THE FIRST FIRST LADY- SPIELBERG'S MARY LINCOLN.

Mary Lincoln, who was the first President’s spouse to be known as the First Lady, was to put it gentilely, a very complex individual. She was ever present in Spielberg’s epic movie, Lincoln, adding a complicating dimension to the Patriarch’s life. Unlike Lincoln’s character, which is laid out for all to see, Spielberg leaves everyone to fill in the blanks as to Mary's and what role she played as Lincoln’s wife and in the political landscape generally.

FIRST LADY

Today one is more than aware of the role of the First Lady. The latter is an essential component of the package that a potential Presidential candidate runs on. When a President is elected, she, (thus far only she), is under constant scrutiny and carves out a niche where she is able to serve and initiate in her own right. Also in each and every case the spouses are reported to be a support to their husbands through thick and thin. In living memory there is no First Lady that did not lend dignity to the Office of Presidency and meet these standards. In fact with each successive Presidential term the Office of First Lady has grown in stature and importance. However, as the first First Lady, Mary Lincoln seems to have been a disaster.

AT THE WHITE HOUSE RECEPTION

Mary challenged Lincoln maintaining that his motive to have a White House reception was to “invite radicals into my home” as he needed their support to pass the 13^th Amendment to abolish slavery. At the White House reception she is blatantly and publicly rude to Thaddeus Stephens, a radical in the Republican Party, whose support Lincoln could not do without. Stephens also headed  the House Committee that vets White House expenditure. Mary was a renowned spender who exceeded her budget by several multiples. The First Lady chastised him for his audits of her expenditure and reminded him of how puny he was next to her husband. Next she blatantly snubed Congressman Ashton whom Lincoln needed to lead the fight for the Amendment. Ashton had been loath to proceed and had told Lincoln previously that there was no hope that the amendment would pass. Mary’s response to it all was to feign that she had never met Ashton or even worse didn’t even recognize him. 

It is difficult not to interpret Mary's behavior as being that of  aggresion towards Lincoln. This especially so as she was at odds with him over his failure not to discuss the Amendment with her and his final refusal not to stop their eldest son Robert from enlisting in the army.

THE HISTORY OF THEIR POLITCAL RELATIONSHIP.

Mary Todd was well educated for a lady of her times. She moved in with her sister in Springfield, Illinois. There she had several suitors one of whom was Stephen Douglas the famed Democratic Senator whose debates with Lincoln put the latter on the national map. Although Douglas won the Senate Seat Abraham Lincoln won her heart. In the process Lincoln’s anti slavery oratory made him a national figure - important enough to be the successful Republican Party contender for Presidency against three other far more qualified candidates.

Mary, although a Southerner who had brothers who fought for the Confederates, was a fervent abolitionist. A recent book by Jennifer Fleischner entitled, “Mrs. Lincoln and Ms. Keckley”, gives the latter two much credit for Lincoln’s views. What Spielberg’s Mary shows is a First lady attending crucial Congressional debates on the 13^th Amendment,  (Not even Hillary Clinton attended important debates). There Mary follows each vote with full knowledge of which ones were crucial or not. So there is little doubt that they shared the same views and was Lincoln’s confidant and political soul mate.

This is illustrated in a scene where Mary complains that Lincoln  - “…. I am your soothsayer, I am not to be trusted …. I know what it is about …….  Its about the amendment to abolish slavery…”.

It is obvious that she feels left out.  Lincoln obviously knew where Mary was coming from and didn’t consult her for the reasons that become explicit in the following dialogue:

 “ You think I’m ignorant of what you’re up to because you have not discussed this scheme with me as you ought to have done. When have I ever been so easily bamboozled?”

  “ I believe you when you insist that amending the constitution and abolishing slavery will end this war. And since you are sending my son into the war, woe unto you if you fail to pass the amendment.”

She also was his biggest admirer of his political stature.

“No one’s loved as much as you, no one’s ever been loved so much, by the people, you might do anything now. Don’t, don’t waste that power on an amendment bill that sure of defeat.

HISTORY OF THEIR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP.

Most of the Spielberg’s Lincoln confrontations relate to their children, particularly Robert their eldest son. Lincoln, having finally, conceded that Robert was entitled to join the North in the fight, is confronted by Mary:

“The war will take our son! A sniper, or a shrapnel shell! Or typhus, same as took Willie, it takes hundreds of boys a day! He’ll die, uselessly, and how will I ever forgive you. Most men, their firstborn is their favorite, but you, you’ve always blamed Robert

for being born, for trapping you in a marriage that’s only ever given you grief.”

This is heavy stuff. It underlies Mary’s insecurity and her need to blame Lincoln for not controlling their own son from making his own decisions. Also she even now is uncertain of Lincoln’s commitment to her and belittles him as to why he married her.

Lincoln responds finally standing up to her in her desire to control him:

“I must make my decisions, Bob must make his, you yours. And bear what we must, hold and carry what we must. What I carry within me – you must allow me to do it, alone as I

must.”

In an argument about grief at the loss of their second son Willie, Lincoln responds that Mary has not the monopoly on grief:

“Mary. I wanted to crawl under the earth, into the vault with his coffin. I still do. Every day I do”.

In Spielberg’s Lincoln Mary’s sanity is brought up by Lincoln in relation to her behavior while she was mourning  Willie’s death and her rejection of their youngest son Tad at the time:

 "And his, (Tad’s), mother won’t let him near her, ‘cause she’s screaming from morning to night pacing the corridors, howling at shadows and furniture and ghosts! I ought to have done it. I ought have done for Tad’s sake, for everybody’s goddamned sake, I should have clapped you in the madhouse!"

MARY’S AMBIVALENCE TOWARDS HER HSUBAND

The interactions between Mary and Abraham that intrigued Jay H. Ell were the ones where Mary’s ambivalence towards her spouse is exhibited. She maintains a dominant attitude in relation to the children and at times belittles him and treats him with contempt yet on the other hand feels totally inferior in relation to Abraham as a person. Lincoln on the other hand never has a cross word unless provoked beyond endurance.

 Mary: “All anyone will remember of me is I was crazy and I ruined your happiness”. Lincoln responds, “Anyone who thinks that doesn’t understand.”

  Mary:“ When they look at you, at what it cost to live at the heart of this, they’ll wonder at it. They’ll wonder at you. They should. But they should also look at the wretched woman by your side, if they want to understand what this was truly like. For an ordinary person. For anyone other than you”. Lincoln reassures, “We must try to be happier. We must. Both of us. We’ve been so miserable for so long.”

So from Lincoln’s point of view Mary is a challengeable equal and he loves her. From Mary’s world on the one hand he is a God and the other a husband that she finds deficient in not prioritizing their children, for example. Mary feels inadequate and expresses herself in no uncertain terms. One wonders whether the anger, contempt and meanness that she expressed was not exacerbated by this insecurity and how many marriages suffer when one or other spouse feels insecure as a result of this perceived imbalance of the difference in their status?

When a marriage breaks up between a celebrity and his or her spouse, intuitively the belief is that the celebrity tired of the “ordinary person” when the situation can be far more complex. Had Lincoln’s marriage broken up the belief would have been that he had had enough of Mary and outgrown her when, if Spielberg’s Lincoln is to be believed, it would have been rather Mary’s destructiveness that caused the split.