The Influence of Evelyn Wood is an intriguing book. In this she presents herself as a Sixties radical who abandoned "order" in favor of a more wild and disorganized style of living, which included drug taking and frequenting gay bars. At one point, she claims that she used "black love" to manipulate her way into the White House, but that claim is disputed by former White House staffers.
I do with this that there are those who believe she may have been a lesbian, but no one really knows for sure. What is clear is that her life and actions during this period had a significant impact on many other women, all of whom had very different beliefs. She is said to have had lesbian tendencies, but denied it. Additionally, there is speculation as to whether she had affairs with both men and women. It is also said that she was a spy during the war, and that she leaked important information to the British. All of these are strong points against Evelyn Wood.
I will not spend time here detailing all of the allegations against Evelyn Wood. Instead, I will mention briefly a couple of her strongest points. Firstly, it seems she was deeply influenced by the philosophies of her time. For example, at one point she describes the philosophy of the Bauhaus school as having had a profound impact on her. She took this to be a rejection of her own identity, but this is clearly not the case. She also seems to have learned quite a bit about what it means to be a woman from reading The Feminine Mystique.
Also, it seems to be a fact that Evelyn Wood was deeply concerned about women's rights. At one point, she describes how she set up the Women's Rights Project. As it turns out, she did just that. In fact, she set up twenty-five projects, all designed to help women. It is clear that Wood believed in the value of women's rights and felt that she had a responsibility to make this value known.
Of course, there are some weaknesses in The Influence of Evelyn Wood. At one point she criticizes certain aspects of dress code in Victorian England. However, other than this, there is very little criticism of the way she wrote or about the contents of her writings. In short, I would say that she did try for consistency throughout her career, but often failed in achieving this consistency.
In her final years, Wood seemed to draw increasingly towards writing about women's issues, such as child labor and working hours. In these days, these issues are still major concerns for women. Her final book, A Woman's Guide to Success, focused on this topic, but also addressed other important issues such as death, marriage, divorce, sexuality, beauty, and identity. All of these topics appeared in previous writings, but in this book they were better presented and discussed. In any case, this collection is an excellent gift for the female population, as it explores some of the issues that affect us all.
To me, the best feature of The Influence of Evelyn Wood is how she was able to write such cohesive volumes. Wood wrote nearly a dozen books, so you need to choose which ones to read carefully. Some of her best stories were about relationships, such as The Courtship of Miles Standish, The Women, and The Infiltration. However, even the stories about child-raising and motherhood are valuable and interesting. The key is to pick out which parts of each book to interest you and then focus on reading those parts.