Ruth Benedict facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ruth Benedict
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Benedict in 1937
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Ruth Fulton
June 5, 1887 New York City, U.S.
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| Died | September 17, 1948 (aged 61) New York City, U.S.
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| Occupation | Anthropologist |
| Spouse(s) | Stanley Rossiter Benedict |
Ruth Fulton Benedict (born June 5, 1887 – died September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist. Anthropologists study human societies and cultures. Folklorists study traditional stories, customs, and beliefs.
Ruth was born in New York City. She went to Vassar College and finished her studies in 1909. Later, she studied anthropology at the New School of Social Research. In 1921, she began graduate studies at Columbia University. There, she learned from Franz Boas, a famous anthropologist.
She earned her PhD and became a faculty member in 1923. Margaret Mead and Marvin Opler were some of her students and colleagues. Ruth Benedict became the first woman to be recognized as a leader in a learned profession. She helped change how anthropology and folklore were studied. She focused on how culture shapes people's lives.
Contents
Ruth Benedict's Early Life
Childhood and Family
Ruth Fulton was born in New York City on June 5, 1887. Her parents were Beatrice and Frederick Fulton. Her mother was a school teacher. Her father was a doctor. He loved his work and research.
Sadly, her father caught an unknown disease during a surgery in 1888. This illness caused the family to move to Norwich, New York. They lived on her grandparents' farm. A year later, her father died. He had been searching for a cure in Trinidad.
Ruth's mother was very sad after her husband died. She often cried, especially in March. Ruth did not like her mother's sadness. She saw it as a weakness. Ruth felt it was wrong to cry in front of others. She later said, "I did not love my mother; I resented her cult of grief." This loss deeply affected her childhood.
As a toddler, Ruth got measles. This left her partially deaf. No one knew this until she started school. Ruth was also interested in death from a young age. When she was four, her grandmother showed her a baby who had died. Ruth said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Ruth's Love for Reading and Writing
When Ruth was seven, she started writing short poems. She read every book she could find. Her favorite author was Jean Ingelow. She loved A Legend of Bregenz and The Judas Tree. Writing helped her get approval from her family.
It was her way to express herself. She wrote about life with deep understanding. In high school, she wrote "Lulu's Wedding (A True Story)." It was about a family servant's arranged marriage. Ruth showed the unromantic truth of the event.
Ruth continued to study how death affects people. In her book Patterns of Culture, she wrote about the Pueblo culture. She showed how they dealt with sadness and death. She explained that people react to death differently. Societies have rules about showing grief. Some allow more expression, while others do not.
College Years and Marriage
After high school, Ruth and her sister went to St Margaret's School for Girls. They got a scholarship to this college prep school. Both sisters did well. In September 1905, they entered Vassar College. Ruth enjoyed the all-female environment.
Some people believed college made girls childless or unmarried. But Ruth explored her interests. She used writing to express her ideas. Her classmates sometimes called her an "intellectual radical." The author Walter Pater greatly influenced her. She wanted to live a full and meaningful life like him.
Ruth and her sister graduated in 1909. They both majored in English Literature. Ruth was unsure what to do next. A wealthy college trustee offered her a free trip to Europe. She traveled through France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and England for a year. She stayed with different families during her trip.
Over the next few years, Ruth tried many jobs. She first worked in social work. Then, she taught at the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, California. There, she became interested in Asia. This interest later guided her anthropology work.
She was not happy teaching at Westlake. After a year, she left to teach English in Pasadena. She taught at the Orton School for Girls. These years were hard for her. She felt sad and lonely. But reading authors like Walt Whitman and Richard Jefferies gave her hope. They wrote about the importance and joy of life.
The summer after her first year at Orton School, she went home. She spent time at the Shattucks' farm. There, Stanley Rossiter Benedict began to visit her. He was an engineer at Cornell Medical College. Ruth had met him in Buffalo around 1910. That summer, Ruth fell in love with Stanley. She accepted his marriage proposal.
Love made her feel energetic. She started many writing projects. She published poems using names like Ruth Stanhope and Anne Singleton. She also began writing a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft. She wanted to recognize other important women.
