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Barbara Deming

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Barbara Deming
BornJuly 23, 1917
New York City, U.S.
DiedAugust 2, 1984(1984-08-02) (aged 67)
Sugarloaf Key, Florida, U.S.
EducationBennington College, Western Reserve University[1]
Partner(s)Mary Meigs (1954–1969)
Jane Verlaine (1969–1984, Deming's death)

Barbara Deming (July 23, 1917 – August 2, 1984) was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change.

Formation and early work

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Barbara Deming was born into an "upper-middle-class" family, and raised with her three brothers in New York City.[2] She attended a Friends (Quaker) school from kindergarten to the end of high school.[3] The family lived in Manhattan and summered in then rural New City, Rockland County, where Deming was exposed to more bohemian influences thanks to the artists' colony that had developed along South Mountain Road.[4]

From 1934 she attended Bennington College in Vermont. She graduated in 1938 with majors in English literature and drama, and returned to New York City, where she settled in Greenwich Village.[5] At first, she seemed destined for a career in the theater. She had co-founded a stock company at Bennington, and served as its co-director in the summers of 1938 and 1939. In her senior year she was active on the fringes of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, and her first paid job after graduation was with the company. She also directed its apprentice group without pay. She briefly worked with another company as assistant director on a production of Shelley's The Cenci, which never found a backer. She returned to Bennington again in the summers of 1940 and 1941, this time as a teaching fellow offering classes in dramatic litterature.[6]

Frustrated and disenchanted by her inability to get steady theater work, she considered an academic career and accepted a scholarship from Western Reserve University (now Case Western) in Cleveland. She completed a one-year master's degree in drama, but the teaching — dominated by shallow survey courses — was sufficiently disappointing to dampen her enthusiasm for academia.[7]

Returning to New York in 1942, she got a job as a film analyst at the Museum of Modern Art, working on a project for the Library of Congress, which she held until funding ran out in 1945.[8] This experience inspired an abiding interest in film, leading to the publication of articles on the subject in the Partisan Review in the 1940s,[9] and to the writing of Running Away from Myself: A Dream Portrait of America Drawn from the Movies of the Forties, which Deming completed in 1950 but only published (after substantial revision) in 1969.[10]

A variety of "pink collar" jobs around New York City followed,[11] including a period as editorial assistant to novelist-journalist Bessie Breuer, "with whom she became very close, though Bessie could be notoriously difficult".[12] In her spare time she took drawing classes with George Grosz at the Art Students League.[13]

As the 1950s began, however, with Deming now in her thirties, she could still write: "I have a great hunger to begin to shape a life."[14]

Political work

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On a trip to India, she began reading Gandhi, and became committed to a non-violent struggle, with her main cause being Women's Rights. She later became a journalist, and was active in many demonstrations and marches over issues of peace and civil rights. She was a member of a group that went to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and was jailed many times for non-violent protest.[15]

Deming believed that it was often those whom we loved that oppressed us, and that it was necessary to re-invent non-violent struggle every day.

It is often said that she created a body of non-violent theory, based on action and personal experience, that centered on the potential of non-violent struggle in its application to the women's movement.[15]

In 1968, Deming signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[16]

On September 2, 1971, Deming was involved in a near-fatal car accident while driving to a conference in Georgia.[17]. She suffered serious internal injuries and for a time her vision was in peril. She spent four months in hospital and longer convalescing at home. She returned to limited activism, but her physical fragility was permanent, eventually prompting her move to Florida in 1977.[18] "Illness holds me by the ankle," she wrote.[19]

In 1978, she became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.[20]

Money for Women / The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund

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In 1975, Deming founded The Money for Women Fund to support the work of feminist artists. Deming helped administer the Fund, with support from artist Mary Meigs. After Deming's death in 1984, the organization was renamed as The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.[21] Today, the foundation is the "oldest ongoing feminist granting agency" which "gives encouragement and grants to individual feminists in the arts (writers, and visual artists)".[22][23]

Relationships

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Deming had her first serious romantic and sexual relationship at sixteen with Norma Millay, sister of Edna St. Vincent Millay, a woman her mother's age whom she had met while holidaying at New City.[24][25] She immediately embraced her lesbianism, writing at the time "I am a lesbian. I must face it,"[26] and a few years later in 1939, "This is not the devil. It is the devil who says this is the devil."[27] This formative relationship lasted about a year, and Deming even confessed it to her mother, who "wasn't judgmental".[28] Other affairs followed, including a brief one in her early twenties with Lotte Lenya.[29] Deming experimented with heterosexuality at college,[30] and then for a final time in her mid-thirties, in a misadventure that convinced her once and for all that "I am not the one to unteach" men their "inanity".[31]

