Five Myths about Jackie Kennedy

By Michael Beschloss

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis1. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis：杰奎琳·鲍维尔·肯尼迪·奥纳西斯（1929—1994），美国第35任总统约翰·肯尼迪的夫人。, the glamorous wife who was beside John F. Kennedy during his presidency and when he was shot, was for 33 years the most famous woman on Earth. Yet after 1964, she never wrote or spoke publicly about her 10-year marriage to JFK2. JFK: 即John Fitzgerald Kennedy: 约翰·菲茨杰拉德·肯尼迪，1960年当选美国第35任总统，1963年11月22日在美国达拉斯遇刺身亡。, let alone the rest of her life. An avalanche of books,written without her cooperation or access to her papers,have reduced some of the mystery surrounding her but have inevitably left us with myths about Jackie Kennedy that are widely believed to this day.3. 市面上有诸多关于她身世谜团的书，尽管她本人从未参与过这些书的创作与出版，也未提供过任何私人文件供作者参考，但这些书也解开了关于她的部分谜团，当然时至今日人们仍普遍认为这些书里披露的事实仅是她诸多谜团的冰山一角。

作为前美国第一夫人，杰奎琳·肯尼迪让人们难以忘怀的不仅仅是其迷人的外表和优雅的气质，更有许多关于她作为第一夫人期间及肯尼迪遇刺后她生活中的诸多谜团让人们念念不忘。今天，小编就为大家揭秘其中最为人们热议的五个谜团。

1. She grew up an heiress.

Certainly she was born to a wealthy family and had a privileged upbringing. Her father, John V. Bouvier III, was an investment banking scion4. scion: 后裔，子孙。, and her mother, Janet Lee, was the daughter of a construction tycoon5. tycoon: 大亨，巨头。who built some of the most distinguished apartment houses on Park Avenue in New York.But her father lost most of his money in the Great Depression6. the Great Depression: 大萧条，指1929年到1933年之间全球性的经济大衰退，从美国开始向全球蔓延，是第二次世界大战前最严重的全球性经济衰退。,her parents divorced bitterly, and she later said that when she was in boarding school, she was sometimes nervous that her father would not be able to pay her tuition bills.

When her mother married the Standard Oil heir Hugh D.Auchincloss Jr., his largesse7. largesse: 慷慨的赠予。did not extend to Jacqueline and her sister. So when, after graduating from George Washington University in 1951, Jackie took a job as the “Inquiring Camera Girl” for the Washington Times-Herald, she did it because she needed the salary.

2. As first lady, she was a stranger to8. be a stranger to: 对……陌生，无经验。 hard work.

As Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of JFK’s vice president, said:Jackie “was a worker, which I don’t think was always quite recognized.” Her restoration of the White House was not some minor exercise in redecoration. When she toured the mansion after JFK’s election in 1960, she was astonished to find that the state rooms looked like the lobby of a prosaic Statler Hotel,which to her meant dreariness.9. mansion: 宅邸，官邸；prosaic:单调乏味的，平淡无奇的；dreariness: 沉寂，凄凉。That was not an accident; after the White House was gutted10. gut: v 破坏……内部。and rebuilt with an interior steel frame during Harry Truman’s second term,Truman had saved money by having the New York department store B. Altman furnish the mansion’s main floor.

Jackie was appalled11. appalled: 惊骇的。that there were so few artifacts, paintings or pieces of furniture rooted in American history. She took it upon herself to raise private money,recruit scholars and search for such objects that would constitute a permanent White House collection.12. 她主动承担筹集私人资金的责任，并聘请学者，为白宫寻找经典藏品。take upon: 承担。Within a year, this was sufficiently underway, so that in February 1962, she was able to stage her famous televised tour of the state floor of the mansion in its new incarnation13. incarnation: 典型，化身。, which,for the most part, was similar to how it looks today. During that TV show, she said she was trying to improve the way “the presidency is presented to the world.”

