... electricity is palpable in Doherty’s pages. I have rarely, if ever, read a work of non-fiction that chronicled relationships like these, with women in conversation about everything except men. Even Sylvia Plath appears without Ted Hughes, befriending Sexton at a poetry seminar in Boston. There were moments when I wanted to know more about the rest of their lives—the troubles in Sexton’s marriage, including her multiple affairs, are mentioned only in passing. But I understood, also, why Doherty focuses so tightly on the Institute. Her book is a love story about art and female friendship ... I consumed both Wade and Doherty’s books at a furious speed, scrawling notes in the margins with greater-than-usual intensity, pausing occasionally to let the ideas sink in. The urgency with which their subjects—ten between them, extending across more than a century—negotiated the demands of intellect and life is timeless. Women must undertake that project anew in each generation because the social structures to support it do not exist. We are still trying to figure it out.
... [an] engaging work of cultural biography ... Doherty provides lively glimpses of the individual trajectories and projects of these artists, both in the years leading up to and after their time at Radcliffe. Olsen’s complicated relationship with the academy is well evoked, as are Sexton’s volatility ... Doherty may be less interested in the visual artists; or perhaps there exists less documentation of their thoughts and experiences ... Doherty’s attention to these early Radcliffe fellows is tempered by her awareness of the institute’s homogeneity at the time with respect to race and, for the most part, class ... This endeavor simultaneously to offer a broader context for the Radcliffe Institute and to cover a large period of time — from 1957 to the mid-1970s — ultimately renders The Equivalents somewhat diffuse, and in places it can feel skimpy. While Sexton’s and Kumin’s lives are thoroughly documented (and have been told elsewhere), Swan’s and Pineda’s in particular are only briefly handled. Doherty isn’t notably a stylist, and her descriptions can be perfunctory ... It’s hard to tell whether the book’s primary interest lies in portraying the complicated and demanding friendships among Kumin, Sexton and Olsen in the context of what is now the Radcliffe Institute, or in representing, at speed, the diverse strands of feminist activism and scholarship in the late ’60s and ’70s. Doherty tries to address all of these, in part, one suspects, because the subjects of her title — the five 'Equivalents' — seem, from a contemporary intersectional perspective, potentially problematic: They were white, and, with the exception of Olsen, educated and largely well-off ... Doherty’s account, may have its flaws, but The Equivalents is nevertheless an illuminating contribution to our history.
The book reads like a novel, and an intense one at that ... Doherty closes with a comparison of that era with ours. What has changed for women over 60 years, what remains the same and what is worse? Was all that struggle and angst and creative turmoil for nothing? She doesn't think so, and neither do I. I once lived in that distant country, and I'm grateful to the author of The Equivalents for reminding me that I have no wish to return.
Doherty focuses on five women: three writers, Kumin, Sexton, and Tillie Olsen; the painter Barbara Swan, who specialized in expressionist portraits dense with texture and emotions; and the sculptor Marianna Pineda, a Brookline mother of three who longed for recognition from an artistic community ... Doherty, despite suggesting that bridging the two spheres is doable with some financial assistance and mutual goodwill, sidesteps the possibility of happy compromise right in her introduction, even before she starts laying out her argument.
... a vivid, captivating, and excellently argued work that makes a compelling case for the importance of 'intellectual communit[ies]… made up entirely of female minds' ... a remarkable balancing act, and one she achieves through her respect for her subjects’ art ... . Now, Doherty argues, it’s past time to break new ground: to look for artists as marginalized as female writers, painters, and sculptors were in postwar America, and create new ways to offer these artists unprecedented community and support.
Maggie Doherty’s brilliant new book, The Equivalents, tells the story of the institute by focusing on the five fellows who called themselves 'The Equivalents' ... Doherty’s rigorous history is an empowering reminder that to change ourselves, we must have systemic support outside ourselves — institutional structures that reinforce the belief that all people are created equal, not just equivalent.
The Equivalents, Ms. Doherty’s first book, is written with panache. She adroitly weaves vivid, empathetic portraits of these talented women, focusing on their artistic accomplishments, their impact on the women’s movement and its impact on them. Her nuanced depiction of deep, supportive female friendships provides a welcome contrast to the fractious competitiveness and infighting that has so often tarnished the history of feminism ... As in life, Anne Sexton tends to commandeer center stage in this book, sometimes overshadowing its other subjects ... Ms. Doherty barely mentions the academic fellows who made up the majority of the early cohort, but her book’s long tail provides welcome snapshots of the Equivalents’ post-fellowship productiveness as well as a broader view of the program’s evolution over 60 years ... The bottom line? The Equivalents is a resounding endorsement of an initially daring social experiment that quickly demonstrated the sagacity of investing in human potential.
... a useful reminder that good behavior is usually more interesting than it’s given credit for, and less appreciated than it ought to be ... If The Equivalents is to be read prescriptively, its most important takeaway might be a sense of empathy with these women, and all of the women, in any place or moment in history, who every now and then manages to squirm out from under the gaze of a man and find the day’s freedom and happiness not by loudly proclaiming her intentions but simply by eating her vegetables and reading a book.
