There were tensions in the relationship between young Alice and her stepmother, who had known her husband's previous wife and made it clear that she regarded her predecessor as a beautiful, but insipid, childlike fool.
Edith once angrily told her that if Alice Hathaway Lee had lived, she would have bored Theodore to death.

Alice, frequently spoiled with gifts, matured into young womanhood, and became known as a great beauty like her mother.
However, continuing tension with her stepmother and prolonged separation and limited attention from her father created a young woman who was as independent and outgoing as she was self-confident and calculating.
When her father was Governor of New York, he and his wife proposed that Alice attend a conservative school for girls in New York City.
Pulling out all the stops, Alice wrote, "If you send me I will humiliate you.
I will do something that will shame you.
I tell you I will."

In later years, Alice expressed admiration for her stepmother's sense of humor and stated that they had shared similar literary tastes.
In her autobiography Crowded Hours, Alice wrote of Edith Carow, "That I was the child of another marriage was a simple fact and made a situation that had to be coped with, and Mother coped with it with a fairness and charm and intelligence which she has to a greater degree than almost any one else I know."
There were tensions in the relationship between young Alice and her stepmother, who had known her husband's previous wife and made it clear that she regarded her predecessor as a beautiful, but insipid, childlike fool. Edith once angrily told her that if Alice Hathaway Lee had lived, she would have bored Theodore to death.
Alice, frequently spoiled with gifts, matured into young womanhood, and became known as a great beauty like her mother. However, continuing tension with her stepmother and prolonged separation and limited attention from her father created a young woman who was as independent and outgoing as she was self-confident and calculating. When her father was Governor of New York, he and his wife proposed that Alice attend a conservative school for girls in New York City. Pulling out all the stops, Alice wrote, "If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will."
In later years, Alice expressed admiration for her stepmother's sense of humor and stated that they had shared similar literary tastes. In her autobiography Crowded Hours, Alice wrote of Edith Carow, "That I was the child of another marriage was a simple fact and made a situation that had to be coped with, and Mother coped with it with a fairness and charm and intelligence which she has to a greater degree than almost any one else I know."
Alice Roosevelt Longworth