370 Part IV Dispositional Theories
feelings. She eventually graduated from college, earned a master’s degree, and
became a psychology and biology teacher. She married at age 31 but had no children.
Although a wealth of personal documents on Marion Taylor became avail-
able to Ada and Gordon Allport, the Allports chose not to publish an account of
her story. Barenbaum (1997) offered some possible reasons for this, but due to
major gaps in the correspondence between Marion Taylor and Ada Allport, it is
now impossible to know for certain why the Allports did not publish this case
history. Their work with Marion Taylor probably helped them organize and publish
a second case—the story of Jenny Gove Masterson, another pseudonym.Letters From Jenny
Allport’s morphogenic approach to the study of lives is best illustrated in his
famous Letters from Jenny. These letters reveal the story of an older woman and
her intense love/hate feelings toward her son, Ross. Between March 1926 (when
she was 58) and October 1937 (when she died), Jenny wrote a series of 301 letters
to Ross’s former college roommate, Glenn, and his wife, Isabel, who almost cer-
tainly were Gordon and Ada Allport (Winter, 1993). Allport originally published
parts of these letters anonymously (Anonymous, 1946) and then later published
them in more detail under his own name (Allport, 1965).
Born in Ireland of Protestant parents in 1868, Jenny was the oldest in a fam-
ily of seven children that included five sisters and a brother. When she was 5 years
old, the family moved to Canada, and when she was 18, her father died and Jenny
was forced to quit school and go to work to help support her family. After 9 years,
her brothers and sisters became self-supporting and Jenny, who had always been
considered rebellious, scandalized her family by marrying a divorced man, a deci-
sion that further alienated her from her conservatively religious family.
After only 2 years of marriage, Jenny’s husband died. A month or so later,
her son, Ross, was born. This was 1897, the same year Gordon Allport, Ross’s
future college roommate, was born. The next 17 years were somewhat contented
ones for Jenny. Her world revolved around her son, and she worked hard to ensure
that he had everything he wanted. She told Ross that, aside from art, the world
was a miserable place and that it was her duty to sacrifice for him because she
was responsible for his existence.
When Ross moved away to attend college, Jenny continued to scrimp in order
to pay all his bills. As Ross began to be interested in women, the idyllic mother-
son relationship came to an end. The two quarreled often and bitterly over his female
friends. Jenny referred to each of them as prostitutes or whores, including the woman
Ross married. With that marriage, Jenny and Ross became temporarily estranged.
At about that same time, Jenny began an 11^1 / 2 -year correspondence with
Glenn and Isabel (Gordon and Ada) in which she revealed much about both her
life and her personality. The early letters showed that she was deeply concerned
with money, death, and Ross. She felt that Ross was ungrateful and that he had
abandoned her for another woman, and a prostitute at that! She continued her bit-
terness toward him until he and his wife were divorced. She then moved into the
apartment next to Ross’s and for a short time Jenny was happy. But soon Ross
was seeing other women, and Jenny inevitably found something wrong with each.