Like traditional upper class families, there are nannies and servants, and the children, you know, come in to say good-night before they go to bed.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOKLike traditional upper class families, there are nannies and servants, and the children, you know, come in to say good-night before they go to bed.
More Blanche Wiesen Cook Quotes
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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.
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Eleanor Roosevelt doesn’t ever do anything that is going to hurt her husband. She tries things out on him. She gets permission to do things.
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One, she’s really talented, an organizational woman. She knows how to do things. She begins to compare her life to her grandmother’s life. And it’s very clear to her that being a devoted wife and a devoted mother is not enough.
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I mean, if you pause over what it means at the age of 76 that Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, the happiest single day of her life was the day she made the first team at field hockey. Field hockey is a team sport. Field hockey is a knockabout.
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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.
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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.
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There’s very little private time with the children in the early years. Actually, there’s much more private time with the children in the 20s.
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One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt.
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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.
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A lot of people say that Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t a good mother. And there are two pieces to that story. One is, when they were very young, she was not a good mother. She was an unhappy mother.
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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.
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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.
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I think Eleanor Roosevelt always had a most incredible comfort writing letters. I mean, she was in the habit of writing letters. And that’s where she allowed her fantasies to flourish. That’s where she allowed her emotions to really evolve.
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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.
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And in her [Eleanor Roosevelt] letters, she writes the most, you know, fanciful letters: when we are together, and when we are reunited, and you know,
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK