Robert Caro’s writing style makes the life of Robert Moses captivating. He transforms his famously in-depth research into a story rather than a laundry list of events, quotes, and primary sources. From this week’s reading, I particularly enjoyed his character profiles of Robert Moses’ grandmother, Rosalie Cohen, and mother, Bella.
Caro argues that Moses inherited several distinguishing traits from these two women, namely brilliance, a sharp tongue, stubbornness, and arrogance.
First, Caro clearly outlines these shared characteristics in Rosalie Cohen and Bella:
Rosalie Cohen
- “A sharp mind was coupled with a sharp tongue, which she used on those who disagreed with her opinions.”
- “’The way Grannie Cohen treated Grandfather Cohen was quite striking,’ the granddaughter recalls. ‘She absolutely sat on him.’”
Bella
- “Bella was mannerly and soft-spoken, but the opinions delivered in that soft voice were direct, forceful – and not particularly susceptible to alteration.” … “while Bella’s voice was soft, the things she might say with it could be sharp indeed.”
- “recalls an acquaintance, ‘… under that quiet manner was an astonishing amount of arrogance. She was her mother’s daughter.’”
- “’The relationship between Mother and Father was simple,’ Paul Moses would recall. ‘Father did what Mother directed.’”
Bella’s commitment to the Settlement House movement and the Madison House may have been drawn more from her father’s civil service rather than Rosalie Cohen, but she brought Grandma Cohen’s arrogance to her approach. The Madison House’s official history says it was established “To help in the Americanization of residents of the Lower East side.” Caro also points out “Many German Jews seemed to feel, as one commentor put it, ‘as if [they were] assuming the white man’s burden’.” And Bella “never forgot that the lower class were lower. Recalls one relative: ‘Her attitude to these people was ‘You’re my children; I know best; you do what I tell you and I’ll take care of you.’””
In the way that Caro describes Moses’s closeness with his mother at the end of Chapter 1, you can sense him absorbing her characteristics into his own personality. As Caro concludes, “Whatever it was that made Robert Moses the way he was, they knew, whatever the quality that has shaped an unusual – in some ways unique – personality, the quality was one that they had watched being passed, like a family heirloom, from Robert Moses’ grandmother to his mother, to him. ‘Robert Moses,’ these people would say, ‘is Bella Moses’ son.’” An echo to the earlier quote of Bella being “her mother’s daughter.”
For Rosalie Cohen and Bella to be so outspoken, dominating, and blatantly arrogant was probably uncharacteristic of the women from their time. But other than potentially rising eyebrows, it doesn’t seem like these traits – wielded in their positions of power – caused any societal harm, particularly in Bella’s case where she directly improved the lives of Jewish immigrants. This brings to mind the question as to why the same traits in a man – their descendent, Robert Moses – could not produce the same good without the noticeable harmful side effects too.
Katie Quan 