Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village

Eleanor in the Village by Jan Jarboe Russell is an engaging and sympathetic biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. The title might cause some readers to expect something different but in a broad sense it is appropriate.

Some readers come to this expecting strictly an account of Eleanor's time in the Village with perhaps a little background. That particular understanding of the title will lead these readers to some degree of disappointment. The book is more of a biography with an emphasis on the Village as an ideological entity as much as a geographic one. Once FDR cheated on Eleanor and they decided (were coerced) into staying married, Eleanor was at long last free to be her own person, and this included apartments in the Village as well as show more friendships with people associated with the general left-leaning social, cultural, and political ideas brewing in and emanating from Greenwich Village.

It is the Village that Eleanor carried within her that the book is truly about, not so much the gossip and day-to-day happenings there. It is the lack of a lot of new gossip that disappoints some readers, rather than the emphasis on the influence of the Village on Eleanor, thus on FDR, and finally on the country.

This book does not break a lot of new ground but is a very insightful and readable biography. While all of the self-professed Eleanor experts claim it taught them nothing new, it will still be a rewarding read for those of us who don't get called for interviews because of our expertise on her life.(I assume all these experts get such calls constantly).

If you enjoy accessible but well-researched biographies this will be an enjoyable read. If you know some of the facts of Eleanor's life but haven't really placed them in context of the history around her, this will place those things in a well-rounded perspective. If you know all there is to know about Eleanor and just want gossip, well, keep looking.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

Eleanor in the Village contends that Eleanor Roosevelt's association with New York's Greenwich Village and the friends she made there had a major impact on the formation of her personal identity outside of her marriage to Franklin. I had hoped to learn details about her activities in the Village.

Jan Jarboe Russell gives readers a brief biography of Eleanor's entire life, which for a reader like myself who has read numerous books on Eleanor and Franklin was a recap of known history. She does give space to the many friendships Eleanor made with Village friends, particularly lesbian friends who were very special to her. She shared her private getaway Val Kill with one lesbian couple, and taught in a school opened one of the partners. A show more female journalist became her close friend and lived in the White House for a time.

Russell mentions the activities that spurred Hoover to open a secret FBI file on her: support of unions and workers and civil rights activities considered communist or socialist in those days. Pages of those files are still unlocked.

I wanted to know more about her activities in the village. I was disappointed by the lack of depth. Russell mentions that Eleanor knew writers living in the Village, like Thomas Wolfe. I sure wanted to know more about this!

An interesting point is Russell's interpretation of Eleanor's relationships with both lesbian friends, like Lorena Hick, and men she loved, including her body guard, doctor, and Joe Lash. As she does also with Franklin's relationship with Missy LeHand, his 'office wife'. Most biographers admit there is no concrete evidence that any of these relationships were sexual in nature or romantic on the Roosevelts' side. Russell is surer.

What is clear is that after Eleanor discovered her husband's affair with her personal secretary, she formed her own 'families' to love, becoming closer to these people than her own children.

Eleanor's story of personal growth is inspiring. That the 'ugly' child from a dysfunctional family, whose mother-in-law ruled her home and life, and whose husband betrayed her, turned out to be a respected, world renowned humanitarian leader could be a fairy tale. But there was no magic involved. With dear friends and strength of will, Eleanor transformed her life.

I would recommend this biography to those who are not familiar with Eleanor Roosevelt. In fact, it would be a good first biography for young adults.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

historical-figures, historical-places-events, historical-research, history-and-culture, biography, 20th-century*****

This well researched and documented biography of one of our most iconoclastic women of the twentieth century has an agenda and slant but is overall a study of how a wealthy but often neglected girl with a really lousy self image came to grow into a strong and effective woman who did her best for all in a time of transition for the whole world. I think that it is impressively well done and that the younger generations could learn a lot by reading this book.
We may not still suffer under J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy as Eleanor and the rest of America did but we have our own problems, some of which she actively fought show more against way back in the 1930s and beyond.
I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from Scribner/Simon and Schuster via NetGalley. Thank you!
I wonder who knit more socks for the troops, Martha Washington or Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor got more press. show less

This book began as a 5 star book. All books I pick up begin at that point. Then, I realized Scribner hadn't added a Table of Contents. How can one use a biography without knowing where to look? [n.b. this review is to an e-book.]

My perennial question when reviewing biographies is whether I am critiquing the subject or the writing. Since I already knew I admired Roosevelt, it soon became apparent I wasn't too enthusiastic with the writer. At around the half-way point, that rather mild sentiment turned sour. Suddenly Russell began taking serious leaps into the minds of her subjects, assigning spurious motives to actions of persons not even remotely having anything to do with Eleanor Roosevelt. Perhaps at this point she fired her editor show more and ...? The last several "chapters" were a mishmash of ideas. As a reader, I was so happy to be told (in parenthetical phrases) certain pieces of information which under the pen of an even mediocre writer could have been deftly woven into the narrative. As a biographer, Russell frequently tells the reader that Eleanor "thought" certain things. It must be a valuable trait as a biographer to have that type of connection with their subjects beyond the grave.

One conclusion I came to is that Russell was uncomfortable with women having lives outside of the mid-twentieth century mores of the times. I also wonder if her publisher's deadline caused her to rush to combine a sheath of notes into the last few chapters. Sadly, a good editor could have worked wonders for Russell. Or, perhaps a writing tutor. show less

Good information, of high interest to me when visiting NYC.