61 pages • 2-hour read
Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination and sexual content.
Sexual Politics as a Route Into Formal Power
Purnell describes Pamela’s use of flirtation, attraction, and sex as political tools that gave her access to and influence over powerful men on the world’s stage. She describes Pamela as “the most powerful courtesan in history” (1). A courtesan is paid to entertain wealthy and powerful clients, often, though not always, by having sexual relations. Pamela used her position as a political courtesan to influence a number of important men, shape diplomatic relations, and eventually rise to the role of American Ambassador to France.
In detailing Pamela’s extramarital affairs, Purnell presents her infidelity as her vocation in service of the UK’s war effort. As a young woman, Pamela was seen as very beautiful and sexually attractive. Purnell argues that the Churchills and other British leaders, like Max Beaverman, recognized the allure she had to powerful men, especially military leaders, and used it to gather information and improve relations between the United States and the United Kingdom at a time when relations were strained. As Purnell notes, “The sexier the dress, the better for what she had to do for her country” (448). Pamela used her charm to win over key American leaders like Averell Harriman, whom she immediately began to have sex with during the Blitz to thrill and entice him to support the British war effort.
Purnell emphasizes Pamela’s use of sexual tactics to increase her own agency and achieve political gains as a pathway to institutionalized power traditionally reserved for men. After the war, Pamela was most closely attached to Gianni Agnelli, the heir to the Fiat fortune. As “Italy’s largest and most powerful corporation” (159), Fiat had immense political influence within Italy and globally. Thus, Pamela used her sexual appeal to help Gianni make connections with those who would help the company overcome its past ties to Mussolini. In exchange, Pamela had access to immense wealth.
By focusing on Pamela’s personal and political successes, Purnell reframes Pamela’s tactics as social savvy and political acumen rather than vilifying her promiscuity. As an older woman, Pamela continued to use her skills of seduction and sexual allure to fundraise on behalf of the Democratic Party. She used the fact that the aging Averell was sexually attracted to her to rekindle their relationship. She then mobilized his name and fortune to enter Washington politics. As Purnell notes, she was able to attract wealthy donors who were “drawn by the glamour of spending time in the bucolic home of a legendary British aristocrat who even now made male knees go weak” (356). Pamela was able to raise millions of dollars in service of Democratic elections. As a reward for her hard work as a fundraiser and organizer, particularly her support of his political career, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the position of US ambassador to France. This was the apex of her political career as she finally earned the formal power and title she had long desired.
Pamela routinely used her sexual appeal and willingness to have sex with a large “network” of men to gather information, secure her financial stability, and exercise power. By the end of her life, she was able to leverage this lifetime as a political courtesan into a formal role in politics.
Misogyny in Historical Memory-Making
Purnell argues that the disdain with which history has remembered Pamela reflects the misogynistic view of female sexuality and sexual appeal. Pamela is not a widely known historical figure today—as Purnell notes, “if she is remembered at all, it is with disdain or condescension” (1). A society’s entrenched sexism ensures that a woman who uses her sex appeal to gain access to power at a time when opportunities for women were limited is vilified. As a result, Pamela’s political and diplomatic skills went largely overlooked in the historical record, due in no small part to the way Pamela and her life were described in the press, the memoirs of notable historical figures, and biographies during her lifetime.
As a young woman during her entrée into the role of political courtesan, Pamela was covered in the society papers as a socialite and a dilettante. Her informal role as a go-between and informant for the British government with the Americans was largely kept secret because of the sensitivity of the operations in which she was involved. Pamela was “running a whole network” of powerful men and channeling the information to Max Beaverbrook and the Churchill government (115), but, in the papers, she was simply recognized as a beautiful, stylish, and fun woman.
