Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College and graduated in 1909. She entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1919, where she studied under Franz Boas. She received her Ph.D and joined the faculty in 1923. Margaret Mead, with whom she may have shared a romantic relationship,[1] and Marvin Opler, were among her students and colleagues.
Franz Boas, her teacher and mentor, has been called the father of American anthropology and his teachings and point of view are clearly evident in Benedict's work. Ruth Benedict was affected by the passionate love of Boas, her mentor, and continued it in her research and writing.
Benedict held the post of President of the American Anthropological Association and was also a prominent member of the American Folklore Society.[2] She became the first woman to be recognized as a prominent leader of a learned profession.[2] She can be viewed as a transitional figure in her field, redirecting both anthropology and folklore away from the limited confines of culture-trait diffusion studies and towards theories of performance as integral to the interpretation of culture. She studied the relationships between personality, art, language and culture, insisting that no trait existed in isolation or self-sufficiency, a theory which she championed in her 1934 Patterns of Culture.
Childhood[edit]
Benedict was born Ruth Fulton in New York City on June 5, 1887, to Beatrice and Frederick Fulton.[3][4] Her mother worked in the city as a schoolteacher, while her father pursued a promising career as a homeopathic doctor and surgeon.[3] Although Mr. Fulton loved his work and research, it eventually led to his premature death, as he acquired an unknown disease during one of his surgeries in 1888.[5] Due to his illness the family moved back to Norwich, New York to the farm of Ruth's maternal grandparents, the Shattucks.[4] A year later he died, ten days after returning from a trip to Trinidad to search for a cure.[5]
Mrs. Fulton was deeply affected by her husband's passing. Any mention of him caused her to be overwhelmed by grief; every March she cried at church and in bed.[5] Ruth hated her mother's sorrow and viewed it as a weakness. For her, the greatest taboos in life were crying in front of people and showing expressions of pain.[5] She reminisced, "I did not love my mother; I resented her cult of grief".[5] Because of this, the psychological effects on her childhood were profound, for "in one stroke she [Ruth] experienced the loss of the two most nourishing and protective people around her—the loss of her father at death and her mother to grief".[4]
As a toddler, she contracted measles which left her partially deaf, which was not discovered until she began school.[6] Ruth also had a fascination with death as a young child. When she was four years old her grandmother took her to see an infant that had recently died. Upon seeing the dead child's face, Ruth claimed that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.[5]
At age seven Ruth began to write short verses and read any book she could get her hands on. Her favorite author was Jean Ingelow and her favorite readings were A Legend of Bregenz and The Judas Tree.[5] Through writing she was able to gain approval from her family. Writing was her outlet, and she wrote with an insightful perception about the realities of life. For example, in her senior year of high school she wrote a piece called, "Lulu's Wedding (A True Story)" in which she recalled the wedding of a family serving girl. Instead of romanticizing the event, she revealed the true, unromantic, arranged marriage that Lulu went through because the man would take her, even though he was much older.[4]
Although Ruth Benedict's fascination with death started at an early age, she continued to study how death affected people throughout her career. In her book Patterns of Culture, Benedict studied the Pueblo culture and how they dealt with grieving and death. She describes in the book that individuals may deal with reactions to death, such as frustration and grief, differently. Societies all have social norms that they follow; some allow more expression when dealing with death, such as mourning, while other societies are not allowed to acknowledge it.[3]
College and marriage[edit]
After high school, Margery (her sister) and Ruth were able to enter St Margaret's School for Girls, a college preparatory school, with help from a full-time scholarship. The girls were successful in school and entered Vassar College in September 1905.[4] During this time period stories were circulating that going to college led girls to become childless and never be married. Nevertheless, Ruth explored her interests in college and found writing as her way of expressing herself as an "intellectual radical" as she was sometimes called by her classmates.[4] Author Walter Pater wa