“Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John Kennedy” has hit the bookstores and her daughter, Caroline Kennedy is hitting the TV circuit to promote the book. At the same time, Diane Sawyer has shown two episodes of the tapes released from the Jacqueline Kennedy interviews with Kennedy aide Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., just 4 months after the Kennedy assassination.
What strikes me the most about Jacqueline Kennedy is how demur she is and how very much she fit into the 50’s mold of the not so modern woman. Her roll as a wife was much closer to my mother’s roll as a wife than I would have imagined. Women in those days very much defined themselves through their husbands and for their husbands. As I watched the Sawyer shows I wanted to spring up through the TV and bellow at Jackie and tell her she was her own person. She was a “stand by your man” kind of woman and it was totally apparent in the interviews.
Jackie became a more independent woman as she aged. She metaphorsized more from a woman who was there to enhance and build up her husband to one who was her own person with her own identity. Caroline Kennedy had the sole responsibility of deciding whether to release the information in the interviews. She decided to release it all. What a gift she has given us with the bird’s eye look into the lives of the two people who redefined the modern presidency in America. Jackie may become better known for her role as national historian than glamorous first lady.
