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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

She really is a completely different First Lady. Eleanor Roosevelt was not going to suffer and withdraw in the White House. And I think he’s a very different President. He does not want his wife to suffer and withdraw in the White House. And they really are partners.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Thinking Two White
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
Well, the reality of her father was that he was a very diseased alcoholic, who died at the age of 34. And one always has to pause to wonder how much you have to drink to die at 34. And he was a really tragic father.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Children Father Mean
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
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 COOK

Children Good Night Years
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

Amount Book Censored Surprise
She writes that the happiest day, the happiest single day of her life was the day that she made the first team at field hockey. And I have to say, as a biographer, that’s the most important fact.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Biographer Fact Happiest Hockey Important Team
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
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
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
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.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Hurt Husband Thinking
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
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
The amazing thing, I think, historically, is that he says, “Go do it. If you can make this happen, I’ll follow you.”
BLANCHE WIESEN COOK

Amazing Follow Happen Thing
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
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

Politics is not an isolated, individualist adventure. Women really need to emerge as a power to be the countervailing power to the men.

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Politics is not an isolated, individualist adventure. Women really need to emerge as a power to be the countervailing power to the men.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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