The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post: A Novel

The novel concludes where it began: with Marjorie hosting President Johnson and his wife. This return to the opening allows readers to more fully understand the claims that Marjorie makes in the Prologue about welcoming many presidents into her various homes. By focusing on Marjorie’s involvement with political figures, the novel is making the argument that Marjorie is an important public figure. Marjorie sees herself as part of history; her understanding of the Post family begins with the Civil War and continues on to John F. Kennedy’s association. She attributes the Posts’ success to being American: “We started with nothing, the Posts. And we’ve come to inhabit homes as nice as this one through hard work, yes, but also the opportunity that America offered to us” (345). Marjorie is portrayed as a proud American woman who believes in her country and her own potential—she has overcome the limitations placed on Women’s Roles in a Male-Dominated Society.

Marjorie’s magnanimous offer of Mar-a-Lago to the US government via the Johnsons in 1968 is meant to emphasize the scale of Marjorie’s legacy. This gift also underscores the theme of Wealth as an Escape From Reality. Marjorie’s desire to bequeath her mansion to be a second White House is both generous and pretentious—she has little idea of just what it would take to actually accomplish such a donation, and her fantasy of housing future presidents is self-aggrandizing. At the same time, the novel has persistently characterized Marjorie as interested in being helpful and service-oriented, however loftily; this would-be gift thus also illustrates the extent to which Marjorie associates her life with her country.

The opening of the Hillwood estate emphasizes Marjorie’s claiming her agency after her divorce from Joe. It is a property all her own, “separate from any man” (318). For the first time in her life, she decorates according to her tastes, with an eye toward functional hosting, rather than worrying about what a husband thinks. Aptly, the Hillwood Museum remains as a testimony to Marjorie, freezing her in time at her most independent. Even after her marriage to Herb, she keeps her last name and her property, unwilling to sacrifice anything for a man.

The theme of Relationships in the Public Eye recurs in the closing pages of the novel, as the press remains focused on Marjorie when she is single, trying to guess her next romantic move: “She’s America’s Hostess, known for throwing the best dinners and the liveliest dances. Now she just needs to find her dancing partner” (321). While she never rules out getting married again, Marjorie is now entirely apathetic about what the press alleges, even as rumors grow more fanciful: Her social capital far exceeds anything that bad press could take away. However, publicity leads to the end of her marriage to Herb: The photos she receives show how closely her life is watched, as Herb is surreptitiously photographed in the privacy of his own home.