PETERS, Sally 1938-

PERSONAL:

Born October 17, 1938, in New York, NY; daughter of Joseph H. (a general contractor) and Sophia (an office manager; maiden name, Selwyn) Goldberg; married Edward H. Peters (a financial advisor), February 1, 1958 (died, November 1, 1967); married Victor E. Vogt, June 30, 1973 (divorced, March, 1983); children: (first marriage) Scott, Jeffrey, Douglas. Education: Temple University, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1960; University of South Florida, M.A., 1970; Florida State University, Ph.D., 1973. Hobbies and other interests: Ballroom dancing, playing classical piano, distance swimming, Peters Family Winery.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Yale University Press, P.O. Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520-9040. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, teaching assistant, 1971-73; Yale University, New Haven, CT, assistant professor, 1973-79, supervisor, teacher preparation in English, 1974-79, director of faculty writing workshop, 1979, visiting lecturer, 1990-92; Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, visiting assistant professor of English, 1984-90, visiting lecturer, graduate liberal studies program, 1985-2003; Connecticut College, New London, CT, visiting professor of English, 1999; Connecticut Humanities Scholar, "Time for Ideas," 1987-90, 1998-2001; University of California, Los Angeles, extension writers' program, instructor of literature, 2002—. Corporate communications consultant, 1979—; freelance writer, lecturer, and workshop leader in academic, corporate, and community settings, 1979—. Author, National Scholarship Examinations, Junior Achievement, 1982; keynote speaker, Shaw Arts Festival, Dublin, Ireland, 1999; keynote speaker, International Shaw Conference, University of South Florida, Sarasota, 2004. Member of advisory board, International Shaw Society, 2004—.

MEMBER:

Bernard Shaw Society (vice president), Authors Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Salutatorian, alumni prize, English Honor Society, Women's Honor Society, Kappa Delta Epsilon National Education Society, and four-year scholarship, all Temple University; Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, Florida State University; Choice Outstanding Academic Book Award, 1996, and New York Review of Books Catalogue Selection, both for Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman; Bernard Shaw was also honored by the Bernard Shaw Society and the American Irish Historical Society; gold medalist, northeastern U.S. ballroom dancing competitions.

WRITINGS:

Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1996.

(Author of preface) Wendi Chen, The Reception of George Bernard Shaw in China, 1918-1996, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 2002.

Contributor to anthologies, including Bernard Shaw and Woman, edited by R. Weintraub, Pennsylvania University Press (University Park, PA), 1977; Modern Critical Views: George Bernard Shaw, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, 1987; Modern Critical Interpretations: George Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman," edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House, 1987; The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Pennsylvania State University Press, Volume 7, 1987, Volume 11, 1991, Volume 13, 1993, Volume 16, 1996, Volume 17, 1997, Volume 19, 1999, Volume 22, 2002, and Volume 23, 2003; Fabian Feminist: The Female Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations, edited by Laurence Goldstein, University of Michigan Press, 1991; Feminist Cultural Studies, Volume 2, edited by Terry Lovell and Edward Elgar, 1995; The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw, edited by Christopher Innes, Cambridge University Press, 1998; and Bernard Shaw's Plays: A Norton Critical Edition of the Plays of George Bernard Shaw, 2nd edition, edited by Sandie Byrne, W. W. Norton, 2002.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New York Times, Rackham Journal of the Arts and Humanities, Journal of Popular Culture, American Theatre Annals of Scholarship, Michigan Quarterly Review, Modern Drama, International Journal of Epidemiology, Irish Echo Magazine, Hartford Courant, Chicago Life, and the Independent Shavian. Editorial board member, Annual of Shaw Studies, 1993—.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Seeking Rudolph Valentino: "part cultural history, part personal memoir, it draws on my experience as a competition ballroom dancer."

SIDELIGHTS:

Sally Peters is a scholar of George Bernard Shaw who is published and anthologized in the fields of George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare, modern drama, cultural history, and dance. She is the author of Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman, which examines Shaw's background and beliefs, his interests and obsessions, and his writings in prose and drama. The biography contains a discussion of Shaw's sexuality, which has traditionally not been included in similar volumes, primarily because it has never been firmly established. Donn B. Murphy wrote in the Washington Times that "while devotees of the traditional staid and heterosexual Shaw, including his several previous biographers, may not be persuaded by Miss Peters's prodigious scholarship, others will find her conclusions ingenious, tempting, and even convincing. Shaw wrote nearly a quarter-million letters, in addition to plays, essays, novels, newspaper criticism, and broadsides, and Miss Peters has mined this rich quarry with invention and with delicious and tantalizing results."

Peters studies the flamboyant Shaw and the influences that lead to her conclusions, including the fact that Shaw's docile and drunken father gave up control of the house and, Shaw feared, Mrs. Shaw's bed to George Vandeleur Lee, a voice teacher who lived with them. Shaw tended to be attracted to women who were married or otherwise unavailable, and these devotions seldom developed into sexual relationships. One that did was his relationship with Jenny Patterson. Peters notes that although he enjoyed sex with her, he did not wish—or was unable—to fulfill all of her needs; he displayed sadistic and masochistic traits that he felt towards women in general. In most of his relationships, Peters maintains, Shaw was attracted not to the carnal possibilities of his relationships, but rather to the idealized image of a woman. His relationship with Ellen Terry, for instance, consisted of erotic correspondence that ceased when they actually met. He did wed, at age forty-two, to Charlotte Payne-Townsend, a wealthy widow his own age, but there is no record that indicates that the marriage was ever consummated. Peters also writes of Shaw's close relationship to Harley Granville Barker, whom Shaw mentored and who may have seen Shaw as a father figure, but then she speculates as to whether there was more to it than that.

