Perhaps as a consequence of the current governmental retreat from public welfare programs, there has been a notable resurgence of interest in that icon of private charity, Jane Addams, founder of Hull-House. Unlike Gioia Diliberto, who in her recent biography investigated some of the conflicts in Addams's personal development, Elshtain (Democracy on Trial; etc.), a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago, undertakes to present an account of Addams's public thought grounded firmly in extensive paraphrase of her writing. Though she subtitles this volume "A Life," Elshtain is not especially interested in the details of Addams's psychological, emotional or even political development. Rather she presents her subject, to whom she is clearly devoted, as a woman who came to moral consciousness early and who acted upon that consciousness with energy and devotion in every area that she felt demanded her attention. Elshtain is at great pains to defend her heroine against modern interpretations, against, for example, the charges of cultural insensitivity leveled by Jill Ker Conway or the suggestions of lesbianism prompted by Addams's 30-year relationship with Mary Rozet Smith. As a result of the author's resolute refusal to speculate on the private Jane Addams, the woman who emerges from these pages is the familiar public figure—noble, generous, empathetic but not altogether engaging—and one who, despite Elshtain's best efforts, emerges as heroic but faintly irrelevant to the present. A companion volume, The Jane Addams Reader,
edited by Elshtain, will be published simultaneously. 8 pages of illus. not seen by PW. (Jan. 8)