She had three long-term relationships. The first, beginning in the early 1940s, was with Vida Ginsberg (1920–2015),[32] later a professor at Bard College.[33] The second, from 1954 to 1969, was with the painter and writer Mary Meigs. Meigs came from a wealthier background than Deming, which gave them the freedom to pursue their political and creative interests with few financial constraints. Deming's final enduring relationship, from 1969 to 1984, was with the painter Jane Verlaine, also known as Jane Watrous Gapen.[34]

When Deming returned to teach at Bennington in the summer of 1941, her brother Quentin (1919–2019),[35] known as Chip, a medical student at Dartmouth College,[35] was playing summer stock in the theatre company his sister had co-founded. So was Bennington senior Vida Ginsberg.[32] Ginsberg was attracted to both siblings, but initially favored Barbara. The pair became lovers, and remained together — if not always under the same roof — for seven years.[36] The relationship ended when Ginsberg belatedly fell in love with Chip, whom she married in 1949. Deming was "stunned" by this development but ultimately philosophical.[37] Chip had always been her darling, and she remained close both to him and to Ginsberg, bonding with their daughters, and even living with them for short periods — her view on love being that "it changes, certainly; but it does not expire".[38]

Mary Meigs was acquainted with Mary McCarthy, and in 1953 the two women bought adjoining properties on Pamet Point Road on the northern outskirts of Wellfleet, Massachusetts,[39] where McCarthy's ex-husband, Edmund Wilson, also lived. McCarthy bought the larger Red House and Meigs bought the smaller Yellow House, where Deming joined her in 1954. Meigs later bought the Red House from McCarthy, and it became the couple's home, with the Yellow House retained as a studio and cottage for visitors.[40] In 1963 Wilson introduced Meigs to the Quebecois writer Marie-Claire Blais, a generation younger than Deming and Meigs, who was visiting Cambridge on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the two fell in love.[41] Blais, who came from a working-class background and did not finish high school, "could barely speak English" at this time,[42] but Meigs was fluent in French.[43]

By the following year Blais had moved into the Yellow House as Meigs's lover. This uneasy triangle — which included a brief affair between Blais and Deming[44] — lasted for six years, from 1964 to 1969,[45] with tensions kept manageable by Deming's frequent absences on political work, or by Meigs and Blais escaping to Europe, or to their cabins in the Laurentians and on the Gaspé Peninsula.[46]

Nevertheless, by 1969 Deming was ready to move on. She had become re-acquainted with the painter Jane Verlaine, whom she had known slightly at Bennington, and the two formed a "permanent and unshakeable" bond.[44] In the fall of 1969, Deming quit Wellfleet to live with Verlaine and her two children in an old farmhouse near Monticello, New York.[47] In the spring of 1977 the couple moved to Sugarloaf Key, Florida, where they became part of a closeknit lesbian-feminist community,[48] and where they lived until Deming's death.[44][49] Meigs and Blais lived together "on and off" for more than twenty years, and remained close until Meigs died in 2002.[50] They continued to embroil themselves in complicated triangular relationships, habitually appealing to Deming for sympathy and advice, which she did her best to provide.[51]

Meigs was politically sympathetic but not a natural activist, being desribed by Blais as "timid" and "uncertain of herself".[52] Verlaine, in contrast, shared both Deming's values and her engagement — she was, if anything, even more radical in her feminism, or at least more pessimistic about men ever becoming genuine allies.[53] As well as painting, drawing and illustrating several books written by Deming, she was a tireless advocate for women who had endured male violence.

Death

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In March 1984 Deming was diagnosed with cancer, which had started in her ovaries and spread.[54] After initially agreeing to treatment, she was told in June that the cancer was incurable. She went home to Sugarloaf Key so she could spend her final days among her friends. In a last note to them she wrote:

"I have loved my life so very much and I have loved you so very much and felt so blessed at the love you have given me. I love the work so many of us have been trying to do together ... but I just feel no more strength in me now and I want to die. ... I want you to know, too, that I die happily."[55]

On July 31 she fell into a coma and two days later she died.[56]