... any reader who picks up the book will immediately realize that the Anne Sexton-Maxine Kumin friendship provides its narrative backbone and emotional core. In many ways, this is a wise decision, since the two women are charismatic characters who offer an intimate glimpse into how the institute nurtured their creative process. The rich sources available to document that influence are also a huge plus ... But at times this focus threatens to take over the story ... Sexton's eventual suicide in 1974 looms large ... The Equivalents is most successful when it keeps close to the story of its five main protagonists. It captures the joy of their mutual friendships and how they depended on each other for encouragement and support ... when Doherty wanders too far from her collective biography, however, she sometimes loses her way ... We have Maggie Doherty to thank for bringing this story, warts and all, to new readers who are left contemplating what 'messy experiment' we should be considering for our own perilous times.
The book begins by laying the groundwork for each of the women, some getting much more story (Sexton and Kumin) than others (Swan and Pineda). But once creative careers are introduced and the artists accepted into Radcliffe, oddly, very little time is devoted to the Equivalents’ work at the institute itself. Readers are left to wonder what exactly happened to create such a beautiful bond between these women ... Sexton’s shaky mental health is told in a distant manner, such that understanding what was so hard for Sexton was difficult to grasp. To sympathetically portray a woman with suicidal tendencies who 'has it all,' as was the case for Sexton, is a challenge, but essential. One gets used to Sexton’s suicide attempts that frequently dot the pages. The episodes lose their weight ... extensively researched. By delving into America’s changes from the 1950s to the millennium, Doherty shines a light on the evolution of women in society, both in the work that’s been done, and the work that remains ... All of Doherty’s research is fascinating, and it’s clear her passion is really about feminism and the potential future of women, not so much The Equivalents themselves. You can feel it in the way the text always meanders to the politics of the time. But this isn’t the promise of the book—the premise is about The Equivalents and how their creative works at Radcliffe motivated one another to change the artistic landscape for women ... The effect of this bouncing around and ambitious undertaking is that there isn’t enough depth with The Equivalents, the era, or the evolution of feminism. Doherty has tried to write two or three books (all worthy of attention) into one.
... Doherty’s elegantly composed account of this circle, with its camaraderie and occasional rivalries, doubles as an affectionate — if not entirely uncritical — homage to the institute itself ... While sketching the historical context, Doherty writes most passionately about the texture of the women’s friendships — above all, the well-documented intimacy between the flamboyant, needy Sexton and the more formal and reserved Kumin ... After their Radcliffe idyll ended, the friendships were attenuated by time, distance, and other strains. So, too, Doherty’s narrative — merging history, group biography, and literary criticism — becomes more diffuse, ranging quickly over the turbulent terrain of the late 1960s and beyond.
Doherty is at her strongest when she attends to the richness of her subject’s epistolary intimacies. She writes strikingly about the relationship that unfolds between California-based Olsen, whose political organizing shaped her intellectual life, and Sexton, whose life as a well-to-do East Coast WASP provides an altogether different view of the world. Doherty uses their correspondence and diaries to paint a vivid and compelling portrait of mutual support and artistic innovation, in spite of their class differences, in the decades before modern feminism ... Though it is full of compelling and poignant moments, the coherence of The Equivalents’s narrative is not always apparent. We move roughly chronologically through the women’s lives, but their stories are interspersed without apparent logic. It is sometimes unclear why a character emerges and one story line is often truncated at the expense of another ... Doherty’s text thus serves as a welcome exploration of a distinct strand of artistic modernism that eschewed abstraction and embraced figuration, and indeed the domestic, during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Doherty shies away from explicitly making such claims ... stands as a testament to the seductions of the archive, and the powerful equivalences and deep attachments we often form with the objects of our own research.
Doherty sets all of her magnetic subjects within a fresh assessment of the sexism of postwar and Cold War America, and celebrates the Equivalents for breaking ground for “innovative, intimate” creations by women. Doherty’s vibrant curiosity and many-faceted expertise infuse this dynamic group biography with light and warmth.
Doherty's overall galvanizing look at a little-explored conjunction of critical feminist voices should incite provocative historical context to current-day discussions around the need for more support of women's intellectual work.
... an elegant, novelistic history ... Doherty’s prose dazzles, and she skillfully integrates her copious research into the narrative while toggling between biographical, creative, and political matters. This empathetic, wide-angled portrait will resonate with fans of the individual artists as well as feminists and readers of women’s history.
Digressions about women peripherally connected to the scholars may have been an attempt to place the graduates’ post-Institute work in a broader perspective, but it feels as if Doherty didn’t have enough material about these scholars to fill an entire volume. When she sticks to her subject, the book is superb, especially when she recounts Sexton’s personal struggles and offers close analyses of each author’s works. A welcome spotlight on an overdue 'experiment.'
