Eleanor Roosevelt:
Volume I, 1884-1933
By Blanche Weisen Cook
Viking, 587 pages, $27.50
Among America`s first families, only the Roosevelts compete with the Kennedys for our enduring interest in their lives. Our attention, of course, has focused on the public achievements and private escapades of the men, who have eclipsed most of their wives, mothers and daughters. Except for Eleanor Roosevelt. A public figure of as formidable stature as her uncle Theodore or her husband Franklin, she alone could have been-and perhaps in another time would have been-a president herself.
Yet despite her career as a social reformer, feminist and statesperson, Roosevelt never before has been the subject of a full-length biography. Historian Blanche Wiesen Cook, whose previous works include an edition of the writings of social activist Crystal Eastman, mines considerable new terrain in this first half of her two-volume study of Roosevelt. The strength of her inquiry, however, comes not so much from the masses of newly available material from such sources as Roosevelt`s FBI and State Department files as from the kinds of questions she is willing to ask about Roosevelt`s life.
”The issue of sex and power is assumed to be central to the lives of great men,” Cook writes in her introduction. ”When looking at the lives of great women, we continue to divide the world into saints and sinners, and we make assumptions based on race and class, even looks.” Roosevelt, Cook tells us, has been portrayed ”as a Victorian wife and mother . . . a saint without desire, an aristocratic lady without erotic imagination.” But Cook presents a starkly different woman, passionate and intrepid, who, both publicly and privately, ”lived an outrageous life.”
Sexuality and empowerment are major themes in this biography. Although some disclosures-of Roosevelt`s affair with reporter Lorena Hickock, for example-will not surprise many readers, Cook`s portrait as a whole offers a welcome reconsideration of a woman whose public image has hardened into improbable political myth.
The only daughter of the beautiful Anna Mall and the suave but flighty Elliott Roosevelt, Eleanor spent her early childhood as a victim of her parents` problems. Anna, unequal to the pressures of being Elliott`s wife,
”forged a hard, untouchable armor that warned those around her to keep their distance.” Eleanor, unable to penetrate that armor, was convinced throughout her life that her mother simply did not love her. Elliott, mentally unstable and alcoholic, simply did not pay attention to his daughter. In any case, by the time she was 10, Eleanor Roosevelt was an orphan.
For the next six years she was raised by her demanding and rigid maternal grandmother. Still, Grandmother Hall made Eleanor the center of her attention, and this alone was a welcome change from her parents. ”Her grandmother,”
Cook says, ”gave Eleanor a new sense of belonging, place, purpose. Her needs were no longer neglected. . . . Out of the chaos and distress of her parental home, Eleanor felt for the first time secure and wanted.” At the same time, however, she was required to be submissive: when her grandmother noticed that her posture was not erect enough, for example, she decided that Eleanor must have a spinal curvature and put the child into a corrective steel brace for nearly a year.
A real sense of belonging, place and purpose came for Eleanor when she attended the Allenswood School in England. No ordinary finishing school, Allenswood, Cook writes, ”took the education of women seriously, at a time when they were denied access to the great halls of learning.” Eleanor was deeply happy at Allenswood. The psychosomatic symptoms that had plagued her throughout her childhood-frequent debilitating headaches and lack of appetite- disappeared during the years she was there. She excelled in her studies and, for the first time in her life, became a respected leader.
Attractive, elegant and gregarious, Eleanor was courted by many young men. Friends wondered why she chose her cousin Franklin, who was, at the time, tall, gawky and in many ways a social failure. Severely over-protected by his mother, he had little experience with his peers of either sex. But Eleanor found him charming. To her, Cook says, ”he was tender, considerate, caring. She felt that he admired her intelligence, and relied on her advice. Above all, she perceived that he needed her. . . .” Despite Sara Delano Roosevelt`s objections, Eleanor and Franklin were married in 1905.
In the next decade, while Franklin invested himself in building a political career, Eleanor had six children, of whom five survived. Her family and social obligations took all of her energies, but she found herself more successful outside of the home than within, where Sara Delano Roosevelt, the very model of a domineering mother-in-law, usurped Eleanor`s authority. Eleanor`s major responsibility, it seems, was transporting the family back and forth between their city and country homes. She had virtually no life of her own, only her marriage, which, she discovered, was deteriorating.
At that time, Cook tells us, Eleanor was drawn to a particular sculpture in Washington`s Rock Creek Park: Grief, Henry Adams` memorial to his wife, Clover. Cloistered from the rest of the cemetery, Eleanor would sit for hours on end, contemplating her life. As Eleanor knew, Clover`s marriage to Adams was, by all accounts, an unhappy union. After Clover committed suicide at the age of 42, her husband perpetuated the story that she had been deeply despondent over her father`s recent death. Rumors, however, hinted that Clover`s depression had another genesis: her husband`s infidelity and his continued lack of interest and emotional support.
In 1919, when Eleanor Roosevelt first began to sit at the foot of Grief, her life was not substantially different. The two women, Cook writes, ”shared a set of realities: the realities of women who have been trifled with, humiliated. And they shared a quest: During a time when women were without place or honor, they sought to live a generous life, to give of their talents and vision, to do significant work, to find meaningful activity.”
At 35, Roosevelt was at a turning point. As a wife, she had discovered her husband`s on-going affair with his secretary, Lucy Mercer. As a mother, she had not developed strong relationships with her children. She had few outlets for her talents and interests; she felt demoralized, abandoned, unloved.
Cook`s intuitive, sensitive rendering of Roosevelt`s anguish sets the stage for the next volume of her biography, which will focus on Roosevelt`s years as an eminent political figure. As Eleanor faced the consequences of her past choices, she also made some new ones. She set herself to the task of learning history and politics. She became increasingly involved in feminist reform movements and political campaigns. She forged new relationships, and these included lovers of both sexes. She decided, Cook tells us, to live, fully and deeply, a life of her own. When this impressive volume ends, that life has only just begun.
