A woman without character? Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images
Just over a decade ago, the late novelist Hilary Mantel delivered a lecture to an event at the London Review of Books and triggered national outrage. In the course of a talk on “Royal Bodies”, which ranged widely across royal women from Anne Boleyn to Marie Antoinette and Princess Diana, she had made what many perceived as disparaging remarks about Kate Middleton, then the Duchess of Cambridge. The Duchess, she said, appeared to have been “designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished”. Indeed, Mantel said, Kate “seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character”.
At this, the newspapers were soon in uproar. The prime minister David Cameron called the comments “completely misguided and completely wrong” and the Labour leader Ed Miliband agreed they were “pretty offensive”. Mantel doggedly refused to back down, saying that her remarks had been twisted out of context, and that she was in fact writing with sympathy about the perceptions that are forcefully projected on to royal women, the cage in which they are held to be goggled at. That was true, but also perhaps not the entire truth, for there was still a perceptible trace of authorial vinegar in the portrait: which of us would be happy to learn, even in sympathy, that we were held at low risk for “the emergence of character”?
Royals are public as well as private figures, of course, and authors are free to hang intellectual ideas on them to try out, as designers do with clothes. Yet while much of the lecture was sharply perceptive, I didn’t agree with the portrait of Kate. That word “selected” had rendered her passive, when in fact her behaviour thus far had suggested both an active intelligence and an unusual degree of self-discipline. The context of her entry into “The Firm” was different from that of other royal brides. Unlike Diana, who had barely emerged from the fractured chrysalis of her troubled aristocratic family when she first met the much older, more worldly Prince Charles, Kate was a contemporary of Prince William’s at the University of St Andrews. Her family background, which appeared warm and supportive, was comfortably middle-class. She seemed generally cheerful and unruffled, even when the press was at the barbed peak of its “Waity Katie” hysteria, trying to goad Prince William into a proposal or abandonment.
After the wedding, in her approach to royal duties, she clearly took the role she had inherited with marriage seriously. The royal whose attitude her own most resembled was the late Queen Elizabeth II, who had long understood the essential nature of the job: to turn up to public events looking the part, intuit precisely what was needed — gravitas, fun, consolation or reassurance — and deliver it while keeping one’s personal emotions on the back burner. This is what a monarchy demands, and the ability to act as an impeccable interpreter of the public mood, year after year, is a particular and testing art. A few have a natural aptitude for it, but most of us do not, and would quickly find its scrutiny and restrictions intolerable.
Grace under consistent pressure is an admirable quality. Were a ballet dancer to execute a string of flawless performances, or a pilot to conduct numerous flights without incident, it would not be deemed evidence of an absence of character: quite the opposite. Yet in Kate — especially for those who increasingly conduct their lives online — serene self-possession seems to drive a proportion of onlookers insane: what lurks behind it, what dark secret is waiting to destroy it, how best might it be disrupted? The uncomfortable truth is that what many people deeply crave in a young and beautiful royal wife and mother is not competence, but crack-up.
The increasingly bizarre treatment of Kate, or the idea of Kate, is connected to the most dominant phenomenon of our age: a cultural prioritising of drama over duty. The supply of drama has spilled beyond the confines of the novel, theatre, cinema or television to become a commodity on which our public figures are judged. When Mantel spoke of Kate’s apparent absence of emerging “character” she was assessing her primarily through the hungry eyes of a novelist. In books, central female characters often generate dramatic tension by chafing against their circumstances, by the intensifying dazzle of their discontents, something that Kate refused to transmit. In contrast, Mantel described Diana as a “carrier of myth”: Diana, publicly trapped in the disappointments of her marriage, certainly carried more plot twists than any author had a right to expect. Unfortunately for her, the final one was her shockingly premature death.
Set against this artistic conception of “character” — distinctive qualities or flaws that, one way or another, deliver drama — is the societal judgement “of good character”, meaning someone who is broadly reliable and respected in relation to their behaviour to others. In recent years the electorate, in line with Neil Postman’s warning in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, has proved increasingly ready to select the former over the latter, even to the marked detriment of our civic health. The former prime minister Boris Johnson instinctively understood it as his job not to deliver the detail of workable policy, but to satisfy the public’s appetite for story: “People live by narrative,” he once told UnHerd’s Tom McTague. In the US, Donald Trump — that relentless generator of low mockery and high fury — is now running for a second term as president, after his first one ended in his supporters storming the Capitol building.
Men are often permitted to survive the frantic generation of drama: it is everyone around them who suffers. Yet women — in art and life — have a greater tendency to be destroyed by it. There is no strutting female equivalent of the male “hellraiser”, but rather a woman who, soaked in the crocodile tears of the tabloids, is tragically “causing concern” among friends. Art and its audiences have always relished the restless struggle and disintegration of female characters who are, or become, unmoored from the harbour of marriage and children. Flaubert’s Emma Bovary — her imagination inflamed by reading novels — is bored with her marriage and disenchanted with motherhood; she seeks solace in affairs and excessive spending, the consequences of which hasten her suicide. Zola’s Nana, a courtesan who ruthlessly captivates Parisian society, has her beguiling face eaten away by smallpox. Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse, immolated on their blazing talent, are hung posthumously high in the musical hall of fame, next to Sylvia Plath in the poetry section and Marilyn Monroe in cinema.
In Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight, a middle-aged English woman called Sasha Jansen, mourning an unhappy marriage and a dead child, finds herself in Paris, a vulnerable drifter seeking solace from stray men. Rhys herself, who died at 88 after a precarious but surprisingly long life, had much in common with her literary creations. As the writer and editor Diana Athill crisply put it: “Jean was absolutely incapable of living, life was just hopelessly beyond her. When she was young, she floated from man to man in a hopeless way… by the time she was old, she floated from kind woman to kind woman.”
In Rhys’s latter years — hard-drinking, irascible and impoverished — Athill and a small group of female friends formed what they called “The Jean Rhys Committee” which met regularly to ask “what should we do next?”. Rhys’s claim to such loyalty, I suppose, was the weight of her literary talent, her ability to exert an odd kind of fascination, and the fortunate soft-heartedness of her friends. The dramatic collided with the dutiful, and was kept alive by it.
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SubscribeI’m not a watcher of royalty and I don’t know if the author’s analysis of Kate is accurate, but this was certainly a very well-written essay. And I was even introduced to a new author whose work seems worth investigating: Jean Rhys.
How anyone could think Kate has no character is beyond me. She seems to have the character, as Jenny says, we always used to admire: duty, Stoicism, hard work, determination, good sense, familial love etc.
I worry that her only mistake so far was to take the Covid ‘vaccines’.
Why would that have been a mistake? What a peculiar comment.
Many medical experts and researchers have found evidence of the ‘vaccines’ causing turbo cancers. As well as cardio and many other problems.
Sounds like you’re trying to hang waaaay too much on way too little.
If the covid vaccine wasn’t much of a vaccine, and yeah, it probably wasn’t, it’s probably no worse than having been injected with a saline solution.
Demetrius is watching MSNBC.
Saline solution doesn’t kill healthy young adults with myocarditis and blood clots the size of eels.
Get yourself informed Alison! Mallen Baker on his Dangerously Reasonable video (for one) has destroyed the supposed evidence for young people dying in droves as a result of covid vaccines. In fact in quite a few of the cases reported the victims hadn’t even BEEN vaccinated! Ah, but some young people died playing sports (as they had always done – I knew one decades ago) after the introduction of a new covid vaccine. Therefore the latter obviously caused the former!. This is like the most primitive form of religion.
It is truly sad to see supposedly intelligent people indulging in this garbage. I remember when vaccines were weren’t remotely controversial. Myocarditis, which is not usually fatal was openly reported. Where are the millions dying from these terrible vaccines? I’ve taken them at every opportunity and I’m still here to tell the tale. It’s an anecdote but as good as the “evidence” that you are basing your views on.
You could almost believe that this is a conspiracy theory to empower the progressive left – by making anybody raising concerns about lockdowns or the excesses of progressive politics seem complete nutters! Some on the anti-liberal right seem to be all too keen to oblige this impression.
The mRNA ‘vaccines’ were not vaccines. The CDC and FDA had to change the definition and they were even described as gene therapy by their designers and manufacturers.
And don’t forget those many people who claimed the ‘vaccines’ were safe and them being alive proved it; and then died. Good luck.
‘ I’ve taken them at every opportunity and I’m still here to tell the tale.’
Same here. Never even caught a whiff of Covid let alone anything worse. And due to the wilful obstinacy of the anti vaxxers, an increasing number of children have not been given MMR vaccines, and so measles has again reared its head.
The longer you call the COVID vaccine a vaccine, the more there will be opponents of vaccinating children by MMR. You yourself breed them with your lies. People don’t trust liars.
The photo of two Nobel Prize winners for the COVID vaccine congratulating each other wearing COVID masks is a perfect illustration of the absurdity that we are asked to consider a norm.
In the good old days, physicians tested vaccines on themselves. Many of them died. They died for us. Not long ago, the inventor of a medicine for stomach ulcers inoculated himself with the causative agent of a stomach ulcer, fell ill and had difficulty recovering; the first medicines were not the most effective. Barry Marshall did this just 40 years ago and now we’re seeing this crap
.
static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/10/Nobel-Medicine-Prize.gif
It is sad how many people are still refusing to even consider the considerable evidence of huge numbers of adverse events. Let alone that we have considerable excess deaths. Why?
