The Kennedy Women
 Laurence Leamer
 (Associate Writer & Reviewer - Dr. Alma Bond)
 1994 Villard Books/Random House
  ISBN: 0679428607


A warmly empathetic & intimate study of the Kennedy family & in particular, the five matrilineal generations of our nation's foremost political dynasty.

For five years bestselling author, journalist & social historian Laurence Leamer researched the book, receiving unprecedented cooperation from Kennedy family members, interviewing scores of relatives & close associates, & gaining access to hundreds of personal documents. The book combines his exhaustive & superb scholarship with a gripping narrative that will forever alter our perception of America's royal family.

Associate Reviewer Dr. Alma Bond writes:

The Kennedy Women is a virtual feast for Kennedy lovers. The book could serve as a university course on the life of the family, chronicling five matrilineal generations in our nation's foremost political dynasty. It provides a poetic panorama of the history of American womanhood, as we are taken from the life of Bridget Murphy Kennedy, who arrived steerage class on an immigrant vessel to work as a servant in the slums of Boston, to the presentation of Joseph Kennedy's daughters to the Queen of England, to John F. Kennedy's White House, through discussions of the future Kennedy matriarchs Caroline Kennedy Scholossberg, Maria Shriver Schwartzenegger, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, & Rory Kennedy.

The book presents what to this reviewer's knowledge are the deepest characterizations given anywhere of the Kennedy women. In particular, I enjoyed the portrait of Rose. I lived through the Kennedy years, but never got more than what appeared to be a superficial view of a frivolous woman. Typical of the PR she received was a press release that informed the world that Rose Kennedy pasted what she called “frownies” on her face every day to keep away the wrinkles. Rose was raised by her mother, Josie, who insisted that her daughter be neat, self-controlled, have her life in order at all times, be studious, devout, & frugal. If she failed, her mother spanked her with a coat hangar, ála Joan Crawford. Rose was made to live her public life as the daughter of the Mayor Fitzgerald as if it were a biography, with every moment under scrutiny.

For those like this reviewer who wonder how she managed to survive all the tragedies in her life to the age of 104, the following paragraphs may provide an answer: “For Rose the world outside was a stage in which she performed with subtle grace and nuance. She had never been considered a beautiful woman, but the beautiful women of her generation were almost all gone now or had sunk into old age... Those years of self-discipline and restraint and exercise were apparent in her posture and her figure, and the youthful illusion that she could still engender in the forgiving, half-lit rooms where she spent her social evenings... Rose found it no sacrilege to use the quiet church as her powder room, for these were her two consolations: her vanity and her faith.” (Pps. 656-7) Wherever she went & whatever she did was confined to the strict world of her Catholic upbringing.

Perhaps most revealing of all, “In the Fitzgerald home, her father was the final authority. It was unthinkable to challenge his commands, to argue even momentarily, or to run tearfully to her mother.” It was a family pattern never to openly discuss questions of the heart, nor to deal openly with emotional matters. Rose was taught that self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, & suffering were the crosses that women were programmed to carry throughout life. To her, it was not “if” catastrophes might occur, but “when.” Her education was a training for tragedy, & may explain how Rose Kennedy was able to endure the momentous disasters of her life.

Wonderful, in-depth portraits with much new material are given of all the Kennedy women, particularly the ubiquitous Jackie, Ethel, & Eunice, & the mentally challenged Rosemary, whose story in all its horror & duplicity is revealed in detail.

Eunice Kennedy is a much more intriguing woman than I had realized. The oldest of the Kennedy sisters, she could pass for a female twin of Jack, in that they resembled each other greatly, suffered from identical illnesses, had similar voices, & talents of the same ilk. Were it not for her gender & the prejudice of the times, her father said, she could easily have become one of the greatest political figures of the era. As it is, her accomplishments are formidable.

Eunice was a Kennedy woman, & as such she considered her role in politics was to boost Jack as far as time, money, good fortune, & ability could take him. Along with her mother & her sisters, Eunice campaigned relentlessly for her brother, heading out into the chill winter of New Hampshire, the isolated towns of Wisconsin, & the mountainous roads of West Virginia seeking votes for Jack. It may well be that the omnipresence of the Kennedy women at campaigns all over the country, teas for women, radio & TV appearances, etc. gave JFK the small number of votes required to take the election from Richard Nixon. When the campaign was over, Eunice collapsed & was admitted to Boston Hospital for a week.

She was the conscience of the family, forever prodding the members upward & onward. Even Jack did not escape her constant nagging. “You should put more fire into your speeches,” she told him. The president responded, “And you should put more of your speeches into the fire.”

Eunice was always the sister who was closest to Rosemary Kennedy, & felt her tragedy on the deepest level. As a result, she devoted much of her life to the establishment of improved lives for the mentally challenged. She outlined & encouraged her father to take a new direction for the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, & to focus almost exclusively on mental retardation, although it was not an issue that would advance Jack's campaign the most.

