L. Williams, she wrote her first book, \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eThe Varied God\u003c/title\u003e.   Patricia Spacks moved with her family to Wellesley College in 1959 when she was hired first as an instructor, then as Assistant and Associate Professor. Awarded tenure early, she remained at Wellesley until 1979, serving as Chair of the English Department from 1968-1971.  Recruited to Yale in 1979, Spacks served as the first female Chair in English from 1981-1985.  She was appointed Neil Gray Jr. Professor of English in 1989.  She left Yale in 1989, to become the Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where she served as Chair from 1991-1997.  Patricia Spacks retired in 2005. \n\nPatricia Spacks has been the recipient of many honors and distinctions for her research and for services to her subject, including the Outstanding Faculty of Virginia Award, 1995; the Francis Andrew March Award, 1996; and an honorary Phi Beta Kappa, 1998. In 2000 she was elected the first Scholar in Residence in the Humanities at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She has been president of the Modern Languages Association, 1994, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001-2006.  In addition Spacks has served on, amongst others, the boards of the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Humanities Center.\n\nPatricia Spacks is the author of many books and articles, including \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eThe Varied God\u003c/title\u003e (University of California Press, 1959); \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eThe Female Imagination\u003c/title\u003e (Knopf, 1975); \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eThe Adolescent Idea: Myths of Youth and the Adult Imagination\u003c/title\u003e (Basic Books, 1981); \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eGossip\u003c/title\u003e (Knopf, 1985); \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eBoredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind\u003c/title\u003e (University of Chicago Press, 1995); \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003ePrivacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self\u003c/title\u003e (University of Chicago Press, 2003); and \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eNovel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction\u003c/title\u003e (Yale University Press, 2006).","Patricia Spacks talks about her background and upbringing, in particular her relationship with her father set within the context of expectations for young women of the period.  She gives a lively account of the different intellectual, social and emotional challenges of her student years at Rollins College, Yale University, and the University of California at Berkeley.  She recalls those teachers, like Bertrand Bronson at Berkeley, who encouraged her intellectual development.  Throughout the interview Spacks describes the pleasures and challenges of teaching in both mixed and single-sex environments.  She recounts her experiences as a young mother when she was teaching at the University of Florida and Wellesley College.  Spacks details her awakening to feminism and in particular how she came to write \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eThe Female Imagination\u003c/title\u003e.  Her experience of Yale culture, especially in the context of being the first female Chair of the Department of English, is described at length, along with the ways in which she believes her gender influenced both how she was expected to do the job and how she actually did it.  The challenges of chairing the English Department, the difficulties of the tenure system for both male and female junior faculty, and the best means of nurturing women (particularly women graduate students) at that time are all addressed. Spacks explains why she left Yale and what she brought from her Yale experience to her work at the University of Virginia.  In the last part of the interview she reflects on her work as president of the Modern Languages Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the challenges of being a public intellectual and defender of the humanities in contemporary America, and the future of the academic profession and the position of women within it.","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026f8e0bd12-015a-462b-be2a-e8362e75312b","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - open-uri20210827-32762-r77847.mpga"]},"duration":8749.37469,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-yalemssa.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/122/275/original/open-uri20210827-32762-r77847.mpga?1630069859","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":8749.37469,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["ru_1051_2012-a-054_spacks_patricia_meyer_edited_transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"SPACKS 113007\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: OK.  I think this is recording.  Um, and you've got a -- a nice strong voice, so I -- I think that should be fine.  Uh, just put it a little bit closer.  Um, all right.  Um, it's um -- it's the 30th of November 2007, and I'm uh, here with uh, Professor Patricia Meyer Spacks, uh, to do an interview for the Women's Oral History at Yale.  Uh, and my name is Florence [Minnis?].  Uh, Pat, uh, I was saying to you a moment ago that it would be terrific if we could start uh, just looking at your -- at your early life.  Um, I'm curious to know if you, for example, came from an academic, a professional background, uh, what kinds of influences and mentors -- and uh, how you developed your clearly lifelong fascination with -- with literature.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, my father never finished high school and my mother -- my mother finished high school and she had a -- a year of library science.  I -- I don't know where -- where she got that year of library science.  She never worked in a library, as far as I know.  She was from a farm in the Midwest.  And my father, who was 12 years older than she, was a Jewish, very urban type from Chicago.  And uh, he, although he didn't finish high school, was -- I don't know -- I don't know if it's fair to call him intellectual.  But he had an enormous interest in language.  He worked in advertising.  And uh, I don't know.  I -- I was born in 1929.  And that was --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Where were you born?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh, I was born in San Francisco, uh, moved to Chicago when I was about two and moved to Florida when I was about six and grew up mostly in Florida.  Um, you know, in that -- in that era it was not normal for girls to be expected to have careers.  There were two girls in my family.  I was the older -- older sister.  And it was always absolutely taken for granted that we would do something, that we would not stay in the small town in Florida where we grew up.  It was absolutely assumed.  And my father had literary fantasies about me.  He taught me to spell when I was a toddler.  And the first word he taught me to spell was \"mother.\"  The second word was \"professor\" and the third word (laughter) was \"dictionary.\"  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's wonderful.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- uh, he used to play word games with me.  Uh, I was tiny, tiny!  uh, word games about homonyms and antonyms.  And he just -- he just loved language.  And uh, as I would be around nine and ten, I started writing poetry.  He would -- every poem I wrote he would get published in some newspaper somewhere around the country.  So it was over-determined (laughs) that I was going to have some kind of a -- a literary career.  However, I was really uh, [potentially?] interested in mathematics, as a girl.  And I had an uncle who was an engineer.  And when he went into the Army, he left me his slide rule.  And I used to play with that -- that slide rule.  I uh -- and I really -- you know, it was a tossup uh, between mathematics and -- and uh, literature.  Uh, my mother wanted me to be an engineer.  And she died at 101, uh, 2-1/2 years ago, and -- well, she -- she was pretty much out of it, the last year, but until she was 100 she would still, at intervals, say she wished I'd been an engineer.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: She's never -- never reconciled to what I did.  But uh, my father gave me a typewriter for my tenth birthday, on condition that I learn to touch-type, something he'd never learned to do.  And then he took me on a trip to the New York World's Fair, by myself -- and just him and -- and me, uh, on condition that I write an account of the trip and send it to Seventeen magazine and try to get it published.  They did not publish it.  But I did -- I did write it.  So uh, when I went off to college, at the age of 15 --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=0.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Why so early?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, because they didn't know what to do with bright --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- bright kids.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So wha--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: [It's like a?] --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- did you go to just a regular high school?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I we-- I went to a small-town school.  And they just kept skipping -- you know, skipping me grades.  And -- and for this reason, partly, although no doubt partly personality, I was fairly solitary.  Because I kept, you know, changing groups.  And uh, in -- in small Southern towns, the groups are very -- are very solid.  I -- I wasn't unhappy.  But I was very uh -- I spent my time reading and uh, playing mathematical games.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh, did -- um, especially when you get into your teenage years, there are a lot of pressures on girls.  I think -- I mean, I think that's kind of universal.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Um did you find that uh, you were -- uh, you felt isolated, at that point, because you were different from other girls?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, uh, you know, I don't have -- I don't have any uh, very painful uh, memories.  Uh, I was too young.  I mean, I wasn't a socially mature 15.  I was -- I was really a young 15, socially.  Uh, I had a boyfriend and I went to the prom.  I mean, you know, I wasn't -- but I was, again, in a small -- small town in the South -- I was -- I was seen as very, very strange.  I mean, you know, I was the smartest one.  And uh, that wasn't a comfortable position for a girl.  I was eager to get to college and I was indeed very happy in college.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Did uh -- were there any teachers at school who -- who were very supportive of -- of you wanting to -- to use your mind, in the way that you did?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh there was an English teacher in the seventh grade, I remember, who, uh -- all -- all my teachers -- I mean, you know, (laughs) I was a bright kid, so -- so they all uh, liked me.  But there wasn't anybody who was -- who was particularly supporting.  In college there was.  But that's a --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Why did you choo-- uh, choose Rollins?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh I got a full scholarship.  And this was a significant thing for -- for my family.  And also, you know, I was so young.  They didn't want me to go --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- far away from home.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was only 40 miles away from --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did um -- do you think that one of the things that maybe uh, drove your parents, apart from --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- perhaps wanting to fulfill their own kinds of uh, dreams, was -- was the fact that it was during the Depression?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That -- that could be.  Uh, but, you know, there was no pressure to make money.  It was just assumed that we'd --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- do something.  Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you have dreams that were separate from your parents'?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I don't -- I don't recall that I had any dreams for myself.  Uh, you know, I just lived in books.  (laughs)  So, I mean, it was just one -- one dream after another, in -- in that sense.  But uh, I had no -- well, when I went to college, uh, I was planning to major in Spanish.  And uh, my plan was that after I graduated I would open an advertising agency with my father in South America.  Where that (laughs) idea came from, I don't know.  But I remember talking about it with him and he was perfectly agreeable to --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- to this idea.  It's a -- it's a very bizarre idea, because, if there is one thing I have no aptitude for, it's languages.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I mean, I learn languages very quickly, you know, to read -- read them but I have no ear at all!  So although I read several languages, I can't speak any language, except English.  And uh -- but I had -- I had the notion that what you were supposed to major in was something that made you work hard.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: You know, it never occurred to me to major in English, because that's what you do for fun.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right!\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Yeah.  And I suppose, also, having a language, it also makes you employable.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh so uh -- but when did you discover that really English was what you wanted to do?\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=300.0,588.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: Well, I -- I know a lot of women tell this kind of story, (laughs) but it's the only story I can -- I can tell.  I was very good at ev-- at everything, at every course I took.  Rollins had no uh, requirements.  So it was a kind of do-it-yourself curriculum.  Um, I was very interested in mathematics and uh, interested in philosophy and particularly wanted to study logic.  And my advisor, the advisor that was assigned to me, said, \"You're quite logical enough already.  There's no reason for you to study logic.\"  He allowed me to take a mathematics course.  And this was one of the few experiences I ever had of, you know, really being discriminated against as a woman.  I think the teacher was a very, very bad teacher.  As far -- uh, if I haven't made this up, what he did was he gave us a book.  He sat in the center of the classroom.  Our assignment was to go through the book.  We could come to him if we had any problems.  And when we finished the book, the course was over.  And uh, I was full of high ambitions.  And he said, on the first day, that there were two mathematical impossibles.  Uh, I can't remember one of them but the other one was diagramming the square root of minus one.  And I went to work on that problem.  And I thought that I had solved the problem.  And so I went to him and said, \"I figured out a way to\" -- he wouldn't even look at it.  Uh, he just had no interest at all.  And so I never took any -- any more math.  That was the end of (laughs) my mathematical career.  Not that I have any regrets but, you know, it's a little too bad.  I would have -- I would have liked to go farther in -- in math.  But every teacher aside (laughs) -- aside from him -- every course I took, the teacher would say, \"You should go on in this.  You should make a profession of this.\"  The teacher I had the biggest crush on was my freshman English teacher, whose picture is in -- in the bathroom.  And he said I should go to graduate school.  I didn't know what graduate school was.  He said I should go to Yale.  I (laughs) applied to Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Why -- why Yale?  Because it was the best?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, that's -- that was his view.  Uh, he, himself, hadn't gone to -- to Yale.  I don't know -- I can't remember.  He'd gone to Columbia, I think.  Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think he recognized how difficult it would be, as -- well, as a younger grad student and also as a woman?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  I don't think he uh -- he gave it a moment's thought.  Uh, and so my parents were a little bemused by this, but -- but no -- you know, no opposition.  I had a fellowship.  It didn't -- it didn't pay my full expenses.  And they --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because you -- you came up when you were 19?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  That's very young.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Well, it was -- it was terribly (laughs) young for Yale Graduate School.  But uh, I certainly learned a lot in that year.  It was not -- not a pleasant year, really.  I did learn a lot.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What uh -- what was it that --?  I mean, uh, let's try to kind of take you back to -- what was it, 1959, when you -- was it nineteen-fifty--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Forty-nine.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: 1949.  I'm sorry.  Uh, I've lost a decade.  Um, because Yale would have been expanding again after the war.  Uh, and there can't have been many female graduate students anywhere.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh very few.  I think --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh I just wonder what -- can you -- if you cast your mind back, what impression it was, coming up from the South.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it was uh -- it was very, very hard to be a -- a woman.  Uh, I think there were -- uh, the figure I have in my head is 100.  I think there were 100 women in the -- in the university, in the -- the graduate school.  And, you know, I probably was still socially retarded.  And I wasn't sexy, and -- and so on.  And the alternative seemed to be either you were, you know, a -- uh, a sex object or you were absolutely invisible.  And I was invisible.  And all these men would open doors for me.  And it felt -- I mean, I was not very conscious of these issues but it felt very clear to me that they didn't even see me, that there was -- there was just some switch that got turned on and they opened the door.  And, you know, um, I didn't make -- I didn't make any friends.  There was one man, uh, from Rollins, a philosophy major, and he was a friend I came with and kept.  And he was sort of what passed for a boyfriend.  I mean, we -- we did things together.  It wasn't really a romantic relationship.  Uh, and I lived at 370 Temple Street, which was at that time a um, dormitory for graduate women.  And I was on friendly terms with other women.  But I can't remember any of their names.  I mean, it wasn't a very -- very deep relationship.  And uh, I found the courses --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=588.0,943.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Uh I take it you were -- these were all English courses you were taking?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was it -- yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh oh, although, (laughs) actually, I audited a course in symbolic logic.  I finally --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- finally got that logic course --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- which I enjoyed very, very much.  So that was -- that was really fun.  Uh, the c-- the courses were -- were challenging but I felt, you know, very well -- well prepared.  Um, all my classmates came from fancy schools in the Northeast but I seemed to have a very -- very solid background.  I didn't feel uh, under-prepared at all.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How many women were in the English class at that time?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I don't remember.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Not many?