Elizabeth Edwards: The Green-eyed Monster?

Is Elizabeth Edwards a green-eyed monster savaging her straying husband and his lover in her new book to satisfy her lust for vengeance?

That's the opinion of some prominent critics -- especially women -- who see Elizabeth, with little sympathy, as a woman scorned and out for payback.

Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times, "Now Saint Elizabeth has dragged him [her husband John] back into the public square for a flogging on Oprah and in Time and at bookstores near you." And Dowd speaks of Elizabeth's desire "to prosecute her husband and his former girlfriend now in public, while still taking the marriage "month by month."

In The Daily Beast, Tina Brown says that Edwards' new book, Resilience, "just drags us back into the messy aftermath of the election season at a time when we are now busy trying to get on with a collapsing economy and save our own lives." Guess who captures Brown's sympathy?

"It almost made me feel sorry for the Democratic twinkie John, who was always under the illusion that he was the next JFK," she writes.

But let me offer up another explanation for Elizabeth Edwards' book, in which -- though you'd never know it from the media -- her husband's affair is a small part of the story of her life. Edwards, I believe, is seeking something more profound than mere vengeance. It's about who owns her story, and through that narrative, herself.

One of the major themes to emerge from the second wave of the women's movement of the 70s was the desire of women to be, at long last, at the center of their own stories. They no longer wanted to be somebody's mother, somebody's wife, somebody's victim, somebody's muse, or the object of somebody's desire.

In those days, the idea of women as actors in their own right, uncoupled from the Male Gaze, was a radical one. Joseph Campbell, the famous scholar of mythology, was once asked if women could have a quest, a journey of their own. He said no, because women were the objects of quests by men. "Women don't need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she's the place that people are trying to get to."

Elizabeth Edwards wants to present her life on her own terms. She wants to tell us of a life that mattered. She doesn't want history's picture of her to be the one we've seen so often with political wives. They stand beside their straying spouses, mute in support, and then shuffle off into the shadows of politics and history.

Edwards' breast cancer has metastasized into her bones. She knows she is coming prematurely to the end of her life. She doesn't have many years ahead of her, as Hillary Clinton did, to forge her own story and triumph in her own right.

Edwards burst onto the national scene as the best spokesperson for her husband's bid for the presidency. A smart, shrewd lawyer who devoted much of her life to John Edwards' career, she quickly became the darling of the media for her wit, her warmth, and for her life story. The tragic loss of a young son led to her having two more children, and she often advocated for children as she traveled with her handsome husband and shared his crusade against poverty in America,

Of course, if it seemed too good to be true, it was. As John Edwards was using his family story as a selling point for his candidacy, he was playing footsie with a videographer he hired to work for his campaign, and with whom he may have fathered a child. When the affair was discovered, Edwards' political career plunged flaming into the sea like a Kamikaze aircraft.

And his wife suddenly went from courageous, smart political player to that most banal of stereotypes, the Wronged Wife, silent, pitiful and often cruelly mocked. She couldn't hang onto her man, what kind of a woman is she?

This implicit notion rings through the critics' words. Many seem more sympathetic to the mistress, Rielle Hunter, than to Edwards. Maureen Dowd wrote that Edwards book "exposes the ex-girlfriend, who's now trying to raise the baby girl, a dead ringer for John Edwards, in South Orange, N.J."

So Edwards' desire to tell her own story should be curtailed to protect the woman who seduced -- or was seduced by -- her husband? Everyone loved Elizabeth when she was the loyal wife or brave cancer victim. But when she stepped out of that role, disapproval followed. Tina Brown wrote, "There was deep public sympathy over the tragedy of the death of their son Wade and later for her brave, unflinching confrontation with a deadly disease."

But when she abandons the role of all-suffering wife, beware.

Brown again: "Most people I know thought that Elizabeth looked like an overbearing chief of staff and were mystified that her interruptions were tolerated by someone as clearly in love with himself as John."

