‘Dear Aunty Eleanor’ : Eleanor Roosevelt, Anna Freud and the politics of emotion in letters by children in war

In this article I argue that the actual and imaginary presence of America looms large in the letters written to Eleanor Roosevelt by refugee children whom she sponsored through the organisation Foster Parents’ Plan for War Children (Plan). In doing so, I historicise the politics of emotion in war by examining how the concept of ‘America’ provided a positive haven for refugee children who constructed an imaginary ‘America’ – a place of security and peace – through which they discussed the fragmentation of their lives. When considering the visceral aspects of wartime experience, however, not all children found comfort in the ‘American’ imaginary. The letters of children such as eight-year-old Rosemary Hayward – who was also observed by psychoanalysts Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham – reveal an emotional fragility towards this notion of ‘America’. The comfort and plenty of ‘America’ was not easily appropriated by Hayward as the way in which she experienced family dislocation became pronounced. While the emotional security of the concept of ‘America’ became the cornerstone of correspondence between financial foster parents and the refugee child, it served to consolidate this exchange and the politics within it, leaving the scars of family disruption and violence in war painfully unresolved.

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