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh very few.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Very few.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Completely different from today.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- yes.  Yeah.  Yes.  I think I told you, over the phone, that I'm giving a talk at Yale in a couple weeks uh, about the state of the humanities, based on statistics.  And uh, it's very striking, the -- in the statistics now, something like 60% of PhDs in the humanities overall uh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think that's something I'd really like to talk you about at the end.  Because uh, I think -- I suppose one could call it maybe the feminization of the academy.  I think it does have interesting repercussions.  Uh, I'd love to hear uh, what you have to say about that.  Um, so Yale, the first time round, was a -- was a lonely --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was very lonely.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- social experience.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And I became --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- I became --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- ill, uh, very ill, before Christmas.  I was in the Yale infirmary.  And they told me I had leukemia.  And I can remember lying in bed in the infirmary and boys going by in the corridors and peering in, because I was the only girl in the infirmary.  And this was a -- and I was terrified, of -- of course.  And they finally decided -- I guess they decided before I left there that it wasn't leukemia but uh, mononucleosis, which in those days was not so well known as -- as it is now.  But they -- they said I couldn't uh, go back to school; I had to go home and recuperate.  And my parents were then living outside Chicago.  It was the first time uh, I was ever on an airplane.  And I went -- I went back there.  And I was out for six weeks.  And when I came back, nobody would let me see their class notes from the -- the time I'd been gone.  That stayed in my mind, you know, for years and years and years, as my image of Yale.  That was --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you get any support from -- from your teachers?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Not really.  Not really.  No, it was -- it was very bad.  And uh, I --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you not think of giving up?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Don't recall that (laughs) I did.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I don't know -- I don't know why.  But I did, uh, decide to leave Yale, although that wasn't the reason.  The reaso-- the reason was that I couldn't teach.  I couldn't be a teaching assistant.  A--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What -- what do you mean you --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: They wouldn't let women be teaching -- teaching assistants.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: They -- and you knew that for a fact?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, that -- uh, that was -- it was a rule.  And uh, I didn't know whether I was able to teach.  I had a terrible lisp.  And I was very, very shy.  And so I had the idea of going to Berkeley for a year, as a -- and with a TA, to see if I could teach and if -- if I liked to.  And then I expected to come back to uh, Yale.  But in fact, uh, I loved Berkeley and --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Why did you choose Berkeley?  Because it was so different from Yale?\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=943.0,1198.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: Uh you know, I was still so ignorant, I didn't know.  (laughs)  I didn't know what was different from -- what -- they must have advertised, offering teaching assistants -- they -- uh, they wanted people from the East Coast very much.  They were just building uh, the university.  So I came with an MA from Yale.  That was -- that was a high-prestige position, in -- in those days.  And, you know, it -- it was very nice there.  There were teachers who were -- were supportive.  Uh, I found a community.  There weren't a lot of women their either.  But uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: W-- te-- uh, it'd be -- uh, I'd kind of like to -- to hear a little bit more about how different Berkeley was.  Because, again, you were still very young, compared to probably your peers.  Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes, although it didn't -- it didn't feel so --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It didn't feel that way?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- uh, so young there.  I felt -- I felt sort of (laughs) normal there.  I didn't -- I never felt normal at Yale, certainly.  But uh, I felt that I just fit into some community.  It wasn't really entirely an academic community.  I -- I can't remember how I met people who weren't academics but I did.  And uh, I -- I had a serious boyfriend for uh, I guess, three years.  He was a safety engineer.  He was six years older than -- than I.  But, you know, he was out in the world.  And his friends were out in the world.  And it was -- it seemed much more like real life.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  And uh, so you went there uh, with an MA, to be a TA -- uh, with the intention of also doing a PhD wile you were there?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  So who was your supervisor?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh Bud Bronson -- Bertrand Bronson, uh, who was wonderful.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, you -- uh, I do uh -- I do remember that uh -- I think it was the first -- your first book was dedicated to him?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That right?  Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, maybe it was the second uh, [work?] --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Or maybe it was the second --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- [had gone?].\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- The Varied God.  Yeah, The Varied God.  Uh, I'll just look at --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- my notes here.  Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, that was dedicated to him?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Because that was the first one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, yes.  Was that --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, it is your first, wasn't it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's about Thomson, isn't it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Uh, yes, it's uh -- yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh!  I didn't --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I've actually written it down here.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I didn't remember that one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  \"-- who's been the guide [and also?] friend of this book.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, he certainly was.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What -- wha-- he was the friend of the book but was he a friend to you?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes, he was.  He was a very -- I mean, uh, it's still mysterious to me, after all these years.  It moves me, actually.  I feel tears in my eyes.  Because he wa-- he was a very, very austere man, a famously forbidding man.  I can't think of anyone at Yale equivalent to him in just sternness.  And for some reason, he took to me in a really fatherly way.  And uh, he invited me -- uh, let's -- and this would be '50, '51.  He invited me over to his house, not as part of uh, the class, just invited me over.  He gave me my first martini.  And he had a nephew who was in the Navy and who was there on leave and I'd been invited to meet the nephew.  And uh, he was just wonderful to me.  He was just wonderful.  And very -- uh, he gave me an A+ in -- in his seminar.  I was absolutely astonished by -- by this.  I never (laughs) could see what -- what he saw in me, exactly.  But he, you know --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: He clearly saw something.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh he clearly saw something.  And he wrote me -- when I published The Female Imagination -- that was '73, something like that -- um, I sent him a copy.  And I don't know if you've seen the hardbound copy of The Female Imagination.  It had a --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think I've only seen a softbound.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- wonderful picture of me on the -- on the uh, back cover.  Uh, and he wrote me a letter about the picture and about the book and saying how fondly he remembered me and so on.  I mean, it wa-- it was wonderful.  It was a -- it was a very, very important relationship to me.  And uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, they do say that everybody just needs one great teacher --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh well --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- and that sets you up for life.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And that's why the 18th century --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- you know, I took (laughs) this 18th century course with him.  I fell in love with him.  Although I didn't have the kind of crush on him that I did on -- on -- you know, I had a fuller emotional life by -- by that time.  But I -- I was very, very fond of him uh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: We-- you -- you didn't marry your safety engineer?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  He married my best friend.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs) uh, so uh, by the time you left Berkeley, uh, were you married?\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=1198.0,1500.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No.  You were --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I uh -- I met my husband at Indiana.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Eh right.  Yeah.  Uh, we've talked about um, Professor Bronson.  Was there anyone else in Berkeley that seemed to make it altogether a more interesting place?  Uh, what -- it seems to me what you're saying to me is that it was uh, intellectually fulfilling in a way that Yale was also intellectually fulfilling --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- but it was also emotionally --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- fulfilling.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And that, emotionally, had to do with friends and with, you know, going to the city and uh -- and it may have just had to do with my being a little older.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I mean, (laughs) you know, it seems to me that my life there started to be the life of a young adult --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- whereas in -- in Yale I don't know what it was but it wasn't that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Of course, uh, I know that uh, what I've read about Yale, uh, right up -- and beyond the -- it going coed in -- in '69, was that uh, the Yale undergraduates tended to look elsewhere for their girlfriends.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh so they had the [mix weeks?] at weekends and, you know, the girls from Vassar -- I mean, the -- you -- you'd see the -- the New Yorker cartoons --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- about it and everything else.  But that seems to have been the -- mostly the case, that any women that were on campus were uh, kind of not -- not on --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- on their radar at all.  Uh, so it -- it must have been very, very difficult for women.  Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it was certainly -- it certainly still lives in my mind as arguably the most miserable year of my life.  I mean, one uh -- one of two miserable years.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But uh -- and if anyone had -- had told me -- and when my daughter was applying to -- to college -- this -- this was before I we-- I went back.  Uh, she was extremely independent about -- about applying for college.  I don't know if you've come to know the American ritual of taking your child around to various colleges.  She wouldn't have any of that.  Whatever she did, she was uh, going to do by herself.  She wanted no advice from her parents.  And we're both academics.  Uh, and she went to Yale for a weekend and she came back and said that she was applying to Yale and only to Yale.  And, of course, Yale is not all that easy to -- to get into.  And uh, they didn't have early decision in those -- those years.  And it was crazy for her to apply only to Yale.  She said, if she didn't get into Yale, she didn't want to go to college.  And I just (laughs) could not believe that my daughter wanted only to -- to go to Yale.  Now, somebody -- you know, things have changed at Yale.  Because the Director of -- of Admissions called her up before Christmas and said that her essay was the best essay he'd every seen and she could count on being admitted to Yale.  So she knew, you know, in advance, a great relief to all of us, a great kindness on -- on his part.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When did she go to Yale?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh let's see.  She graduated -- she graduated in 1980.  I came in 1979.  So --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you just overlapped.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- I was there for her --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- senior year.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  So -- so she really was applying before you went back.  So you didn't --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So the only memory you had then was -- was this pretty miserable one?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.  Oh, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Well, I can understand --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- I think, (laughs) the way you might have been feeling about that.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And she had some trouble, at the -- at the beginning, at Yale, because, I mean, she was -- uh, you know, she was not sure what she was going to major in.  And one of the things she thought of was literature.  And uh, she's also interested in history.  And she kept encountering teachers -- she wrote a uh, paper for Jonathan Spence on some Chinese woman and he said, \"Oh, well, of course.  You're Patricia Spacks' daughter.\"  And in the literature major everybody said, \"Oh, you're” -- well, when I got to Yale, everybody I met said, \"Oh, you're Judith's mother.\"\r\n(laughter)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: She sounds as if she's a chip off the old block.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  Um, when you were uh, a graduate student uh, and TA, did you discover you enjoyed teaching?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.  I enjoyed teaching.  I lost the lisp as soon as I got in the classroom.  Uh, and then -- then I just lost it generally.  It comes back if I'm very tickled or -- or very excited.  But basically it just disappeared.  And uh, my shyness disappeared in the classroom too.  It was just -- just miraculous.  You know.  Now I feel that - that my personality in the classroom and outside are related to one another but then it was just some miracle that took -- took place.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=1500.0,1814.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: So obviously, just a desire to communicate --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I guess.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- overwhelmed all --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I guess, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- the other things that uh, were -- were there.  That's very interesting.  Because most women often -- uh, I shouldn't say most.  But women I've talked to often say that -- uh, that it was very difficult for them to be confident in the classroom, especially if there were a lot of stu-- uh, a lot of male students --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- and it was very difficult to uh, assert themselves.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I didn't have any trouble, no trouble at all.  Uh, there were plenty of male -- male students, certainly, and I was very young.  But it just worked.  I'm very grateful.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I must tell you about my first -- actually, I guess it's the only job interview I've ever had.  Uh, in those days, the chairs of departments would go out to the universities.  And the chair from Indiana came out to uh, Berkeley.  And I was told that I was to go and talk to him.  And I said I wasn't interested in Indiana.  I wanted to stay in California.  I was expecting to marry my safety engineer.  And I would have taught anyplace in California.  They said, \"You go and talk to him.\"  So I was ushered into a little room and I introduced myself.  And I said, \"Mr. [Wirk?], I should tell you at the beginning uh, I'm really not interested in teaching at Indiana.\"  And said, \"That's fine, because we're not interested in hiring women.\"  And so (laughs) we had a pleasant conversation.  I can't remember what it -- what it was about.  And after he'd gone on for a while, he said, \"Well, what are your plans for writing after your dissertation?\"  And I said, \"I don't think I'll ever write anything again after my -- my dissertation.\"  And he looked at me for a long time and he laughed and he said, \"You know, I think you're wrong.\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And he offered me the job.  And it was a very good job in those days.  And, you know, the Placement Office, I mean, they really wanted to place their people around the country.  They wouldn't give me any help to stay in California.  And so off I -- off I went to Indiana, where indeed they had no women on the faculty.  Uh, there was a woman in folklore.  Oh, no, there was one woman, Mary [Gaphid?], on the faculty.  And that was it.  And me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And -- and despite knowing that they really didn't want to have women on the faculty --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- did it -- was it uh, difficult for you to -- to kind of integrate into it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  (laughs)  Everybody was very nice to me.  Uh, I uh -- I acquired a -- a boyfriend rather fast, whom I married.  He was a graduate student.  And that uh -- that gave me entrée into that world too, which was really more appropriate, you know, because I was -- uh, I wasn't 25 yet.  Uh, but, you know, that was fine socially.\r\n(cat sound)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Hmm!  Is the cat all right?  Just how he --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: He doe-- she does that sometimes.  I don't know what it is.  She doesn't bring up anything --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- thank goodness, but --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Hmm.  Hmm.  But a bit disconcerting to hear her there --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: [Yeah?].\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- in the corner.  Um, so you -- you stayed at Indiana, then, for a couple of years?  And was that as uh, an assistant professor?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh yeah.  Um, did --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Was I an assistant professor?  Or was I an instructor?  I think I was an instructor.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Instructor?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  So uh, did you, then, see that your future was going to be in Indiana, especially if you were going to get married?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh no.  I uh -- I knew I was not going to stay in Indiana.  