Most Famous First Ladies

First ladies have been referred to as “footnotes of history,” reflecting the public’s limited view of their position in the White House. Only a handful of first ladies have achieved great fame while many of equal or greater influence have been allowed to drop into obscurity. Two of the most famous first ladies are Eleanor Roosevelt and Jacqueline Kennedy, who made major waves in their respective political and social spheres; however, before these two first ladies made their impact, their predecessors paved the way for future first ladies’ progress. Before Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt’s reform campaigns, Lou Hoover pushed for feminist propaganda by delivering speeches on national radio. Almost 175 years before Mrs. Kennedy, Elizabeth Monroe enchanted …show more content…
The next generation of first ladies (Rachel Jackson to Eliza Johnson) featured many absence spouses either due to illness or death, being less active either politically or socially. From Julia Grant to Ida McKinley, this era of first ladies showed potential for forging new roles for the institution with college-educated first ladies such as Lucy Hayes and Lucretia Garfield. Unfortunately, either the time’s restriction on women’s involvement in politics or simply illness limited many of these first ladies. By the turn of the century, however, Edith Roosevelt and then Helen Taft functioned as incredibly active first ladies, breaking previous restrictions on the role of first lady in their own respective social and political fields. Looking carefully at these two first ladies, the public can see where the dichotomy that separated Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and Mrs. Kennedy began. Those who knew Mrs. Roosevelt well characterized her as poised, courteous, and family-orientated lady of her time. She represented the embodiment of womanhood and the importance of the wife and mother in a family structure. She, like other upper middle class women of her time, was not expected to have to work for a living. Most of them stayed at home until they married. When married, wives were expected …show more content…
This ideology emerged during the Industrial Revolution in the United State and Europe, although there were already much older gendered roles. This notion separates life and society into two spheres – private and public. Men inhabited the public sphere which is the world of politics, economy, law, and the clergy. Women inhabited the private sphere of domestic life, child-rearing, housekeeping, and basic education. Earlier first ladies faced many restrictions on their position because expanding their power meant potentially breaching the public sphere . The separate spheres created distinctive gender roles that began to blur for first ladies with the rise of