The importance of being Eleanor
Hugh Brogan
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: VOLUME TWO 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook Bloomsbury, £30, pp. 686 Eleanor Roosevelt is a fascinating but intractable historical subject. She was a woman of vast warmth, energy and intelli- gence, who made an indelible mark on her times; but it is extraordinarily difficult to measure her achievement accurately. Her times themselves are the chief reason. Even in the 1930s American women had more scope and liberty to realise them- selves than their sisters anywhere else; but they were nevertheless still badly hampered in their lives and choices. Mrs Roosevelt never directly exercised power in the usual sense; she owed her career to the fact that she was Franklin Roosevelt's wife. But such were her determination and ability that her political influence was huge. The President recognised and used her unique gifts, which saved his own career after he went down with polio; in the White House years she was his conscience, his gadfly, an extra set of eyes and ears and legs (she could visit places such as coal-mines which his paralysis as well as his office kept him out of). It was she who rallied most politi- cally active women to support the New Deal. Yet there can be no plain answer to the question of whether she was a first- or second-rank political figure. She was cer- tainly no Clementine Churchill or Pat Nixon, but she was more an Eva Peron than a Margaret Thatcher. And she has proved inimitable, as Mrs Clinton has found to her cost. Altogether, it is no won- der that so many historians and biogra- phers want to write about her.
But that hardly excuses Blanche Wiesen Cook's performance. She has undertaken a biography on the largest scale: two fat vol- umes (nearly 1,300 pages) so far, and pre- sumably two more to come. The scale is itself a problem: Mrs Roosevelt was at the centre of one of the most dramatic periods of American history, but she held no office and took no decisions, except the supremely important one to support her husband in his struggle back into public life after his illness struck him down. What, then, needs so much exposition?
The answer to the question must be bru- tal. Professor Cook adds nothing important to the record as set out by, say, Joseph Lash in his admirable memoir, Eleanor and Franklin. All her hard work has ended in padding.
Nor has she made superfluity enjoyable. She piles up the details as if they were all equally important, and displays them in a prolix style that makes bad worse. It is a particularly dangerous weakness in a biog- rapher of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was end- lessly engaged in churning out newspaper articles, memos to her husband, letters to her friends, and political speeches wher- ever she went, as well as dealing with her huge White House postbag. She was a competent but not distinguished writer; a little of her prose goes a long way. She needs to be quoted with the utmost dis- crimination, but Professor Cook just chucks everything in. Nor is it merely Mrs Roosevelt who stimulates her wordiness. Every individual who crossed her path is deemed worth at least half a page of bio- graphical summary; and the problem of background — of what to say about the New Deal and events generally — is never methodically tackled. Professor Cook is content to ramble on insouciantly, just as want gay family size' her fancy takes her. The result resembles neither history nor biography, but an arti- cle in People magazine.
Or perhaps it is just hagiography. Profes- sor Cook avowedly holds up Eleanor Roos- evelt as a feminist heroine. She is not blind to her subject's faults, of which a tendency to brood on her grievances against her hus- band was the worst. But this limited real- ism does not mitigate the total effect, which is one of almost unrelieved gush. Mrs Roosevelt, though apparently not a lesbian, was given to crushes on other women. Her sentimental correspondence makes wearisome reading. Blanche Wiesen Cook extracts it by the yard.
She has also adopted the intensely irri- tating practice of referring throughout to Mrs Roosevelt as E.R., on the analogy of F.D.R. (initials which she also overworks). This is thoroughly tendentious. I cannot find that Eleanor was ever mentioned in this way during her lifetime (none of the documents quoted does so): it is simply an attempt to manufacture a legendary status for the heroine, putting her on the same plane of importance as her husband. And that is certainly wrong.
Many an incompetent author has blessed American publishers' taste for big, bad books. This one has been sabotaged by a complete failure to edit it. Neither the pub- lic nor the author need be grateful.
Previous page
