An Inconvenient Widow
The Torment, Trial, and Triumph of Mary Todd Lincoln
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- ¥2,200
発行者による作品情報
A revelatory new biography of one of the most misunderstood and vilified First Ladies in American history: Mary Todd Lincoln.
Mary Lincoln was at the center of politics at a time when society’s expectations for women were rigid and circumscribed. The product of Southern aristocracy, she grew up among an influential clan of politicians and elites who founded Lexington, Kentucky. Mary’s early exposure to the male-dominated world of politics instilled in her a keen political acumen and a fierce ambition. Proclaiming as a child that she was destined to become the wife of a president, she played a crucial role in boosting her husband to greatness.
But her hopes for a triumphant experience at the pinnacle of power were lost to the Civil War and unfathomable family tragedies. Still, Mary persevered. She steadfastly supported the Union war effort, visited encampments, tended to wounded soldiers, and generously donated money and gifts to refugees from slavery. She was an unconventional, larger-than-life character who dressed too ostentatiously, grieved too publicly, suffered a shopping addiction, and seemed unable or unwilling to corral her emotions, her temper, and her opinions. She made enemies—influential men who wrote her story for her, often unfairly. After Lincoln was assassinated, she was all but abandoned by the nation he had given his life to defend and preserve.
Former Washington Post writer and columnist Lois Romano rectifies the tortured legacy of Mary Todd Lincoln, who was failed at nearly every turn in her widowhood—by her family, by her government, by medical professionals ill-equipped to diagnose her mental illness, and finally, by history. Romano draws on hundreds of archives, letters, and memoirs to provide the most complete portrait—of not simply of an inconvenient widow, but of a brilliant and flawed woman, who possessed uncommon tenacity in the face of extraordinary adversity and personal torment, and helped launch one of America’s greatest presidents.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Abraham Lincoln's much maligned wife had her mental troubles but was also a smart political operator and loving helpmeet, according to this vivid debut biography. Journalist Romano explores Mary Todd Lincoln's many issues: her volatile temperament, her extravagant shopping expeditions that generated negative press coverage during wartime, her unseemly lobbying for government appointments for cronies, and, later in life, her unhinged grief at losing three sons and a husband, which made her prey to charlatan spiritualists. But, Romano contends, Mary was a shrewd promoter of Lincoln's ambitions—she advised him to refuse a post as Oregon's territorial governor that would have scotched his presidential hopes—who, contrary to critics' assertions, fully supported his opposition to slavery. Romano devotes much space to demolishing the conventional historiography that Lincoln and Mary's relationship was an agonizing ordeal; instead, she paints them as well-matched—"he learned how to defuse her tantrums; she was adept at pulling him out of his funks." Later chapters recap how Mary adroitly marshaled the public sympathy needed to regain her freedom after her son had her committed in 1875. Romano is sometimes too quick with pat psychotherapeutic rationales for Mary's questionable choices. ("Shopping filled an emotional void... gave her a feeling of power and control.") Still, this revealing study dramatically recasts a proverbial ball and chain as a dynamic and constructive figure.
