Diana and Jackie: Maidens, Mothers, Myths [Hardcover]

Jay Mulvaney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0312282044 | ISBN-13: 978-0312282042 | Edition: 1st

History has seen only a few women so magical, so evanescent, that they captured the spirit and imagination of their times. Diana, Princess of Wales and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were two of these rare creatures. They were the most famous women of the twentieth century ~ admired, respected, even adored at times; rebuked, mocked and reviled at others. Separated by nationality and a generation apart, they led two surprisingly similar lives.

Both were the daughters of acrimonious divorce. Both wed men twelve years their senior, men who needed "trophy brides" to advance their careers. Both married into powerful and domineering families, who tried, unsuccessfully, to tame their willful independence. Both inherited power through marriage and both rebelled within their official roles, forever crushing the archetype. And both revolutionized dynasties.

And yet in many ways they were completely different: Jackie lived her life with an English "stiff upper lip" ~ never complaining, never explaining in the face of immense public curiosity. Diana lived her life with an American "quivering lower lip" ~ with televised tell-alls, exposing her family drama to a world eager for every detail.

These two lives have been well documented but never before compared. And never before examined in the context of their times. Jay Mulvaney, author of Kennedy Weddings and Jackie: The Clothes of Camelot, probes the lives of these two twentieth century icons and discovers:

The nature of their personalities forged from the cradle by their relationships with their fathers, Black Jack Bouvier and Johnny Spencer.
·Their early years, and their early relationships with men.
·Their marriages, and the truth behind the lies, the betrayals and the arrangements.
·Their greatest achievements: motherhood.
·Their prickly relationships with their august mothers-in-law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II
· Their lives as single women, working mothers.
· Their roles as icons and archetypes.

Graced with never before seen photographs from many private collections, and painstakingly researched, 0Diana and Jackie presents these two remarkable and unique women as they have never been seen before.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eight years after Jackie Onassis's death and a mere five after Princess Diana's, Mulvaney gives the millions of strangers who mourned their passing a reason to rejoice: he's taken the familiar and favorite stories that have been rehashed by countless journalists and biographers, cast them in a new light and come up with a book that's irresistibly readable. The twist: it's not just another biography, it's a compare-and-contrast study of the two style-and-glamour icons of the second half of the 20th century. Mulvaney highlights the similarities in their poor-little-rich-girl-childhoods and their troubled marriages to powerful, repressed men (both of whom, Mulvaney says, had conflicted relationships with distant, frigid mothers). He explores their Mediterranean phases Jackie's with Ari, Diana's with Dodi their influence on popular culture and their success in providing their privileged children with the opportunity to experience some semblance of normalcy. Both became expert media manipulators, but as Mulvaney reminds us, Jackie resented their intrusiveness while the deeply insecure Diana craved and thrived on the attention. Perhaps, Mulvaney writes, it was because Jackie, long adored by her father, had a stronger sense of self than Diana, who went without a name for the first week of her life, so badly had her parents wanted a son. The author of Jackie: The Clothes of Camelot and coauthor of Kennedy Weddings, Mulvaney is part melodramatic gossip hound (Diana's death was "like a comet racing across the sky"), part pop psychologist (JFK was "a little boy lost"; Diana the classic "underdog as overachiever"). He's got a knack for weaving a tale, and material that could have been tired and stale instead gets a fresh new perspective. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"I never noticed the extraordinary parallels between their front-page-famous lives until now. I so enjoyed reading this book." --Dominick Dunne

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (August 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312282044
• ISBN-13: 978-0312282042
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,207,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( O ) > Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy
  • #96 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Royalty > Princess Diana

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look at two great ladies, August 13, 2002

By 

Shannon McNall (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diana and Jackie: Maidens, Mothers, Myths (Hardcover)

This book really turned me around on how much both Princess Di and Jackie Onassis accomplished in a substantive way with their lives. I always thought, "oh they were like Barbie dollls, attractive but not worth much more than a pretty photograph." Boy was I wrong. They each really worked hard at the things they loved, and it was really interesting to see the parallels in their two lives...how much they were alike and, more telling, how much they differed.