As the late critic Carolyn Heilbrun pointed out, "Above all other prohibitions, what has been forbidden to women is anger, together with the open admission of the desire for power and control over one's life ...Because this has been declared unwomanly, and because many women would prefer (or think they would prefer) a world without evident power or control, women have been deprived of the narratives, or the texts, plots, or examples, by which they might assume power over -- take control of -- their own lives."

Elizabeth Edwards has taken hold of the one power she has left -- being able to tell her own story. She's not thinking of her husband or her children or the other woman or the other woman's child. She's claiming something for herself. Judge her if you will -- for being too trusting, too ambitious, too willing to serve her husband's ambition, too smart, too angry, whatever.

But let her have her say.

Boston University Journalism professor Caryl Rivers is the author of "Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women."

Comments

[meko]

I don't see how the tale of the wronged wife is being the center of her story. She had a great opportunity to be a voice for universal health care, but she chose to play a victim role. There were female martyrs long before the women's movement, there were politicians wives who were the woman behind the man long before the women's movement. She's closer to the players on the 1950s game show Queen for a Day, where women competed to have the most tragic story in order to win a refrigerator than she is to any advocate for any cause.

She may be finding some satisfaction in ensuring the end of her, supposedly beloved, husband's career. She may find some satisfaction in sharing her suffering martyr role once again. But this is not heroic.

Can you imagine being her child, going to school the day after the Oprah show? What about them? The story will only become more lurid, as she perpetuates the media circus, and creates a market for the other woman's book deal.

[inmyhumbleopinion]

Respect you tremendously, Caryl, as a former BU COM student. However, while I agree that women should manage their own stories, I believe Elizabeth Edwards' timing is less than admirable.

If, as the press is indicating now, she knew about her husband's affair before the primaries, she should not have agreed to go along with his candidacy and (a) either stopped him from running or (b) disassociated herself from his campaign. To now write a book about how wronged she was feels a lot like Scott McClellan's tell-all. It's disingenuous. Where was the integrity as the events were unfolding?

[TheBlackCat]

Honestly, I don't really care about the Edwards. Elizabeth's story is very sad, but they never appealed to me. I find it offensive and obscene that they live in a 28,200 square foot house, yet claim profusely to care about the lives of the poor and the environment. Not to mention I find it hard to trust anyone who made their millions as a malpractice attorney.

But I did very much like this article, about women wanting to reclaim the narrative, to be centers of their own story. I studied this pretty extensively in my ethnography class, and it always bothered me- that women are so typically only the accessories to a man in any narrative. I definitely can find it believable that this is what Elizabeth was seeking to do in writing her own story, not simply to seek "Revenge." Of course we'll never know what her intentions are, but I did enjoy this article's theory.

[HelloFunnyWorld]

Hello Caryl Rivers,

We are a small group of friends that have just finished reading Resilience, like it very much, seem to get what Elizabeth Edwards was trying to convey not only about her self and her life and we cannot understand why the likes of Tina Brown, Maureen Dowd, of all people - amongst others too - we cannot understand why Mrs. Edwards is the one being attacked so ferociously. Bizarre.

Thanks for your ending quote from Carolyn Heilbrun - about the right of women to have power, or control over their own lives, just like men do over theirs, without men having to fight for it, or have other men beat up on them for wanting this very important ingredient in Life. Without which one cannot, simply cannot take good care of one's own life.

If & when you do meet Mrs.Edwards please give her our best wishes and thanks for being brave enough to let us into her so private thoughts, feelings. Her book will help others fight, properly, for the power and control over their own lives that is so very necessary for all of us, gender not withstanding.

Mrs.Edwards is also right, that today 2009, the 21st century - it is women, not men who do not show respect for other women. But this too will change. Now that she and others too, have put the elephant in the room - on the table!