And Barry, uh, he liked it better -- better than I did but he was perfectly willing to -- to go elsewhere.  He didn't have a PhD.  Uh, he got a Fulbright to Cambridge, England, and that's where we left for.  And we could have -- could have gone back but uh, I very much didn't want to go back.  And so we applied for jobs together, from England.  But I got pregnant in England.  And uh, nobody -- nobody would hire the uh, two of us.  Uh, I got an offer from the University of North Dakota.  And then, when we discovered I was pregnant, we decided that Barry better -- better get a job.  And he got a job at the University of Florida, teaching creative writing.  Uh, he was a poet and fiction writer.  And so we went to Florida.  And the chair of the department called me up and asked if I'd like to teach uh, too.  And I said, \"Oh, yes.  I'm -- I'm pregnant but my baby will be born between semesters,\" I said.  And she was.  And he said, \"Oh, well, we couldn't have you teaching if you're pregnant.  The boys wouldn't like it.\"\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=1814.0,2137.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Really?  What about the girls?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: (laughs) I guess they weren't worried about the girls.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: The boys wouldn't like it.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: The boys wouldn't like it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you didn't get to teach.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Not -- uh, not that -- that first year.  The next year, I taught.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So they took you on, once -- once your daughter was born?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Uh, but actually, that was really the beginning of my career.  I didn't have uh, any particular intention of writing anything.  Uh, and we came to this new community.  Nobody would talk to me about anything but babies.  Drove me crazy, really.  And I was (laughs) -- I was beside myself.  I just -- I didn't know what to do with myself.  And Barry said -- Barry came home with an uh, advertisement from the press.  Uh, they were uh, starting a monograph series.  And he said, \"You should write a monograph.\"  A hundred page, [uh, long?].  Uh, and I said, \"I don't have anything to write about.\"  And he said, you know, picking it out of the ether, \"Write -- write a monograph about the supernatural in 18th century poetry.\"  And I said, \"OK.\"  And I did.  Um, and uh, you know, it kept -- it kept me sane.  It really did.  And then --  (laughs) Well, maybe -- maybe this is the part I'm not going to want to put open to the public.  Uh, I got a phone call one day from uh, Aubrey Williams, who had just come back to -- to Florida.  Does that name mean anything to you?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No, it doesn't.  No.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: He uh -- he had, at that time -- he was a student of Maynard Mack's at Yale.  And uh, he uh, taught at Yale, was offered tenure at Yale, and uh, turned it down, because -- he had six children.  He wanted to raise them in Florida, which is where -- where he had uh, grown -- grown up.  I think he was the first person ever to refuse tenure uh, at Yale.  Uh, he had, at that time, written a wonderful book, uh, [The Dunciad].  And uh, I hadn't met him but I admired the book very much.  Uh, he called me up and said that he had been asked by the press to read this monograph and uh, that he was not going to recommend it for publication but that he'd like to talk to me uh.  So we met in the student union.  And he said, \"This isn't a monograph.  It should be a book.\"  And he explained to me how it should be -- be a book.  And I thought he was wonderful.  Uh, I was very, very, very grateful to him.  He said, \"You shouldn't make such a fuss.  We're colleagues and colleagues help each -- help each other.\"  He said, \"You've written a book.  I've written a -- written a book.  This is not a big deal.\"  So uh, I turned it into a book.  It was promptly accepted by Harvard University Press.  We were living out in the country, out in Sherburne, at that time.  We came home late at night, after a dinner party, and reached into the mailbox and here was this letter.  And I took it out.  Harvard was accepting the book.  I burst into tears --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- and said, \"Do you think they know what they're doing?\"  But -- and the part -- the part that may be (laughs) unprintable -- I'll have to think about it -- is that uh, I was divorced in 1978 and, in nineteen-- well, I -- I should say that, uh, while we were still in Florida, and the -- the next year, at a dinner party, I -- I mean, uh, I still blush over this.  I should not have -- have said this.  In my husband's presence I said that Aubrey Williams was the most attractive man I'd ever seen.  Uh, my husband was offended.  And I didn't blame him.  Uh, in 1980, our paths crossed again.  I mean, we had had various professional contacts in the years between.  And we began a love affair, which has lasted to this day.  He is now very ill, uh, alas.  But it all (laughs) started with the uh --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=2137.0,2430.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: With the supernatural?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, the supernatural.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's an amazing story.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So y-- it's interesting the way you seem almost surprised that your work's acceptable.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, well, uh, [you know?], I mean, I still -- I still am a little -- little surprised uh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because, I mean, you've won so many prizes and plaudits and -- and everything.  And yet -- and yet you're surprised.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, yeah, (laughs) I am.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: [I am?].\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I wonder if that's a female trait.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Probably.  Uh, well, I --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What -- your parents -- your parents are still living, at this time, and you -- when you uh, published your first book and then the supernatural.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes.  Uh, my father was -- was still alive.  My father -- my father was thrilled that I married a -- a real writer.  You know, Barry got money for -- uh, for his.  Which, I never -- never got any money for -- for my books.  But my father was still alive when The Female Imagination was accepted by Knopf and I got an advance of, I think, $1,000, I think.  I think that's right.  He was so thrilled.  That was just -- that was really wonderful.  Yes, he was -- uh, he took -- took great delight in -- in um -- my mother uh, never saw the point of it.  And uh, I always sent my parents copies of my books.  And after my father -- father died, my mother said, \"There's no point in sending me those books.  I can't read them.\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What did your sister do?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it's very hard to describe.  She is uh -- she's very smart but she's not academic smart at all.  I don't think she owns a book.  She -- she became a consultant -- she worked for the government mostly.  And what she did was she evaluated uh, job training programs.  And then sh-- and she was apparently very, very good at this.  And then she started -- she lived with a man she never m-- never married.  Uh, she lived with a man for uh, about 30 years.  And they stared an antique business uh, on weekends, in Houston, which is where she still lives.  And she is still running that.  And he -- because he died, you know.  He was a uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you're very different.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Very different.  And we had -- you know, because I kept skipping grades, I -- uh, we're only 2-1/2 years apart in age but we were five years apart in -- in school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And we had no use for each other as kids.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But now we're very close.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I've forgotten where we've got to.  I think we've got to the supernatural.  You're in Florida.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And uh, you've um, written about the supernatural.  So that was book was published.  When was that published?  Can you recall?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It might have been mid-'50s?  A little bit later than that.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.  It would be -- it would be probably around 1960 --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: '62?  '62.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- the early '60s.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh when you were -- you were doing some teaching.  You weren't -- were -- you weren't in a -- in a tenure track position, were you?  Were you --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: At Florida?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was -- it was just the one year.  I taught uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- four sections of Introductory Humanities and one section of Remedial Composition --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- a semester.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It's five courses a semester.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Good.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh no, I was -- I was an instructor there.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And then uh, I applied for the job at Wellesley by mail -- and got --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- the job at Wellesley (laughs) by return mail -- or telegram.  I guess they sent me a telegram.  No interview.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No interview!\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh those were the days.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, I never had another interview --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- after the interview with [Degs?] Wirk.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Goodness!  Yeah.  And did Barry stay in Florida?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, no.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, he came.  The first year, uh, he didn't have a job and he basically took care of the baby and wrote.  You know, he was publishing commercial uh, stuff, in magazines.  Then he got a job at MIT, where he taught for the rest of the --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=2430.0,2703.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- time we were together, I mean, almost 20 years.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  So what was -- what was it like to come back up to the East Coast?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It wasn't back.  I'd never been on the East Coast for.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Of course you hadn't.  Because it was Midwest to --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- Florida, r-- yes, of course.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was absolutely wonderful.  I was just beside myself with joy the moment I came to Boston.  I just loved it!  And I still have the -- the feeling about -- well, about Cambridge, particularly, but about all of Greater Boston, that this is a place where I walk down the street and it's populated by people like me.  And I don't know exactly what I mean by that, because I've only lived in academic communities, so, in a sense they're all populated by people like me, but not like Cambridge.  (laughs)  I mean, it's -- I just really feel as though I belong here.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And I did from the beginning.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Um, when you came to Wellesley, of course, it -- it was very much still a women's college?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it still is.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It still is.  But it must have had a -- a very distinct --?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, in -- yes.  It was, uh -- it was very -- very, very different.  In the first place, as I said earlier, these uh, women from a previous generation were -- were still there, not many of them, but there were two of them in the English -- English Department, serious scholars, uh, who had never married, who didn't cook, uh, who believed that domesticity was a distraction from everything else, very good in the classroom, very devoted to their students, very smart.  I mean, they were -- they were wonderful.  They were very, very impressive -- and bewildered by -- by me.  Now I wa-- there were, of course, many other women on the -- the faculty uh, but I was the first one in the English Department and possibly in the college -- I'm not sure about that -- uh, to have a baby.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And -- and uh, a husband, there were other married women.  I don't think there was anybody else with a baby.  Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you ever have any negative feeling from them because they were bewildered by the fact that you seemed to be having it all?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: You won't believe what I got negative feeling about.  It's about writing.  I was, by this -- you know, I was hooked, by -- by this time, on writing.  And I would sit -- I had a baby at home and so it wasn't a very good working place.  I had to come to my office.  And I would sit there and write.  And there was a lot of criticism about that.  If I was writing, I must not be spending enough time on my teaching.  Uh, it was not -- you know, they didn't care about publication.  They only --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- only cared about teaching.  So uh, I think it was the best that could have happened to me.  You know, writing became my -- my hidden vice.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And uh, there was no set -- I mean, it was just the opposite of the situation everybody's in now.  Uh, far from writing to achieve advancement or -- or anything, I was writing entirely for myself, entirely for pleasure.  And uh -- you know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I wonder if that was uh, something that was also in other colleges at that time.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think prob-- it probably was, in colleges, yeah --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm.  Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- I think.  But, you know, it was a real distinction between colleges and universities.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Now that distinction hardly exists.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, I mean, teaching you kind of do because you have to --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, no, you're --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- to get advan--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, it's still --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No, to get advan-- to get --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But --  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- advancement --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- I think.  Uh, there seems to be a priority on research and -- uh, or it's -- it's in a privileged position of some sort.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.  Uh, although now I think most places real-- I don't know anyplace where people are more devoted to teaching than Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That uh -- that was a big surprise to me.  And it still impresses me, particularly since I'm teaching at Harvard this semester --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- where that is not the case.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Yes.  Um, it's interesting that they -- you got the criticism because you were neglecting your teaching --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, uh, it was --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- because of writing.\r\n(laughter)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- I must be.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But uh, was there no sense that maybe you were also neglecting your child (laughs) --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- because you came in to write?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Nobody was worried about my child.  (laughter)  I mean, that was just too -- too bizarre.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And the fact that --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- you had a househusband must have been pretty peculiar as well.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes, I -- yes, I think I must have seemed very, very strange.  But --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What were your students like?\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=2703.0,2983.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, that was -- that was the other thing that uh, was very different.  They were debutantes.  And the classes would just empty out after -- after Thanksgiving.  Everyone went home to make -- make her debut.  Now that only lasted another year or so.  /I came in '59.  And by '61 that was -- that was over.  But I got in on the last of that.  And I was -- (laughs) I was really befuddled.  I mean, I wasn't 30 yet when I -- when I came.  Uh, the first uh, time I went into a class, all the girls, who'd all gone to prep school, stood up.  (laughs)  I didn't know what to do!  Uh, and they made it very clear that they considered me socially beneath them.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And as, of course, I was.  And uh, I just didn't know how to handle any of this.  I -- but fortunately, (laughs) it stopped pretty soon.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh but you did -- I know you said you discovered you enjoyed teaching when you were at Berkeley.  But you -- you had any problems -- uh, you didn't find that you liked the teaching less because the girls had a different attitude to you?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, because the teaching was -- I mean, the teaching was just different.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: You know, it was -- the -- the attitude came in office hours or whatever.  It didn't come in the classroom.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Or if it did, I didn't notice it.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  So you enjoyed teaching at Wellesley?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, very, very much --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- very much.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And the -- you said there were other women but not in your position of having a - having a child.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That's right.  But they came along pretty soon.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  Yeah.  Well, this would have been in the late '50s, early '60s and um, the first ripples of -- of second-wave feminism must have been start--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you at all aware of that?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes.  Uh, I -- I don't have a very good sense uh, of chronology.  You know, I can't remember exactly when all -- all these things happened.  But I was part of a consciousness-raising group.  And my students were very eagerly interested uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- in it.  And, of course, I taught the -- the first course about women --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- that had ever been taught Wellesley.  Isn't that a shocking thing?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Eh when -- when was that?