Added to my love of biography and history, I had a personal reason for wanting to read the book that I review today. I remember as a child that people often said that Mama looked like Eleanor Roosevelt. I’ve included her picture along with Eleanor’s from the cover of the book for you to decide.
Eleanor by David Michaelis can be pre-ordered before it goes on sale November 1. The author, using new in-depth research, covers the whole story of Eleanor Roosevelt from her birth into a family defined by wealth and social status privilege to her death as a major world influence for human rights for all. Her childhood with dysfunctional parents before she is orphaned brings thoughts of “poor little rich girl.” Growing up with family guardians filled with ethnic prejudice and concerned with social status, she initially absorbed those attitudes. The book traces her change as she becomes a major activist in American and worldwide efforts advocating, “If we cannot keep in check anti-Semitism, anti-racial feelings as well as anti-religious feelings, then we shall have removed from the world, the one real hope for the future on which all humanity must rely.”
Her family forms a fascinating story that might be rejected in fiction as too unbelievable. Her plain Jane marriage to her debonair fifth cousin Franklin Roosevelt seems doomed from the start, carrying the additional baggage of an interfering mother-in-law with a “Mama’s boy” for a husband. Even six children, with one dying young, does not bring an emotional bond between them. Yet when Franklin becomes involved with his younger prettier secretary Lucy Mercer and Eleanor offers a divorce, he does not take her up on it. The truth is Eleanor and Franklin need each other.
Over time, he gives her partnership in his own ambitions to become President and brings her from volunteer work to the forefront as a spokesperson and a voice for those who have none. She becomes an equal partner in his ambitions and continues after his death in broader ways as President Truman appointed her to serve in the United Nations. Franklin needed her for her advocacy in his public persona and in private for the nursing and care she gave during his bout with polio and other illnesses. He also needed the cover she gave for his disability as the polio took his dexterity and again for his failing health that threatened his last run for the White House.
Eleanor remained emotionally vulnerable for her entire life with many efforts at close relationships that were stronger on her side than on her recipients. Her strength and status in the public arena contrasted with her need for personal closeness. She gave her children freedom that had been denied to her to live their own lives. Perhaps an insight into how she lived this extraordinary life may be in a comment to her children as they followed Franklin’s casket, “Much further back I had had to face certain difficulties until I decided to accept the fact that a man must be what he is, life must be lived as it is . . . and you cannot live at all if you do not adapt yourself to your life as it happens to be.”
Now, I return to my introduction. It amused me as I read the book how often people who met Eleanor were surprised that she looked much better in person than in her pictures. I can verify that the same could be said of Mama.