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In the early eighties, not long after she wrote those words, my mom fell in love with my dad, Stanley Aronowitz, in precisely this beat-the-system way. A political organizer and socialist professor, Stanley had read a book review of Ellen’s and was so impressed that he asked Rosalyn Baxandall, a ra…

Consider, for instance, the pros and cons list. I wrote it at the kitchen table on a gray afternoon, as naturally and casually as a shopping list. Transcribing the circular thoughts that had become fixtures in my brain, I put Aaron’s good and bad qualities in two columns. They were around the same …

I realize I was brought up to be the person others wanted me to be, so that they would like me and not be bothered by my presence.

That person was not me.

When I began to be me, I felt that I had more to give.

Life was richer.

I am trying to eliminate all the bad conscience caused by th…

The habit is to play Nora too lightly in the beginning and too heavily in the end. The person who has been charming in Acts 1 and 2 puts on a dowdy traveling suit in Act 3 and is suddenly standing before you as a spinster governess. If the play is to make sense, the woman who has decided to leave h…

The change from the girlish, charming wife to the radical, courageous heroine setting out alone has always been a perturbation. Part of the trouble is that we do not think, and actresses and directors do not think, the Nora of the first acts, the bright woman — with her children, her presents, her …