Learning about Jane Goodall was a part of my growing up. There’s a sort of a golden glow around her in my childhood memories. I’ve been sifting through those wisps of images and facts since I learned that she was gone.
I grew up in a house with books, and not just story books and fairy tales. We had “great men of science”, and “men who made history”. My mother owned a Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia set circa 1948 which recounted, more or less, the history, knowledge, and accomplishments of mankind.
And then there was Jane Goodall - - doing something no one had ever really done and learning things no one had even been curious about or valued.
There was no one like her in my books at home or on television shows or in the movies. I was fascinated by her.
Truth be told, I wasn’t all that interested in her field of study. I didn’t imagine myself doing what she did. But the essence of her spirit - - her gentle, persistent curiosity - - made all of it more interesting to me. If she thought it was worth knowing, then it was.
Women in my childhood world were wives, mothers, teachers, secretaries, stewardesses, nurses. (A few were models or Hollywood sexpots.) Women who strove for excellence in any other sphere were often mocked and painted with the brush of being bossy, unattractive, and unfeminine while also derided as categorically inferior to their male counterparts.
And then there was Jane Goodall. In a world of immovable objects she was an irresistible force.
If you had asked me who my heroes were when I was little I don’t know what I would have said. Heroes were men, possibly cartoon characters in tights and capes. I wanted to grow up to sing like Julie Andrews and Judy Collins. I guess they were my heroes.
What does it mean to be a hero? What does it mean to have heroes who are truly worthy of your admiration? Women have long been encouraged to live vicariously and dream vicariously through men. It is frustrating to me that I might have had many worthy heroes and role models as a child if the stories of women had been shared and valued equally.
Were there women heroes before Jane Goodall? Plenty. Were they largely invisible to me? Yes.
In this year’s Alan Turing Lecture at King’s College, Cambridge speaker Sandi Toksvig addresses how prejudice can skew and mar academic inquiry. (Cutting Discovery on the Bias) Toksvig’s knowledge of and passion for the subject crackles with brilliance throughout. She has, as they say, brought the receipts. But underneath her well-educated and carefully modulated speech I sense the crackling of something else: the dry, almost brittle crackling of quiet rage.
Rage at the exclusion, omission and erasure which perpetuate both ignorance and oppression.
Maybe the rage isn’t there. I don’t know. Maybe it’s my rage bleeding through.
And now we have lost Jane Goodall. She managed, somehow, to cut through the patriarchal world of scientific study and show us something revolutionary: a woman fully committed to her life’s work with determination and joy.
She was a great light. I didn’t realize until this week how much she has meant to me.
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