Eunice was so single-minded, determined, & convinced of the value of the work she was doing that she felt she had every right to be as merciless to her subordinates as she was to herself. It is not beyond credibility that many of them hid when they saw her coming. She brought her campaign for the mentally challenged all over the world, even discussing it with President de Gaulle, who had a retarded child. She successfully sought to have the foundation fund multidisciplinary research centers to prevent or ameliorate mental retardation. And perhaps what she is best known for, she was the founder & director of the Special Olympics, a huge, worldwide organization in which retarded individuals could compete in sports, which she headed for many years.

The most interesting character in the book, of course, is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who is presented as a delightful human being, resplendent with good qualities & bad. The reader is told many anecdotes about her that I, a determined Jackiephile, had never heard before. According to Evelyn Lincoln, Jack's executive secretary, neither Jackie nor Jack were in love with each other when they married. Jack's father, Joe Kennedy, thought that a candidate for the presidency should have a wife. Obedient as always to his father's wishes, Jack at the age of 35 simply picked the best contender. In accepting his proposal, 21-year-old Jackie gave full play to both her emotions & her calculations, a characteristic that the stunned world could not face for decades. Her selling & trading of wedding presents offended many who had known about it. “Why doesn't she just have ‘Please send cash' engraved on the wedding invitations,” some said. This calculated behavior was to shock the world decades later when she married Onassis.

According to a classmate at Farmington School, Jackie was always an outsider. “Shy, insecure, removed from everything, interested primarily in her horse” (p. 428.) Jack found her a stunning woman with a gamine-esque demeanor, at times childlike in her questioning. Then to everyone's amazement a literary or cultural allusion of the utmost sophistication & a menacing wit would loom forth in Jackie's ethereal tones. She was not sexy like Jack's other conquests, but had a sweet sensuality of her own.

Jackie didn't appreciate the fraternity-like atmosphere when the Kennedys gathered at Hyannis Port, where the women joined the men in roughhouse play. The “ladies” matched their brothers in athletic competitions. “My sisters are direct, energetic types and she (Jackie) is more sensitive,” Jack said later...“She is a more direct sort.” The sisters ridiculed their new sister-in-law, calling her “the Deb,” mocking her childlike voice, & leading her onto the turf for a game of touch football. When Jackie broke her ankle, she was carted off the field, never to return.

While the Kennedys were forthright in expressing their anger, Jackie's style was more subtle. She would skewer her enemies with remarks of such modest calculation that it was impossible to tell whether she was being naive or deeply nasty. This psychologist leans toward the latter interpretation. Rose and her children were not interested in introspection, and did not look into themselves. Rather, both Jack and Rose were terrified at revealing their innermost feelings. Jackie, on the other hand, who had spent decades in psychoanalysis, often fell into brooding self-analysis, and was capable of subtle analysis and insight.

She had deep perceptions about Rose & her life as a woman. “Whenever she was relaxed and not trying to keep up with everything, she has this wit and this mischief, she's like a little girl and she says some quite irreverent things.” Rose interacted with Jackie more intimately than with her own daughters. When Jackie's photo was snapped while she was sunbathing in the nude exposing what one tabloid blasphemously called “the most famous bush in the world,” Rose impishly said, “I told you you'd get caught sometime.” Jackie was fond of Rose, & learned from her. Whereas Jackie tended to go into a downward spiral of depression & withdrawal when she was sad, Rose taught her “To go out, to take a walk, to take a swim, that's very much what the Kennedys do.”

Despite her wide range of humanitarian interests, Jackie was not particularly interested in feminism. When a Newsweek reporter began to talk about the flourishing of feminism in the workplace, Jackie commented, “I don't go for all that. I had no trouble finding a position in journalism as a photographer ”(p. 655.) It apparently never occurred to Jackie that her beauty & family connections saw to it that she got the job with “no trouble,” even before she became the fiancee of JFK.

Included in the book are 16 pages of delightful photographs, many from The John F. Kennedy Library, which were previously unpublished. The last page of illustrations, fittingly enough, includes a poignant photograph of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg kneeling at the side of her mother's coffin.

It isn't often that one mourns coming to the end of a book. Although The Kennedy Women covers 933 pages, I was saddened to find myself on the last page. “That's okay,” I thought. “Leamer's The Kennedy Men (882 pages) is sitting right there waiting to be opened and read.” I can hardly wait.

More from Laurence Leamer: King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson; As Time Goes By: The Life of Ingrid Bergman, & Make Believe: The Story of Nancy and Ronald Reagan. He has written for Harpers, Playboy, People, New York, The Washingtonian, & The New York Times Magazine, among others.
(01/27/02)

Dr. Alma Bond
2002©Alma Bond
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

A RebeccasReads author featured in Authors & Books

Reviewer's Bio:
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of ten published books, including:
The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle;
The Tree That Could Fly;
Tales Of Psychology (2004);
I Married Dr. Jekyll And Woke Up Mrs. Hyde (2000);
The Autobiography Of Maria Callas, A Novel (1998);
On Becoming A Grandparent: A Diary of Family Discovery (1994);
Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1998);
Profiles of Key West (1996).

She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age Is A Terminal Illness, as an audio book.

She is also the author of a just published children's picture book called The Tree That Could Fly.

Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.