玛丽·林肯-白宫购物狂.docVIP

玛丽·林肯:白宫购物狂 As we are enjoying a day off of work in honor of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington,2 it’s worth revisiting Lincoln’s troubled wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Most Americans think of Mary―if they think of her at all―as crazy. In 1875, she was publicly tried for insanity by her only living son and found guilty.3 Then she spent months in an asylum4 against her will. As one contemporary summed it up, “She was not like ladies in general.”5 Was she actually mentally ill or merely an eccentric with an ahead-of-her-time independent streak?6 The latter would be a tidy 21st-century conclusion, but the real answer is not so pat.7 Her supporters, including W.A. Evans, the author of the 1932 biography Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Study of Her Personality and Her Influence on Lincoln, would say that Mrs. Lincoln was unfairly maligned8. Many of her most serious troubles were financial, not emotional. Some modern biographers like Jason Emerson diagnose her with bipolar disease, others, like Jean Baker, believe Mary had narcissistic personality disorder.9 There is evidence to support the notion that Mary was not quite so straightforwardly batty10 as those diagnoses suggest. Part of her bad reputation was the result of truly terrible luck. Perhaps because of her liberated behavior, the press was never willing to cut Mary any slack11 during these hard times. While her husband, Abraham, served as a wartime president, she was rumored to be a Confederate spy, an unloved bride, a neglectful mother, and a frivolous fame-seeker.12 Three of her four sons died prematurely, and her husband was assassinated in front of her on Good Friday.13 Even in her grief she received less sympathy than other presidential widows: Critics sniffed that she sobbed too loudly and wore black too long.14 Her treatment in the press was a preview of the way modern first ladies are criticized: Like Nancy Reagan, who consulted an astrologer during her years in the White House, Mary was fascinated by fad