Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson's First Ladies

Miller (Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman) explores how Woodrow Wilson's two wives influenced his time in office, drawing a close connection between personal struggle and political action. Dying of kidney failure just 18 months after Wilson's first inauguration, his wife Ellen Axson had been "quiet, intellectual, dutiful, and frugal." An artist of modest talent who sought success by dedicating herself to her husband's promising career rather than her own, Ellen broadened Wilson's appreciation of art and literature, made translations and digests for his early writing, suggested revisions for books and speeches, and helped him select advisers. An intensely loving partner who struggled with depression, Ellen tolerated and even abetted Wilson's intense, possibly sexual, relationship with another woman. She was also the first presidential wife to lobby for her favorite cause: urban renewal. Fifteen months after Ellen's death, Wilson married a "flamboyant, confident, and fashionable" widow, Edith Bolling Galt, who would become infamous for usurping executive power after Wilson was debilitated by a stroke during his second term, though Miller maintains a scholarly detachment in recounting these possibly world-changing events. This latest installment in the University Press of Kansas's Modern First Ladies series may alter some readers' opinions of our nation's 28th president. 22 photos. (Oct.)