Hillary Rodham Clinton: Living History and the Rights of Women, Book Review Example

That Hillary Clinton’s book Living History became a small sensation is difficult to deny: for many people in America and beyond, Hillary Clinton has always been a great mystery and a closed chapter. These characteristics always contradicted to her popularity and publicity but, simultaneously, made Hillary Clinton unique. To some extent, Clinton’s writing signifies the triumph of the true female freedom. In her book, Clinton tells much about her fight for women’s rights and her dedication to the ideals of freedom and gender equality. This book is worth reading simply because is represents an interesting viewpoint on how women’s rights and opportunities in America have been evolving over the course of the 20^th century.

Living History is not simply a book for women, but it is also a book about women. It shows Clinton in the new light, not only as a woman who was able to achieve unbelievable political and social highs but also as a woman, who fought for and sought to promote female freedom, the equality of gender rights, and who also went through the negative experiences of being a woman. In her book, Clinton emphasizes the existing gap between what used to be when she was young and what women are currently up to. In other words, Clinton is confident that women’s rights are no longer limited, like it used to be when she was young, and present day women have far better opportunities for self-realization: “I was free to make choices unavailable to past generations of women in my country and inconceivable to many women in the world today. I came of age on the crest of tumultuous social change and took part in the political battles fought over the meaning of America and its role in the world. My mother and my grandmothers could never have lived my life; my father and my grandfathers could never have imagined it” (Clinton 6). It is very probable that Clinton tries to imply the role, which she did play and could have played in broadening the scope of women’s rights but it is obvious that what was once a reality for thousands of American women is forever gone and will never be back again.

It is interesting but not surprising that in her revelations, Clinton refers to her mother as a personalization of everything good she had been able to acquire and achieve throughout her life. Clinton shows her mother as the source of her beginnings, as her major support, as an example of how a woman should live her life, and as a person who wanted to break the gender conventions of her time: “By the time she turned fourteen, she could no longer bear life in her grandmother’s house. She found a work as a mother’s helper, caring for two young children in return for room, board and three dollars a week” (Clinton 8). Here, it is useful and interesting to see how Hillary Clinton herself was learning the values of gender equity, independence, and professionalism with the help of her mother. Clinton often returns to her mother as a representation of everything good in her life. However, she does not lose the objectivity of her judgments and tries to use the image of her mother to evaluate the gender constraints that existed when she [Hillary Clinton] was young. Clinton describes her mother as a woman who wanted her children to learn the world through books, who was more successful than her brothers, who took Hillary to library every single week, and who did not let her children watch TV too much (Clinton 17). Clinton’s mother engaged her children in playing Monopoly and card games in order to help them develop and acquire strategic thinking skills (Clinton 17). Hillary Clinton could always count on her with her homework (Clinton 17). However, and Clinton cannot neglect this fact, her mother was very much narrowed in her life choices and it is only now that Clinton can see how limited those choices were, compared with the overwhelming opportunities she as a woman can access and use today (17). Despite the relative stability and even happiness in her family, Clinton remembers her mother as another victim of the gender gap, which usually started in families like hers and turned into one of the major social trends.

This is probably why the topic of women’s rights is one of the most sensitive for Clinton, and this is probably why this very topic dominates in the book. To some extent, Clinton’s Living History is a call for gender equity and a proof to the fact that America was able to pass a long way to the freedom of women’s rights. However, there is an impression that what Clinton writes about women and their rights is a good way to position herself as a potentially good candidate for presidency – that the book was published in 2003 was not a coincidence but a completely conscious step. Actually, the whole book is aimed to show Clinton as a woman, who does recognize the difficulties and gender complexities in present day America and the rest of the world. These political implications are very subtle and rather difficult to notice, and the more important are the ways, in which Clinton expresses herself when it comes to the topic of women and gender.

For many women in America, Clinton stands out as an exemplification of what women can accomplish and achieve in their lives. In her book, Clinton tries to show that America as the country of unlimited opportunities presents women with sufficient freedoms and rights to achieve unbelievable highs. “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister’ – a phrase in line with my own Methodist upbringing” (Clinton 37) goes like a hidden motto throughout the whole book. However, Clinton is very wise in her choice of words, expressions, and discussion topics. She sees it as necessary not only to show herself as a strong woman who was able to achieve something in life, and not only as a strong example to thousands of women in the U.S. and internationally, but as a woman who, despite her political upbringing, her publicity, and the pressures under which she is bound to live daily because of her work, did not lose her own female identity, the sense of compassion to others, and the sense of respect to women’s rights. In this sense, the example of Lissa Muscatine is very demonstrative: “the White House had hired Lissa even though she was pregnant with twins when she applied for the job. She told her students that when she came back to work for me full-time after her maternity leave, I had encouraged her to structure her hours and to work from home if necessary so that she could spend time with her children. After the class, a dozen young women gathered around her to ask questions and say how encouraging it was to hear about working mothers in the White House” (Clinton 311). Unfortunately for the whole book, all these references to the importance of women’s rights in America have far-reaching political implications: what Clinton writes about Lissa Muscatine is about showing the White House during the Clinton Era as the best support of the working women and something that had been missing in America before. Although Clinton goes further to discuss her Chinese experiences as a part of her continuous fight for gender equity, there is always a feeling of something missing in the book.

What is missing in the book are sincerity, impartiality, and even neutrality, because every word Clinton writes about her own fight for women’s rights is designed to confirm her positive political image and her unique human nature. No, that does not mean that Living History is not worth reading. On the contrary, I believe that it is a useful experience to everyone, who wants to know more about this woman. Unfortunately, Clinton’s book for me was a good proof to that everything in modern America is done for a purpose. I cannot escape this feeling as I am slowly moving toward the last page of the book. Nevertheless, I was able to learn a lot of new information about this personality. Despite the hidden political implications, Hillary Clinton was able to preserve her own uniqueness and even succeeded in the political and social spheres without losing her own individuality in the shadow of her husband’s presidency.

Works Cited

Clinton, H.R. Living History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.