AMERICAN FEMINISM IN THE FICTION OF AMANDA CROSS [CAROLYN HEILBRUN]
AMERICAN FEMINISM IN THE FICTION OF AMANDA CROSS [CAROLYN HEILBRUN]

Summary/Abstract: "When the feminist intellectual figure Carolyn Gold Heilbrun (1926-2003) committed suicide (McFadden, 2003) it was sad event for her fans, but not something surprising to those who had read her works closely. Suicide was a message vehicle for a key character in one Amanda Cross novel (Knepper, 1992) and Heilbrun herself had and openly expressed negative views about excessive longevity. At one point in her life she had “held a determination to commit suicide at seventy” (1997:7). A suicide, mistaken for a murder, is the central case in her Death in a Tenured Position (1981) and suicides are discussed multiple times in Sweet Death, Kind Death (1984) in which the murder victim has contemplated suicide and her death is disguised as one. In Heilbrun's non-fiction The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty (1997) her views about excessive longevity were made clear in multiple passages, but she also explained why she had not ended her life at seventy. She felt that there was a point in a well-lived life when all of one's aims were either met or "[...]

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