Jackie's Immortal Godmothers

The Mona Lisa Stratagem: The Art of Women, Age, and Power
by Harriet Rubin

Around the time a woman reaches 45, there is one enemy with the power to threaten her confidence, steal her beauty, make her feel invisible, and turn even the pleasures of life against her. That enemy is Time. Most women feel that an essential part of them dies when their youth is gone, yet the reality is women can grow more beautiful, experience new pleasures, and accomplish their best work later in life.

Now, taking inspiration from a masterpiece of female beauty, mystery, and immortality, Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Harriet Rubin reveals a powerful stratagem for finding happiness and fulfillment in midlife and beyond. Interweaving stories of iconic women throughout history, Rubin codifies ten tactics - including how to be noticed, how to create circles of influence with you at the center, and how to express talents that have been ripening over decades. In the process, she uncovers the key to mature power, the highest art of leadership.

A just-picked plum Jackie Kennedy-fresh and firm and all of thirty-one, new mistress of her husband's White House-developed an obsession for a chubby glamourpuss named Madame de Maintenon who was well past menopause when she secretly married a king (Louis XIV). It is said that to get at a French king, you had to wiggle through a wall of women. All the more extraordinary, then, that at the center one should find this grandmama, as if that word were adequate. At the age of seventy-five Madame complained to her priest that the king insisted on sex with her every day, sometimes several times. Madame had a commanding and seductive presence that was more irresistible than when she was young and lithe. She made herself the central figure wherever she appeared. The king who took as his emblem the midday sun felt humbled and overshadowed by her and suddenly aware of his own mediocrity. In a court of pose and pomposity, she remained modest, spiritual, and compelling.

It's obvious why a person might covet the insights of age and power late in life, but at thirty-one? Jackie wanted to get a head start on the practices of power at its greatest. Power is the most intoxicating thing in the world, and the most intoxicating power comes with maturity and the confidence of having seen and done everything. When one is stirred by a resurgence of creative energy rivaling that of earlier decades, the challenge lies in knowing how to channel that power to the best possible ends.

But a wizened old hen like Madame? Exactly like Madame! She was no slave to manbooze; she had love but was also free. At Madame's age, she could feel like a woman but luxuriate in the full force of her own mind, just like a man. She could be sour when cranky opinion moved her and an enlightened influence when truth was at stake. Her power went beyond having a king fall at her feet. A dozen or more women just like her became the original chattering classes: they opened salons in their homes, shaped the agendas for talk, lured into their midst the bright minds of the time, and used these conversations to move ideas through the society. The ideas instigated by these "vintage" women and impregnated into men in high governmental and political positions formed a society distinguished by its insistence on truth and beauty. The Paris of the eighteenth century salonistes became the center of the world and the inspiration for the French Revolution. Ben Franklin wooed the salonistes for their insight into politics and access to key figures. They had something going for them that had proved impossible even in their own youth, some magic formula that put them at the center like the noonday sun.

Power brokers who came after Madame de Maintenon established themselves at the center of the universe for one hundred years. Men today follow the principles of the Godfather. For a creative, less moneymad time, these women were Godmothers. They formed a loose confederation or matriarchy-circles within circles of power. They talked not only with men but avidly with each other. Their unity, formed of their adroit construction of social platforms, made them figures to be reckoned with. They became an army of women-a Taliban of women-out to reconstruct a society based on the most sublime peace, amor mundi: love of the world. They cherished people outside their families as they cherished members of their families. Because what one man or even one family could contain all they had to give? At an age when they might have disappeared into the shadows locked in isolation from a community of purpose, they took to the big stage of social, cultural, and political effectiveness. No wonder Madame captured the attention and admiration of the young Jackie Kennedy, who followed her example to invest herself as America's queen, a position she held for decades, until her death, no matter who succeeded her as First Lady.

Godmothers like Madame were the ultimate strategists. They could focus their attention upon improving the world because they knew who the real enemy was. Time! A young woman may be hooked, her energies drained, by a difficult husband, a paranoid boss, a jealous friend, or her own nasty ninjas of troubled self-confidence. But in age, such minor enemies lose their edge. They no longer confuse and distract. Rather, in age, one may act from a position of strength to confront and then to create a truce with Time. Time is the thief of youth, beauty, and assurance. Anything Time stole from Madame, however, she was happy to let go of: the tiny waist, the smooth neck, and the flock of children off to feather their own nests. She knew where to find compelling substitutes for whatever she lost. Jackie, who could have had herself tutored in power by any of the men in her husband's presidential court, chose her teachers carefully. Her Godmothers had a seventh sense men lack: a sense of timing. Let's put a finer point on it. They had a sense of how to live their lives not frozen in the glory of some distant past or with the promise of some faraway future. These women made the most of every moment. Age was a form of wealth for them, each passing year another deposit into accounts marked Cleverness, Spontaneity, Pleasure, Accomplishment, Ease!

The subject of women, age, and power opens a bold new frontier. The idea that age is increase in anything but devastation is new to us. Women now live longer than ever, and in many of them, much of the world's wealth is coming to reside, the consequence of widowhood and divorce. But power is a late-life acquisition: for female writers, for example, the act of self-creation comes later in life than for men. Men tend to move on a fairly predictable path to achievement; women transform themselves only after an awakening. What is the nature of women's late awakening? What powerful qualities show up late, like latecomers to a party who enliven the whole affair?

One's fifties are said to be one's most creative decade, one's sixties marked by freedom, and one's seventies by a state of nobility. But such talk seems like the myth of the no-calorie cheesecake. People say a bite won't cost anything, but you know it does. Age seems both the opposite of power and its deepest expression. How can it be both a huge gift and a high-ticket item? The answer is that most people don't know how to age, but some people are better in age than they ever were. Age for those who get it right is a metaphysical diet: a chance to lose dead weight like the disease to please, the obsession with status, or the burden to be trendy or fashionable. In fact, everything Time steals means that something more important is restored.

Like Jackie, I set out to find those brilliant maturers, true alchemists of Time, and to understand the means by which they turned loss into tremendous gain. How did they continue walking into rooms and dazzling, no matter how many young women were present? Why did they grow more interesting, immune to disappearing into "the sands of time"? Why were they taken more seriously as leaders yet also considered more feminine than in their youth? How did they manage to work less and achieve more? The secret lay in a lost definition of femininity that is found in maturity.

© Harriet Rubin 2007.

About the Author

Harriet Rubin is author of The Mona Lisa Stratagem and a member of USA Today's board of contributors. She lives in New York City.