(4/22/2023)
This is a work of biographical fiction that almost qualifies as a horror story. Using fact and poetic license--after all, it is a novel--author Andromeda Romano-Lax profiles the life of Rosalie Raynor Watson, the wife of Dr. John B. Watson, who developed in the 1920s the controversial psychological theory of behaviorism. Specifically, Watson advocated that parents should put their newborns on a rigid feeding and sleeping schedule, ignore their cries, hold them as little as possible and never kiss or cuddle them. To arrive at this theory, he and Rosalie, his laboratory assistant at Johns Hopkins University, conducted cruel psychological and physical experiments on newborns, most of whom were orphans. (This is where it turned into a horror story for me.)
John, who was married and had two children, had a torrid affair with Rosalie. The affair was quickly exposed and even publicized in the mainstream press, which ruined John's academic career at Johns Hopkins and mortified Rosalie's family. Eventually, John was able to divorce his first wife and marry Rosalie, although he continued having multiple lovers on the side. The couple moved to New York City to begin life anew, but the gossip followed them there, too. Rosalie, a 1920 graduate of Vassar, was frustrated most of her life, unable to have a career in science as she had always dreamed and unhappy as a mother of two boys.
This is a fascinating, well-written story not only of life in the roaring '20s among the rich and educated, but also the incredible power parents have over their children's psychological development. Read it!