By 1918, Ruth and Stanley grew apart. Stanley was injured and wanted to live away from the city. Ruth was unhappy when they moved to Bedford Hills.
Ruth Benedict's Career in Anthropology
Starting Her Anthropology Journey
Ruth looked for a new career path. She attended lectures at the New School for Social Research. She thought about becoming an educational philosopher. At the school, she took a class called "S-- in Ethnology." It was taught by Elsie Clews Parsons. She enjoyed the class.
Then she took another anthropology course. Her teacher was Alexander Goldenweiser. He was a student of Franz Boas. Ruth's love for anthropology grew steadily. Her close friend Margaret Mead said, "Anthropology made the first 'sense' that any ordered approach to life had ever made to Ruth Benedict."
After a year with Goldenweiser, he sent her to study with Franz Boas. This was at Columbia University in 1921. She became very close with Boas. He was like a father figure to her. Ruth affectionately called him "Papa Franz."
Boas gave her credit for her New School courses. Benedict wrote her main paper, "The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America." She earned her PhD in anthropology in 1923. She also became friends with Edward Sapir. He encouraged her to study how individual creativity and culture connect. They both loved poetry and shared their work. They also were interested in how personalities and cultures relate.
In 1922, Benedict taught her first anthropology course at Barnard College. Margaret Mead was one of her students. Benedict had a big influence on Mead. Boas saw Benedict as a valuable part of the anthropology department. In 1931, he made her an assistant professor. This was possible after her divorce from Stanley Benedict that same year.
Ruth Benedict was a mentor to many students. One student, Ruth Landes, admired Benedict greatly. Landes wrote letters saying she loved how Benedict taught. She liked how Benedict made students think in new ways.
When Boas retired in 1937, many expected Ruth Benedict to lead the department. However, Columbia University was not as open to female leaders. The university president, Nicholas Murray Butler, wanted to reduce the influence of Boas's students. He thought they were too radical. Instead, Ralph Linton was named head of the department. Linton was a former student of Boas. He was also a critic of Benedict's ideas about "Culture and Personality."
Benedict felt insulted by Linton's appointment. The Columbia department became divided. Linton and Benedict were both successful anthropologists. But neither of them ever mentioned the other's work.
Working with Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict were very important anthropologists. They got along well. They shared a passion for each other's work. They were proud to be successful working women. This was rare at the time. They often reviewed each other's work. Their friendship grew through their shared work.
Both Benedict and Mead wanted to change stereotypes about women. They wanted to show that women could be successful in the workplace. In 1946, Benedict received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women.
After Benedict died from a heart attack in 1948, Mead continued her legacy. Mead oversaw projects Benedict would have done. She also edited and published Benedict's research notes.
After World War II
Before World War II, Benedict gave lectures at Bryn Mawr College. These lectures were about the idea of synergy. But the war made her focus on other areas of anthropology. The lectures were never fully presented. After the war, she finished her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Her original notes for the synergy lecture were never found.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1947. She continued teaching after the war. She became a full professor just two months before she died. She passed away in New York on September 17, 1948.
Ruth Benedict's Important Works
Understanding Cultures with Patterns of Culture
Ruth Benedict's book Patterns of Culture (1934) was very popular. It was translated into fourteen languages. For many years, it was a standard book for anthropology classes in American universities.
The main idea in Patterns of Culture is that cultures are like big personalities. As Benedict wrote, "A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action." She believed each culture chooses certain traits from all human possibilities. These traits become the main personality features of the people in that culture. These traits create a unique way of life for each culture.
For example, she described the Pueblo cultures of the American Southwest. They emphasized being calm and controlled. In contrast, the Native American cultures of the Great Plains emphasized being wild and free. She used ideas from Friedrich Nietzsche about "Apollonian" (orderly) and "Dionysian" (wild) to describe these cultures.
She explained that in ancient Greece, followers of Apollo valued order. But followers of Dionysus, the god of wine, celebrated wildly. Benedict showed how different cultures have different rituals, beliefs, and preferences. She showed that each culture has a "personality" that shapes its people.
