A new book paints the wife of President Woodrow Wilson as a complex change-maker who refused to blend into the background
A new book paints President Woodrow Wilson’s wife as a complex change-maker who refused to blend into the backgroundcentury before the dawn of Instagram, Edith Wilson had her own means of distorting reality for the watchful masses. Her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, was recovering from a stroke, in no shape to be seen by the public or his political foes who suspected he wasn’t up to leading a country.
At first, Edith spurned the president’s advances. But his fixation on her wore her down, as did the joy she experienced while talking about work with a man who had the most interesting job in America. Edith concerned herself with all of her husband’s affairs, running interference and offering counsel. She was the first president’s wife to travel abroad with her husband for diplomatic trips, and also one of the first to write a memoir.
“Edith helped define what a first lady does,” said Roberts to the Guardian. Studying Edith’s history, she came to admire a character who put her own spin on the position of first lady. “It’s an impossible job. It’s got no job description, no training, no salary, no ability to be fired. You don’t get any guardrails at all.
She was always at her husband’s side, an unflagging co-worker, a doting nurse, and an ingenious image crafter. “Once Woodrow Wilson got sick, she was very aware of how things looked,” says Roberts. “She was very good at sort of the public performance piece side of politics” – things like installing sheep to graze on the White House lawn as a cost-cutting measure or taking up knitting, which became the rage among American women.
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