Book Review for Rosemary by Kate Clifford Larson
'Rosemary: The Subconscious Kennedy Girl,' by Kate Clifford Larson
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The tragic life of Rosemary Kennedy, the intellectually disabled member of the Kennedy clan, has been well documented in many histories of this famous family. Simply she has often been treated as an afterthought, a secondary character kept out of sight during the pivotal 1960s. Now the 3rd child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy takes eye phase in "Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter," past Kate Clifford Larson, a biography that chronicles her life with fresh details and tells how her famous siblings were affected by — and reacted to — Rosemary'due south struggles.
Setting her story against the properties of the stigma fastened to mental illness in the first one-half of the 20th century, Larson describes the hubris of ambitious and conflicted parents who cared for their daughter just feared that her limitations, if publicly known, would harm their other children's brilliant careers. Unwilling to have that annihilation could be truly wrong with his ain mankind and blood, Joe Kennedy, with his wife'southward complicity, subjected 23-year-former Rosemary to an experimental treatment that left her severely devitalized and institutionalized for the remaining vi decades of her life.
What makes this story especially haunting are the might-have-beens. Rosemary's issues began at her birth, on Sept. 13, 1918. Her female parent's offset ii children, Joe Jr. and Jack, had been safely delivered at domicile by the same obstetrician. But when Rose went into labor with Rosemary, the doctor was not immediately available. Although the nurse was trained to deliver babies, she nonetheless tried to halt the birth to expect the physician's arrival. By ordering Rose to go on her legs airtight and forcing the infant'south head to stay in the nativity canal for two hours, the nurse took actions that resulted in a harmful loss of oxygen.
As a kid, Rosemary suffered development delays, yet had enough mental acuity to be frustrated when she was unable to keep up with her brilliant and athletic siblings. Fifty-fifty with individual tutors, she had difficulty mastering the basics of reading and writing. At age xi, she was sent to a Pennsylvania boarding schoolhouse for intellectually challenged students. From and so on, Rosemary changed schools every few years, either because the educators were unable to deal with her disabilities and mood swings or because her parents hoped a change of scene might evidence beneficial.
The start biographer to have access to all of Rosemary's known letters, replete with typos and lopsided sentence structure, Larson deploys excerpts in eye-rending fashion, showing a sweet, insecure girl who was desperate to please. "I would practice annihilation to brand you so happy," a teenage Rosemary wrote to her father. Although at 15 she had the writing skill of a 10-year-old, that didn't prevent her from expressing joy in her life and appearing poised and sociable. But at her parents' behest, Rosemary endured experimental injections meant to treat hormonal imbalances. Her begetter described her equally suffering from "backwardness." Her siblings, often charged with keeping an centre on her during vacations and school breaks, were supportive merely at times impatient.
Her older brother Joe Jr. appeared to dote on Rosemary, but during a postal service-Harvard trip to Deutschland in 1934, he showed piddling sympathy for others with disabilities. In a chilling alphabetic character to his father, he praised Hitler's sterilization policy as "a great thing" that "will do away with many of the disgusting specimens of men."
After Joseph Kennedy became the United States ambassador to Uk in 1938, Rosemary blossomed, entering the most satisfying period of her life. Now a flirtatious dazzler who reveled in male attending, the well-rehearsed Rosemary fabricated a stunning debut at Buckingham Palace and attended a convent school where she thrived, training to be a Montessori teacher's aide. Only the outbreak of state of war in the autumn of 1939 sent her mother and siblings fleeing to New York, and Rosemary joined them in June 1940. Joseph Kennedy, whose isolationist views had irked President Roosevelt, resigned from his postal service after the November election.
Rosemary's render to the family domicile in Bronxville was disastrous. She regressed, experiencing seizures and trigger-happy tantrums, striking and hurting those in the vicinity. Her frantic parents sent her to a summer camp in western Massachusetts (she was kicked out subsequently a few weeks), a Philadelphia boarding schoolhouse (she lasted a few months) and and so a convent schoolhouse in Washington, D.C., where a rebellious Rosemary wandered off at night. Fearing that men might sexually casualty on their vulnerable daughter, her parents worried that a scandal would diminish the family's political prospects.
Deciding that something drastic needed to exist done, Joseph Kennedy chose a surgical solution that the American Medical Association had already warned was risky: a prefrontal lobotomy. In November 1941, at George Washington University Infirmary, a wide-awake Rosemary followed a doctor's instructions to recite songs and stories as he drilled two holes in her head and cut nervus endings in her brain until she became incoherent, then silent.
The vicious surgery left her permanently disabled and unable to care for herself. Even after months of concrete therapy, Rosemary never regained the full utilise of one arm and walked with a limp. Initially, she could speak only a few words. Sent to a private psychiatric institution in New York, so to a church-run facility in Wisconsin, Rosemary was abandoned by her parents. Joe appears to have stopped seeing her in 1948 although he was vigorous until 1961, when he suffered a catastrophic stroke. Rose, who blamed her husband for authorizing the lobotomy, couldn't face her damaged child. "At that place is no tape of Rose visiting her eldest daughter for more than twenty years," Larson writes. In the early 1960s, when Rose finally did turn upwards, Rosemary reportedly recoiled.
The heroine of this story is Eunice Kennedy Shriver, now best known as i of the founders of the Special Olympics. Horrified by what had been washed to her sister, Eunice became a passionate champion for people with disabilities. She persuaded her begetter to use his fortune to fund research, and subsequently John F. Kennedy was elected president she successfully lobbied him to establish such authorities entities as the National Found of Child Health and Human Development. She later assumed responsibility for Rosemary's care.
The family's youngest member, Ted, was only 9 years erstwhile when Rosemary vanished from family life with minimal explanation, a frightening and puzzling loss. As a senator, he too took up her cause, citing Rosemary equally his inspiration when he sponsored bills similar the groundbreaking Americans With Disabilities Act.
In 1974, more than 30 years after the lobotomy, Rose arranged for Rosemary to briefly leave the Wisconsin institution and visit her surviving family members in Hyannis Port. The trip went sufficiently well that more reunions followed. In 1995, at the age of 104, Rose Kennedy died. A decade later, when Rosemary succumbed, at age 86, four of her siblings — Eunice, Jean, Pat and Ted — were by her side.
Many of Larson's best anecdotes and quotations are mined from previous books, notably Doris Kearns Goodwin's "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys"; David Nasaw'south "The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy"; and Laurence Leamer'south 2 volumes, "The Kennedy Men" and "The Kennedy Women." But she has amplified this well-told tale with newly released material from the John F. Kennedy Library and a few interviews. By making Rosemary the primal character, she has produced a valuable business relationship of a mental health tragedy, and an influential family unit's belated efforts to brand amends.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/books/review/rosemary-the-hidden-kennedy-daughter-by-kate-clifford-larson.html
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