Madness of Mary Lincoln

[kerry]

I think the book is very good, but I get the concern about bias. It's very hard to find a tone that is neither dismissive nor promotional with Mary. I think she's still hard to pin down - the female writers during the Civil War did a much better job capturing her personality. Mary Clemmer Ames wrote a piece around the time of her death that was far more detailed than the previous one she wrote about having nothing to do but shop. One of the things she said was "The intelligence of Mrs. Lincoln by the country at large has always been greatly underrated. Physically and mentally she was a strong woman, though her mental force had probably never been fully developed and in her later life became deeply warped,"

I think this is true of a lot of women during that era, and I think some of Mary's problems had to do with her having an "enterprising" spirit and trying to make a business out of the limited opportunities she had available. People have trouble giving her credit for her agency while also balancing the questionable ethics of her plans. I think during her insanity trial, she took great pride in reading about the insanity laws, writing up her petition for freedom and choosing the wording, and also writing a statement for the press and doing an interview. The fight woke her up from the drifting she'd been doing. I think it's hard to give her credit for that that without feeling a need to mention things about her manipulations or mental issues. I think men who show that sort of ambition and self-interest are accepted more easily, even when they have obvious issues. If Mary were alive today, I'm sure she'd still have a bad temper and some mental health issues, but I believe she'd have a successful business of some sort. That instinct was warped at the time and since there were few legitimate avenues to follow, she comes across as a schemer. She enjoyed squaring off against all those lawyers during her commitment. She would have been better off had she just foregone propriety and done what Myra Bradwell had regarding a career, but I understand how that would be too difficult for most women to deal with at the time.