The Emancipator's Wife

The Emancipator's Wife by Barbara Hambly

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Emancipator's Wife is a fictionalized biography of Mary Todd Lincoln. Rather than paint her as someone whose mental illness encompasses her entire personality, the book portrays Mrs. Lincoln as someone who is witty and intelligent and truly struggles with the way her mental illness impacts her life.

Author Barbara Hambly takes into account the many other factors that could have come into play to explain Mary Lincoln's unstable behavior, not the least of which were the drugs that were rampant in unregulated "women's cordials" that Mrs. Lincoln was known to have taken. Nineteenth century mental health care was as unscientific as much of the medical care of the time, for those who were well to do enough to afford any at all.

The privileged life led by Mary Todd Lincoln is juxtaposed with the life of another woman similarly affected by mental illness--a fictional black woman whose son's first hand experience in dealing with the behavior brought on by her mental illness leads him to work in Bellevue, the sanitarium that Mary is placed in after Robert Lincoln asks the court to declare her insane.

Hambly ends the book by pointing to sexism as a key reason for society's lack of tolerance of "eccentric" behavior in women, when men's place of power in the community protects them from similar isolating treatment.

In the Epilogue Hambly explains her research and authorship decisions in a broad but satisfying way.

Excellent book!




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