What is a first lady, really? It is taken for granted that our national leaders will have someone on their arm, almost always a woman. This person will represent the softer side of power and be ever present, willingly secondary, and highly scrutinized. She will diligently represent her country nationally and internationally. And she’ll do it with no job title, no pay, and no complaints. (There are rare exceptions like Ghana, where the role is salaried, and places like the United States and France, which at least fund an office and staff.)
Conversations about the role of political wives — about the friction between the busy push and pull of modern womanhood and the norms of formal state protocols — percolate back up into public consciousness every few years. This time, it’s by virtue of a memoir by Eliza Reid, a native of small-town eastern Ontario who served as first lady of the tiny Nordic nation of Iceland between 2016 and 2024.
The First Lady Next...
Bronwen Jervis previously worked as a literary assistant to John Irving and as a speechwriter for Justin Trudeau.
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