see the process of women's long struggle to free themselves from their husbands's dutiful shadows. "It is said that famous mane are usually the product of an unhappy childhood," wrote Winston Churchill. "The stern compression of circumstance, the spur of slights and taunts in early years are needed to evoke that ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother-wit without wich great actions are seldom accomplished." His words, about an unhappy childhood shaping the reateness of later years, were applicable to Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1 make friends easily. She would have to regain her trust in the world befor she could act upon the lession her Grandfather Theodore had impressed upon his children-receive people's love and peopld will love you. After her father's death a fear of loneliness and abadonment become ruling emotions in her life. She concealed such fears and longing that both shaped her approach to reality and prepared the way for deep disappointments in her relationships with others, especially men. Her memory of him strengthened her efforts to live up to his expectations of her. He had been a man of tender chivalry, and she wanted her man to behave similaryly. But men did not live upto such ideals, including the wish that they remain permanently and exclusively hers. And somewhere, too, she carried the forbidden knowledge of her father's weakness-his bouts of drunkenness, use of drugs, and philandering. Life and hte veiled memories of her father's frailities in time make her more tolerant of weaknesses in others. Her other model in adolescence was Mlle Souvestre, da;ugher of a French philosophe and ...
