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There was a surprising amount of freedom. Eleanor Roosevelt talks about how the happiest moments of her days were when she would take a book out of the library, which wasn’t censored.

Blanche Wiesen Cook

She meets Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, and becomes very involved in the women’s movement, and then in the peace movement. And ironically, the years of her greatest despair become also the years of her great liberation.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Despair Met Movement Peace Women Years
But it’s also the beginning of another level of liberation for her]Eleanor Roosevelt], because when she returns to New York, she gets very involved in a new level of politics.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Country Despair Years
And that’s where she allowed herself to express herself really fully, and sometimes whimsically, very often romantically. And it really starts with her letters to her father, who is lifelong her primary love.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Letter Lifelong Long Romantically Sometimes
Also, she spoke perfect French. She grew up speaking French. She’s now at a french-speaking school where, you know, girls are coming from all over the world. Not everybody speaks French.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Also Country Different Language School Speak
You know, unloved, judged harshly, never up to par. And she was her father’s favorite, and her mother’s unfavorite. So her father was the man that she went to for comfort in her imaginings.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Imagination Judged Know Mother Unfavorable Unloved
Politics is not an isolated, individualist adventure. Women really need to emerge as a power to be the countervailing power to the men.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Adventure Coutevailing Effort Men
Her mother died at the age of 29, essentially turning her face to the wall and deciding to die. And so we can only imagine the agony she felt. And Eleanor Roosevelt really wanted to make her mother happier, and – and to make her live, you know, make her want to live.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Mother Thinking Wall
They’re partners in a big house where there are two separate courts, and they both know they have two separate courts. But these are courts that are allied in purpose, united in vision.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Count Partner Separate United Vision
She’s very warm about her grandmother, even though, if you look at contemporary accounts, they’re accounts of horror at the Dickensian scene that Tivoli represents: bleak and drear and dark and unhappy. But Eleanor Roosevelt in her own writings is not very unhappy about Tivoli.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Account Contemporary Dark Unhappy Warm
She was an unhappy wife. She had never known what it was to be a good mother. She didn’t have a good mother of her own. And so there’s a kind of parenting that doesn’t happen.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Happen Kind Known Mother Unhappy
We need something like the League of Nations. We need to work together to fight fascism. We need embargoes against aggressor nations, and we need to name aggressor nations. All of which is a direct contradiction of FDR’s policies.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Aggression Million Need
And there’s something about, you know, when your mother dies, this sense of abandonment. I think Eleanor Roosevelt had a lifelong fear of abandonment and sense of abandonment after her parents’ death.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Abandonment Fear Lifelong Mother Think
And I think Eleanor Roosevelt always responded to pain by doing more, by doing something, by being active. And I think she just couldn’t bear to look at her childhood grief. And she didn’t.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Childhood Look More Responded Something Think
She only writes about her father’s agony. But her whole life is dedicated to making it better for people in the kind of need and pain and anguish that her mother was in.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Better Making Mother Need
I think that Eleanor Roosevelt really learned about the limits of power and influence from Arthurdale. She could not make some things happen. And she particularly learned that she could not, just because she was nominally in charge.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Fighting Heart Moving
I think that Hick was in love with Eleanor, and Eleanor was in love with Hick. I think it’s very important to look at the letters that are in my book, because unlike some of the recent published letters.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Book Fun Important Thinking Unlike

There was a surprising amount of freedom. Eleanor Roosevelt talks about how the happiest moments of her days were when she would take a book out of the library, which wasn’t censored.

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There was a surprising amount of freedom. Eleanor Roosevelt talks about how the happiest moments of her days were when she would take a book out of the library, which wasn’t censored.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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