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, back in your --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- it was late!  Uh, I mean, it must have been -- probably '67 --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- probably.  Uh, I think -- I think that's about right.  That, of course, was the origin of, uh, The Female Imagination.  Uh, but I remember uh, a woman uh, friend of mine, when I was starting to plan The Female Imagination, saying, \"You're writing a book about women?  I'd as soon write a book about dogs.\"  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It seems like another country, doesn't it?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So, um, I mean, obviously, with -- with having worked on Thomson and the supernatural and --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- all that kind of stuff, which probably doesn't have much in the way of -- uh, of uh, conscious gender uh, bias --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- where did -- uh, where did your interest in uh -- in developing an interest and -- and knowledge of women's writing come from?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it came from -- I mean, again, this sounds like a story.  I mean, it's obviously my story.  It couldn't ha-- couldn't have been this simple.  But in my mythology, at least, it came from a very particular episode.  I went to a dinner party in Wellesley and was seated next to the manuscript librarian of the Houghton Library, charming, charming man.  And uh, we talked.  He ascertained that I was interested in the 18th century.  And uh, before the end of the evening, he said to me, \"We've just gotten a manuscript of Mrs. Piazzi's late diaries.  Would you be interested in reading them and writing something for the Harvard Library Bulletin?\"  And I said, \"Sure.\"  I barely knew who Mrs. Piazzi was.  I mean, I knew she had some connection with Dr. Johnson.  That wa-- that was about it.  And uh, so I went to the Houghton and I read these five volumes.  And uh, I was part of this consciousness-raising group by -- by this time.  And that group was not altogether comfortable for me, although I made one -- one good friend out of it.  But uh, all the other women in the group were not working or not working at jobs that they felt worthy uh, of them and the talk was all the time how they were kept -- prevented, somehow, from working.  So my position there was a little uncomfortable.  So I read these d--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were you -- were you actually tenured at Wellesley by that time?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I -- I think I was.  Uh, you know, I just had such a --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=2983.0,3286.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: -- remarkably easy uh, career.  I was tenured -- I didn't come up for tenure in the normal way.  One -- one day I was told that I'd been awarded tenure.  It was early.  I mean, it was a couple years before I would have expected it.  And nobody told -- had told me they were considered me.  (laughs)  I mean, it just -- it just happened.  I really was spared an awful lot.  But uh, the voice of Mrs. Piazzi -- this is Mrs. Piazzi in her late 70s and 80s.  Uh, she's writing this diary for -- her husband's dead.  She's writing this diary for their adopted son, who is her husband's nephew.  And the voice was the voice of these women.  You know, she's complaining and talking about her sense of vocation and talking about her difficulty in getting validated externally and so on.  And I got -- I wrote a long feminist essay on this, which, I thought, \"This is not for the Harvard Library Bulletin but, since that's who I'm supposed to be writing for, I'll give it to Rodney.\"  I gave it to him.  The Harvard Library Bulletin (laughs) published it.  And never before or since have they published anything of the -- of the sort.  And that was the --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And that was the beginning of it.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- beginning.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I -- I read somewhere, and I think maybe it was in -- in the preface to the book, um, that also you'd sort of done surveys of your students at the time.  Or maybe it was just uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, I never did any surveys.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Um, no, yeah.  There's something here.  Yeah.  You made use of tape recordings.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, I -- I taped my -- taped the classes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: All right.  Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's an interesting uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Unh huh.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I can't -- can't re-- I remember taping them.  I don't remember listening to the tapes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But I guess I did.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Why did you tape them?  Was that something you did normally or --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, no, no.  It was because I -- I knew that I was going to write a book uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- on --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  What uh -- it's a -- it's an interesting way of -- of kind of working through um --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- a problem.  Uh, what sort of reactions were you getting from the students?  Can you recall?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: To the taping?  To the --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No, not to the taping but to -- to the material that you were discussing in class?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, they were -- uh, those were wonderful classes.  Uh, it -- it actually became a problem by the second year because so many people wanted to take it and uh, would -- they drafted somebody else to teach it, uh, two, you know, uh, eventually three sections.  Uh, they were -- they loved it.  They absolutely loved it.  But uh, they made it very clear that they didn't take books by women as seriously as they took -- took books by men.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: The women?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: The women, yeah.  Uh, they just didn't think it was -- uh, I remember talking about Black Beauty and saying -- uh, more than one uh, girl said that she identified with the horse.  That's who she uh, identified -- uh, they identified with male heroes and not with female uh, heroes.  And they had trouble taking -- and I remember I taught uh, The Bell Jar, which I thought and think a very bad book.  And I was teaching as -- I mean, I thought I was teaching it as a bad book.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And it was a pretty contemporary novel at that time --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- wasn't it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.  And they -- that was their favorite book.  They loved that -- just loved it.  Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's very interesting that these women, who were probably amongst the earliest feminists of our gener--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- of our generation -- not identifying with women --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yup.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- but identifying with men.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh or it's just --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It was what they wanted.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: They want-- it's what they wanted.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's very, very interesting.  And so you had a ha--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Did you -- did you have women teachers in Ireland, in univers--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh well, I went to an all girl-- uh, well, I went to an all girls high school.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But in university?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: At university I had um -- I really only had one.  And she was formidable.  She is form-- she's still formidable.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Um that was uh -- I’ve forgotten her second name.  I can't believe I've forgotten her second name.  Uh, it -- it'll come to me.  Um, she's written absolutely masses.  Edna -- Edna Longley --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Ah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- Edna Longley, at Queens, in Belfast --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- absolutely form-- uh, she terrified the life out of --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- terrified me.  And she was -- uh, she is a rather diffident woman --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm!\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- uh, and -- and her -- her --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=3286.0,3590.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: -- uh, the way she projects herself but a Rottweiler when it comes to (laughter) intellectual uh, and esthetic and critical uh/ things.  Yes.  She was absolutely terri-- but -- uh, but, you know, uh -- but I -- I think, at that time, in the early '70s, there were just the two women -- two full women in the department, a medievalist and -- and Edna.  I'm not sure if there were any others, at least none that I can recall.  There were other women but they were in part-time teaching jobs.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: One of them, I -- I was very friendly with and we -- we're lifelong friends.  Uh, so, uh, yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I never -- never had a woman teacher.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You never had a woman teacher.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  I mean, in high school, of course --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- but uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- never in college and graduate school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  So uh -- so you really -- uh, one of the big issues that comes up again and again and again in this kind of subject, looking at how women get on in the academic profession, is the whole issue of mentoring.  So if you had mentors at all, they really were men --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- yeah -- people who mentored and nurtured your intellectual development.  And --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But that uh, never seemed to be an -- you know, I -- I realize, in retrospect, that I was just really quite oblivious to uh, any problems about being a woman but even now that doesn't seem to me a problem.  You know, men were very, very kind to me, the men -- men in the profession, not just uh, my teachers but, when I started giving papers and so on, there were older -- older men -- uh, there was one at Columbia, there was one at Princeton, there was one -- one at Toronto -- who were just kind to me.  They -- they would, you know, take me around at conferences and uh -- I -- I felt very supported.  I thought there were many places I could turn if I needed information and -- you know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it really almost -- you could say, maybe, that uh, it was these older women at Wellesley that -- that were more problematic.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes!  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's interesting.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I mean, they were not -- they were not supportive in this.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I'm going to put this up here, because the -- the heating --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- I think, might uh -- might --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I can turn that off.  I don't think we really need it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I don't think -- I think it would be quite good if we could turn it off --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- because it is very noisy.  (pause)  So I think, having got to The Female Imagination -- you think it's fair to say that really your intellectual interests at that point coincided with -- with the genuine kind of feminist agenda?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I also think, somewhere around that time -- again, I found this --  I think it was either in your -- in your vita or uh, some el-- some other place, that you also uh, wrote a -- wrote a -- or gave a paper called, \"Early Fiction and Frightened Male.\"\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: You know, that's very funny.  I was thinking uh -- I was thinking about that, for some -- some reason, today.  That was -- that was at MLA.  I think I published it sometime.  I can't reme-- I must have published it someplace.  But uh, it was at MLA.  And a friend of mine was sitting in the audience behind two men and she said that the one man turned to the other and said something like, \"That's what's happening to this profession,\" (laughs) and, you know, the -- as far as he was concerned, that this was just the -- the end of everything, the -- the --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It was the end (laughs) --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- that -- that there were uppity women up on the plat--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uppity -- uppity women.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Looking back, actually, that's quite a sad thing to have overheard.  Isn't it?  It's -- it's an indictment of the, kind of, fear that might have been around in a profession that's supposed to be open to new ideas.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, you know, I don't know if you've heard the famous story about uh, Harold Bloom in my bathroom, at Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, you see, bathrooms are a big theme in this -- in this uh, project.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I -- I've had at least half a dozen bathroom stories.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Really?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Um and uh, it would be interesting to hear yours.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, um, mine is so widely circulated that I -- I thought you -- you might -- might have heard it.  Well, uh, when I became chair at uh, Yale, of course, I was the first woman.  And this was a period in Yale's history where the department was not easy.  It was uh -- it was a very obstreperous and difficult uh, department.  And I had a lot of trepidation about this job.  And so I came in on uh, the first day.  And have you been in the chair's office, in Li-- in [Lindsley?] ch--\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=3590.0,3917.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it's probably all been --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- totally changed uh, now.  But one of the perks was that there was a little tiny bathroom, tucked back in the corner, a half-- half-bathroom.  So I came in and took possession on uh, the first of July.  And I went into the bathroom.  And I came out and I said to Diane, who was the secretary -- whether she is now -- \"Uh the bathroom stinks.\"  And she said, \"Oh, that's Harold.\"  And I said, \"What do you mean, that's Harold?\"  And she said, \"Well, Harold uses the bathroom and he doesn't put the seat up.\"  I don't know how she knew this intimate detail but -- but that's what she said.  And I said, \"Well, why does Harold use the bathroom?\"  And she said, \"Oh, he's always used the bathroom.\"  And I said, \"Well --\"  (laughs) You know, I was really very bewildered by this.  She said, \"Uh if there's a meeting in there, he will open the door and come in and use the bathroom, even -- even if, you know, there's -- there's a meeting.  He's always used the chair's bathroom.\"  And I said, \"Well, he's not going to use it while I'm the chair.\"  So then I went home and started worrying about this.  And all my anxieties about the job got crystallized in this.  And I got so upset that I made a trip back to Boston to see my old psychiatrist.  And she was an orthodox Freudian.  I don't think I'd ever seen her smile.  And I told her this story.  And she started laughing uncontrollably.  She just couldn't stop laughing.  And finally she pulled herself together and she said, \"I'm terribly sorry but this is not a neurotic problem.  This is a real-life problem.  And I can't think of anything you can do except take him out in the old campus and shoot him.\"  This made me feel much better.  And I went back and I thought about the problem some more and I thought, \"Well, I'm only going to make a fool of myself if I make an -- an issue of this in the abstract.  If he uses the -- the bathroom while I'm not there, fine, but if he ever uses the bathroom when I am there, uh, I'm going to say something.\"  So uh, on day in October, Marie Boroff was sitting on the couch reading applications for uh, you know, those [Junior Feld?] Whiting uh, fellowships and I was sitting at my desk talking on the phone.  And Harold came in.  He didn't acknowledge the presence of either of us.  He went right behind my chair, went in the bathroom, peed noisily, came out.  I was still on the phone.  And Marie was -- (laughs) uh, and, well, when I got off the phone I realized that I was really angry.  I don't get angry very -- very easily.  And I put a sheet of stationery in the typewrite and I wrote a note that said, \"Dear Harold, I would appreciate it if you would not use the bathroom while I am in the office,\" signed it, \"Pat.\"  We were, of course, on kissing terms.  I mean, he's on kissing terms with everyone.  Uh, and put it in his box.  The next day there was a letter in my box.  Diane was just dying to -- she was very, very interested in this -- this transaction.  \"Dear Professor Spacks --” I carried this around in my purse for years.  I don't know what finally happened to it.  \"Dear Professor Spacks, I am sometimes thoughtless when I'm disturbed and I'm deeply disturbed these days.  Kindly forgive me.  It will not happen again.  Sincerely yours, Harold S. Bloom, Avalon Professor of the Humanities.\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And he never kissed me again -- which was a plus.  But the interesting thing is that he told this story, all around the country, as did I.  And people who heard it from us both said that it was the same story.  The only difference is that when he tells the story it's about feminazis oppressing men.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Isn't that interesting?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And Dick Broad had succeeded me uh, as chair and Harold went back to his old ways and Dick didn't protest.  Now, I don't know whether that means that it really didn't bother Dick or whether it means that Dick couldn't stand up to Harold, although Dick's pretty -- I -- I would think he could.  But, you know, I -- I just don't know what it means.  Uh, but I'm interested.  But --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=3917.0,4207.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: Well, certainly it -- it'll add to my store of -- of bathroom stories.  Because there are plenty of them around the --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Really?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- the campus.  Yes.  I mean, I suppose the most famous one is the uh -- is the case of uh, the first -- uh, Louise Farnam, who was the first uh, medical -- female medical student, uh, back in the '20s.  Uh, and uh, she had -- she applied to the medical school.  They said they -- they didn't take women and um -- and they couldn’t possibly take her.  And so her father said -- uh, be-- and uh -- and they -- she asked for a reason.  And they said, \"Well, we don't have any facilities for women.\"\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Hmm!\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And -- and so her father, who was actually on the faculty at Yale -- I think he must have been Yale College, not -- not the School of Medicine -- said, \"Well, if it's -- if that's all it takes to have my daughter in the medical school, I shall give you the money for a bathroom.