Yours sincerely

[HuffyLady]

We’re surprised when women, particularly, turn on another when she’s troubled; yet reliable studies show rape victims routinely blamed for “dressing provocatively”, or women (especially career women) whose husbands cheat suspected of being “cold” or otherwise “causing” their husbands to stray. To feel less vulnerable, we negatively judge and blame the victim …as if WE could have avoided what that person did to “deserve” it.

I knew a brilliant woman utterly devoted to supporting her husband’s every ambition. In return, he lied and manipulated her into years of self-doubt, dependence, and depression. Remarkably, despite the odds and fear of repercussions, even without proof that his calculated mental abuse wasn’t actually “the mere imaginings of a delusional woman”, as he claimed, she finally resolved to take her chances alone, rather than tolerate it one second more.

Reacting to the first divorce among their social group, every one of her “friends” shunned or betrayed her, openly reviling her for “hurting” her ex.

On her own, feeling nothing but relief, she quickly regained her spirit, discovered his hidden money and latest mistress, fired her incompetent shrink, and blossomed.

Later, one of her worst betrayers actually contacted her for advice! Wine-emboldened, the troubled woman confessed, “We were all partying at your ex’s apartment and took money bets you wouldn’t make it. I need to know how you did it”. - Really!

Ultimately, any lack of empathy for Elizabeth only betrays our own fear that NO one - even in powerful positions - is safe.

[dessertsfirst]

Excellent post!
Mrs. Edwards is in a non-win situation. In the end she will lose her life, and she knows this... she has no control over this destiny. And now she has lost control over the very thing she thought she exercised some degree of control. Her husband had promised fidelity to her when they were married, and she counted on that. Now, nearing the end of her life, her husband's unfaithfulness declared, and Elizabeth? Elizabeth is trying to salvage what little control and dignity she has left... you're NOT gonna get my man. This is my man, and my marriage and my children, for as long as I have left to live. And I'm not gonna give them up.

[OtayPanky]

dessertsfirst: Mrs. Edwards is in a non-win situation. In the end she will lose her life, and she knows this...

===

In the end we will ALL lose our life. All we can do before then is act with integrity, and make appropriate amends when we don't.

She wouldn't be getting such a mixed reception right now if she used her book tour to (among other things) apologize to their supporters, and to the democratic party, for joining John in presentation of a CHARADE to the public - and (worse yet) putting us all in grave danger of yet another 4 years of repub rule had they somehow gotten the nomination.

There's something Shakespearian about this. These are two extremely intelligent people who have been caught in THE BIG LIE - and yet are still both in denial about the basic facts and their implications.

Attempts by both of them to revision the narrative in the face of what is now known by everyone is not a good example for any of us...and to use feminist rhetoric to say otherwise is just another nail in the coffin for feminism.

But I guess some will pound those nails anyway.

[RIELLEFortuneHUNTER]

You call it a charade? IF what Elizabeth knew was true, just one night of indiscretion, this would barely be a footnote. Assume it was only one night, but he got caught anyway. Assume on this one night Rielle had photographed him and sold it to the National Enquirer, as she undoubtedly did with the "baby" photo. John and Elizabeth would have gone public, admitted to his error and weakness, made it clear he had admitted it, she had forgiven him and the end result -- not even a footnote.

So, Elizabeth had nothing to do with the big cover-up, nothing.

[mydsh]

Thank you Caryl Rivers for reminding us who we are. I was privileged, as an adolescent, to witness my mother and her friends struggle to claim the full measure of personhood in the early 1970s. It is so disheartening to know that some of our most prominent and accomplished women wish to simplify Elizabeth Edwards, while collaborating with the media and culture at large, ie Advertising. Our constant diet of youth worship, exhibitionism and immediate gratification have little to do with Liberation. Why does Elizabeth Edwards need to describe herself as "old-fashioned" when she refers to honesty, principle and life's deeper currents?

