SOURCE: "Marguerite Yourcenar: 1903–1987," in Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall, 1988, p. 8.

Schmidt is an American critic and educator. In the following review of With Open Eyes, A Coin in Nine Hands, and Two Lives and a Dream, she lauds Yourcenar's work.

The date March 6, 1980, was memorable for French women writers. On that day, Marguerite Yourcenar became the first and so far only woman ever elected to the prestigious 345-year-old body of French writers, the French Academy. However, as she recounts in With Open Eyes, the informative series of conversations she had with French literary critic Matthieu Galey, she herself was publicly indifferent to membership in the academy of "Immortals."

For two contradictory reasons, Yourcenar remains an enigma to many feminists. First, she was not interested in striking a victory for women by becoming a member of the Academy, and second, she was, above...