Galt's Gulch

Woodrow Wilson's 2nd wife's maiden name

Posted by $ jbrenner 7 years, 5 months ago to History
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Does anyone know if Ayn Rand was aware of Mrs. Wilson's maiden name? Did that influence Rand's choice for a last name for a character in Atlas Shrugged? Who knows the history behind this, if it is not a coincidence? Certainly the 2nd Mrs. Wilson ran the White House during the last 19 months of the post-WW1 part of Woodrow Wilson's 2nd term. Did Rand write anything about Edith Wilson?
SOURCE URL: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/woodrow-wilson-marries-edith-bolling-galt

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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 5 months ago
    While Galt is not a common name, it is by no means a rare one. I once stayed in Fort Lauderdale at Galt Ocean Mile Hotel. It was one of the largest hotels (motel, really) in town. (1952). I had this fantasy where the owners were in the witness protection and Mr. and Mrs. Galt raised little Johnny in relative seclusion.
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  • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago
    There is no evidence whatsoever that Ayn Rand named the prime hero of her novel after Woodrow Wilson's second wife or even knew about her maiden name, nor is there any connection between the characters. Why would anyone speculate about such a thing? She picked the names in the novel for what she thought were a appropriate for her characters. Any writer has heard of thousands of names in the course of a life without remembering where they first came from. So what?
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    • Posted by $ jbrenner 7 years, 5 months ago
      Thank you for the historical enlightenment, ewv. I did not know of any connection between Edith Galt Wilson and Ayn Rand. I was hoping that you or someone with greater knowledge about Rand's writings might shed some enlightenment. I am quite sure that Rand would not have been a fan of Woodrow Wilson. The answer to "So what?" is that it has been common for many authors to thinly veil irony in their novels. Given Rand's lack of writing on Edith Galt Wilson, the "So what?" question is a good one, but given the answer to the "So what?" question might have been very interesting indeed had Rand written more about the Wilsons. Rand has written about entry into WWII. Did she include anything about Woodrow Wilson's decision to enter WW1? I know that decision was a reluctant one, but it forever altered US foreign policy away from one that Ayn Rand would have approved of.
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      • Posted by ewv 7 years, 5 months ago
        She wrote about both WWI and WWII, as examples of how statism leads to war, in the "Roots of War" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. She referred to Woodrow Wilson and to Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism chapter "American Enters the Struggle for Power" (pp 195-220) on how and why we got into World War I. It wasn't reluctant, the progressives pushed it in a crusade with moral frenzy It has nothing to do with naming characters in Atlas Shrugged.
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