Thoughts from Mary's sister Elizabeth

[kerry]

Elizabeth Edwards seems to have been very insightful and sharp, and as she mentioned in that letter about exaggerating her age, she tried to put the best spin on things. She was evidently able to keep her daughter's condition quiet for a long time. I get the sense some of the stuff she told Herndon about the courtship was strategic in some way but I've never been able to figure out what story she meant to tell. I've been wondering if there were more of her papers available - I can't wait to read that article when it comes about. Her take on the situation in the letters relating to Mary's insanity trial always seems the most insightful - she was probably way more involved in many things than we know, and didn't get much credit for it due to the way women were kept behind the scenes at the time. I've been doing a lot of research on the last year of Mary's life, which usually gets less than a page of coverage in biographies but was really pretty eventful, and i keep wondering what role she played.

Her daughter's symptoms sound like post-partum psychosis, but then the stuff about it showing at age 13 - maybe she suffered severe depressive episodes and that made her do "flighty" things, whatever that means.