How Martha Stewart Learned Character

Martha Stewart is a successful television personality, lifestyle guru, publisher, writer, and business executive. She is known to be very ambitious, hard-working, and creative. However, another side of her character is being insulting, demeaning, and demanding.

Martha learned many of her character traits from her parents—especially her father.

She learned that the right way to act is to be ambitious and work hard for what you want. Her father set standards of excellence that defined her character and business philosophy. However, he also set an example of being demanding and demeaning.

This lesson will answer those questions.

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Ambitious and hard-working

Martha (Kostyra) Stewart grew up in a working class neighborhood in the small town of Nutley, New Jersey.

The family’s financial struggles motivated her to seek better things in life. Her father encouraged her to excel and be ambitious and to work hard for what she wanted in life.

Her father set standards of excellence that resulted in Martha’s character traits of an endless devotion to perfection and a chronic, insatiable ambition for material success.

Sought perfection

By all accounts, Stewart’s father was a strict disciplinarian who instilled in Stewart the value of self-sufficiency as well as a domineering perfectionism.

Taught skills

Martha’s mother taught her how to cook and sew. She learned canning and preserving from her grandparents.

Martha grew to love gardening from her father, who taught her much about the subject. These skills and the love of them would be important in shaping her character and career.

Skills became hobbies

Though acquiring these skills out of necessity, Stewart later embraced her former chores as hobbies and made a living by showing others how to parlay domestic expertise into evidence of refinement and the good life.

Demanding and insulting

Some of the negative character traits of Martha Stewart were learned from her father, Eddie Kostyra, who was known for going into rages, where he demeaned and insulted others, especially members of the family.

Insulted husband

Although her husband, Andy Stewart, was responsible for getting Martha’s best-selling book Entertaining published, resulting in getting her career started, she was often insulting and demeaning to Andy. She would sometimes belittle him in front of other people, until he became so fed up that he divorced her.

Demanding to workers

Martha was also known to be demanding and insulting to her workers and those with whom she interfaced. She had been taught that this was the way to act, in order to get results as well as respect. But also, it indicated little or no concern about other’s feelings.

She learned to be ambitious and work hard for what you want. Her father set standards of excellence that defined her character and business philosophy. However, he also set an example of being demanding and demeaning.

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Study and learn

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Resources and references

Websites

Martha Stewart Business Biography

Martha Stewart – Wikipedia

Character Resources