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David Brooks
Frances Perkins was a workers’ rights activist in the first half of the 20th century and a member of the Roosevelt administration. Brooks regards her as an example of the power of vocation in a person’s life. Perkins grew up in Maine in a traditional, unsentimental Yankee family. They taught Perkins to be honest and conservative in her personal life, but active in her community. Although she was a bad student, she studied at Mt. Holyoke College. After graduation, she went to work at the Hull House, a community dedicated to acts of service that improve life for all. Her community service work didn’t become a vocation until she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. This fire, caused by horrible working conditions, made Perkins morally indignant. She felt that the world was asking something of her and that she’d found her calling. She went to Albany to lobby for workers’ rights, doing whatever it took to win the respect of the callous politicians there. She married a man whose mental health and financial affairs later fell apart. Their marriage was unhappy, and their only daughter was badly-behaved and distant from her mother. Perkins kept her personal life very private but once admitted that her own poor intimacy skills were the ruin of her family. She ended up working for Franklin Roosevelt who appointed her first as Industrial Commissioner and later as secretary of labor. She agreed to these appointments on the condition that he make certain changes in workers’ rights. She served Roosevelt until he died, falling quietly into the background as her personal life became more and more scandalous. After Roosevelt’s death, Perkins taught at Cornell and wrote a biography of Roosevelt, but not one of herself. Perkins’s self-discipline was the downfall of her personal life, but it made her an excellent public servant. She devoted herself to her vocation of workers’ rights, sacrificing all that was personally dear to her.
Frances Perkins Quotes in The Road to Character
The The Road to Character quotes below are all either spoken by Frances Perkins or refer to Frances Perkins. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2: The Summoned Self
Quotes
In [Frances Perkins’s] method, you don’t ask, What do I want from life? You ask a different set of questions: What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do? In this scheme of things we don’t create our lives; we are summoned by life.
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Perkins didn’t so much choose her life. She responded to the call of a felt necessity. A person who embraces a calling doesn’t take a direct route to self-fulfillment. She is willing to surrender the things that are most dear, and by seeking to forget herself and submerge herself she finds a purpose that defines and fulfills herself. Such vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime.
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Chapter 10: The Big Me
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Eventually [humble people] achieve moments of catharsis when outer ambition comes into balance with inner aspiration, when there is a unity of effort between Adam I and Adam II, when there is that ultimate tranquility and that feeling of flow—when moral nature and external skills are united in one defining effort.
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Frances Perkins Quotes in The Road to Character
The The Road to Character quotes below are all either spoken by Frances Perkins or refer to Frances Perkins. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2: The Summoned Self
Quotes
In [Frances Perkins’s] method, you don’t ask, What do I want from life? You ask a different set of questions: What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do? In this scheme of things we don’t create our lives; we are summoned by life.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Perkins didn’t so much choose her life. She responded to the call of a felt necessity. A person who embraces a calling doesn’t take a direct route to self-fulfillment. She is willing to surrender the things that are most dear, and by seeking to forget herself and submerge herself she finds a purpose that defines and fulfills herself. Such vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10: The Big Me
Quotes
Eventually [humble people] achieve moments of catharsis when outer ambition comes into balance with inner aspiration, when there is a unity of effort between Adam I and Adam II, when there is that ultimate tranquility and that feeling of flow—when moral nature and external skills are united in one defining effort.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
