The Savvy, Salty Political Saint

Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman known for her upright back and moral certitude, secretly enjoyed having her palms read. One particular analysis, in October 1939, tickled her so much that she kept it in the drawer of her desk, along with poems that inspired her. The palmist wrote that the finger which showed leadership "is much bolder in your left hand, which shows inherent potentialities, than it is in your right hand which shows what actually happens. This leads me to believe that many times you've had to cramp your style."

Follow your favorite NEWSWEEK columnists

Customize the Newsweek homepage to feature the latest word from your favorite columnists.

The fact that Eleanor kept this document for years is more revealing than the words themselves—did she believe she had qualities of leadership that were repressed, or thwarted by her position as First Lady? Despite all she achieved, and the esteemed place she holds in American history and affection, there's a central lingering question about her legacy: what would she have been capable of achieving on her own, without the constraints placed on her sex at the time, and without her marriage to Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

The recently published first volume of her papers, "The Human Rights Years, 1945–48," with a foreword by Hillary Clinton, provides important clues. It begins when Franklin Roosevelt died, and ends with the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Eleanor played a crucial part. In allowing us to study her own words, in letters, speeches, columns and diary entries, a different portrait of the much-lionized woman emerges—one of a pragmatic, savvy politician. While she is remembered as a saintly, long-suffering figure, we can forget she was an indefatigable, disciplined activist—as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, a "tough and salty old lady"—who resisted stereotyping when she was alive, and constantly protested she was not interested in power while vigorously pursuing it.

The comparisons to Hillary Clinton are obvious—both had unfaithful husbands, and both were smart, unconventional First Ladies. To consider Eleanor simply prologue to Hillary, however, is to accept one of the too-easy images of ER. Mrs. Roosevelt eludes straightforward categorization; contrary to conventional interpretation, she shared some of her husband's emotional and political complexity. FDR could be charming (to meet him was like "opening a bottle of champagne," as Churchill said) or coolly difficult ("the coldest man I ever met," as Truman said). Like him, Eleanor had her own layers in life, and now there are layers in death. We think we know her, but we do not, and the myths we choose to believe may tell us more about ourselves than they do about her.

The dominant myth, according to the editor of the papers, Allida Black, is that Eleanor was "a meek, mushy-headed liberal." "We did the book because everybody thinks of Eleanor as this great, bleeding liberal conscience who had no experience in crafting hard-nosed realistic policy," she says. "That's not true. She hid behind her traditional image to shape policy."

These papers—the first of five volumes intended to document her years alone—deepen our understanding of Eleanor, a prodigious woman with a needle-sharp intellect who has been quoted widely by those who wish to ape her—or own her. She has had her portrait painted by many authors since she died in 1962, and has often been stereotyped in a manner she would surely have resisted when alive. First were those who knew and loved her, like biographer and friend Joseph Lash, who depicted her as godly and selfless—a woman who triumphed over buck teeth, a dysfunctional family and her husband's love for a younger, prettier woman—like a kind of sexless, successful saint. At one point he compares her to Teresa of Avila. Second were the feminists who declared her one of the greatest heroines of the 20th century and carefully documented her relentless activism for refugees, African-Americans and women. Historical error inevitably follows apotheosis. Some modern, politically correct activists were so eager for her image to be blemish-free that they insisted her statue at the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., not include her trademark silver-fox fur.