Lisbie Rae commented on Bernard Shaw in Modern Drama: "Was Shaw homosexual? Probably not. Peters produces so much questionable evidence that a wary reader rejects her thesis in the end. Was he sexually ambivalent? Quite possibly. Peters's most important discovery reveals a consistent presence in Shaw's personality of a hitherto hidden and feminine side, which may lead to a fresh understanding of Shaw's works." In the Lambda Book Report, Ulysses D'Aquila noted, on the other hand, that the facts "are not evidence enough to prove Shaw a homosexual, closeted or otherwise, but Sally Peters persuasively argues that, in fact, he was one. She marshals to her side the many comments Shaw made defending homosexuality and his generally sympathetic attitude to it. Her chapters on this subject are perhaps the best part of the book and the most original contribution to Shaw Studies." And London Times contributor Peter Ackroyd, sensing that Peters's book reflects the ambiguity of Shaw's life, felt that Peters "tries to isolate and to examine those emotions or situations of which Shaw himself might not have been aware. It is as if she were trying to bring into clear focus the invisible man who accompanied him on his great journey, but whom the artist himself refused to recognize."

Peters told CA: "I was attracted to Shaw because of his wit and vitality, his great good cheer and his support of women. My early work on Shaw analyzed the structure and development of his dramaturgy, but Shaw the man was a mystery to me. What led him to create those glorious plays? I was puzzled. If environment, circumstance, and heredity are determining factors, then Shaw should have lived and died a clerk in Dublin. Instead, he became the second greatest playwright in the English language. A passionate belief in my subject enabled me to sustain a writing project over two decades. Shaw was an enigma to me, and I felt impelled to solve his riddle, never dreaming it would take me some fifteen years.

"I began with what most intrigued me—the so-called eccentricities—the noisy vegetarianism, the yellow wool Jaeger suits, the militant antivivisectionism. What did they mean to Shaw? It is the peculiar spinning out of the life history, the weaving of the personal life myth that fascinates, and yet it is the realm of everyday life that offers a pathway into secret spheres, including the labyrinthine psyche of the great creative artist.

"So there I was thinking and probing, researching and writing, ignoring time, refusing to publish what I felt was only part of the truth. To get new answers, I needed new questions. I forged my own method, using everything from existential phenomenology to popular culture to track down clues. I isolated the themes of Shaw's life—his recurring patterns and passions—everything from pugilism to socialism. One theme led to another. A chapter on feminism ballooned into a lengthy investigation of his relationships with women (so many!) and challenged my view of Shaw.

"I found a pattern of evidence that suggests that Shaw thought of himself as a 'noble invert'—an ascetic artist-genius whose gifts were linked to his homoerotic nature. Of course, how one views oneself may be at odds with the world at large—because I report Shaw's claim that he was the reincarnation of Shakespeare does not mean I think he was. For Shaw, immersed in the conflicting theories of heredity and genius, gender and sexology of his age, the cultural climate of sexual ambiguity and private revelation mirrored his own uncertainties. Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman charts Shaw's rich interior life, including his struggle to recognize and accept the secret identity that he believed to be both his inheritance and his destiny. In piecing together the kaleidoscopic mosaic of Shaw's 'world design,' the configuration formed by his life choices, I found a powerful ascending trajectory. Shaw, the champion of will, had made himself into the artist/superman that his own writings celebrate."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Annual of Shaw Studies, 1997, Frederick P. W. McDowell, review of Bernard Shaw: The Ascent of the Superman, pp. 261-265.

Booklist, March 15, 1996, Mary Carroll, review of Bernard Shaw.

Choice, September, 1996, H. I. Einsohn, review of Bernard Shaw, p. 129.

Economist, May 18, 1996, review of Bernard Shaw, pp. 15-16.

Homologie, November-December, 1996, Jacob Molenaar, review of Bernard Shaw, pp. 43-44.

Independent Shavian, Volume 34, numbers 1-2, 1996, T. F. Evans, review of Bernard Shaw, pp. 22-23, and Daniel Leary, review of Bernard Shaw, pp. 35-39.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 1996, review of Bernard Shaw, pp. 118-119.

Lambda Book Report, January, 1997, Ulysses D'Aquila, review of Bernard Shaw, pp. 21-22.

Library Journal, March 15, 1996, Susan L. Peters, review of Bernard Shaw, p. 71.

Modern Drama, summer, 1997, Lisbie Rae, review of Bernard Shaw, p. 298.

Publishers Weekly, January 29, 1996, review of Bernard Shaw, p. 92.

Times (London, England), April 25, 1996, Peter Ackroyd, review of Bernard Shaw, p. 36.

Victorian Studies, winter, 1998, Martin Meisel, review of Bernard Shaw, p. 265.

Washington Times, May 26, 1996, Donn B. Murphy, review of Bernard Shaw.