[OtayPanky]

Tina Brown's article pointed out what so many others have said before: she was a central player in the conspiracy to keep alive a fatally wounded campaign. Had Edwards actually won the nomination, and then been exposed, we'd be talking about President McCain right now.

She can "own her narrative" all she wants, but neither Women's Studies nor our natural sympathy for her and her family can cover up the cold, hard facts.

[roshni]

when her own narrative involves changing timelines and denial, it's not such a good thing.

[h0tr0d]

Elizabeth Edwards life is the center of her private life. When you are married to a public servant, than your public life becomes integrated with your public spouse's life. This has nothing to do with with any women's movement.

[dessertsfirst]

Exactly! It doesn't have to do w/ any women's movement.... it is more personal than that. It is the pure, (or impure) raw personal emotions of a woman who is hurting, who isn't capable of doing much thinking other than trying to justify to herself why and how this could happen to her... she has after all endured so much....
and it ain't a pretty sight.

[LuGubrious]

The personal is political.

(Just a head's up from the past 40 years.)

[HuffyLady]

No event in the life of a loyal, supportive wife is as invalidating as the betrayal of a philandering husband, and Elizabeth Edwards must walk her gauntlet under the invasive scrutiny of the American press and the vicarious voyeurism of their readers.

How could she ever have suspected writing a book about a life well spent would make her the focus of such unwarranted ire? By writing her book, Elizabeth has at least found one constructive, healthy way to restore her own sense of validity - which her husband’s deception has so undermined, and her prognosis has seemed to make irrelevant.

When two such devastating personal events as the diagnosis of terminal illness and publicly exposed spousal infidelity simultaneously shock your world off its axis, you do anything you must to try to maintain familiar patterns and the last threads of seeming normalcy. Regaining trust is an arduous and tentative process - and time is not on their side. She could have simply kicked him out. She still may. Either way, the plethora of self-appointed arbiters sit in judgment as if they had all the pertinent facts, pronouncing whatever sentence they see fit in order to make themselves feel better.

I hope women’s recent social liberation has not caused us to harshly judge another who suddenly finds herself needing that final evaluation of what her existence on this earth has actually meant to her husband, her children, and what appears to be the tragically unenlightened and harsh world around her.

[timezone]

Nicely said, Huffy.

[dessertsfirst]

Thank you for your excellent post. Very well stated. It shouldn't matter which side of the women's lib line we stand on... we are all sisters, and should support one another when the need arises, not be labeled among those who eat their young.

[RIELLEFortuneHUNTER]

Huffy, well done.

[mostlyindignant]

I am afraid I disagree with you Huffy. Elizabeth does not really need to "walk the gauntlet" of the press. She put herself on the runway of the press, smack dab in the spotlight by resurrecting issues involving her personal life and her family that had all but disappeared from the press (until of course the grand jury investigation of JREs campaign $ began). How is publishing a book including private family information, traveling the globe to promote it, appearing on any tom-dick-harry talk show have anything to do with "maintain(ing) familiar patterns and ...normalcy"? Normal for who? Michael Jackson? Octomom? Normal, which does not necessarily equate with brainless or worthless or unimportant or insignificant, is spending time with your children, other than spending three weeks sorting out legos), trying to improve your community-however you choose to define it. E's process of regaining trust, mothering her children and serving her world has nothing to do with the book. SHe says she had a contract-- I say she could have broken it. She/they have $30 mil in the bank. Instead, here is a woman who could not stand to be out of the spotlight. She is never going to regain the life she had if it revolved around a quest to live in the White House. So, enjoy the life she has right within her grasp. Huffy, remember, she is the one who continues to put herself in the path of public judgment, not the public.

[timezone]

Let's see....Ms. Edwards lost a child (as I know her husband did as well, to be fair), has been fighting terminal cancer, her husband cheated on her, then lied to her (saying it was just once), so she had a double betrayal, she stayed and obviously wants to finds peace before she dies. The media and public have gone crazy judging her WITH or WITHOUT her writing this book. I see nothing wrong in her wanting to have HER say and tell people HER side of the story before she dies, if that will give her peace. SHE isn't the one who cheated, and yet, it seems she's being judged harsher than a husband who cheated repeatedly on his wife.

