One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt.
BLANCHE WIESEN COOKShe 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.
More Blanche Wiesen Cook Quotes
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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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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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And during the campaign of 1936, she writes that she and her brother would always rather be out doing things when they’re sick, rather than take to their beds.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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She writes an article which becomes an article she writes in different ways over and over and over again: Women need to organize. They need to create their own bosses. They need to have support networks and gangs so that they are a force.
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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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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.
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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.
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Eleanor Roosevelt started off almost every early article she wrote, starting with, “My mother was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.” And I think her life was a constant and continual and lifelong contrast with her mother.
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In one way, it is this sense of order and also love that, I think, really saved Eleanor Roosevelt’s life. And in her own writing.
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By 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt was so angry at FDR’s policies, she writes a book called This Troubled World. And it is actually a point-by-point rebuttal of her husband’s foreign policy. We need collective security. We need a World Court.
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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