(4 of 5)
Of course, it became a popular pastime to analyze Jackie and her motives. A couturier friend attributed Jackie's marriage to "a desire to escape the Kennedy clan, which is really, believe me, a vault of lead. She did it bravely, breaking with this marriage every alliance with the past. And why not? The present, the life she and the children had to face daily, was unlivable for a human being—rushing, hiding, constantly representing someone or something." As to the rather indelicate question of whether Jackie intended to have chil dren by Onassis, speculators could only grasp at an alleged interview in the Greek daily, Nea Politia. Reporter: "Do you intend to have children?" Jackie: "I hope and wish it. It's a wonderful thing to have children."
The week of the wedding, a German paper had headlined that "America has lost a saint." Gradually, both Americans and Europeans began to realize that the saint, or heroine, had been of their own making. "They wanted her to be a widow forever," said Anthropologist Margaret Mead. "There is no conceivable way for her to satisfy them. That's one of the drawbacks of being put in a regal position." Some of the heroine-worshipers were still taking it -hard. Los Angeles Financier Bart Lytton, a longtime Kennedy supporter, turned his photo of Jackie upside down on the wall, and planned to "leave her that way for a while longer."
But Giulietta Masina, Italian actress and wife of Film Director Federico Fellini, was more quickly generous in Turin's La Stampa. "Myths, when they are human, are fatally subject to wear and tear, disparities, and loneliness," she wrote. "Why marvel if a woman at a certain point tears off all the veils that cover her like a monument—a 39year-old monument, still beautiful, extremely alive, obligated to a role that does not belong to her? I say that if she wishes to begin all over again, it is right that she do it."
What still bothered some critics more than anything else was that Aristotle Onassis seemed to be on the verge of becoming the public partner of a regime that does not exactly mirror the ideals of his wife's first husband. Last week Onassis interrupted the honeymoon long enough to confer for five hours with Greek Premier George Papadopoulos, the leader of the military junta, about his plans to invest up to $400 million in Greece. The Onassis investment package includes several tourist developments, an underground air terminal in Athens and an aluminum factory designed to take advantage of Greece's rich bauxite deposits. To make such an undertaking economically feasible, Onassis needs permission to import, duty-free, fuel for the factory's power plant. The Greek government is reportedly asking in return that he transfer some of his 100 ships—most of which now sail under the Liberian flag of convenience—to Greek registry.