[IowaGirl]

I say a pox on them both, at this point. Like a writer for the LATimes said recently, I have compassion for her and also compassion fatigue.

Sure..."own her own narrative," blah blah blah. I get it.

But if she is such a great mother, why is she putting this book out there for her three children to have to live with their whole lives? (Not to mention John's baby w/ Rielle.) My heart goes out to her oldest daughter, a young adult who campaigned hard for her father, who is in law school, I believe. What fun that must be...to have your father raked over the coals by both the media, the millions of Oprah-watchers et al., and your own mother, whose health issues already weigh heavily on your heart.

It is indeed Shakespearean, but Elizabeth is not the one who should write this play.

[timezone]

If someone, everyone, was weighing in and speculating about YOUR life, Iowa, and you were dying, you wouldn't feel you had the right to tell your story from your perspective? I'm sure her children have been bombarded as well by seeing, reading, hearing other people talk about their parents. I would want my mother to speak up for herself. This is a horrible situation, but I'm tired of people jumping on Ms. Edwards because she's decided to write a book as her life is ending. She's getting as much, or more, flack than her husband. No one says any one has to buy her book, I think she's certainly entitled to write it. If everyone is as tired as you think they are of hearing about this, it won't sell anyway, Iowa. I have feeling a lot of people want to hear her side of this story.

[Cherubim]

As Elizabeth Edwards has said during her TV interviews,
former U.S. Senator John Edwards is visiting The Fuller Center in El Salvador
Click on the link for pictures and information about the The Fuller Center
http://fullercenter.org/2009/05/former-us-senator-john-edwards-visiting-the-fuller-center-in-el-salvador/

[bettync]

Yes!! Elizabeth has every right to tell her story. Her book is not at all the "telll all" some people imagine. It helps anyone who has been hurt in life to find a way to stand back up and keep going. It gives hope. I encourage everyone to read it.

When someone faces a tragedy, one way we heal is to talk about it and get support from other human beings. But not when your spouse has cheated. All too often, ordinary women face the same kind of criticism and cruel assumptions that are being hurled at Elizabeth. Jealous. Angry. Washing dirty laundry in public. I am proud of Elizabeth Edwards for telling her story. Every person should be able speak their truth and not be shamed.

[Ellyllon]

That was quite provocative, and very interesting. I hadn't thought of it as Elizabeth trying to define herself, and maintain her own story. I also hadn't thought of how uncomfortable people are with emotion - and the emotion of anger, most of all. Anger isn't pretty - we can't always Oprah it up, and fit it into a self-help guide. It's a bit of a shame she can't just go with it, but more than anything, maybe we really do have issues with women expressing fury. Anyway - thanks! Interesting.

[lauracox12]

OMG, I cannot believe this article.
Elizabeth, I admire you facing the nation to the issues that will keep going if you were not brave enough to face issues on TV and put an end to it. It will die down. If the book helped you, that is all that counts. You would not be the first to forgive a husband that cheated.
You have a right to do what is right for you, please ignore the idiots and their judgements!
Any woman's first thought would to be to leave him but you have LIFE - John, children, family. I understand staying with him. Especially as you have a terminal illness why on earth would you want to break your family at this time or maybe anytime? Enjoy your remaining life with your family. Otherwise you will regret it.
I am ill as well, few people understand how this alone changes everything in your life. After my experience, I can see that men have a very difficult time dealing with an ill wife - we are no longer just like we were at marriage and they are scared and confused and react badly. Being in pain and ill all the time changes us and depression can over take us. You had to put the pain to rest in order to enjoy the rest of your life. Hope you & John are able to eventually put this to rest & really enjoy each other again. He obviously loves you very much,