\"\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And so he did.  And so she got to go.  (laughs)  So I have a little -- I'm -- I'm kind of building up a little store of them.  There are other ones too.  There was the -- there was the sit-in in the bathroom in the -- in the Divinity School.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And that was in the '60s.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So, yes.  So uh, I think they're -- I think they're important -- and possibly Freudian as well.  (laughs)  Um, now you've put me completely off track.  I'm not quite --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I'm sorry.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh no, that's perfectly --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: We were --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- all right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- back, uh -- we were back at Wellesley --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, we were back --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- the Wellesley days --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Um, so you were --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- in the '60s.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, the '60s.  Um, and uh, obviously, developing a whole new uh, curriculum about women's writing.  Uh, were you aware of -- of other women and other universities and colleges --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- doing that?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So was there a kind of uh -- a sort of a community of you?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Not really, no.  But I was already active -- I mean, I can't remember exactly what I was doing but I was active in the MLA during -- during those years.  I was doing things --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- outside uh, Wellesley.  I had contacts, you know.  So I --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- kind of got to know what was going on.  I -- I didn't have any community, except in the vaguest uh, sense.  But --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So what sort of things were you doing in the MLA?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, I can't remember what I -- what I was doing then.  I was on the uh -- I just don't know.  I --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were there -- were there -- was there, for want of a better phrase, feminist activity at the MLA before --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- before Title IX and 1972 and all of that?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So it would have been in the '70s.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, it was just a matter of meeting people.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That was uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.  Yeah.  So there weren't women's caucuses?  Were there?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh because I think, in some of the sciences, by the late '60s, there were --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, really?  Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- there were one or two women's caucuses --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- campaigning and lobbying for --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- uh, for equal opportunities for women in the sciences.  But maybe it wasn't happening in the humanities in the same way.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I don't think so.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  You were at Wellesley -- Wellesley a long time.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Twenty years.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Twenty years?  What, uh -- what was it that made you decide to -- to change?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, I got offers from Yale and Princeton at the same time.  And it was clear to me that, if I wasn't going to leave for Yale or Princeton, (laughs) I was never uh -- never going to leave.  And I had developed some doubts about single-sex education.  And uh, I'm still inclined to think that single-sex education at the secondary level makes sense but at the college level doesn't -- doesn't make sense.  At any rate, you know, I liked the idea of teaching and I liked the idea of teaching graduate students, which I'd never done.  I'd taught men before but I'd never uh, taught graduate students.  And uh, I'd just been divorced and uh, so there was no reason why I couldn't -- why I couldn't move.  And, you know, it just seemed the uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And -- and you were quite happy to put your past experience of Yale behind you, at that time?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Or did you see that this was a challenge to be overcome?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think -- uh, I think it was probably that.  Uh, (laughs) I have to say I -- I would -- that I've never known of -- and I haven't quite been able to ask him, although he became a -- a friend.  Uh, I came down to Yale, you know, to see the place and -- and so on and was very -- very nicely treated.  And I was taken to see Ron [Paulson?], uh, in his office, and which was a very splendid office.  And uh, we had a pleasant conversation.  And he said, \"You know, you don't want to go to Princeton.  They just want you because you're a woman.  And we don't want you just because you're a woman.  We already have one.\"\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=4207.0,4521.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Now it is possible that that was a joke.  I don't know.  But I'm not sure it was a joke.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So the other woman would have been --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Marie.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- Marie --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- the other tenured woman?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's amazing.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It's --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's very funny.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It's true Princeton didn't have any.  (laughter) Oh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So that obviously persuaded you.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, right.  (laughter)  um, I -- well, uh, I didn't like -- Princeton was actually too much Wellesley.  I mean, the town of Princeton is too much like the town of -- of Wellesley.  Uh, New Haven seemed more interesting town, less rich.  And uh -- and Maynard Mack was somebody I really revered.  I had uh, edited several books uh, under his general editorship, for -- for Prentice Hall.  That's where he was, uh, at the time.  I'd learned an enormous amount from him in that way.  He -- he was just amazing.  I learned more about writing from doing those uh, books than I'd ever learned uh, in any other way.  And uh, he had retired by then.  But I really revered him.  And I'd spent a year uh, in New Haven at a short-lived uh, outfit called uh, the National Humanities Institute, which he ran, with Bart Giamatti as his second -- Bart Giamatti and uh, John -- what was his last name?  He -- he subsequently married Maynard's daughter.  Harrington -- John Harrington, a Greek scholar.  And uh, that was a year where what we were supposed to do was uh, devise an interdisciplinary course.  We were explicitly not supposed to write books.  I surreptitiously wrote a book too.  But uh, I also did a bit of uh -- it was a wonderful year.  And uh, I not only loved Maynard but uh, I became very close to Bart and to John Harrington.  So there were two people on the faculty that, you know, I really already knew and liked.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, so -- so by the time you came back, Yale was not an unknown quantity to you.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That's -- that's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  You had a real sense of what was going on?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And uh -- and Mary and Martin Price had become friends and Tom and [Lillianne?] Green.  So I -- I had some friends at Yale.  Even -- even so, it was socially rather daunting.  But -- but it didn't feel like the same place uh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  Right.  In what ways was it socially daunting?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, I think I told you on the phone.  This was this uh -- people having to go in two-by-two as -- as uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh at dinners?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: At uh, dinners, yeah.  Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So being a single woman was a -- was definitely a bit of a -- a no-no?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  It wa-- it was very, very difficult.  And uh, the younger people had -- had less trouble with it.  Uh, I became very friendly with [Sara Soleri?], who you may -- may know.  She's still there.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I don't know her, no.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh she's a good 20 years younger than I.  Uh, and uh, here were other -- the junior -- the junior faculty were very welcoming to me.  Uh, and the senior faculty were, you know, according to their lights.  I mean, they ritually invited me to dinner once, (laughs) in the course of the year, but there was no sense of a -- of a social community.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, I suppose -- well, it's always -- it must have been a very settled department.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes, very.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Your people had been there for [long?].\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n(break in audio)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And -- and I also -- I mean, I did look at some figures that uh -- and some lists that Chip Long gave me uh, of uh -- of women on the faculty in the mid-'70s, which were a little earlier than you coming.  But nevertheless, there were -- an awful lot of the junior faculty were actually women.  But they weren't in tenure-track jobs.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh, there were an enormous number of them, and English way, way beyond any of the other departments --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- in Yale College.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But none of them got tenure.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: But none of them -- I think none of them got tenure.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Margie Ferguson got -- got tenure --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Margie.  That's right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- but then left.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Yes.  Yeah.  But all the others uh, were dispersed --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=4521.0,4798.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: -- and went in other uh -- I remember Margie saying to me that uh, knowing you had to go -- I think it was Margie.  Maybe -- maybe it was somebody else.  It was like having to leave paradise.  (laughter)  You were expelled -- expelled from paradise.  Um, one of the things that you -- you've just begun to touch on it.  Uh, one of the things that struck me about coming to Yale is this still, I think, enormous gulf between junior and senior faculty, which I think is something to do with the way the tenure system works --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- works at Yale.  Um, and I just wondered if you had any sense of that when you -- when you came back.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, uh, I know that many people experienced that.  As I said, my -- my friends were -- I mean, my real friends were by and large on the junior faculty.  And I was seen, I think, I'm -- I'm pretty sure, uh, as a bridging figure between the junior and senior faculty.  I never had that problem.  I -- I remember one of my senior colleagues saying to me, quite early, that it was a mistake to make friends with the junior faculty because they wouldn't be there long and then there'd be bad feelings when they --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  So you shouldn't really invest in them.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh was he saying that to you as a kind of warning --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- a sort of helpful hint?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.  Yes.  I mean, not critically but -- but, you know, kindly.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh but, you know, it's --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was there a lot of pressure from the younger faculty about the fact that there were so very few tenured women in the department?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Not pressure, no.  No.  I mean, they were certainly aware that, uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Because I think there was, uh -- I know that uh, there was a fair amount of committee work going on the status of women at the university, all the way through the '70s.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Um I know Marie was involved with one in particular.  Uh, and I've seen -- I've seen the letters and the reports in the -- in the archives.  So it was clearly something that was a big, big issue, after -- especially after 1972, when uh -- when uh, the Equal Opportunities was extended to women in, uh -- legislation was extended to the u-- to the universities.  Uh, but I suppose, as you -- because you came in as tenured senior faculty, in a way you bypassed all of that.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm.  But you must have heard from your junior -- because -- particularly if you were friendly with them --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- the anxieties that were -- or the --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, well -- well, of course I heard the anxieties.  But uh, I don't think they were any greater among women than among men.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I mean --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- uh, it was uh -- there were a lot of -- of people there, as I -- as I think there -- there still are -- this is not totally usual uh, on university faculties -- a lot of people who'd gone through the Yale -- Yale Graduate School, and like Margie uh, and Dick, uh, which I have come to think is probably not a very good idea, you know, because they are -- they're, in a way, infantilized.  They -- their colleagues have been their teachers and I think they never quite get over that, you know, that double sense of being judged all the ti-- all the time.  It's very, very hard.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And yet there are very, very few people who -- who've been at Yale, as it were, uh, man and boy, uh, who've been undergraduates, then graduates, and then -- and then tenured faculty.  And I -- I can only think of one or two, uh, certainly in English, who -- who would fit that.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think it was Dick Broadhead.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It was Dick and, I think, [Lanny?] uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Unh huh.  Unh huh.  That's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- who is the -- is another one.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Um I don't know whether Larry Manley -- but maybe --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Was he an undergraduate?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Maybe --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I -- [I'm not?] --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh maybe he wasn't an undergraduate.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- [sure?].\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think there were -- there were two or three.  And uh -- but most -- most of them, uh, [once finished?] graduate school uh, and maybe had an assistant or an associate position, and you had to go somewhere else.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And it was, I suppose, to that extent, gender blind.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How was it with you -- but your -- your daughter, of course, was almost grown up by that time.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh so -- in fact, she was already at -- she was already at Yale, wasn't she?  So that wasn't an issue, the fact that you were also a parent by that time?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  No.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: No.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=4798.0,5099.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: No, she -- (laughs) she was a great help to me.  Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  I -- I remember I was in the habit of leaving my office door open at a-- at all times.  (laughs)  She told me, \"You leave your door closed and locked.\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.  I guess New Haven was more dangerous then than it is now.  I came -- I -- I had an office in Trumbull.  Uh, I came in one morning.  I -- I tended to come in very -- very early on, like about 6:30.  And uh, there was a man asleep on the floor in my office, a drunk.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Goodness!\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: He peed all over the rug.  And uh, they'd been doing some construction in a neighboring office that -- that uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So security would have been an issue?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And I think -- I think, all the women's groups, that was something that they were very active on.  And I remember, I think, [Elga Wassermann?] -- uh, you may not have known, because she was, really --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, I -- I knew her.  She was my lawyer.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, she was your lawyer.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  Of course you do know her.  Yes.  Uh, because I know that that was an issue that she uh, had -- uh, had quite a lot to do with, once the colleges went coed.  Uh, I remember, when I was talking to Elga, when she was doing her interview, that uh, one of the things that she was told by Kingman Brewster, when she came into the role uh, as his special assistant overseeing the coeducation project, that uh, her -- her role was to make Yale a good place for women.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm!\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And that was in 1968 --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm!\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- when she was taken on.  You came along ten years later.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And I wondered if -- if that had been fulfilled in those ten years.  Do you think it was a good place for women, by the time the late '70s came along?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, you know, Florence, I don't -- I don't know.  I mean, it was, in many ways, a good place for me.  People were -- were very kind to me.  And the men in the department, particularly when I became chair, they were very, very generous, uh, unexpected people.  Hillis Miller, who I was always on jovial terms with -- I mean, everybody's on jovial terms with Hillis Miller.  But he was not a real friend.  I don't think he was ever at my house for dinner.  Uh, and uh, he had been chair, not immediately before me but before -- before that.  And he went out of his way to give me tips.  And there was a named Michael Cooke who was tragically killed in an automobile accident shortly after -- after I left, a Jamaican man.  And uh, he had never been chair but he was master of a college.  