Eleanor Roosevelt



Abstract

Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the United States, champion of human rights, and acclaimed author, was born in New York City in 1984. Her parents were Anna Hall and Elliott Roosevelt, the younger brother of Theodore Roosevelt. Both of her parents died when she was a child, leaving her to be raised by her maternal grandmother. The tragedy of her parents' death enabled Roosevelt to develop sensitivity to the suffering of the underprivileged. These sentiments would later cause her to devote her life to helping those in need and becoming one of the nation's most active humanitarians. In this paper, we try to focus on the Eleanor Roosevelt woman and examine her life in the context of what Learn here. The paper includes: 1) What unique strengths did she possess that enabled her to survive in her time, 2) What unique challenges explained in your text book did she suffer, 3) What have you personally learned from studying this woman.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Introduction

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt — always known by her middle name or its diminutives and referred to as ER throughout this book — was the child of a troubled marriage. Her mother had married the dashing Elliott Roosevelt at the age of nineteen and given birth to her daughter a year later, too early perhaps to continue to enjoy the pleasures of dances and parties that she still craved. Elliott, the younger brother of the future president, Theodore, was handsome, mercurial, and unstable. Although he professed to adore his wife and children, particularly Eleanor, he was a philanderer and a de- structive alcoholic. “Little Nell,” who remembered as an adult feeling increasingly rejected by her unhappy mother, worshiped her father in return for his attentions and his imaginative extravagance but saw him only between the bouts of institutionalization and semi-exile that his family imposed as his behavior deteriorated.

Background

Her mother's death from diphtheria when Eleanor was ten years old increased the child's isolation. Sent to live with loving but strict and emotionally distant relatives, she developed a strong fantasy life built around her father's occasional letters. Within two years, he too died, leaving Eleanor and her much younger brother, Hall, in her maternal grandmother's care. Privately educated, she spent her time with her mother's younger siblings rather with than her contemporaries and developed in this company of women an inner reserve and strength that would serve her well later on.

Discussion

What unique strengths did she possess that enabled her to survive in her time?

For more than a year, Eleanor struggled to find direction. She appears to have become anorexic, purposeless, and depressed. Cook describes her many visits to the memorial to Marion Hooper Adams erected at Rock Creek Park by her husband Henry after her suicide. Speculating about the parallels between the two wives, Cook uses the visits to this enigmatic statue as the fulcrum of her volume. From this point on, Eleanor's life would develop a direction of its own.

Eleanor Roosevelt, like many others of her generation and class, was ...