Other anthropologists also developed these ideas. Margaret Mead did in her books Coming of Age in Samoa and S-- and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Benedict was a senior student of Franz Boas when Mead started studying with them. They greatly influenced each other's work.
In Patterns of Culture, Benedict shared her belief in cultural relativism. This means she believed each culture has its own moral rules. You can only understand these rules by studying the whole culture. She felt it was wrong to judge other cultures' customs or values. These customs had meaning to the people who lived them. They should be understood and respected. People should not judge others using only their own standards. She argued that what is "moral" depends on the values of the culture you are in.
She described the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest, the Pueblo of New Mexico, the nations of the Great Plains, and the Dobu culture of New Guinea. She showed that their values, even if they seemed strange, made sense within their own cultural systems. They deserved to be understood and respected. This idea was also central to her later work on the Japanese after World War II.
Some critics argued that her ideas were too general. They said that the patterns she found might only be part of a culture. For example, David Friend Aberle wrote that Pueblo people might be calm in some situations. But they could be suspicious or warlike in others.
In 1936, she became an associate professor at Columbia University. She had already helped train many anthropology students there. These included Margaret Mead and Ruth Landes. After the US entered World War II, the US government asked leading cultural anthropologists like Benedict for help. They needed help with war-related research.
Fighting Racism with "The Races of Mankind"
One of Benedict's less known works was a pamphlet called "The Races of Mankind." She wrote it with Gene Weltfish, a colleague at Columbia University. The pamphlet was for American troops. It used simple language and cartoons to explain why racist beliefs were wrong.
The pamphlet began, "The world is shrinking." It said, "Thirty-four nations are now united in a common cause—victory over Axis aggression, the military destruction of fascism." These nations included people of "the most different physical types."
Benedict and Weltfish showed evidence for human equality. They wanted to encourage all types of people to unite. They said, "all the peoples of the earth are a single family and have a common origin." They explained that all humans have the same number of teeth, bones, and muscles. This means we all came from the same ancestors, no matter our skin color or hair texture. "The races of mankind are what the Bible says they are—brothers. In their bodies is the record of their brotherhood."
Understanding Japan with The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
Benedict is also famous for her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. This book, published in 1946, studied the society and culture of Japan. It included her research from wartime.
This book was an example of anthropology at a distance. During World War II, anthropologists helped the United States and its allies. They could not visit Nazi Germany or Japan. So, they studied cultures using literature, newspapers, films, and recordings. They tried to understand the cultural patterns that might be causing aggression. They hoped to find ways to persuade these nations.
Benedict's war work included a big study on Japanese culture. Americans found some Japanese behaviors hard to understand. For example, American prisoners-of-war wanted their families to know they were alive. They also kept quiet about troop movements. But Japanese prisoners seemed to share information freely. They did not try to contact their families. Why was this? Also, why did Asian peoples not see the Japanese as liberators from Western colonialism? Why did they not accept Japan's supposed top place in a hierarchy?
Benedict played a key role in understanding the place of the Emperor of Japan in Japanese popular culture. She suggested to US President Franklin Roosevelt that allowing the Emperor to remain in power should be part of the surrender offer.
Some Japanese people who read this book found it mostly accurate. But they felt it was a bit "moralistic." Parts of the book were mentioned in Takeo Doi's book, The Anatomy of Dependence. Doi criticized Benedict's idea that Japan has a "shame" culture. He felt this implied that Japan's values were inferior to the Christian American "guilt" culture.
Ruth Benedict's Legacy
The American Anthropology Association gives an annual award named after Ruth Benedict. The Ruth Benedict Prize has two categories. One is for books by a single writer. The other is for edited collections of writings. The prize honors "excellence in a scholarly book written from an anthropological perspective about a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender topic."
A 46-cent Great Americans series postage stamp was issued in her honor on October 20, 1995.
Benedict College at Stony Brook University is named after her.
In 2005, Ruth Benedict was added to the National Women's Hall of Fame.
See also
In Spanish: Ruth Benedict para niños
