
          Lillian_Smith: A Southerner Confronting the
South. By Anne Loveland. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1986. $22.50).
          By Gladney, RoseRose Gladney
          Vol. 9, No. 1, 1987, pp. 13-14
          
          Before she died in 1966 Lillian_Smith was contacted and sometimes
interviewed by several prospective biographers. Because she knew her
worth, Smith cooperated and compiled a rather extensive collection of
autobiographical notes, chronologies, and lists of significant friends
and references. After Smith's death Paula Snelling, as executrix of
her literary estate, continued the process by preparing and selecting
Smith's correspondence and other papers for deposit in the University
of Georgia Libraries. Students and friends of Smith have waited twenty
years for a serious, thoroughly researched biography. Anne Loveland is
to be congratulated for being the first to master the sheer volume of
material in the Lillian_Smith papers and for placing Smith's life in
the mainstream of twentieth century American social and intellectual
history.
          Because she wee publicly praised and honored for her work with the
civil_rights movement during her lifetime, Smith knew she would be
remembered for her early and continued call for a complete end to
racial segregation. However, what Smith most wanted was to be valued
as a creative writer and thinker. Accordingly, Loveland chose as the
informing theme of her biography what Smith had called the struggle to
relate the "Mary" and "Martha" aspects of her life, the conflicting
impulses between her writing career and her work for social
reform. While the use of this theme in her analysis provides important
insights into some of Smith's works, Loveland fails to establish her
own aesthetic criteria for evaluating Smith's writing. Instead, after
offering little more than reports of the critical views of Smith's
contemporaries and noting Smith's own acknowledged appreciation of
other philosophers and theologians such as Tillich and Teilard de
Chardin, Loveland concludes: "Regrettably, her philosophical
thinking was generally derivative and superficial and her literary
effort unexceptional. Her primary significance lies in the role she
played in the Southern civil_rights movement of the 1940s, 1950s, and
1960s."
          Although Smith's contribution to the Southern civil_rights movement
should not be underestimated, the value and significance of that
contribution cannot really be separated from the quality of her
writing and thinking. Behind Loveland's assessment of Smith's literary
and philosophical capabilities lies a seemingly unexamined acceptance
of the necessity of separating creative writing and social
activism. This failure to examine the implications of Smith's choice
of self-definition is one indication of the absence of an essential
ingredient in Loveland's analysis: a consciousness of the power of
gender in shaping a life and in influencing one's perception of life
in general.
          Without that awareness, Loveland fails to see the tension between
the "Mary" and "Martha" aspects of her character as a function of
gender and the frustration in Smith's life as a product of seeking
affirmation and validation from the very forces she rebelled
against--the patriarchal structure which perpetuates a racist and
sexist society.
          Additional evidence of Loveland's lack of feminist consciousness
pervades her discussion of Smith's analysis of the roles of Southern
women. Although Loveland notes Smith's "comprehensive challenge
against sexual convention," she seems to accept uncritically Smith's
rather limited definition of feminism. While observing that Smith
"thought of herself as specially qualified to help break the long
silence about women," and that her challenge to white_supremacy and
racial segregation "inevitably threatened two major supports of sacred
womanhood," Loveland maintains that "[Smith] was clearly not a
feminist writer, for lesbianism was only a minor theme in her novels
and none of her works was written to promote women's rights or
liberation." I question the logic of so 

limited a definition of
feminist writing.
          Loveland's lack of feminist consciousness is further demonstrated
in her analysis of Smith's personal relationships. While acknowledging
that Smith's closest friends were women, and that the strongest
support and appreciation of her work came from women, Loveland
devalues the significance of that support by implying that those
female friends praised Smith's work because they "recognized how much
Lillian desired approval and praise." Downplaying the effects of
thirteen years of battling cancer, the 1955 fire which destroyed her
home and most of her unpublished manuscripts, and the reality of
patriarchal biases in treatment from male critics and friends,
Loveland concludes the chapter on relationships: "She seemed to
expect ill treatment from people, especially men, and purposely looked
for indications of it to confirm her suspicions. At least some of the
frustration and disappointment marking her life and career was of her
own making and the result of an inability to take satisfaction in
anything less than unconditional praise or loyalty."
          Although Smith's tendency to resist identification as a feminist
may be at least partially attributed to the absence of a
well-developed, supportive feminist movement during her lifetime, it
is not so easy to excuse Loveland's adherence to an anti-feminist
interpretation in light of the influence of feminist theory on recent
historical scholarship. Whether or not Smith can be called a feminist
writer, her biographer should recognize the power of patriarchal
values in shaping Smith's life. Smith knew that her sex made an
important difference in her experience, perception, and treatment as a
writer. She even associated the "Mary" or creative side of herself
with her knowledge of women. Yet she wanted to be valued as though sex
did not matter. The illusion that such approval can be "objective" is
in itself a product of patriarchal thinking. Ironically, we finally
learn from Smith's life what neither she-nor Loveland could fully
see--the power and the cost of self-creation and the necessity for
self-validation in a woman's life.
          Loveland's biography values in Smith what was acknowledged by the
ruling males of her day and ours: Smith's contribution to the civil
rights movement. Correspondingly, the biography undervalues the
importance of Smith's life and work with other women. If Smith's life
is to be re-created so that its richness and complexity may be fully
appreciated, her biographer must push the boundaries of patriarchal
thinking even further than Smith did.
          This carefully researched example of traditional scholarship has
reported the facts of Smith's life, but a full recreation and
appreciation of her character remains to be written.
          
            Rose Gladney is assistant professor of American Studies
at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
          
        