And he gave -- he told -- told me things that I would never have figured out by myself, you know, about making friends with the workmen and, you know, going through the work-- and Chip Long I -- I called up virtually every day when I was chair, mostly complaining about the condition of the -- the building.  But Chip was wonderful to me.  And these three were the most conspicuous examples.  They were as generous and as kind as people could possibly have been.  I didn't feel that my gender was in any way a -- an issue.  And uh, I didn't feel that -- you know, all the time I was chair I don't think it was ever an issue.  There was once a meeting at which John Hollander was being very overbearing and I sort of lost patience and said, \"Oh, stop being such a bully, John.\"  And he stopped.  And everyone laughed.  And that was that.  I mean, it was just uh -- really I can't think of a single episode in my relations with the rest -- rest of the faculty or the administration where I felt that I'd been mistreated.  Now uh, I probably should have had a chaired professorship.  And they offered me a chaired professorship when I was starting to flirt with -- with Virginia.  It made me mad that they hadn't done that before.  And I think, at that time, no woman had a -- had a chair.  Uh, I think my salary was lower than that -- that of men.  But these were not things that I was particularly concerned about.  And, you know, I didn't feel o-- I was on some important committees but I didn't feel that I was on too many committees.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: This was committees -- universities committees?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because certainly the literature -- I’m no-- I'm not talking specifically here about Yale.  But um, it's something that comes in the literature --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: [I know?].\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=5099.0,5398.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: -- all the time, that, because there were so few women around --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- that they were spread rather thinly and often not on the important committees but doing the scut work.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, I -- I was on important -- important committees.  I was on -- I can't remember what they call it at Yale, but the promotion and tenure committee, several years.  And I -- I really have no complaints.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Why do you think uh, you were approached to become chair of the department?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, I think --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you know --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- I was seen as a -- as a bridging figure.  Uh, I can't remember who I talked to about that.  I think it was the provost but I can't remember who that was.  But he --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was that Sid Altman?  Or was --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, it wasn't.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- was it after his time?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was someone else.  Uh, he claimed that it was virtually a unanimous view.  And I think that that was the reason, that I was seen as somebody who really did bridge [the?] --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were able to bring people together?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You were --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You were a part --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And it was felt, afterwards -- I mean, I didn't feel particularly appreci-- I didn't feel particularly unappreciated but I didn't feel particularly appreciated as chair.  But when I decided to leave and when people started talking about, you know, what, uh -- what I had done, that was what they talked about, was bringing -- bringing people together.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You said earlier on in the interview that uh, it was a -- it was a pretty tempestuous place, the English Department.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How were those tempests?  How would you describe them?  What was their nature?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: (laughs) Well, there were just -- you know, there were a lot of theoretical disagreements.  And uh, those would -- would come out in discussions about appointments.  And -- but I had very great respect for uh -- for my colleagues.  And uh, when I was running those meetings, they were not necessarily easy to run.  But everybody was very, very smart.  And uh, I mean, I know that's a (laughs) truism but -- about the Yale department but it was -- it was a very, very good department at that -- that point.  And uh, they would work out their difficulties.  And the meetings would sometimes be long and -- and hard, I mean, real, serious disagreements, but they would mm come to -- which -- you know, there were still some -- some of the men -- I guess that generation has now died out, with Gene -- Gene [Waif?] was the last -- last of them.  But uh, Gene Waif and Dwight Culler and uh, Louis Marx were still -- were still teaching.  And they were grand old men.  I mean, they were men of such integrity.  They -- they really stood for something real.  And I -- and I think they had a real influence, all the way -- all the way down the line.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Uh, and were they a --a kind of balancing influence to the kind of theore-- [theory-ward?]?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think so, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  And they were respected by -- I mean, there was a lot of mutual respect.  It was a good department.  (laughs)  It really was.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because um --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Huh?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- certainly it had a notorious reputation outside of Yale.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh it was -- uh, the -- the fighting and uh, the grand scenes and all of that.  It must have been like herding cats.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was -- (laughs) it was work.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think you brought anything to it, uh, as a woman?  uh, do you think you have maybe particular skills --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Who knows?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- because you were a woman?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I don't know.  I do remember -- uh, you wouldn't have known Tom Green.  Uh, his wife, uh, his widow now, is uh -- remains a -- a close friend of mine.  And uh, Tom was a friend too.  And I would be at their house for dinner and Tom -- the first year I was at Yale, I never opened my mouth in a -- in a meeting.  And toward the end of the year, Tom started saying, you know, \"We would like to hear from you -- like to hear --” And I said, \"Well, I'm listening and I'm trying to figure out what's going on beneath the surface.\"  And he said, with complete seriousness, and Lillianne heard him, \"Nothing's going on beneath the surface.\"  Well, I heard a lot going on beneath the surface.  Uh, but I don't think that's necessarily a gender-linked characteristic.  I mean, I think he was extraordinarily obtuse.  Uh, I think -- uh, I mean, I -- I think I did have important skills but I don't know that they were because I, you know, was woman.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  What do you think --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I just don't know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What were the skills?\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=5398.0,5698.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: Uh figuring out what's going on beneath the surface.  And, you know, being able to talk to people in a non-confrontational way uh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah, all the things that uh, in management-speak nowadays, are -- are highly valued --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- but are often seen as feminine --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- traits --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- uh, that are -- are now bandied around as uh, things that are really very, very good.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think I was very, very, very important to the women graduate students at Yale.  I don't know how important I was to the -- the women junior faculty.  Probably I was important to them too.  But I know I was very important to the women graduate students.  And my perception of the first year, and it never -- never changed in the ten years, was that women graduate students characteristically wouldn't get out in front of their -- of their -- what they had to say.  You know, they would understate [their?] -- and the men would characteristically overstate what -- what they had to stay.  And I would talk about that, not in class but, you know, individually, to uh, the women.  And, you know, every -- every one of them would see it, when -- when it was pointed out.  But I ha-- I have the same difficulty.  You know, it's uh -- it's hard, even when you see it, to -- to do it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: But I was very interested in that -- you know, that work.  But I -- I think that may have changed.  At least in the last years at Virginia, I wasn't noticing that any more as a sex-linked characteristic.  I mean, some people overstate and some people understate but it didn't seem to have to do with sex.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I think that --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I didn't --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think there has been a -- a very big uh, psychological shift uh, amongst women, of -- of [culture here?] -- ambitious uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- for their subject or their profession.  Yeah, they -- they're less likely to be diffident.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think that's true.  Uh, it's a very big change.  Did you ever know anything um, about the Boys Friendly?  You didn't know about the Boys Friendly?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Nnn-nnn.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I asked --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: The Boys Friend--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I asked Fred Robertson about it last night.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh it was a group of men -- senior men in the English department who met every Monday lunchtime.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, I didn't know that's what it was called.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Whether --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- uh, rain or shine uh.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.  Very conservative.  (laughs)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I think they were certainly very traditional.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, politically very conservative.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: It was all the extreme right-wing people.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Because I've also -- uh, and I came -- somebody said it was the Monday Club and the Monday Club, of course, if a conservative organization back home in -- in the U.K.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So uh -- and um -- but, no, it's the Boys Friendly.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I didn't know that's what it was called.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And uh -- and uh, I know that quite a lot of junior faculty felt that that was the real powerhouse --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, really?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- in the -- in the department --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, interesting.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- and -- and that -- that that's where things happened.  Now that was their perception.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I wonder if that's true.  It was George [Baumberger?] and Fred --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- and I can't remember who else.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Claude Rawson, I think, was a late joiner.  Because he --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And -- and uh, Louis B. Marx was --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh unh huh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- one of them.  Uh, and uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I can remember --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- the table where they -- where they sat.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And uh, so it -- it's interesting that that seemed to be the perception amongst the --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- the junior faculty.  And I was -- and it did make me wonder how -- where you were, if you were the chair, head of department, trying to uh, do things, uh, that you might have had a -- a counter-group or a group that was working against you.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: If that was true, I never uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You -- yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- I never knew it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, of course --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- you found out what was going on under the surface, so maybe that was --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- (laughs) that was a way of uh -- of uh -- but uh, again, it may not have been a political group.  And I'm talking about --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- academic politics here.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh it may -- it may have been more uh, you know, an intellectual or --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That's what I thought it --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- gossip group.  Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- thought it was.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Conversation -- good conversation.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Um one of the things that uh, you mentioned in one of your conversations on the telephone with me was that uh, you -- you said that Yale was a very pressured environment.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh and I'd like [to] hear, again, that story you told me about uh, going to the concert.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=5698.0,5984.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes.  I -- uh, that was -- that was a very important story in my uh -- in my [month?].  I went to the -- a Tuesday night concert with a man who spent the entire concert looking around, not to see who was there but to see who wasn't there, because he -- his fantasy was that they were home doing their work.  It, uh -- you know, this is not uh, specifically a -- a gender issue either but it's the reason I -- I left Yale.  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  I -- absolutely.  I mean, not that -- that episode.  But the -- the reason I left was that I felt that work just had a place that was too -- too dominant, uh, that there wasn't enough room for life.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You felt it was an unhealthy balance?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I mean, uh, exactly.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Exactly that, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And uh, you know, I didn't want either to live within it or to live against it, as I had been doing.  I did a lot of entertaining.  I had a lot of dinner parties.  People loved it!  I mean, they -- but they didn't reciprocate.  I mean, you know, I did that and -- and other people didn't.  And uh, I decided that, you know, I didn't want to continue (laughs) being the social -- the social life of --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Being Mummy.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, exactly.  And I like to cook but not that much.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's interesting that you were -- you were the first female head of department, uh, one of only two tenured women, at least in the earlier part, uh, and you were doing all the female things.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's a very, very interesting --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- picture you're drawing.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- I mean, uh, you know, those female things I wa-- I was doing because I enjoyed them.  Uh, there was -- I -- I remember being at a -- uh, something for the NEH, you know, I was judging something for the NEH in -- in Washington and a secretary brought in a tray.  I was the only woman on the -- on the panel.  A secretary brought in a tray with coffee and cups on it.  And I quite automatically got up and started serving coffee.  And that wasn't exactly because I enjoyed it.  But it wasn't because I felt that I had to do it either.  It was natural, uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Second nature.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah!\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh exactly.  And, you know, that doesn't seem to me such a terrible thing.  I mean (laughs) --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I do wonder, too, uh, if you did do a lot of entertaining in the department -- it -- sometimes those -- those social graces do oil the wheels, don't they?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, I think they do.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because people are taken out of that --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- pressured context, just for a little while, and things can happen.  Uh, so it was probably also a very good thing to have done.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, I think it was.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I [think?] it uh, was.  But uh, you know, I did -- did find life more comfortable in Charlottesville, (laughs) where that was not such a remarkable thing to do.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you -- with all the -- all the pressure of being chair and uh -- and uh, all your committee work in the university, did you manage to carry on with your research?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When did you do it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I -- I don't know.  But it -- (laughs) it happened.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Did you -- did you find yourself being tough on other people who couldn’t maybe keep that kind of output going?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I wasn't tough.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You don't --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I've always had a lot of sympa-- I mean, you know, I have felt greatly blessed.  I've always had a lot of energy.  I uh, learned, when I had a baby, to get up early and to -- to work -- work in the morning.  I feel just very fortunate to be able to do --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- uh, what I've been able -- able to do.  And I know that not everybody can -- can.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: How did you -- and uh, did you and Marie, because you were the two senior women, did you ever make common cause?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  Uh, I mean, I -- I like -- like Marie and I would have lunch with her from time to time but we weren't uh, close.  And actually, at that time -- I think -- I think she's changed.  But at that -- uh, that time I remember her saying that she didn't think that being a woman was an issue of any significance at all, uh, you know, that that wasn't -- it wasn't a significant classification.  Have you heard of the philosopher Ruth Marcus?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=5984.0,6281.