Rielle: Elizabeth Edwards' Rival Revealed

The paramour of presidential candidate John Edwards has a little girl, about whose paternity, his wife Elizabeth tells Oprah in an exclusive interview airing Thursday, she has "no idea." (Patricia Murphy has an excerpt here) Oprah could ask Elizabeth about the child, and she agreed to answer, because Elizabeth is promoting a memoir about her personal humiliation and devastating illness titled Resilience.

I, for one, am in awe of Mrs. Edwards' resilience. She has weathered a number of blows and currently is battling incurable cancer. Mrs. Edwards' appearance on Oprah's show will guarantee her book a large audience, but Elizabeth made one condition as a fig leaf to her privacy. The name of that little girl's mother, Rielle Hunter, was not to be mentioned during the interview. The publisher, Random House, inserted language forbidding the host to specifically say the name of the filmmaker with whom the author's husband had a rather complicated illicit affair, into their appearance agreement. I can't imagine what it must be like to be in Elizabeth Edwards' unique situation, let alone want to share that experience. Ms. Winfrey's program is the kick off event for this sharing which, as an example of its title, Elizabeth mustered the fortitude to write. (The contract did not prohibit the topic of her husband's lover, as Oprah's ratings will no doubt soon bear out.) Mrs. Edwards calls the other woman "pathetic" and describes her as a groupie. I'm sure she has much more to say in her book which I certainly plan to read.
I have to agree with the wife here that the other woman behaved despicably in the pursuit of an unavailable man in the public spotlight. It must be sweet revenge for his 59-year-old wife to trash her so publicly and to keep her philandering husband on his best behavior, to boot. But there are a couple things that bother me. One is the name thing seems needlessly pissy. We all know it. Rielle Hunter. Besides, Rielle Hunter is writing her own version of her great love match with John Edwards (speaking of "pathetic") so if we forget her name, she'll remind us.

The other thing is more personal to the Edwards. Nobody knows what goes on inside a marriage except the two people in it, no matter how public the betrayal. But since Elizabeth is sharing, I just want to ask about the daughter who, let's face it, may be a sibling to her three living children and to Wade, the son she buried. Mrs. Edwards understands mortality. If the medical predictions are correct, she will be facing her own before long, but that little girl is only one year old. The child's name is Frances but she reminds me of Pearl, the blameless child of Hester Prynne and conflicted preacher Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathanial Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. When Elizabeth Edwards learns the child's paternity, and we can trust the National Enquirer to help her find out, won't she want to explain to her children, if it turns out to be so, that they have a little sister?