Purnell suggests that Pamela’s negative portrayal in the press resulted from the interpersonal fallout of her sexual affairs. After the war, Pamela embarked on a series of relationships with powerful men, including Gianni Agnelli, Leland Hayward, and Averell Harriman. In every instance, Pamela’s sway over these wealthy and well-connected individuals garnered ill will from members of their families, such as their children from previous marriages and ex-wives, many of whom aired their views about Pamela in public, particularly in their tell-all memoirs. A particularly vicious example can be seen in Brooke Hayward’s memoir, Haywire, which portrayed Pamela as “vain, grasping and acquisitive” and a “Cruella de Vil figure” (279). Pamela’s own son contributed to the negative view of her in the press and in print. He described her as “simply a ‘political consort’” who was “not a politician. She married a politician” (320). Throughout her life, the media remained focused on “parties and gossip” related to Pamela rather than focusing on the results of her relationships and the ways she was recruited and encouraged to use sexual tactics to reify the political agendas of powerful men (345).
Purnell highlights previous biographies of Pamela to underscore the inherent misogyny in their depictions of her, reinforcing their differences from Kingmaker. The view of Pamela as a fundamentally unserious person who simply rode on the coattails of powerful men was articulated by two unauthorized biographies of Pamela: Reflected Glory by Sally Smith (1996) and Life of the Party by Christopher Ogden (1994), both of which focused on Pamela’s relationships rather than her work. Purnell criticizes this historiographical approach throughout Kingmaker, positioning her biography as a feminist approach to Pamela’s life, which emphasizes Pamela’s independent contributions to policy and diplomacy. She signals this approach, in part, through her emphasis on Pamela’s later life as a Democratic fundraiser organizer and her time as ambassador to France. In so doing, Purnell hopes to counter the misogyny that has largely defined the historical memory of Pamela’s life.
The Changing Role of Women in Politics
Over the course of Pamela’s life, she embodied—and bore witness to—the changing role of women in politics. As a young woman, she adopted the expectations of her time and social milieu that a woman in politics was expected to contribute informally, through influencing powerful men, rather than directly running for office or taking on a formal role. By the time she entered her 40s, in the 1970s, these expectations had somewhat shifted. As the feminist movement gained pace and women had greater opportunities for direct participation, Pamela’s views also shifted. Although she was never a vocal feminist, she used her role and political influence to support other women in politics, eventually achieving a formal political role herself.
As a young woman, Pamela learned from women like Clementine Churchill and Lady Baillie how to exercise informal political power through influencing powerful men and acting as a hostess. Pamela observed how Clementine used her close relationship with her husband, Winston, to influence his political decisions and lift his morale. She learned from Lady Baillie the role of “political hostess,” embracing these two primary roles for women, like Pamela, who wished to be engaged in politics in the 1930s. Many male, conservative figures, like Pamela’s own husband Randolph Churchill, felt threatened by this informal influence, believing women should be “exclude[d] […] from taking part in public life” (35). After the war, Pamela considered running for office, but she was dissuaded as there were very few women in such a position at the time.
Pamela’s formative experience as a supportive, influential wife and political hostess shaped her political engagement throughout most of her life. However, over time, she became more sympathetic to the feminist cause and the role of women in politics. Purnell argues that women’s rights advocate Gloria Steinem was essential to this transformation, writing that Steinem “influenced [Pamela] and explained how the women’s movement […] could help her overcome her own thwarted ambition” (218). Steinem praised her as a “woman who proves that not all feminists have to wear combat boots.” (331). By the time she was in her 60s, Pamela felt it was too late to embark on a career in electoral politics of her own. As Purnell writes, she “preferr[ed] to acquire power behind the throne” (330). Pamela publicly and financially supported female candidates for political office, such as Bella Abzug, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Mikulski. However, her feminism was complex; she felt female candidates “had to be exceptional, probably more so than equivalent men” (330), reflecting the obstacles facing women in male-dominated systems of power.
Pamela’s own life maps the transition of women from informal to formal political influence. By the 1980s and 1990s, there were female candidates for her to support, pointing to the changing expectations and roles for women in politics. When she was formally appointed American ambassador to France by President Bill Clinton in 1993, she became a pioneer in the role as the first woman ever appointed to the position. Her appointment—and the president’s vocal support of her qualifications for the role illustrates how much the role for women in politics had changed over her lifetime. Where once she would have been only considered in the role of wife of an ambassador, now she was one in her own right.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence