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 COOKAnd 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.
More Blanche Wiesen Cook Quotes
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And the correspondence between them that we have, I mean, she says, “I cannot believe you’re not going to say one word.” And she writes to Walter White, “I’ve asked FDR to say one word. Perhaps he will.” But he doesn’t. And these become very bitter disagreements.
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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.
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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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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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She was going to redeem her father’s honor. And publishing his letters, reconnecting with her childhood really fortified her to go on into the difficult White House years.
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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.
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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,
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Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt’s talents and encouraged her talents.
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I think FDR was very dashing and charming and debonair, and probably reminded her of her father. A great bon-vivant. He loved to party.
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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.
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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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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.
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I think her Grandmother Hall gave her a great sense of family love, and reassurance. Her grandmother did love her, like her father, unconditionally. And despite the order and the discipline – and home at certain hours and out at certain hours and reading at certain hours,
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In 1935, Eleanor Roosevelt goes on the air; she writes columns; she broadcast three, four times to say the US must join the World Court.
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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