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My mother made me
It's no business of the Government to appoint role models
Three cheers for the actress Emma Thompson. She has wisely turned down the preposterous invitation of the interfering Lady Jay, our Minister for Women, to become a role model for teenage girls. To be more precise, she made it publicly clear on Thursday, having heard rumours that such an invitation was on its way, that she refuses to be considered for this dubious privilege. Apparently Baroness "Big Sister" Jay considers it her duty to mould the minds of the nation's girlhood by appointing people like Geri "ex-Spice Girl" Halliwell to teach them - well, one hardly knows what. This kind of heavy handed New Labour dirigisme ought to be treated with the greatest contempt. Apart from being alarming, it is deeply stupid.
Role models cannot be designed or constructed. Role models cannot be appointed. And in any case, it is no business of an honest Government to try. Role models simply appear; they are conjured up out of ordinary people's admiration. They may be perfectly ordinary themselves, or at least they may seem so to those who are dazzled by wealth and fame. And they are all around us. All the great female role models of my younger years were ordinary people, and part of my ordinary life. They were no less heroic to me for that.
None of the women I greatly admired was famous. None of them had careers, though many of them took on work. None had any status, as people talk of status now. None was rich. Most of them were single, or single parents, or widows. Many of them were formidable, so that I never felt that a woman needed money or status to be truly powerful. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore did a sketch in the 1960s about an upper-class woman called Lady Beryl Strebe Grebeling, who mercilessly bullied her drippy son Sir Arthur into ambitious enterprises, including a project to teach ravens to fly under water. "A very powerful woman, my mother," said Sir Arthur glumly. "She can break a swan's wing with a blow of her nose." This had a great deal of resonance with my brothers, my sister and me. Our mother, who died last month, was wearingly resolute, especially on our behalf, so we sometimes called her Lady Beryl.
Our mother was astonishingly strong. She brought up four children, all on her own, after being widowed at 30; her youngest child was mentally handicapped. There was no darkness that frightened her, no piece of furniture she could not move, no smoking chimney she could not make draw, no obscure book she could not extract from Dorchester public library, no anxiety that overwhelmed her, no homework she could not help with, no cause of ours she could not fight. We did not dare fail. There was a little painted china dish on her dressing table. "Au coeur vaillant, rien d'impossible," it said. To the valiant heart, nothing is impossible.
My mother was not by any means the only powerful woman of my childhood. Her sister my aunt, though different, is also rather overwhelming. Her vitality makes one feel quite feeble. Ceaselessly energetic, striding across the Dorset fields, farming, bee-keeping, jam making, involved in village activities, she also, with four children, found time to do community work in London, and to set up a small scheme 20 years ago for trained volunteers to help schoolchildren with reading difficulties; it is now a nationwide scheme, and has just been given more money by the Minister for Education.
Then there was the redoubtable Mrs Stockley, who used to clean for people, including my mother. For all her menial job, she commanded instant respect; she was tall and powerful and hugely competent; I still remember the exact style with which she washed the stone floor, so quick and so precise. She also taught me how to cut the thinnest sandwiches, with the buttered loaf under her arm; she told me she had learnt it in service at 14, and her face as she spoke told me far more complex things than any glib right-on diatribe about social justice. We thought she had Gypsy blood, but in any case she had black curls and black eyes, and though her face was often sad and stern, because her husband had a terrible illness, she also loved to laugh and to tease, which not all sorrowful people can do.
Then there was Bice Crichton Miller, crippled young with painful arthritis, and an inspired, if savage history teacher - living proof that a woman's mind can be as rigorous as any man's and her physical courage just as great. Or there was Mags, a student teacher in London's East End and our holiday nanny, beautiful and warm, tough and funny, galloping with us all round the county and scandalising us with stories of her romances with members of the Household Cavalry.
Or there was another aunt, in sharp contrast to most of the women in my life - gentle, tactful, tolerant and glamorous, the only woman I knew when growing up who painted her nails. And there were formidable women everywhere I went, in shops, in schools, on farms, and just across the road, some kind and some very unkind, but almost all capable and uncomplaining.
As powerful female role models go, I don't think that Geri Halliwell is quite in the same league as any of these.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, November 15, 1998
