n-law's houshold. In 1910 when Franklin Roosevelt anounced that he was going to run for a state senate race, Eleanor wrote: " I listened to all his plans with a great deal of interest. It never occured to me that I had any part. I felt I must acquiesce in whatever he might decide and be willing to go to Albany." Politics was man's business, and in this particular cas he embodied the push and elan associted with the male animal, and she was the model of wifely subordination. In 1912, when Franklin fell ill while running for reelection, she took on briefly the management of the final weeks of the compaign before she too bacame sick. During the democratic convention the same year, she accompained Franklin to Baltimore. She was content to remain in hte backgroung, a position he preferred. She found the convention boring and meaningless. Her dislike for the convention spectacle always remained with her. Under the impact of Franklin's political nececssities and the promptings of her heart and curiosity, she was begginning to outgrow the limitations and taboos of a society that sought to preserve its rule by its exclusiveness. Eleanor blamed herself for the way she brought up her children. She sought to play with them, to be their guid, to teach them to concentrate, as she had learned at Mlle Souvestre's, to speak French, to be self-reliant, and to accept pain stoically, but she thought later she had "enforced a discipline which in many ways was unwise." " She felt a tremendous sense of duty to us," Anna later said, "... but she did not understand to statisfy the need of a child for primary closeness to a parent." Her children's "wildness" scared...
