Ruth Madoff Research Paper

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Mark Seal published the fourth in his series of “The Madoff Chronicles” for Vanity Fair magazine this month; this time he turns his attention to the still-mysterious figure of Ruth Madoff, wife to the criminal du jour. It makes for strange reading. The question, of course, is as obvious and inescapable as it is unanswerable: what did she know and when did she know (or suspect) it? Just a week before Bernard Madoff allegedly confessed his scheme to his wife and children, Ruth Madoff withdrew $15.5 million from her own personal account. She had an office in the so-called Lipstick Building and normally came to work with her husband, a man who proudly declared that “Nothing gets by Ruth,” and reminded his friends that she used to pay all…show more content…
But through it all, one comes to a quiet sympathy for Ruth Madoff, one amplified and magnified by the stream of vitriol she has absorbed in the press. She has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, and she literally has nowhere to hide. She was a woman who applied herself dutifully and completely to the task of being a wife who could move in elite circles. She was pretty, tanned, fit. She has aged fifteen years in as many weeks. The toll must be enormous, and for a woman of her evident pride, excruciating. And she lacks the rhetorical gifts to communicate any of this to us. She has allowed her lawyer to speak on her behalf and has refused to answer any questions, save through him. His prose lacks the poetry a theater-lover might wish for. Is this why I find myself thinking of Shakespeare? You may recall the incredible character-sketch of Lady Macbeth. In the beginning, as the drama unfolds, she is not only the nursemaid to her husband’s flagging ambition; she is the engine driving its fulfillment. Her counsel is firm of purpose, almost inhumanly so. She cautions him against... compassion: These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us

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