A Role Model for Women
It would be nearly impossible to chronicle in these few pages all of the close women friends and colleagues with whom Grandmère shared and learned so much. For many years she surrounded herself with and enjoyed the company of many of the world’s brightest and most fascinating women, some well known, others less so. But even as they gave to her, she had tremendous impact on their lives as well.
When Eleanor wrote It’s Up to the Women, she could never have imagined the implications the book would have. Hastily compiled just weeks after she and FDR took up residence in the White House for his first term, this short volume became a rallying point, a call to action for women of all classes. Throughout its pages women are urged to be the reforming force for change, to assume leadership roles in the movement for social, political, and labor justice. It set into words Eleanor’s own priorities for peace, women’s rights, civil rights for all, and equal opportunity—social and economic—for every man, woman, and child. It helped provide definition for the course she had set for the rest of her life’s work, a course from which she never deviated. It is impossible, I think, to merely extricate Grandmère’s work on women’s issues from those others so closely related. She was not, as I have said before, strictly a women’s activist, for her concerns crossed all boundaries, all rights, and all inequities.
One of Grandmère’s friends from FDR’s administration was Helen Gahagan Douglas, wife of screen actor Melvyn Douglas and a stage and screen star in her own right. The Douglases originally came to the attention of my grandfather and grandmother as a result of their activism on behalf of California migrant workers. Eventually, at FDR’s urging, Helen Gahagan Douglas forsook her stage and screen successes to enter the world of politics, first as a national committeewoman and vice-chair of the California Democratic Party, and eventually to be elected to the U.S. Congress as representative from California. Subsequently, Helen and Grandmère worked closely for many years on issues relating to women’s rights. When questioned in later years about Eleanor’s impact on a woman’s role in politics, Helen responded, “In the White House years she was one of the main pillars in building a strong women’s division [in the national party]. It was her leadership that inspired other women all over the country… all over the world. Her courage in taking a stand, expressing herself in a very simple way… she was able to communicate to women… And she did that just by being herself and being courageous and taking stands… never being ugly and abrasive… It was the purity of that motivation that won so many people to her, Republicans as well as Democrats.”
Grandmère was continuously chided for not being more outspoken about women’s rights, particularly in the early days of the original Equal Rights Amendment, when she declared her opposition to it. The original ERA was drafted as early as 1923 by the women’s activist Alice Paul. However, it increased in strength and influence by 1940 when men were sent to war and women took most of the office and factory jobs in the land. In proving their productivity and value to the country, women were able to demand and obtain more changes for the ERA. It wasn’t that Grandmère opposed equal rights for women; she was more concerned that passage of the amendment would threaten certain advances already in place to protect women in the labor force. As Helen Gahagan Douglas explained, “She was against ERA. So was I, so was every leading woman in the Labor Department. That was because the protections that had been set up through the Labor Department for women in industry or in work jobs of any kind were very new, and we were afraid that if we supported the ERA we would lose those protections… [but] had Mrs. Roosevelt lived I am sure that she’d be for the ERA today. It was so difficult [at that time] to put through the reforms that would protect women that we were just fearful that ERA would be an excuse to do away with them. But she supported everything else that had to do with women’s rights, even before she went to the White House.”9
In 1940 Grandmère, Melvyn, and Helen Gahagan Douglas toured a camp of California migratory workers.
Again with Helen and Warren Austin in 1946, at a meeting of the US delegation to the United Nations.
Grandmère said in her autobiography, “I became much more of a feminist than I ever thought possible,” and she was also an avowed social reformer, whose pragmatism compelled her to view the broader implications of the proposed amendment, implications that could have greater detrimental effect on the working woman than it could on women of privilege. It was a difficult position for her to assume, particularly since it meant opposing her own political party.
Grandmère also believed that someday a woman would be elected president of the United States, but again she did not actively advocate her belief during or after her years in the White House. Interestingly, I think Louis Howe also shared the view that a woman would and could be elected to the highest office in the land, and at one point, perhaps partly in jest, he suggested to Grandmère, “Eleanor, if you want to be President in 1940, tell me now so I can start getting things ready!” Grandmère at the time doubted that the attitude of the country would allow a woman to be elected; “I do not think it would be impossible to find a woman who could be President, but I hope it does not happen in the near future…” she would say, continuing, “I hope it will not be while we speak of a ‘woman’s vote’… I hope it only becomes a reality when she is elected as an individual, because of her capacity and the trust which a majority of the people have in her integrity and ability as a person.”
Harry Hopkins during a rare moment of relaxation, at Hyde Park.
ER, FDR, and my father, after casting their votes for the “next president of the United States.”
