ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

I would probably never have bothered to read this book if it hadn’t been written by the noted Australian biographer, Hazel Rowley (1951-2011). For a start, as an Australian I am naturally more interested in reading about our political leaders than American ones, but also I’m not interested in their private lives at all because I believe it’s none of my business, nor anyone else’s.

However I was attracted to Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage when I saw it at the library because it had received considerable publicity at the time of Rowley’s premature death last year and had received generous reviews. It turned out to be well worth reading, partly because it’s so well-written but also because it traverses territory that transcends the individuals concerned.

Franklin and Eleanor is about what is nowadays called an ‘open marriage‘, that is, one in which the couple tacitly or explicitly give one another permission to have loving relationships with others. In the case of the Roosevelts, both had relationships which were enduring and which provided emotional support as well as companionship. It would have been unusual for any couple at that time, but it is astonishing that America’s first couple were able to sustain long-lasting extra-marital relationships without the press finding out about it until years after Eleanor Roosevelt’s death.

What I liked about this book was that this aspect of a long and successful marriage is handled in a non-prurient way. Whereas American politics today seems to imply that any political dalliances (no matter whether long past or present) comprise a security risk, it seems that the only security risk ever contemplated by the Secret Security forces was Eleanor herself, because they thought she was a Communist. Her activism for social justice was judged to be dangerously left-wing at the time. Her FBI file is one of the largest in the collection, which would have astonished her had she known of it.

The Roosevelt marriage was a stressful one, as all political marriages of necessity are: the frequent absences, the demands of political life in general and the feeling that family members have that they must always take second place. The importance of concealing the extent of FDR’s physical disability from the press and public would have added to the tension that always surrounds any appearance by public figures – I cannot imagine what it must be like to have paparazzi surround every move that celebrities make, the sole purpose of which is always to get the scoop that shows a victim in an unflattering light.

For the wife in such a marriage, even today, there is usually also the additional frustration of being denied a voice and a career. The women of Eleanor Roosevelt’s generation were expected to make a good marriage, to have children, to support their husbands – and no more than that. (Eleanor didn’t even support the suffragette movement, not until FDR did). But his illness transformed both their relationship and her willingness to conform to society’s expectations: together with the indomitable Louis Howe, she became a crucial aspect of FDR’s campaign team and after his election as president, she became active in a variety of causes from Civil Rights to equal pay for women and national health insurance.

The open marriage worked because FDR and Eleanor were intensely sociable people. They liked to have others around all the time, to hold a type of court in their various homes where there were endless visitors and house guests. Although it is known that Eleanor suffered some bouts of hurt and jealousy, there seems to be no evidence that FDR felt the same, though this may of course be only because so much of their private journals and correspondence was destroyed in order to conceal what was happening. Rowley is insistent that this couple loved each other and that the other relationships they had complemented their marriage rather than detracted from it.

Two minor criticisms: I didn’t like FDR’s friends who had polio being referred to (twice) as ‘the polios‘ as if they were defined by their illness and had no other identity. In a book at pains to show the life of one man struck down by this illness who refused to let it constrain his ambition or identity, it is an odd choice of idiom. And the photo collection is awful: it’s as if the publishers have chosen almost every photo with a view to portraying these people in an unflattering light. The one of Lorena Hickok showing her fat and flabby in a bathing suit is particularly cruel, but there is also an awful family photo taken at Campobello in 1920 when the entire group including the children looks sulky and depressed.

But these quibbles aside, it’s a compelling read, and I’m glad I have Rowley’s biography of Christina Stead on my TBR!

PS Sue at Whispering Gums reviewed it too.

Author: Hazel Rowley
Title: Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage Publisher: MUP (Melbourne University Press) 2011 (the edition on the RHS above)
ISBN: 9780522851793
Source: Kingston Library

Availability: Fishpond: Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (the edition on the LHS above, the MUP edition seems not to be available now).