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: She was a fellow of Trumbull, as uh, was I.  And early, you know, in my naïve, girlish enthusiasm, when I came to Yale, I thought, \"Oh, here's a senior woman who's a member of my college.  I'll be friends with her.\"  And so I proposed having -- having lunch at the college.  And she was very agreeable.  And I remember having lunch with her.  And I said, \"When you uh, first came, how did you -- how did you make friends?  Did you make friends through the college?\"  And she said, \"Friends?\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Goodness.  It obviously wasn't maybe as important to her --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Her.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- uh, as -- as it was to you?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: For sure.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I came -- I came to realize that she specialized rather at making enemies (laughs) but --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, then, maybe there -- maybe academic life maybe does attract some people who are, by their very nature, loners uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes, I think that's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- and highly introverted --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think that's right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- um, and it's a -- it's a comfortable place for a certain personality type.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh I don't know whether that's changed as university life has become more corporate but uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, I think that some people uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm.  It -- it does seem to be a place that can accommodate people of very, very different --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- and wide -- they're hard to clone, maybe (laughs) academic people.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it's a wonderful life.  I mean, I was sitting here reading Emma before you came and --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- and uh, daily I think, \"They pay me for doing this?\"  It's --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, maybe your mother was right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: [No?] --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's not a serious occupation!\r\n(laughter)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: When uh -- when you were chair, were there any uh -- any pressing issues that you felt needed to be addressed and anything that you wanted to push through that you managed to get through?  I ask that because my understanding is that, in the -- in the '70s -- uh, or the late '70s and early '80s, it was a difficult time for Yale generally, because of the financial situation --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- um, partly because uh, Kingman Brewster, with this espousal of liberal -- of the -- with a liberal political agenda, uh, had uh, ticked off quite a lot of the donors and secondly um, just the ma-- the buildings, as you said, uh, being terribly neglected and so there was uh, huge pressure to try to do something about the -- the actual uh, stock -- building stock.  Uh, and I just wonder that perhaps there wasn't as much money around as there has been since.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, there -- no, there certainly wasn't.  I can't remember.  Uh, and that probably means uh, that there wasn't.  There are certain -- you know, at Virginia there were a bunch of uh -- of key things that I did push through but I can't remember uh, any at Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I remember I succeeded Martin Price as -- as Director of Undergraduate Studies, before -- before I was chair, and I remember asking him, you know, \"Well, how do you do this job?\"  And he said, \"My only advice is, if they cry, give them what they want.\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs) Did you find much difference between the -- the women undergraduates and the men undergraduates?  I mean, you've talked about --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well -- yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- how diffident some of the -- the graduate students could be.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: The graduate students were different.  The undergraduate weren't.  The undergraduate women were -- were terrific.  I mean, they were all the women who'd been siphoned off from -- from Wellesley --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- and places like it.  They -- they were wonderful.  Uh, no, I -- I don't, really.  It happened, one -- one year, that I taught an undergraduate seminar -- senior seminar on uh, Jane Austen.  And it was all -- all women.  Uh, and I remember, you know, being pleased and thinking, \"Well, this -- this is going to be fun,\" but it didn't really seem all that different.  It uh -- they were, you know, feisty and assertive.  And they're -- they were great -- great -- wonderful students, really.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Well, I mean, it's the pressure to get there uh, is so enormous on them.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh -- you said earlier on that uh, you -- in -- in the end, you felt one of the reasons for leaving Yale was this pressure-house environment.  Uh, did you feel that you had succeeded there?\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=6281.0,6611.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: I'd certainly succeeded intellectually.  Uh, I felt that it had been very good for me intellectually, you know, that I -- I'd grown, um, that my work was better -- better for it.  I didn't -- I think probably that people are very vulnerable to outside offers after they step down as chair.  Uh, and, you know, I've never figured out exactly how important that -- that was.  But I -- I know that I worked very hard as chair and uh, I didn't have a feeling of having succeeded in any very significant way or of having --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Would you have wanted to carry on being chair?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, no.  No, no.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You just wanted to do the one term.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh but, you know, after I decided to leave, then people started talking to me about their perception uh, of what I had done and it was clear that the general perception was that I'd been very successful at this job.  So that -- that was nice.  I mean, that was -- was comforting.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Were there any innovations during your term uh, that, uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh, I can't remember that there were, although uh, you know, I met -- I met somebody at the University of New Hampshire, when I gave a talk last year, who had been a junior faculty member when I was there and he said, \"You changed things so much when you were chair.\"  But I don't know -- I don't know what he meant.  I mean, I don't know -- I don't know -- I think -- I think it may be just atmosphere.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think I did change the atmosphere.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I can't remember any -- any innovations.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh I have -- I mean, I have the impression, rightly or wrongly, um, that the Yale culture, uh, certainly back in the -- in the '70s and -- and earlier than that, probably was the -- was the opposite of transparent.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: [Your?] -- uh, there was -- there was a network -- uh, I don't want to say old boy network.  But there were --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, well, I [think?] --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Your -- it was who you knew.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh things got done on the nod, uh, inside and outside departments, at uh, college level.  Um, and I just wondered, maybe you coming in from the outside --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- uh, that maybe -- and the culture was changing --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- because the legislation was there that --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- meant it had to change -- that it was becoming more transparent; it was more open maybe in its dealings.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Maybe so.  Maybe so.  Uh -- I just -- uh, I seem to be very blank about the --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  Yeah.  Or you're just being modest?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No, no.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh I really -- you know, aside from what Hillis and -- and Michael Cooke told me, uh, I never figured out the inner workings of the place at all.  I just went straight ahead (laughs) as thought there -- there weren't any.  Chip was -- was a real ally.  He uh -- I think he really ran interference for -- uh, for me, so-- uh, some.  I did -- I was very successful at getting who I asked (laughs) for uh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was this in terms of -- of hires or --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- plant or --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh well, I mean, the plant was just a daily struggle.  I mean, uh, yes, I tended to get what I wanted for -- inch -- inch by inch.  Uh, but hires, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Who did you hire?  Would you have hired Lanny and Jill?  Or was that after you left?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Was that after?  All -- yeah.  Oh, I remember talking to Jill.  Uh, it must have been while, uh -- it must have been while I was still there.  I had to be, because I can remember having long conversations about whether she should take the Yale offer.  They had another offer.  I advised her -- I advised them against uh, taking the Yale offer.  Yes, and that -- that certainly happened during -- during my administration.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: She was my uh, doctoral student.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Was she?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, I think I knew that.  Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I was very sorry to hear about --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh we'd better --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- her separation.\r\n(break in audio)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: [I'd better remember to?] --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=6611.0,6900.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: Very soon -- very soon.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.  We're recording again.  Sorry.  Um, we were talking about the possibility of what uh, kind of innovations and changes were made under your um, jurisdiction.  Somebody did tell me that you were -- that you'd brought in major adjustments to the teaching load.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, uh, that's what I was trying to remember.  That's what I did at uh, Virginia.  But -- and maybe I -- maybe I did it at Yale too.  I felt very strongly that the uh, junior and senior faculty should have the same -- the same load.  And maybe -- maybe that was it.  Maybe uh, the junior faculty were teaching two and three, when I came, and I got it changed to two and two.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Yes, because I think everybody teaches the same --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- load now.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And why -- why did you feel that this was unfair, that they took a --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Because I thought that they -- I mean, it's true that senior faculty have more committee work and dissertations to direct and so on but junior faculty are under such terrific pressure, uh, working toward tenure at Yale or -- or elsewhere, and, because they are less experienced as teacher-- as teachers, you know, the teaching makes more demands on them.  And I thought there was no case to be made for -- for an inequality of -- of load.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And did you have any trouble trying to get something like that put through?  Was there resistance from the senior facul--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, there wa-- there was resistance but it wasn't (laughs) insuperable for me, obviously.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, right.  When you went to uh, Virginia, what did you bring with you from Yale into that new place?  Because you went as -- as chair there -- did you?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I didn't go as --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: You didn't go --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- as chair.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: (laughs) It took a year.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh well, you know, uh, a lot of valuable administrative experience, for sure, uh, but also, I think, a -- a sense of intellectual rigor.  Uh, but -- well, I thi-- I think I was more rigorous than, at least, some -- some of my uh, colleagues and more demanding.  Uh, Virginia was uh -- was more advanced than Yale, I mean, and made more progress about really integrating women uh, into -- into the department.  But uh, there too -- I guess -- I guess I brought (laughs) quite a bit of confidence that I could make things happen.  And uh -- and I made a lot happen there.  I mean, there were a lot of -- uh, just one -- one thing after another that -- that I just managed to change.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you want to feed your beasts?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Because I think --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Ten minutes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Give them ten minutes?  (laughter)  Because they're definitely looking at the clock.  I can see that.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.  Mmm-hmm.  And they uh --  [I can?[ clarify --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Just thinking about -- you -- you said you -- you felt you brought an intellectual rigor uh, from Yale.  Uh, I wonder, given the -- the, kind of -- the heavy hitters who were in the English Department at Yale, especially amongst the theorists, uh, and all of -- all of that that was going on, uh, was it more difficult, as a result of that, to bring women's literature uh, a curriculum that would develop women's writing?  Was it more difficult to introduce that and to maintain it and to nurture it, in that kind of atmosphere --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I was--\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- or was --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I wasn't trying particularly to -- to uh, do that, because a lot of that had already been done.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=6900.0,7174.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: I mean, it didn't feel like something that -- that needed to be done.  Uh, my most important curricular innovation at Yale was, against the advice of all my colleagues -- uh, well, I mean of all the colleagues I talked to, I taught uh, the unabridged version of Clarissa in a graduate course.  And it was such a smash hit.  It was just -- (laughs) it was really an amazing experience.  I've taught it many -- many times, since -- uh, since then.  But that first time was just wonderful.  It was one of the many times when Yale was having a strike.  And uh, so we were meeting various places all around.  And the students were standing on street corners, arguing about Clarissa.  It was just --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: (laughs)\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- just fantastic.  It was a wonderful, wonderful experience!  The, uh -- the -- it was a -- it was a seminar and there were, I think, 12 people in the class.  And as it happened, six were men and six were women.  And uh, on the day that we were going to talk about the rape, uh, we came to this -- this classroom and they divided.  The women sat one side and the men sat on the other.  It just -- it just --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It just happened?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- happened.  And uh, within ten minutes, they were yelling at each other.  The uh, women were saying, \"You treat the rape as though it were a trope!  It's not a trope.  It's a rape!\"  And the men were saying, \"You never really talk about anything.  You just wait for us to talk about it.\"  It was -- it was great.  And, you know -- and then I pointed out what was happening and then they got very interested in that and -- it was a wonderful experience.  I loved teaching at Yale.  I really loved it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: The students were very engaged?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, the stu-- the students were wonderful, both the undergraduates and the graduate students.  Uh, I had some really remarkable graduate students.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And, of course, Yale, I think it's true to say, now uh, and I think, from what you're saying, in the past -- valued teaching.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Very, very much.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So students got a very good deal --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- get a very good deal.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Uh, it wa-- it was really remarkable.  I mean, the junior faculty were dedicated teachers but the senior faculty were too.  Bart was president when I -- when I came and he said that they never made special deals about teaching -- about reduced teaching.  I don't think that was quite true.  I think that occasionally there were such special deals made, but not very often.  Uh, and uh, the senior faculty too, you know, I mean, really taught.  Most of them now -- there were many stories about -- well, Harold never read a paper in his life, apparently.  And there were stories about Geoffrey Hartman not reading -- reading papers in graduate -- in graduate courses.  But they taught the classes.  They really did.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It must be one of the reasons why so many Yale graduate students are all over the place --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- teaching everywhere.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Uh, the -- the influence kind of passes on?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And Yale, you know, captures the imagination, in -- in some way.  And this guy I met in New Hampshire, he's been away from Yale -- he -- he left Yale before I did.  And um, I left in '89.  So -- and but he still is eager to talk about -- about Yale.  And, you know, whenever I meet somebody who has been at Yale, that's the -- that's the subject.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  You obviously do meet people a lot and continue to do so, because you've been involved, um, at a national level, about -- and the debate about the -- the value of the humanities uh, in the academy and beyond.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Um and I just wondered uh, what -- what kinds of roles you've taken, in -- in, for example, the uh, American Academy and the MLA?  Have you been president?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I was president of the MLA and uh, I was president of the Academy for six years, which is, I think, unprecedented.  I -- I don't think anyone's ever been president for that long.  Uh, it's supposed to be a single, three-year term.  Uh, well, what role I -- I took.  I was president of MLA in -- in '94.  And that was a time -- that was when Lynne Cheney was -- was director of the NEH.  And uh, it was a -- it was a time when the humanities were under terrific pressure.  