Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

by Maureen Callahan

Kennedy men have been valorized and lionized for nearly a century, but the women they’ve broken, tormented, raped, murdered, or left for dead have never really been part of their legacy.

The Kennedys remain very much with us. But what is the Kennedy legacy, really? How should we define it? Do the Kennedys deserve to remain a power center in American life and politics? Or should we relegate them to their inglorious past? If not, what should we now demand of any Kennedy who seeks power?

Underneath Carolyn’s simple, unfussy presentation was a very complicated woman. She was always assessing, teasing apart someone’s psyche and figuring out what made them tick, what would make them happy or upset, and using that to get what she wanted. She could hone in on someone’s most painful insecurity and weaponize it. But she could also be extremely kind and warm. You never knew which Carolyn you were going to get; even her closest friends were kept at a remove. If you crossed her she’d drop you flat, just cut you off with no way back. It was a trait she shared with John’s mother.

That so-called effortless style was full of suffering. Gone were the days of showing up to the Calvin

She loved the fame and hated it and didn’t know what to do with it.

Jackie wasn’t naïve. She knew Jack wouldn’t be faithful. But she hadn’t known just how promiscuous he was or how little he’d do to protect her. Later she’d learn, along with the whole world in news reports too numerous to bear, that Jack had likely infected her with his own constant sexually transmitted diseases, the asymptomatic chlamydia among them, and this was quite likely why she’d had so much trouble carrying her first two pregnancies to term.

What man would want a woman like Jackie? She was extremely bright, sharp, and funny—cutting, even—and she had real goals. Janet told Jackie to tone herself down, to hide her intelligence lest she scare off the best available men. But Jackie wasn’t sure she could hide her smarts, mainly because she didn’t want to. She needed a man who could keep up with her and let her shine. Her mother had hung her entire identity on being a wife and mother—and look how that turned out. Janet tried to hide her depression, but Jackie knew her mother drank and took pills and sometimes slept the day away. Neither one of her parents had healthy coping mechanisms. They were all id, their emotions wild and explosive. Little Jackie learned to shrink herself down while growing up fast.

She wasn’t about to focus-group herself into becoming mumsy or relatable. She could not be anyone other than who she was.

Only Marilyn’s shrinks had any inkling why she spoke that way, why some women who were abused as children sometimes adopt a child’s voice. It was a way of saying: I’m smaller than you. Please don’t hurt me. She never thought Jack Kennedy would hurt her.

But he and Bobby Jr. had that male Kennedy entitlement, the expectation that their wives should be mind readers, hostesses who could throw together a dinner for twelve at the last minute—the uncomplaining Cool Girl. If her husband didn’t come home when he said he would, if he was an hour or a day or a week late? The good Kennedy wife just brushed that off. And, of course, a wandering eye, Bobby’s wandering eye, was just part of the deal. Congenital, generational, baked in—the original recipe Kennedy.

“His death really robbed me of my chance to be angry with him,” Jackie told Dr. Kris. “He really went out in a blaze of glory.”

“John wanted certain people out of her life,” her friend said. “Anybody from her past he wanted gone. They were grooming Carolyn to be John Kennedy’s wife, and John Kennedy was being groomed to go into politics. I think the problem is that Carolyn created this Stepford political wife to please John. That’s when she started to die.”

“I don’t know how you put up with this,” her mother said. “I love him,” Carolyn replied. “It’s not worth it.”

And as per Kennedy tradition, burying troublesome women alone was nothing new to them.

These women’s real endings are not always happy. But they are true. And therein lies their power.