people around her—the loss of her father at death and her mother to grief." As a toddler, she contracted measles, which left her partially deaf; that was not discovered until she began school. Ruth also had a fascination with death as a young child. When she was four years old, her grandmother took her to see an infant that had recently died. Upon seeing the dead child's face, Ruth claimed that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. At seven, Ruth began to write short verses and read any book that she could get her hands on. Her favorite author was Jean Ingelow, and her favorite readings were A Legend of Bregenz and The Judas Tree. Through writing, she gained approval from her family. Writing was her outlet, and she wrote with an insightful perception about the realities of life. For example, in her senior year of high school, she wrote a piece, "Lulu's Wedding (A True Story)," in which she recalled the wedding of a family serving girl. Instead of romanticizing the event, she revealed the true unromantic arranged marriage that Lulu went through because the man would take her even though he was much older. Although her fascination with death started at an early age, she continued to study how death affected people throughout her career. In her book Patterns of Culture, Benedict shows how the Pueblo culture dealt with grieving and death. She describes in the book that individuals may deal with reactions to death, such as frustration and grief, differently from one another. Societies all have social norms that they follow; some allow more expression in dealing with death, such as mourning, but other societies are not allowed to acknowledge it. College and marriage After high school, Ruth and her sister entered St Margaret's School for Girls, a college preparatory school, with the help from a full-time scholarship. The girls were successful in school and entered Vassar College in September 1905, where Ruth thrived in an all-female atmosphere. Stories were then circulating that going to college led girls to become childless and remain unmarried. Nevertheless, Ruth explored her interests in college and found writing as her way of expressing herself as an "intellectual radical" as she was sometimes called by her classmates. The author Walter Pater was a large influence on her life during this time as she strove to be like him