Adrienne Rich, the renowned poet, died this week. I was reading about her and came across that she was married to Alfred Conrad, a professor in the economics department at Harvard. He wrote a well received book on the antebellum south and slavery that anticipated Fogels work. But what I found curious was he committed suicide in 1970 at the age of 45-46. Rich then moved in with her long-term partner, Michelle something
Anyone know more about this story? Why did Condad commit suicide? What happened to rich and him and where can I read more about him?
Why did Alfred Conrad kill himself?
-
-
Couldn't stand the feminism (serious). His wife was writing books and papers all the time to the public about how being a wife is being oppressed etc.
"Increasingly militant, Rich hosted anti-war and Black Panther fundraising parties at their apartment; tensions began to split the marriage, Conrad fearing that his wife had lost her mind.[9] The couple separated in mid-1970 and shortly afterward, in October, Conrad drove into the woods and shot himself.[9][13]"
-
However, the decisive move came in 1966, when Rich and her husband moved to New York after he was offered a post at City College. Rich began teaching the graduate poetry course at Columbia University and immersed herself in the radical ideas flooding the campus, in particular the anti-Vietnam movement and women's liberation. In 1968, she also took up a teaching post at City College as part of the Seek programme which attempted to reach out to underprivileged students. In her work, radical ideas would begin to surface in the 1969 collection Leaflets , but more decisively in her prose, which had now begun appearing in feminist journals.
Initially, Rich's husband supported her growing activism, and joined her in hosting anti-Vietnam and Black Panther fundraising parties at their apartment. However, he quickly became exasperated: "She was becoming a very pronounced, very militant feminist," says Hayden Carruth. "I don't know what went on between them, except that Alf came to me and complained bitterly that Adrienne had lost her mind." By the summer of 1970, they had reached breaking point and with both parties indulging in affairs - at this stage, in Adrienne's case, still of a heterosexual nature - she left, moving into a small apartment nearby.
After months of upheaval, Alfred Conrad left in October 1970 for what he told his children would be a brief trip. When he failed to return, Adrienne became concerned: "She called and asked me to get hold of Alf," says Carruth, who still lived close to the Rich family summer house in Vermont. "She said he had taken off, possibly to Vermont. I drove to their place and couldn't find him, so I left a note on the door. The next day the cops called and asked me to come and help identify his body. Immediately after that I called and told her. She wasn't unprepared. Alf was going to a psychiatrist at the time and one reason he came up to Vermont was that he couldn't get hold of his psychiatrist in New York. It was very complicated. I think that temperamental differences had something to do with it. I think Alf was a disappointed person, who, as Adrienne became more celebrated, became more depressed."
-
Wow, what a piece of shit. So apparently her husband gave up a lush academic job at Harvard to accommodate her, did everything to help her political cause, and she responds by publicly humiliating him (for sins that "men" committed), leaving him behind and driving him crazy. Then when he killed himself, she commented on it saying it was a "tremendous waste of talent". She didn't feel any remorse/regret at all? What a f**king psychopath.
-
There's a moral for us all here. Don't marry a feminist with an overwhelming sense of entitlement and hatred. Don't marry a feminist who's so insecure about her identity that she has to destroy everything around her. You want someone who's strong, independent, and don't let the label of "female" define her entire existence. Those are the real feminists.
-
Wow, the sexism in this extraordinary thread of events is mind-boggling. If a man can't handle his wife's success - or if he is depressed or mentally ill, let's blame his wife and her feminism. Yopu troglodytes go back to your cave.
Psycobitch, just go away, ok?
-
Wow, what a piece of shit. So apparently her husband gave up a lush academic job at Harvard to accommodate her, did everything to help her political cause, and she responds by publicly humiliating him (for sins that "men" committed), leaving him behind and driving him crazy. Then when he killed himself, she commented on it saying it was a "tremendous waste of talent". She didn't feel any remorse/regret at all? What a f**king psychopath.
Oh come on. It's not her fault he committed suicide even if everything you said is accurate. If she becomes popular and he doesn't, so what? No one causes another person to experience the sensations inside their head and heart. Those are the things that each of us have responsibility for.
It sounds like they were in the end a troubled couple and a bad match. My understanding is he was an important economist in this field, and it makes me wonder if Fogel would've shared the Nobel had Conrad continued at the same level he began.
-
It takes two to tango as they say. How can anyone assign blame to one partner or another? Especially now that both of them are death and cannot enlighten us. Maybe there is evidence buried somewhere in letters or diaries somewhere, but who will look for it. Relationships are complicated and change and evolve as the social context around them does as well. Wrong people married to each other at the wrong time in history.
-
The comments on this thread are so heartless, as if anyone has the ability to judge what drives a person to end his life or what happens between two people in an intimate relationship. (Many of) your responses to this couple's pain and private relationship are arrogant, sexist, judgemental, and uninformed. Even if both were famous, that does not make it our business or give us the right to pass judgement. I hope your personal struggles and demons are afforded more respect and privacy than you are giving theirs.
-
Life is full of tragedies, disappointments and selfishness. Nobody's exempt. Even the celebrated have nostrils to breathe with just like everybody else - we are chained to the limitations of humanity. And, being human means being wrong most of the time; self involved psycho-bitch or deeply damaged academic notwithstanding.