LINDBERGH, Anne Morrow

Born 22 June 1906, Englewood, New Jersey

Daughter of Dwight and Elizabeth Cutter Morrow; married Charles A. Lindbergh, 1929 (died); children: six.

Born into a family devoted to books and scholarship, Anne Morrow Lindbergh learned to value education, self-discipline, and personal ambition from an early age. She acquired a sense of history firsthand from traveling with her parents throughout Europe. Lindbergh received a B.A. (1928) from Smith College, where she also earned recognition as a writer. With her marriage, the publicity engulfing her husband Charles extended to Lindbergh, shattering the privacy she had treasured.

After her marriage she learned to fly, studied dead reckoning and celestial navigation, and became the first woman in America to obtain a glider-pilot's license. Between 1931 and 1933 Lindbergh assisted her husband in charting the international air routes later used for commercial air travel. For her work as copilot and radio operator in flights exceeding 40,000 miles over five continents, the National Geographic Society awarded her the Hubbard Gold Medal in 1934.

In the midst of these achievements the public curiosity haunting the Lindberghs reached frenzied levels with the kidnapping and murder of their twenty-month-old son in 1932. The tragedy and the prolonged investigation terminated with the conviction of Bruno Richard Hauptman. In December 1935, for protection and privacy, the Lindberghs left the U.S. for England, and later France; when World War II descended on Europe in 1939, the Lindberghs returned to the U.S. Since her husband's death in 1974, Lindbergh has continued to occupy the family home in Darien, Connecticut, and maintained a residence on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Although her duties as celebrity and mother of a large family have drawn heavily on her energy, Lindbergh has never abandoned her writing career, producing both fiction and nonfiction throughout her life.

In Gift from the Sea (1955), originally conceived as a series of autobiographical essays, Lindbergh presents a microcosm of modern American womanhood as contemplated by a solitary figure in retreat at a seashore. With attention to the effects of marriage on woman's struggle for self-identity, Lindbergh traces the stages of marriage from the early self-contained relationship between man and woman, through the middle years weighed down with responsibilities, and finally to the mature marriage characterized by a newly acquired sense of freedom.

With the abandoned argonauta, one of several seashells used to symbolize the different stages of marriage, Lindbergh offers her view of the ideal relationship: "the meeting of two whole fully developed people as persons." Recognizing that the many demands of marriage hinder woman's growth, Lindbergh advocates as a counterbalance to these demands periods of solitude devoted to creativity. If practiced, such creativity would yield self-knowledge. Having reaffirmed her faith in the power of solitude, Lindbergh leaves the seashore, strengthened by her reflections, especially by her awareness of the dynamic nature of life. With her customary modesty, she acknowledges that her answer to woman's predicament is not definitive, except in her assertion that the desire for self-identity will persist. Moreover, she admits new problems will appear just as certainly as the ebb and flow of the sea continues. With this, her most significant work, Lindbergh reveals not only her poetic sensitivity but her insight into the nature of womanhood as well.

A collection of her poetry, The Unicorn, and Other Poems (1956), presents the spiritual odyssey of an individual pursuing personal freedom. Throughout the poems, Lindbergh identifies the demons obstructing this pursuit, all the while attempting to destroy them. Irregular lyric forms appropriately capture her meandering reflections, just as images drawn from winter effectively support passages dealing with spiritual isolation in contrast to the aerial images signaling hope and joy.

Lindbergh returned to the theme of marriage in her novel Dearly Beloved (1962). Writing in the tradition of the experimental novel, Lindbergh eschews simple narration in favor of the stream-of-consciousness technique as a means of revealing certain basic truths about marriage. Organized around the single event of a family wedding in a structure reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, the novel examines the different attitudes towards marriage held by the wedding guests. As the minister recites the traditional marriage formula and the guests reveal their innermost thoughts, the contradiction between religious precepts and experienced reality gradually emerges. With remarkable restraint but unabashed candor Lindbergh crushes the romantic myth surrounding marriage. In the final pages of the novel marriage is redefined simply as a state offering two people a unique opportunity for human growth; hence, a wedding should be a joyous occasion because it crystallizes this awareness. Although Lindbergh's characters remain wooden with little interaction among them, they function effectively insofar as they represent different points of view in this ideational novel.

