In memoriam: Prolific lesbian writer Doris Grumbach
Author and literary critic Doris Grumbach, one of the first fictionists to portray lesbian characters in a positive light as modern feminism came of age in the 1970s and ’80s, died November 4 at Kendal-Crosslands retirement community in Kennett Square, Pa. She was 104.
Her daughter Barbara Wheeler confirmed the death to news outlets but did not cite a cause.
The Washington Post obituaries described Grumbach as an “observant writer with a voice that was by turns graceful and cantankerous.” She was as prolific as she was versatile. She published an entire shelf of books in her lifetime, although she got off to a late start.
Early life, divorce, lesbianism, and writing
The older of two children, Doris Muriel Isaac was born in Manhattan on July 12, 1918.
In elementary school, Doris skipped some grades and entered the all-girls Julia Richman High School after a brief, unhappy experience at Hunter High School.
Socially unprepared, she developed a stammer, lost confidence, and had poor grades. She remained an indifferent student, but she excelled in theater and creative writing.
After receiving her undergraduate degree from New York University, she earned a master’s degree in medieval literature from Cornell, where she met and later married Leonard Grumbach.
In the first half of the 1940s, she worked as a magazine editor and served in the women’s branch of the Navy Reserves, later moving for her husband’s career for much of the next decade.
From 1960 to 1971, she taught English at the College of St. Rose in Albany. She also began writing. Her first novels, “The Spoil of the Flowers” (1962) and “The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth” (1964), attracted little notice.
Doris Grumbach’s marriage ended in divorce in 1972. She then moved to Saratoga Springs for a year and started a relationship with Sybil Pike (who would be her life partner until Pike’s death in March 2021).
It would take a few more years before she gained attention as a novelist for “Chamber Music” (1979), the story of an unsatisfying marriage and a lesbian relationship that offered extraordinary late-in-life comfort.
Criticism and later work
Critics disagreed sharply about Grumbach’s strengths and weaknesses as a writer.
In some circles, she was lauded for her unflinching portrayals of women who were engulfed by intolerant social conventions or caught in loveless marriages and families unsympathetic to female friendships that ripen into love.
Others, however, said her portraits of lesbian characters and themes were unrealistic, even stereotypical. She was criticized for insufficient feminism.
In her 70s, she began a new burst of writing, producing a collection of essays on growing old.
“The most lamentable loss in the elderly spirit is the erosion of hope,” she wrote in an article for The New York Times.
“You do what you want and do it the best that you can,” Grumbach told Publishers Weekly in 1991. “If it makes it, then you celebrate with it, and if it doesn’t- well, you haven’t wasted your life.”