Above all, Grandmère saw women as the humanizing strength and motivation of politics, and throughout her life she believed that women possessed a strength of consciousness and conviction that was wanting in most men in politics; that women would drive the reformation of injustice. When it came to women in the role of political partisanship, Eleanor could not have cared less. Although a Democrat and long a stalwart of women in the party structure, it was the individual qualities that defined the person, not party affiliation. To Grandmère, the most important thing was to strive for accomplishments of one’s beliefs and principles, and if it meant joining with an otherwise unlikely ally on an issue from time to time, so be it. She shocked some of the leadership in her own party when in 1932, as related by Joe Lash, she urged women to be prepared to reject the party and its candidates “when the need arises.” When FDR was elected in 1932, Eleanor worked tirelessly to ensure that qualified women, regardless of party affiliation, were participants in the New Deal administration. One of the first New Deal programs, the Civil Works Administration (CWA), was just a singular example of Grandmère’s influence in the administration. When the original plan for the CWA was unveiled it did not mention the role of women specifically. At the urging of Harry Hopkins, one of FDR’s key advisors and a “soul mate” in ER’s impassioned reform philosophy, Eleanor called for a White House conference to hammer out a program keyed toward unemployed women. The conference, attended by leaders from across the nation in the field of social welfare, presented a proposal that within one year had secured jobs for more than a hundred thousand women in the CWA.
Leaving Albany for Washington in 1932 on the Roosevelt Special.
FDR reading the results of his landslide gubernatorial success in 1930, to be followed again by his ascendancy to the presidency.
In sum, Grandmère’s belief in the ability of women to be the force of change is best stated in It’s Up to the Women, when she says that her greatest admiration was for those women throughout time “whose hearts were somehow touched by the misery of human beings [so] that they wanted to give their lives in some way to alleviate it.” But above all else, women would have to earn their rightful place in politics, as in life, by “putting aside their womanly personalities [and] standing on their own ability, their own character as persons.”
First Lady
A reluctant ye
t elegant First Lady, posing for her first official photograph at the White House in 1933.
I knew what traditionally would lie before me, and I cannot say I was very pleased with the prospect. The turmoil in my heart and my mind was rather great that night.
—Eleanor Roosevelt, the night of FDR’s election as president
THE WHITE HOUSE LOOMED AHEAD AS A place Grandmère would never be able to call home, but where she would serve as First Lady of a country ravaged by the deep incisions of the Great Depression. The sense of foreboding she felt the night news of Franklin’s impending presidency was announced would be etched into deep uncertainty from the beginning. It was as if she were standing at the rim of her hard-won vantage point to regard her new role with foreboding and fading hope rather than with a sense of triumph.
With persistence and tenacity Grandmère had by then managed to combine all the difficult strands of her life into a satisfactory whole: her partnership with Franklin, the friendships with powerful and stimulating women, her children, politics, her homes, teaching, writing, and public speaking. She was now thrust into the role of First Lady of the nation in a society that still wrote its history in the male gender and was staked out for women by norms, prohibitions, and controls. Too much individuality set her in conflict with the rest of society, and this was never more apparent than within the traditional context of the presidency. For many women at the time, conflict was still at the center of their vision; change could only be attained through agitation, rebellion, and transgression. Eleanor Roosevelt would reveal herself as unique for choosing to change the reality of her role through information, action, and understanding, not through conflict.
As beautiful as the White House may have been that first winter, inside the administration was dealing with the effects of the Great Depression.
What we know of our lives and what we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves depends on what we know of the world, what we believe to be possible, and whether our private loyalties are to the past, present, or future, opening a door that would allow women graceful entry into the world of politics and social change. This would invite all subsequent First Ladies to take up the challenge of their position for the betterment of American society and the strengthening of the country’s ties to the rest of the world. Eleanor chose to listen to her yearnings rather than be governed by old ways of thinking, both in her private world and in the public forum. Deeply attuned to new ways of solving conflict and merging social forces, she saw that politics and economics were powerless in the face of the obstinacy of entrenched shortsightedness. She found a new way, changed negative perspectives of the unattainable, and made growth possible for all who desired it. She was a stimulant the White House had never seen before, and perhaps has not seen since to such an extent.
Grandmère entering the official Inaugural Ball.