Lindbergh's literary themes have their genesis in several volumes of her letters and diaries. From these pages there emerges the figure of a sensitive individual with a penchant for writing, whose circumstances in life have plunged her into the maelstrom of public activity. The anxiety resulting from these conflicting forces and her determination to assert spiritual independence spill over into her writing, making it all of one piece.

Lindbergh's artistic forte lies in her ability to shape her themes into impressive forms. Since her themes are open-ended, her forms are appropriately organic: the lyric, the stream-ofconsciousness novel, the familiar essay. She manages aesthetic distance by objectifying nature. Seashells, barren trees, the sky, birds, and mountains are favorite images conveying her vision. Lindbergh's astute handling of diverse forms and her instinct for selecting the near-perfect image have contributed to her reputation as a significant modern writer.

Throughout the 1980s Lindbergh continued to write, living quietly and modestly. Yet in the next decade her family name was once again in the media, both print and television. As the century came to a close, a number of documentaries and books recounted the significant events of the last 100 years, and the Lindberghs were in the center of two: Lucky Lindy's historical flight, and the tragic death of Charles, Jr., culminating in one of the "trials of the century." Additionally, there were two exceptional biographies, one by renowned biographer Scott A. Berg, and the other by Lindbergh's daughter Reeve. The latter, Under a Wing: A Memoir (1998), details the Lindberghs' lives after Reeve and her siblings are born, none of them knowing about their slain older brother, yet sensing something dark and terrible had once occurred in their parents's lives. The book's title reflects Reeve's impression of the Lindbergh children's upbringing—sheltered, private, protected—as well as a reference to her father's historic deed and its aftermath. Under a Wing: A Memoir also recounts Anne Morrow Lindbergh's other losses—after her husband and firstborn—of daughter Anne to cancer and a young grandson (Reeve's son) to encephalitis. These later losses brought mother and daughter together, united in their grief and determined to move through it with grace and dignity.

Other Works:

North to the Orient (1935). Listen! The Wind (1938). The Wave of the Future (1940). The Steep Ascent (1944). Earth Shine (1966). Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928 (1971). Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1973, reissued as Hour of Lead: Sharing Sorrow 1986). Locked Rooms and Open Doors: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1933-1935 (1974). The Flower and the Nettle: Diaries and Letters, 1936-1939 (1976). War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters, 1939-1944 (1980). The People in Pineapple Place (1982). Bailey's Window (1984). Hunky-Dory Diary (1986). Shadow on the Dial (1987). Nobody's Orphan (1987). Next Time, Take Care (with S. Hoguet, 1988). Tidy Lady (1989). Prisoner of Pineapple Place (1990). Travel Far, Pay No Fee (1992). Three Lives to Live (1992). Nick of Time (1994).

Bibliography:

Chadwick, R., Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Pilot and Poet (1987). Herrmann, D., Anne Morrow Lindbergh: A Gift for Life (1993). Latham-Jones, A., "Frames: A Script and Solo Performance of Selected Writings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh" (thesis, 1986). Mayer, E. F., My Window on the World: The Works of Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1988). Owens, E. S., The Phoenix and the Unicorn: A Study of the Published Private Writing of May Sarton and Anne Morrow Lindbergh (dissertation, 1982). Vaughan, D. K., Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1988). Woggon-Wheeler, K. M., "Embracing the feminine: The Thought of Anne Morrow Lindbergh" (thesis, 1991). Wurz, T., Anne Morrow Lindbergh—The Literary Reputation: A Primary and Annotated Secondary Bibliography (1988).

Reference works:

CA (1976). CB (Nov. 1940; June 1976). NCAB. Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995). TCA, TCAS.

Other references:

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (audiocassette, 1981). America (28 Feb. 1968). NYT (10 June 1962). NYTBR (20 March 1955, 27 Feb. 1972). SR (2 April 1955, 12 Jan. 1957).

—ELSIE F. MAYER,

UPDATED BY NELSON RHODES