Publications

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  • Deming, Barbara: Prison Notes. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1966.
  • Deming, Barbara: On Revolution and Equilibrium. Liberation, February 1968. From the collection: ed. Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd. Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. Revised Edition. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995.
  • Deming, Barbara: Running Away from Myself: A Dream Portrait of America Drawn from the Movies of the Forties. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1969.
  • Deming, Barbara; Berrigan, Daniel; Forest, James; Kunstler, William; Lynd, Staughton; Shaull, Richard; Statements of the Catonsville 9 and Milwaukee 14 Delivered Into Resistance The Advocate Press: 1969.
  • Deming, Barbara: Revolution and Equilibrium. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1971.
  • Deming, Barbara: Wash Us and Comb Us. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972.
  • Deming, Barbara: We Cannot Live Without Our Lives. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974.
  • Deming, Barbara: A Humming Under My Feet. London: Women's Press, 1974.
  • Deming, Barbara: Remembering Who We Are. Tallahassee, FL: The Naiad Press, 1981.
  • Deming, Barbara; Meyerding, Jane (Editor): We Are All Part of One Another a Barbara Deming Reader . Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1984.
  • Deming, Barbara; McDaniel, Judith; Biren, Joan E.; Vanderlinde, Sky (Editor): Prisons That Could Not Hold . University of Georgia Press, 1995.
  • Deming, Barbara; McDaniel, Judith (Editor) I Change, I Change: Poems. New Victoria Publishers, 1996.

References

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  1. ^ "Deming, Barbara, 1917-1984. Papers, 1886-1995: A Finding Aid". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2017-04-14.
  2. ^ Martin Duberman, A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds (New York: The New Press, 2011), p. 7.
  3. ^ Jane Meyerding (ed.), We Are All Part of One Another: A Barbara Deming Reader (New Society, 1984), "Introduction", p. 1.
  4. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 7 and 9.
  5. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 10-11.
  6. ^ All details of Deming's theater work from A Saving Remnant, p. 11.
  7. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 11–12.
  8. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 12.
  9. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 12.
  10. ^ Meyerding, "Introduction", p. 2.
  11. ^ Meyerding, "Introduction", p. 2.
  12. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 14–15.
  13. ^ Meyerding, "Introduction", p. 2.
  14. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 18.
  15. ^ a b Andrejkoymasky.com Archived April 22, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post
  17. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 151.
  18. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 193.
  19. ^ Meyerding, "Introduction", p. 12.
  20. ^ "Associates | The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press". www.wifp.org. Retrieved 2017-06-21.
  21. ^ [1] Archived December 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  22. ^ "Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc. : Home". Demingfund.org. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  23. ^ Dusenbery, Maya (6 December 2010). "Quickhit: Calling all Feminist Fiction Writers". Feministing.com. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  24. ^ Meyerding, "Introduction", p. 1.
  25. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 9.
  26. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 9.
  27. ^ Meyerding, "Introduction", p. 1.
  28. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 9.
  29. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 11.
  30. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 10.
  31. ^ Barbara Deming, A Humming Under My Feet: A Book of Travail (London: The Women's Press, 1985), pp. 266–267.
  32. ^ a b "Deaths, Vida Ginsberg Deming", New York Times, March 17, 2015. Accessed August 2, 2025.
  33. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 11.
  34. ^ Gapen was her mother's maiden name (sic), Watrous her father's name, and Verlaine her husband's name. She used both Gapen and Verlaine in different contexts. See A Saving Remnant, p. 264, note 8.
  35. ^ a b "Deaths, Quentin Deming", New York Times, January 23, 2019, reproduced at Legacy.com. Accessed August 2, 2025.
  36. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 11-12.
  37. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 13.
  38. ^ A Saving Remnant, pp. 12–13.
  39. ^ Mary Meigs, Lily Briscoe, A Self-Portrait: An Autobiography (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1981), p.146. Marie-Claire Blais, Parcours d'un écrivain, notes américaines (Montréal: VLB, 1993), p. 61.
  40. ^ Lily Briscoe, pp.146-147. Parcours d'un écrivain, p. 61.
  41. ^ Lily Briscoe, p.122. Parcours d'un écrivain, p. 63.
  42. ^ Lily Briscoe, p.117
  43. ^ Thérèse Fabi, Marie-Claire Blais, sa vie, son oeuvre, la critique (Montréal: Agence d'ARC, 1973), p. 6.
  44. ^ a b c Martin Duberman, "The Struggles of Barbara Deming", The Gay and Lesbian Review, May–June 2020. Accessed 25 July 2025.
  45. ^ Mary Jean Green, Marie-Claire Blaise (New York: Twayne, 1995), p. 3.
  46. ^ Mary Meigs,The Medusa Head (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1983), Chapter 1.
  47. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 138.
  48. ^ Mary Meigs, Beyond Recall (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005), p. x and passim.
  49. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 193.
  50. ^ H. J. Kirchoff, "Doyenne of Montreal's art world",The Globe and Mail, 1 January 2003.
  51. ^ The Medusa Head, pp. 63, 118.
  52. ^ Parcours d'un écrivain, pp. 63 and 69: "timide" and "incertain de soi".
  53. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 172.
  54. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 228.
  55. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 229.
  56. ^ A Saving Remnant, p. 229.
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