The Roosevelt Way
Those first few months of transition to the role of First Lady were not easy for Grandmère. Initially she abhorred the limelight, but the Roosevelts settled into the White House and, in their unique way, went about transforming its staid rituals into those more of a small hotel with all of its comings and goings. Friends and visitors came to spend the night and sometimes ended up staying for days, weeks, or in some instances much longer. Members of both Roosevelts’ retinues would even occasionally invite their own guests who, feeling completely at home, mingled easily with the children and staff. Grandmère would cook scrambled eggs in a chafing dish every Sunday evening, and everyone gathered together for this informal and intimate supper, mixing talk of politics with gossip and banter, jokes and intimate chats. Years later, remembering her time at the White House, Grandmère admitted that the “Roosevelt way” might have seemed perhaps too strong a breeze of fresh air to a staff accustomed to a different order of things:
Judging by the articles our head butler has written lately, I gather my informal ways of doing things were a shock. And I am afraid my husband must have been rather a shock too! He did not like to dress for dinner when we were alone, and we used the small dining room almost entirely and never used the big state dining room except for formal parties. I did not realize at first that I was not supposed to run the elevator but I was gently told that it was not the custom for the First Lady to run an elevator. I was obstinate enough, however, to say that I couldn’t be bothered waiting for anyone, and I imagine this will be the feeling of any young woman going into the White House, particularly if she is trying to be a mother to young children, a wife to her husband and at the same time trying to run the White House and meet her social requirements.1
She composed an article for Redbook in 1960 in which she gave advice to future First Ladies about life in the White House in her inimitably elegant, feminine, quirky, and perceptive way:
I think the mistress of the White House does well to make a tour of the whole house now and then to make sure that she knows every individual and gives them a chance to say a word to her. No matter how good the housekeeping is this is a safeguard. I found on one occasion great friction, which could have been ironed out more quickly if I had been in the habit of giving employees a chance to speak with me now and then when I went on the rounds… Some things you will find amusing, some of them irritating. I remember my consternation when I was told I was very neglectful because something was happening to the coats of the White House squirrels. I had not noticed that anything was happening, but today I have a series of cartoons that came out when it was discovered that the kind of nuts the guards and the public were feeding the squirrels were not the proper diet! I had to have the squirrels caught by the curator at the zoo and after careful examination the squirrels were supplied with the proper diet. Mrs. Hoover told me she was criticized because there was a darn in one of the white curtains in one of the big windows over the staircase. It was still there while I was there and remained for some time because curtains and hangings are very expensive for the big White House windows. Once I was severely criticized for being away too much by a lady who had soiled her white gloves on the railing of the stairs leading up from the basement of the East Room. She said that if I stayed at home I would have time to see to it that the railing was properly dusted. I wrote the lady that it was wiped once every half hour during the day but it seemed impossible to keep it clean all the time.
… There is really nothing a woman can do to prevent personal gossip, and constant criticism of herself and of the President and the children, so I think it is as well to remain ignorant as far as possible in this particular and rather inevitable situation. Any woman must live her own personal life as best as she can. It is difficult to have a personal life. It must be had in snatches and this is not an ideal situation. It is difficult for the children because to have a father who is constantly interested in affairs of state that must engross him, means that at times a father is not there to share their difficulties. A man in public life makes great sacrifices and the rest of us should help in every way we can to make it easier for his wife and children.
As far as keeping up old friends is concerned, that is possible. Any White House wife must observe protocol and it is impossible for the President’s wife to call on diplomatic people, even though they have been old friends, more than a very limited number of times. The moment it is noticed that one group or even one individual has an advantage over another, there is jealousy and possibly really serious international repercussions. So you learn to have your old friends stay with you, to go off when you can with them out of Washington if possible, but to content yourself with your formal duties and your personal life in the White House as far as possible.
I think it is as well to have friendly relations with the press. They can make life difficult for you or they can make it easy. It is wise never to forget that whether you know it or not somebody is always watching you. I remember one day falling off my horse very early in the morning in the park. She had slipped in the mud and I had slid off her back, but I was on again in a minute and rode with
Elinor Morgenthau and I think Missy LeHand to the waiting cars. I went home, had my bath as usual, and half an hour later I was sitting in the West Hall having breakfast when Steve Early, my husband’s press secretary, came in and exclaimed: “There, I knew it was not so. I told the A. P. it could not have happened that you fell off your horse without my knowing about it.” I had to say in a very small voice: “But it did happen, Steve. I just didn’t know there was anyone around to let the A. P. know”.
Whoever goes into the White House will have interesting years as the President’s wife—trying in some ways, deeply interesting in others. She deserves the help and the loyalty of every woman in the US for life will never be easy for the First Lady of this land.2
Oppressive may be an apt word for describing the feeling Grandmère had for those first few months as First Lady. Not only did she have to be far more circumspect in her activities, but she also had restricted access to her friends, her engagements. All the elements she had carefully cultivated in her life were gradually eroding.
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