Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412230059
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MARY WELEK ATWELL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I will confess that I've always enjoyed reading about the Kennedys. So I greeted with pleasure a book that told the stories of the female members of that prominent family. There is much that is interesting and some that is new in Leamer's group biography. He makes a genuine, and often successful effort to see events from the Kennedy women's point of view.
The story begins with Bridget Murphy, the "founding mother," a poor Irish immigrant who married Patrick Kennedy. Widowed at a young age, with four children to support, Bridget scrimped and saved. She built a small business, and provided a secure start in life for her favored son, P.J. (father of Joseph P. Kennedy). Leamer sees Bridget as a sort of female Kennedy archetype in her financial acumen and in her ambition for her son. As several generations of her descendants would do, Bridget put her own life in the shadow and at the service of male aspiration.
This is one of Leamer's persistent themes - the Kennedy women lived by a double standard. The men in the family moved on the public stage of politics and business, the women provided unquestioning support and turned a blind eye to the infidelities of their husbands, sons and brothers. He tends to hammer home that point, as it developed in the life of Josie Hannon Fitzgerald, mother of Rose Kennedy, Rose herself, and most of Rose's daughters and daughters-in-law.
Most of these women would have been smart and capable enough to be successful on their own if all of them had not been conditioned to subservience by the Catholic church and by their family traditions. Dissatisfaction with the subordinate role may have well been the cause for Pat Kennedy Lawford's and Joan Kennedy's drinking, as well as for Rose's coldness and Eunice Kennedy Shriver's frenetic life.
All of these women led lives of privilege, even as the growth of their talents was stunted. The real tragedy among the Kennedy women, however, is Rosemary, the retarded sister of Jack et al. For years the family hid her condition, pretending either that she was "slow" or that she suffered from a physical disability. Not only did they misrepresent Rosemary to the world, they lied persistently to themselves.
The ultimate betrayal came in 1941 when her father ordered a lobotomy for Rosemary. The operation meant that the young woman regressed to a permanent infantile mental state. For all intents and purposes the family, with the exception of Eunice, pretended Rosemary no longer existed.
Although "The Kennedy Women" professes to cover the current generation - Caroline, Maria Shriver, and their cousins - there is really very little about them that is not common knowledge. Of course, there are 12 of those "Kennedy" women and among them, 15 daughters. Perhaps Leamer envisions a sequel or two.
Mary Welek Atwell teaches at Radford University.
by CNB