At the same time, she had Air Force One’s exterior redesigned, turned the Oval Office into something more resembling a living room and transformed the rituals for South Lawn arrival ceremonies and state dinners, all of which survive almost intact 50 years later.14. 于此同时，她还让人重新设计了空军一号的外观，把总统办公室布置得更像客厅，还对南草坪欢迎仪式和国宴的礼制做了修改，所有这些修改在整整50年后依然在沿用。 exterior:外部，表面；the Oval Office: 椭圆形办公室，位于白宫西翼，为美国总统的正式办公室；rituals: 惯例，礼制；intact: 完整无缺的。As a young woman, Jackie once puckishly15. puckishly: 顽皮地，淘气地。wrote that her aim was to be the “art director of the twentieth century.” She succeeded in performing that role for her husband’s presidency.

3. She had little interest in JFK’s political life.

Jacqueline Kennedy was no Eleanor Roosevelt or Hillary Rodham Clinton in terms of advising her husband on policy.Before JFK’s election, she startled reporters by confessing that she did not know the date of the presidential inauguration,and when asked what might be a suitable venue for the next Democratic convention, she said, “Acapulco.”16. inauguration: 就职典礼；Acapulco: 墨西哥南部港市阿卡普尔科。But she wasn’t clueless about her husband’s line of work.

She was first lady in a time—which has not quite ended—when many Americans were put off if a president’s wife seemed too involved in his political career. In almost every presidential marriage you will find a first lady who, while she serves, insists that all politics is left to the president—but when viewed in history, she turns out to have been a significant in fluence on that presidency. Jackie is no exception.

The first lady’s oral history for the Kennedy Library, sealed until 2011, reveals her opinions on virtually every major figure of JFK’s administration and makes it quite clear that she shared them with her husband. Although she does not say that explicitly, the historian who reads these comments closely will note that the men and women Jackie praises, such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, tended to be promoted or given more power by President Kennedy.17. 尽管她并未明说，但历史学家如果仔细读过这些评论就会注意到，凡是杰奎琳称赞过的人都会得到肯尼迪总统的提拔或被委以重任，比如国防部长罗伯特·麦克纳马拉以及国家安全顾问麦克乔治·邦迪。explicitly: 明确地，明白地。And those she disdains, such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, tended to languish.18. disdain: 轻视，蔑视； languish:失去活力，憔悴。Had someone else been JFK’s first lady, some of the most important personnel decisions during that presidency might have been different.

4. In the three decades after November 1963, she managed to get beyond the Dallas tragedy.

Alas, it’s more likely that she never did. After she left the White House, a fortnight after the assassination19. assassination: 行刺，暗杀。, she asked her Secret Service drivers to avoid routes that might cause her to glimpse the mansion, even at a distance. She visited again only once after 1963: She agreed to a secret, unphotographed trip with her children in 1971 to what was by then Richard Nixon’s White House to view Aaron Shikler’s portraits of her and her husband.She later wrote Nixon with thanks, saying, “A day I had always dreaded turned out to be one of the most precious ones I have spent with my children.”

When Hillary Rodham Clinton became first lady in 1993, she and Jackie were friends, and she urged JFK’s widow to revisit the White House. Jackie declined but appreciated the gesture. After she died, her son John wrote to Clinton: “Since she left Washington I believe she resisted ever connecting with it emotionally—or the institutional demands of being a former First Lady.20.她去世后，她的儿子约翰致信克林顿，信中写道：“我觉得她自从离开华盛顿之后从情感一面再不愿想起那儿了，也很抗拒‘前第一夫人’这个身份带来的规定和要求。It had much to do with the memories stirred and her desires to resist being cast in a lifelong role that didn’t quite fit.”

5. She remained a woman of the early-1960s, pre-feminist era.

Sure, in the oral history she gave in 1964, Jackie Kennedy said that women should not go into politics because they are “too emotional” and that in the “best” marriages, wives are subordinate21. subordinate: 从属的，次要的。to husbands. But, like millions of American women, she changed emphatically22. emphatically: 着重地，强调地。.

After the death of her second husband, Aristotle Onassis23. Aristotle Onassis: 亚里士多德·奥纳西斯，希腊船王。, in 1975, she got a job as a New York editor at Viking and then Doubleday, publishing art books, histories and memoirs, and was known to most of her authors as a genuine, hands-on colleague who performed the kind of assiduous lineediting that, even in the 1990s, was growing scarce.24. hands-on: 亲自动手的；assiduous: 刻苦的，勤勉的。

She lived through and reflected a crucial period in U.S. history in which women moved into the mainstream of American professional life and redefined their roles.