Kryhoski is currently working as a freelance writer. She has taught English literature in addition to English as a second language overseas. In this essay, Kryhoski considers the influence of history on the characterization of women in the play.

Dore Schary's Sunrise at Campobello is an historical work documenting a period in FDR's life of great personal struggle. Upon further examination, the work appears to be a series of stereotypes rather than actual depictions of the Roosevelts, seemingly idealized forms based on social dictates and historical events Schary may or may not have been subconsciously responding to. On another level, it is a document of those twentieth-century stereotypes feminists have tried so hard to overcome and continue to do so yet today. In Schary's depiction of FDR's wife, Eleanor, one can see a huge rift forming between those images of the modern female ideal and those of...