Kennedy Wives: Triumph and Tragedy in America's Most Public Family by Hunt Amber Batcher David & David Batcher

Author:Hunt, Amber,Batcher, David & David Batcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press (R&L)
Published: 2014-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

Though Jackie seems to have had few illusions about Jack’s behavior, it still hurt and angered her. Though in the abstract she had a Continental acceptance of a “man’s nature,” and though her childhood with Black Jack had normalized a certain amount of infidelity, Jack’s continual need for so many fresh conquests was humiliating. Friends report that as late as 1958—five years into their marriage—she still wondered if she could bear to be married to such an unfaithful man. By the White House years, it seems that her attitude had hardened into one of resignation. Her outward response was generally one of bitter aplomb, as when she was showing a Parisian journalist around the White House. As they passed the secretary known as “Fiddle,” Jackie casually mentioned in French, “And there is the woman that my husband is supposed to be sleeping with.” (The journalist was apparently taken aback. “What is going on here?” he asked one of Pierre Salinger’s aides.)

Jack’s behavior is less a reflection of a loveless marriage than it is symptomatic of a man with a profoundly stunted capacity for intimacy with a woman. “I think that Jack in his way was enormously proud of Jackie,” Charlie Bartlett would later say. “I think he really adored her in his way. But it was in his way. It wasn’t exactly what Jackie needed. I think she needed a warmer, cozier husband, more constant. Jack was difficult, easily bored, and he liked to be amused—not what she needed.”

Jack and Jackie’s relationship was, to understate it by a great deal, complicated. Part of the enduring fascination with them both lies in our attempts to reconcile so much that is seemingly irreconcilable: his genuine heroism with his patently despicable personal behavior; Jackie’s intelligence and strength of character with her maddening willingness to take his abuse; our knowledge of the pain she must have felt with her adoring, nearly hagiographic, and apparently sincere memories of their married life. Through these contradictions, the Kennedys remain a puzzle, one with which we never tire of playing, no matter how impossible the solution.

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