Jackie was stronger, more self assured, but Diana was more compelling and vibrant. They both made great contributions to the world and this book does an excellent job of making the case that each woman deserves to be taken seriously as a female role model and icon.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Straining to be scholarly, April 18, 2003

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Diana and Jackie: Maidens, Mothers, Myths (Hardcover)

There are dozens of vapid biographies of both Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana out there, but this book manages to do the work of two: It has vapid info on both of them! What a thrill! Jay Mulvaney strains to produce some sort of substantial comparison and contrast, but the result is less than satisfying. (Considering that his only other books are about Kennedys and clothing, I wasn't expecting anything too earth-shattering)

Using the trio of "naiden, mother, myth" (instead of "maiden, mother, crone"), he examines the lives of both Di and Jackie -- their childhoods, their marriages, the two children each of them had, their husbands, and their lives after their husbands (in Di's case, post-divorce; in both of Jackie's cases, in widowhood).

One of the biggest problems with this book is the superficiality. The book makes a great deal out of similarities that just don't mean much -- divorced parents, philandering husbands, overbearing in-laws, out-of-control weddings, and so on. But the fact is that though there are some similarities (both of them became irrational focuses for the masses), there isn't a lot of similarity under the surface.

Yes, both of them had divorced parents, but WHY they divorced is drastically different. Yes, both of their husbands cheated on them, but they had drastically different personas. Those husbands were a shy, spoiled aristocrat and an outgoing, charismatic elected leader; one actually NEEDED a wife to uphold his image in order to get his position, while the other just wanted one. Despite what Mulvaney says, Diana was not close to Jackie's level intellectually (by her own admission, no less). And their own personalities were at different ends of the scale -- outgoing and sensitive, versus private and almost snobby. The superficiality of things like divorced parents, pretty clothes, crazy weddings and obnoxious in-laws are clearly shown.

Moreover, Mulvaney seems to be one of those biographers who dreads speaking ill of anyone. He claims it would be "harsh" to refer to Rose Kennedy or Queen Elizabeth II as a bad mom. Well, Charles and Jack were quite harsh, then. Bad personality traits are watered down, obnoxious tendencies are diminished. The worst thing he says about Rose is that her memoirs are full of "half truths and evasions." (Mulvaney has an evasion of his own: Rose disliked Jackie)

In short, this book can be summarized as: "Jackie and Di had some similarities." It doesn't even provide interesting pictures or any new information whatsoever; everything in this book is gleaned from previous material. All the "intertwining" that Mulvaney can manage is to start many of the paragraphs with, "Like Diana..." or "Like Jackie..."

Basically, this book feels like an attempt to draw in Di and Jackie enthusiasts all at once. It could just as easily have been about Diana and Grace Kelly, or Jackie and Hillary Clinton. A quick'n'dirty, very generic read about the Windsors and Kennedys, and there ain't nothing new here.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary Everywomen, September 13, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Diana and Jackie: Maidens, Mothers, Myths (Hardcover)

What an interesting book! Mulvaney takes the lives of the two most chronicled, photographed women of the 20th century and puts them in a fascinating new context. While there is little new here in terms of facts or photos, it's the writer's interpretation of this oft-told tales that make the book worth reading. (For example, I never realized how similar Jackie's and Diana's realtionships with their mothers-in-law were.) By contrasting the way these two world famous women played the roles most women are expected to play -- maiden, wife and mother -- he makes their extraordinary lives more relatable. Most fascinating of all to me was the cross-cultural note: It was Jackie, enigmatic to the end, who kept her private life private and maintained an almost-English "stiff upper lip;" it was Diana who openly, impusively shared her life with world in a more typically American fashion. And it remains Jackie's sense of mystery and Diana's vulnerabiity that continue to fascinate us, years after they're gone.