Women Behind The Men Month: The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

We begin our Women Behind the Men month with a look into the marriage of Anne Morrow Lindbergh as provided by Melanie Benjamin in The Aviator’s Wife. 

This is historical fiction to a tee, and the tome draws the basis of its plot from what really happened to Anne Lindberg, who rose to fame as an author and aviatrix in her own right, in her own time, but began her life in the spotlight as the co-pilot for her famous aviator husband Charles Lindbergh, as the daughter of her Ambassador father.   Together the Lucky Lindys would soar through the friendly skies and draw the world’s admiration before it all came crashing down under the dual blows of an infamous child kidnapping case that made them the object of great pity – and an affiliation with Nazi Germany that squandered that goodwill and ruined Lindberg’s political hopes.

The Aviator’s Wife is an odd book; occasionally sublime and lyrical it is far more often told in a soapy, melodramatic tone that fits better with that of a miniseries or a tv movie.  That’s not to say that there aren’t fine passages – one in particular examines the torpor of mundane fifties suburban life against the tense backdrop of Charles Lindbergh’s terrorism of his own brood - but no matter how you feel about long burning passages about air travel and short mocking ones about  domesticity the voice in these pages do not match the style of Morrow’s extensive writing, a deadly mistake for a story written in first person.

As the novel progresses the audience is left frustrated – for every nice observation of life in Paris under the glare of public acclaim and abhorrent there is an incident that makes absolutely no sense.  Amelia Earhart is dragged into the narrative to say something bitchy and be the victim of a stinging rejoinder by Anne; there’s a breathlessly teary-eyed scene between Anne and her elder daughter in which the young girl gives her mother forgiveness and her blessing after having stumbled on her love letter to a man that’s not the child’s father during a trip to New York.    Gifts from the Sea was one of the first prototypical inspirational books, and one of the first examples of feminist literature, but you wouldn’t know that from The Aviator’s Wife, which treats it like a highly successful piece of fiction.   I also somehow doubt Lindbergh told Anne about the sister mistresses he kept in Germany and the small family he was raising with them. 

The most glaring choice Benjamin makes involves the bizarre subplot given Anne’s sister Elisabeth, whom Anne comes to realize is in a Boston marriage with her colleague.  This secret becomes a Great Shameful Burden on Anne, and on Elisabeth alike who wants to be “normal”.  Then the author shrugs, Elisabeth gets married and abruptly dies, and then her widower marries Anne’s other sister.  This is handled with such a perverse sense of cheer by the girls’ mother that Anne comments on it in the narrative – but then it’s never brought up again.  Elisabeth is clearly supposed to serve  as an example to Anne about following her own bliss and living a life outside of society’s norms but overall it’s a cruel and needless subplot that seems to have no basis in fact.

There is at least a great deal of truth applied to the relationship between Lindbergh and Anne; their union seems to have been as complex as the author says it was.   Lindbergh is seen through varied eyes – through Anne’s love-lust which turns into sadness, frustration and resentment, which hardens into an unforgiving but loving mask.   The author does not skimp on the details of his genius, his taciturn nature and his immaturity, all of which lead to his temporary ruin, something that only hard work and the dewy-eyed sympathy of a nation managed to cure.  His turn toward Nazism is portrayed with some sense of truth, but the author is unable to allow Anne to be seen in a bad light, and thus comes off as flighty.  Anne’s opinions on Nazism is dithery;  she goes along with her husband’s whims and writes a supportive essay that results in their near-banishment from America during the war years, but the author is very careful to say Anne wasn’t a TRUE Nazi – something she’d reiterated to her daughter before her death but something that might have changed in the period between.  Either way, this wishy-washy woman the narrative gives us isn’t the same woman who looked away in disgust after Lindbergh showed her his Nazi order and called it ‘the Golden Albatross.’

While pulpy and slightly silly, “The Aviator’s Wife” still does a good job of portraying a woman’s struggle to squirm out from beneath the boot of her husband.  It’s a heavily flawed but properly tender salute to a woman still fairly recent in her passing.