Damsel Deceased: The Professors Accolade
Written by Julia B.
In “Death of an English Major,” an essay compiled in the book The Best Essays of 2019, Gary Taylor, chair of the English Department at Florida State, reflects on the murder of one of his students, Maura Binkly. People who study humanities “celebrate and investigate…human particularity” (191). Taylor grieved Maura’s passing by remembering her as “brave, bold and kind.” He spoke of “her cute cat backpack” and “the sound of her voice.” As an English major, he was able to focus on “the particulars of her beautiful promise.” Yet, as someone who has studied and worked in literature in addition to being responsible for Maura at the time of her passing, in this essay, Taylor interprets her loss through examples in literature and by highlighting systemic problems of hatred that people face as a call to action for the American public.
Finding a bigger purpose in Maura’s death, Taylor develops a call to action against targeted hate crimes in the United States. As a professor responsible for hundreds of students, Taylor was aware one could die. College aged kids are known to be impulsive, and not the most responsible — accidents can happen, and injury or even death is a possibility. But he didn’t imagine someone would be shot and killed. Maura was murdered in a yoga studio because she was a woman. He acknowledges that “Maura was not the only woman [the shooter] is alleged to have killed, or the only woman who was shot” (189). However, Maura was the only woman killed that he was responsible for. Because of this sense of defeat, Taylor is passionate and has a sense of urgency to his call to action. Through repetition, Taylor insists that we need to be aware, and afraid, of “one of them” — meaning evil people who cause harm to others — or in his words people whose “self-importance depends on their capacity for violence” (190). Sadly, this type of person is more common than we’d like; “The man accused of killing 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue was one of them. The man accused of killing a random black man and a random black woman in a Kentucky supermarket the week before was one of them. The man who killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando was one of them” (190-191). These men who are “one of them” are men who “kill generalities” (191) because they believe they are saving something — they aren’t. Instead, they are taking lives from innocent people because of preconceived notions and unfair misconceptions. As readers, we are convinced to stand up for the ‘generalities’ and work to stop systemic hate, not just for Maura but for everyone.
Explaining these problems from a literary perspective, Taylor uses work from Shakespeare. The Shakesphere quote that came to him when learning of Maura’s death was from the play King Lear: “why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?” (190). King Lear says this to his daughter who had just been murdered. He questions why terrible people who murder get to live while the innocent people that they murder die. The man who murdered the King's daughter was “one of them.” The King, like Taylor, was “half-pretending to himself that she can still hear him” (190). Taylor uses this quote to demonstrate why the call to action is so important to him: he feels like he was responsible for Maura. While he is not her father, he was still given the responsibility to look after and take care of her, a job that he failed.
Taylor, at the end of the day, is an English professor. Literature inspires and helps him understand tragedies like this one. Through literature he processes what happened — and finds his purpose. I found that while the essay focused on problems surrounding murder and the tough position that Taylor was put in, it didn’t focus on the part that was most shocking to me: Maura was murdered because she was a woman. When a woman is murdered it is usually because she is a certain race, or religion, or had a psychotic ex-boyfriend. It is rare to hear that a woman was murdered for just being a woman. Taylor does an exceptional job of zooming out and taking a stand against systemic murders; however, he doesn’t do as good of a job zooming in developing the complex layers of Maura’s unique story. So while I agree with the arguments Taylor makes, ultimately urging us readers, as Americans, to “dedicate ourselves to erasing the ugliness that erased her,” I am eager to know more about her — Maura Binkly’s — story (191).
If you’d like to read the original essay that Julia responds to, click here.
