Radiant Beauty
Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage
by Eugene Genovese
ISI, 2009
(143 pages, $25.00, hardcover)
reviewed by David Paul Deavel
Preaching at Oxford’s Roger Bacon memorial, Ronald Knox cited Ecclesiastes 2:16: “There shall be no remembrance of the wise, no more than of the fool, for ever; and the times to come shall cover all things together with oblivion. The learned dieth in like manner as the unlearned.” Roger Bacon the intellectual, Knox said, “is dead.” His memory is now hazy. But St. Francis “is not dead. . . . He is removed from our company because he is in heaven; but his story is of yesterday; he is like an elder brother who died, more is the pity, before we were born.”
I have no idea if Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s name will be as hazy as Bacon’s in a few hundred years. An accomplished scholar, author of myriad books and articles, recipient of the National Humanities Medal among many other awards, she was a powerful intellect. But if she is remembered, my guess is that it will be from the portrait found in her husband’s memoir: as a woman who didn’t just seek truth, but let Truth capture her heart. I did not know her, but reading Miss Betsey, I started thinking of her as an older sister.
Toiling as a Team
Eugene Genovese’s tale begins with himself, a 38-year-old lapsed-Catholic Marxist historian, having attempted two marriages, successful in academic work by day and occasional promiscuous encounters by night. Outwardly glamorous as his life seemed, he was miserable. Having been told about a brilliant and beautiful young teaching fellow at Harvard, Eugene found a reason to travel to Cambridge and meet this creature.
Eleven years younger than he, Elizabeth “Betsey” Fox first appeared to him as “Death Warmed Over.” Having suffered from anorexia and hepatitis, her “emaciation, taut skin, and unpleasant pallor” meant she was not an immediate knockout. But having traveled so far, Eugene thought he might as well be a gentleman. After hours of discussion of academic horror stories, history, and life, he left her with a kiss on the forehead, having discovered that in reality she was brilliant and “radiantly beautiful.” The attraction was mutual.
Upon marriage, the liberated, tolerant atheist Eugene was shocked to discover that “about ten” seemed the right number of children for his agnostic, scholarly wife. And concerning motherhood and career?
I hope you understand. I shall expect you to do a good deal to help raise the children, but I have no patience with this equal-parenting and quality-time nonsense. Children need a mother to be there for them if she possibly can. I know how strongly you want me to pursue an academic career, and I love you for your encouragement and support. But our children will come first. If I have to curtail my career or scuttle it altogether, that is what I shall do.
She was not joking when she titled a later book Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life.
Sadly, Eugene found that he was sterile. Despite his worry, “never in all the years of our marriage did she hint at resentment—neither in word nor gesture or deed.” She kept working at her career, always telling people that “her marriage—her husband—was the most important thing in her life.”
David Paul Deavel , a doctoral student at Fordham University, is associate editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and a contributing editor of Gilbert Magazine, a magazine dedicated to the work of G. K. Chesterton.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on marriage from the online archives
29.1—Jan/Feb 2016
on Marriage, Moral Corruption & the Christian Duty of Witness by Regis Nicoll
more from the online archives
31.5—September/October 2018
The Rise of the Gnostic Liberal State After Christianity by Andrew Latham
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
on Costly Grace in Breece D'J Pancake's Flyover Country by Casey Chalk
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
