Jackie – loyal housewife and sharp political plotter

FINALLY released after 47 years under lock and key, the candid thoughts of Jackie Kennedy – captured in eight hours of recorded interviews by historian Arthur Schlesinger four months after JFK's assassination in November 1963 – were aired by the US broadcaster ABC last night. We were told in advance that she found Martin Luther King a "terrible" sex pest, Indira Gandhi a "real prune" and Charles De Gaulle an "egomaniac". But what did the tapes reveal about Jackie Kennedy herself?
 
The stereotypical housewife

Tom Leonard of the Daily Mail is shocked by the "blatantly anti-feminist tone" of the tapes, referring to Kennedy's belief that "women should never be in politics" and to her pride in having what she terms a "Victorian or Asiatic" relationship with her husband. Even Caroline Kennedy, who made the decision to publish her mother's thoughts, said her own children were "horrified" and asked "did she really think that?"
 
For Jezebel's Irin Carmon, Jackie Kennedy's suspicion that certain female political figures, including Clare Boothe Luce, were lesbians was rooted in the fact that these women "diverged from the roles usually assigned to women at the time. And at age 34, the former first lady was deeply invested in traditional marriage, or projecting a view of it".
 
The arch spindoctor
 
The one glaring omission from Kennedy's account of her life with JFK – any discussion of his well-known affairs – is too big to ignore, according to the Independent's Archie Bland. "Her private life didn't entirely become public property just because of her husband's job," he writes. "But it's somewhat strange to hear that gap in the record in our own era of total disclosure."
 
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times agrees, saying Jackie Kennedy bathed her husband "in an impossibly perfect glow". The result is that Jackie comes across as "JFK's best image wizard", directing her snobbery "at anyone she felt was hurting her husband or children".
 
The secret politico

The perception of Jackie Kennedy's political innocence is nonsense, according to historian Michael Beschloss. He says Jackie's insistence in the tapes that her thoughts on politics all came from JFK should be taken with "a warehouse of salt" – it is no coincidence that the savvy Jackie used the interviews with Schlesinger to attack her husband's enemies.
 
Carl Anthony, an expert on first ladies, agrees that the tapes show "an unerring, all-observing eye". He says Jackie Kennedy "did not want to be implored and lobbied by people who wanted her to influence policy, so she assumed a public persona of the "anti-Eleanor Roosevelt'.' It was a very tactical move, Anthony declares – "almost like a spy". ·