Sandra Mortola Gilbert

Sandra M. Gilbert—distinguished and prolific literary critic, poet, memoirist, editor, and teacher—died after a long illness on Sunday, November 10, at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, California. She was 87.

Born in New York City in 1936 to Alexis Joseph Mortola and Angela Caruso Mortola, Gilbert grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens.  After graduating from Hunter High School in New York, she entered Cornell University, where she studied with the eminent critic M. H. Abrams.  At Cornell she won prizes for her poetry, formed lasting friendships, and met her future husband Elliot Gilbert, then a PhD student.

The couple married in 1957, the year Gilbert graduated from Cornell.  After a year in Germany while her husband served in the army, she entered graduate school, earning her MA from New York University and her PhD from Columbia, both in English literature.  In 1966 they and their three children—Roger, Katherine, and Susanna—moved to California, where Elliot had been hired to teach in the University of California, Davis, English department.

Upon completing her PhD in 1968, Gilbert took a teaching position at California State, Hayward. After publishing a study of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry, Acts of Attention, in 1972, she taught for two years at Indiana University in Bloomington. There, in 1973, she met her longtime collaborator Susan Gubar, and over the next several years they wrote their groundbreaking study of 19^th century women’s literature The Madwoman in the Attic. Published in 1979, the book has become a classic of feminist literary criticism, and was followed by several other works co-authored with Gubar, including a monumental three-volume study of 20^th century women’s writing, No Man’s Land (1988-1994); the academic spoof Masterpiece Theatre (1995); and most recently Still Mad (2021), on contemporary feminist writing.  Together they also edited The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1985), now in its third edition, and Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism (2007).

In 1976 she began teaching in the UC Davis English department, retiring in 2005 as Distinguished Professor Emerita.  From 1985 to 1989 she was the C. Barnwell Straut Professor of English at Princeton University.  In 1996 she served as president of the Modern Language Association.

After her retirement from Davis, Gilbert took several visiting positions, including as the inaugural M. H. Abrams Distinguished Professor at Cornell in 2006.  She received honorary degrees from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2004 and from Harvard University in 2017.  Other honors included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Soros foundations, and several awards for her poetry, including the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award from the Italian-American Foundation.  In 2012 she and Susan Gubar received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle.

Sandra Gilbert was the author of eight books of poetry, most published by W.W. Norton: In the Fourth World (1979), Emily’s Bread (1984), Blood Pressure (1989), Ghost Volcano (1997), Kissing the Bread: New and Selected Poems (2000), Belongings (2006), Aftermath (2011), and Judgment Day (2018).  She also published several books of memoir and criticism, including Wrongful Death: A Medical Tragedy (1995), an account of her husband Elliot Gilbert’s death after surgery in 1991; Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve (2006); and The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity (2014).  In addition, she edited an anthology of poetic elegies, Inventions of Farewell (2001), and co-edited with Roger J. Porter Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing (2015).

After her husband’s death, Gilbert formed a long-term relationship with the mathematician David Gale.  After Gale’s death, she had two other serious relationships, first with Albert Magid, and then with Dick Frieden, who survives her.  For over 50 years she made her primary home in Berkeley, but also lived for extended periods in Paris and at the Sea Ranch.  Her devoted survivors include her three children, Roger Gilbert, Katherine Gilbert-O’Neil, and Susanna Gilbert; daughters-in-law Gina Campbell and Robin Gilbert-O’Neil; and grandchildren Valentine Gilbert, Aaron Gilbert-O’Neil, Stefan Gilbert-O’Neil, and Sophia Gilbert.

Sandra Gilbert will be remembered by those who knew her for her passion for literature, music, travel, food and wine; for her fierce commitments to gender equality and other causes; for her devotion to her family, friends, and students; and for her largeness of spirit, which showed itself in every aspect of her life.  Though she was perhaps best known for her critical writing, which left a lasting mark on the field of literary studies, she considered herself as much a poet as a scholar.  In her later years she met regularly with fellow poets to share and discuss their work.  Reflecting on her complementary vocations, she once said “I see myself as a poet, critic, and a feminist, hoping each ‘self’ enriches the others. As a poet, however, I’m superstitious about becoming too self-conscious; as a critic, I want to stay close to the sources of poetry; as a feminist, I try to keep my priorities clear without sermonizing.”

A celebration of Sandra Gilbert’s extraordinary life and career is being planned. Contributions in her honor can be sent to Emily’s List and NOW.

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