Uh, it was the -- the time -- I don't know if you would have known about this in -- in Great Britain but the right wing launched an attack uh, on the academy -- I mean, on -- on uh, the profession, alleging that Shakespeare wasn't taught any -- any more.  And it worked up a lot of popular feeling.  Uh, the MLA, at that time, had a very distinguished statistician on -- on its payroll and she did a study of the curriculum in, you know, many universities -- it was statistically impeccable, I was told -- uh, and demonstrated unmistakably that Shakespeare was taught -- was taught everywhere.  And uh, at the convention, I was to uh, host a press conference to give out this news.  And I had big charts and so on.  And I made my pitch.  And Roger Kimball -- do you know who that is?\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=7174.0,7563.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: I know the name but I don't --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: He's -- he's a conservative -- very -- very conservative critic.  He's second in command of The New Criterion.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: And uh, he's been at this a long time.  Uh, I made my pitch and I asked if there were any questions.  And Roger Kimball stood up and said, \"You're lying.\"  That was --  (laughs)  I wish I could remember what uh -- what I said.  I did not lose my aplomb at the moment.  Uh, but I have no memory of what -- what I did.  It was such a shock to me.  But -- and I was involved but, uh -- but, you know, I can't -- I can't claim any great accomplishments.  I was involved -- I tried (laughs) to be involved in the setting of standards for what they insisted on calling language arts and still are calling language arts.  It was just totally futile.  They -- they just wouldn't pay any attention.  Uh, I was involved in -- in establishing the MLA radio program.  But I didn't do anything very remarkable.  Uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Do you think that the humanities uh, are under a great deal of pressure because -- because of the way that science seems to give answers, or at least the possibility of answers in a very concrete way?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: You know, the strange thing is that science is under great pressure too.  Uh, I had lunch yesterday with a woman who's master of a college here uh, and she's also head of the uh, History -- is it the History and Literature Depart-- no, it's the literature major.  And she said they had a meeting of masters of the colleges, who were all concerned about the humanities, about what was happening to the humanities.  And uh, what she is concerned about is she says that all -- all those statistics show that graduates in the humanities do fine in the business world.  She said that people who are graduating now, the people who graduate in the humanities are not getting good jobs.  And people who graduate with business degrees, which is 22% of all degrees in the United States -- are business degrees -- uh, they get the jobs.  And economics.  And uh, so.  But science is -- you know, jobs are drying up in the sciences too, because the federal money's drying up.  I suppo-- I suppose it's true that people -- that the general population -- uh, you know, I -- I don't know, Florence, because there is such a backlash against science right now too.  I mean, there's the whole evangelical attack on uh, evolution.  There's the right wing attack on climate change.  Uh, scientists are not being accorded the kind of authority that -- that they used to have.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Maybe it's a kind of anti-intellectualism, genera--\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I was just going to say.  I think the -- that the attack is not just on the humanities.  It's on the intellectual life.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm.  Do you think, in the humanities, the fact that it's -- the academy has become, in many ways, feminized has been a problem?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I don't know how directly -- I was worried about that a long, long time ago, you know, noticing what happened to the medical profession in Russia as it became --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- as it became feminized.  I thought -- I mean, there were -- the Kremlin feminists were saying, \"We are going to take over.\"  I -- I never thought that was such a -- such a good thing.  And uh, I don't think -- I don't think (laughs) it strengthens the humanities, or women.  Uh --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=7563.0,7804.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER: It's a terrible conundrum, isn't it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah, it really is.  It really is.  And again, you know, since I've been immersed in statistics so much uh, recently, foreign languages and literature, uh, a large uh, majority of the faculty are women -- I mean, of tenured faculty are -- are women.  And that's probably the lowest prestige field in the university.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And -- yeah, and I think there's also some evidence, uh, certainly in the U.K., that uh, the very best humanities students -- I'm thinking of students in the English -- in English and history and modern languages and things like that -- uh, they're not actually even going to graduate school.  They're going straight into the business world.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Really?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh because they see that that is going to hold them up and that, in the end, what can they do with all of those things?  They're just going to teach.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: And those are not high status jobs.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So they're going straight into -- into the business world or going to one of the professional schools to do uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Law or --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- law or management --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- or whatever.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh and uh -- and I know I've heard people say, not so much in English but I've heard it in other subjects in the humanities, that they now feel that they're not getting the best students as graduate students.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I think that's right.  I -- I think it's true in English too.  Uh, and I know many other people who --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?  So uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- think the same thing.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I mean, I -- I was wondering if I was -- maybe I was mis-hearing or misrepresenting.  But you say that -- that --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  I -- I think that's right.  I -- I uh, certainly was feeling that the last several -- several years in -- at Virginia.  Of course, Virginia doesn't get students as -- as good as -- well, it gets some students as -- as good as Yale but it doesn't get -- not all of the students are as good as at Yale.  But -- my -- my friends at Harvard say that too.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Are you optimistic about the profession?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: No.  I'm very pessimistic.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Really?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.  Uh, I mean, I think part of it is our fault.  But I don't know how to do anything uh, about it.  Uh, I remember, years ago at Yale, overhearing two undergraduates uh, talking in a basement across campus uh, and the one saying to the other, \"I just loved Mr. Brisman.  I can't understand a word he says.\"\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Who -- who is Mr. Briston?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Leslie Brisman, teaches in the department.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, right, right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: He's -- he's very, very theoretical --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- high theory.  He's a -- a disciple of Harold's.  Uh, well, there's been too much of that.  And, uh -- well, you -- you know all the -- all the familiar things.  I -- I just wish I knew what to do about it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It is -- it is a difficult position.  And it's -- and what money there is does seem to be going into the sciences or into the professional schools, doesn't it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, my most starting statistics -- this -- this is very recent.  I -- this -- I think this is 2006.  The amount of money spent from outside the university on research in the humanities is 1/4th of 1% of what is spent on sciences.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Good heavens.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: 1/4th of 1%.  I mean, that is -- you know, to be sure, we don't need laboratories but (laughs) --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  But uh, all of that's also rolled up into salaries and everything else --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- isn't it?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  All the other things that make a working life good.  You said that uh -- in one of your essays uh, you talked about the rhetoric of uncertainty in female autobiography.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Did I?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes.  Well, (laughs) maybe you don't remember.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: I don't remember that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh how women tend to be mute about um --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- to mute their -- your --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- lower their -- and you talk about their success and --  uh, and to deny the difficulties of trying to live a life other than the stereotypical one that maybe culture has -- has uh, dictated.  Uh, I just --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=7804.0,8103.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: That was quite a while ago.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It would -- probably was.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: I just wondered if you were also speaking from your own experience in that.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh you know, I -- you know, I really don't remember it.  I remember writing about the parenthesis as a -- as a particularly female uh, symbol.  But I -- I --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Oh, tha-- tell me more about that.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, ju-- it is.  You know, women -- women tend to use parentheses a lot.  And uh, you know, it's a -- (laughs) it's a way of -- of putting -- putting things aside.  But I don't know -- uh, I don't know that I was talking about personal experience.  And I don't know that that's true any more either.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Uh I rather think it isn't.  I mean, I think that women have no difficulty at all talking about their difficulties.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Right.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  I would have thought nowadays people used dashes rather than --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- parentheses.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yes, probably.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  (laughs)  There's a kind of forward --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- dynamism, isn't there?  Um, do you think it's become easier for a woman to combine family and career, and to -- to expect to be able to do that?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Mm, I don't -- I don't really think it's become easier.  Uh, I remember, you know, talking to those Wellesley students, in the -- in the '60s, who were very, very interested in that question.  And I said, \"Well, the important thing is to pick a good man.\"  I -- I mean, you'd have to have the right husband.  You have to have the right support system.  Uh, how could it be easier?  I mean, it's just not easy.  Uh, I suppose -- I suppose it's easier in the sense that there are probably more men around who are willing to make the -- the necessary adjustments but I don't think there are all that many, really.  And uh, it just is hard.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's -- and how far do you think institutions should make institutional adjustment to enable people to have both?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, well, I'm -- I'm all in favor of that.  But I -- I mean, you know -- and certainly there is much more maternity leave and paternity leave.  So -- but those are really -- (laughs) they're band-aids.  I mean, that's not the -- it's -- it's year after year.  It's not, uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's the task itself --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- is so difficult.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.  I mean, it's -- if there are two things you care very much about and they -- and there's only one hunk of time, you know, it's -- it's never going to be easy to do that.  And I think -- I suspect that there are some ways in which it's become harder.  Because uh -- I mean, when I -- when I was doing it, it wasn't a social expectation at any level of -- of society.  Now there are whole social groups where it's expected that you'll somehow be able to do that.  And uh, that's -- that's a very hard expectation.  And there's also politics involved in it.  And it's -- it's a political cause.  And I think all of that makes it harder.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yes, I suppose, if you expect to be able to do it all and then you find that you can't --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- then you're setting yourself up for failure.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah!  Exactly.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Or you find you don't want both -- or all.  But somehow, then, you're deemed by society to have failed.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Right.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: There -- there's a different set of difficulties.  What do you think, that -- looking back on your -- on your life, and eh as a -- as a writer and an academic and as a teacher, what are you most proud of?\r\n(pause)\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=8103.0,8364.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"PATRICIA SPACKS: I don't know.  I've never -- never asked myself that.  Uh -- I’m really proud of the job I did as chair at Virginia.  I uh -- I made a lot of difference to that department -- a lot.  (pause)  About books, you know, I'm pretty fickle.  I uh -- I tend to like the last one best.  (laughs)  Uh, I'm proud of The Female Imagination.  It's terribly dated now but it was important in its time.  And it was a lot of fun to write.  And it was a new kind of writing for me.  You know, pride doesn't seem the right --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: That -- that's not the relevant --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- emotion, really.  It's uh -- and I -- I don't know what I'd substitute, you know, because I've found, well, it's a matter of pleasure.  What have I taken the most pleasure in?  But I've taken pleasure in a -- in a lot of it, uh, most of it.  You know, I've loved -- I've loved teaching.  [And I loved?] teaching at the University of Florida.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What do you think your greatest as being?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, there have been a lot of those.  (laughs)  There have been a lot of big challenges.  I think Yale was probably my biggest -- biggest challenge.  I mean, I was -- I was in emotionally fragile condition when I -- when I came to Yale and it was -- it was tough, I think not -- not because I was a woman particularly but it's just -- it's a tough place.  And, uh -- but I -- I have always -- you know, I -- once -- once you surmount a -- uh, surmount a challenge, it doesn't seem like a challenge any more --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- so I can't -- can't even remember very many.  But I have uh, habitually ta-- I was talking to somebody about -- about this, just the other day, saying that is was my vice and that I had just uh, managed to overcome it for the first time.  I withdrew from something I had agreed to do.  Uh, I have always tended to do things because I didn't know how to do them or because I wasn't sure I could do them or because I thought I couldn't do them.  And uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: So you were always testing yourself?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's very exhausting.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  But it's also exhilarating.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  If you survive.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: If you -- if you survive uh.  As I said, I've been -- I've been very, very fortunate.  I've had a lot of help.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What were the uh -- we didn't really talk about uh, your -- your uh, time at uh, Virginia, because it was after your -- your time at Yale.  Uh, you said that you -- you felt you'd done a really good job as chair there.  What sorts of things did you -- did you do there that uh --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, I changed the uh -- just about everything changed, (laughs) really.  The teaching -- the teaching load was the first thing.  The uh, orals lists, the uh, arrangement of the -- of exams for the uh -- for the graduate program.  I changed a lot in the graduate program.  Uh, the procedures in hiring.  I -- I really -- really changed a great deal.  There was one thing I didn't succeed in changing that I wanted to.  But it's an old Virginia tradition.  But otherwise, you know, everything uh --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: What was that?\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Oh, it's -- it's an arrangement whereby people are identified by their announced fields of specialty and then they -- they caucus within those -- those fields.  And the effect of this is that everyone teaches just in his field.  And I taught nothing but the 18th century all the time -- well, I -- I taught an introduction to the major course a couple -- couple of times.  And at Yale I taught, you know, college seminars and uh, I taught uh, English 125, which I loved.  And, you know, I felt that anything I wanted to teach, I could -- could uh, teach.  And at Wellesley (laughs) I taught the whole curriculum.  And I didn't like just teaching the 18th century.  I didn't like it at all.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: It's stri-- it's -- hearing you talk about that, it strikes me that, from what I'm hearing or picking up from you, that Yale gave you confidence --\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: A lot, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: -- gave you a lot of confidence.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  I mean, that's (laughs) because it was the biggest challenge and --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Yeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: -- you know, it was tough.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: That's a good point to stop.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Thank you, very much indeed.\r\n\nPATRICIA SPACKS: Well, it's a pleasure.  And uh, I'm happy to have that open.  I mean, many people know I've had a long love affair with Aubrey Williams.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER: Uh OK.  Uh, let --\r\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=8364.0,8714.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275/transcript/31941/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"END OF TRANSCRIPT","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48970/file/122275#t=8714.0,8749.37469"}]}]}]}