“Hard work”? Are you nuts? The lazy madam wouldn’t know a hard day’s work if it came up and introduced itself. “Grasping”, “calculating” and “entitled” is more like it.
This is Kate not Meghan.
There’s very little difference, frankly. “Kate” is slightly more subtle.
You would not be Megan, by any chance? Obviously a synonym name and the bile seems strongly familiar
An envious woman is a rather unpleasant sight
As is an envious man.
Envy is not gender specific.
I’m sorry, but I think, you are wrong, envy is more typical in women, their success in life too often depends on genetically determined sexual attractiveness, and they are much more concerned with issues of equality (all my children should be equally loved, right?)
It is more important for men to know their place in the hierarchy and emotionally they are more dumb for to feel envy. Just don’t call me a misogynist, I’m still in love with my wife, over the many years of our life she has never heard a single offensive word from me. As a result, by default I treat women well, which, however, does not prevent me from seeing their relative shortcomings.
We men have many more shortcomings, believe me. If the man is envy, this is the end of the world.
As a programmer, I determined for myself a long time ago that we are only an alpha versions and women decide who deserve the release.
I’m asking for forgivness, but I think so
Do you know her? Are you an acquaintance or family member? That’s the only way you could possibly be able to comment on her in such precise terms. Or maybe you get all your opinions from the garbage on social media, and are one of the drama queens who revel in all the recent intrigue.
Since I don’t know her, I remain neutral. I don’t think of her in the glowing terms that other commenters have referred to her – but I will remain neutral unless or until such time the evidence is available to change my mind.
kids, this is an elegant essay on the nature of character and so much more, and you’ve turned two-thirds of the comment section into a flame war about covid vaccines
Never could be doing with Hilary Mantel.
“Men are often permitted to survive the frantic generation of drama: it is everyone around them who suffers”
I was tempted into thinking just this when reading Tennyson’s Ulysses the other night. Penelope as a victim of the hero’s selfish wanderlust. But then I recalled to mind her epithets in the Odyssey itself – περίφρων, wise or sage, ἐχέφρων, discreet, and πινυτή, prudent Penelope. With deference to the literary examples listed in this article – this is how I would conceive of the Princess of Wales’s ‘character’ in the shrewd and sober way she has entered into the perilous game of the Hollow Crown. She weaves and unweaves her web, keeping the baying mob of gossips guessing.
“There is no strutting female equivalent of the male “hellraiser”
Correct, because this is not a female type. A female ‘hellraiser’ would quickly be overpowered by the men she had wronged. One thinks of Euripides Medea immediately, of Jezebel, of Wilde’s Salome, even of Catherine in the Taming of the Shrew.
There are numerous recgonised types available to men and women both, which inevitably correspond to their respective parts in the negotiation of the sexed disproportion in physical strength and burdens of parenthood. The ‘War of Love’ is a very ancient metaphor in the Western Canon, because it holds truth. And consideration might show that in fact very few men are forgiven the Byronic spirit in life – and let us not forget a large part of it’s redemption lies in early death. As it’s first exemplar Achilles showed for all time. This is the type of literary complexity that feeds the soul.
In the English female tradition there are Titanias & Rosalinds, The Wife of Bath and the female heroines of the Faerie Queene – Amaretta and Acrasia in particular. In foreign tongues one immediately recalls the numerous vivid examples in Boccacio and, of course, Clorinda in Tasso. But all these classic characters, if they are to endure and inspire, must engage with and negotiate the fundamental physical differences which are innate to men and women. When they don’t they become ephemeral and absurd. Like our comic book ‘heroines’ of today.
How beautifully put Sir, you’ve quite taken the “wind out of my sails”. Thank you.
The fundamental principle at work here is that the loudest voices are assumed to represent the opinions of most people. Such is the fallacy of using the internet megaphone as source material. I suspect the “Silent Majority” is alive and well out there, and deeply admires and respects the quality of character the Princess not only embodies, but projects.
You are right, and I have read a poll recently, can’t remember where but it was one of the mainstream newspapers (not tabloid), showing that the majority of British people think nothing of the editing of family photos to show everyone to best advantage, and think the Palace gave out enough information about the princess’s health and the royals have to right to privacy in such matters. The hysteria was confined to the usual suspects.
Why has WILLIAM AMOS’S splendid post been removed?
As at 13.25 GMT.
RESTORED @ about 17.30th, thus stifling debate for 4 hours!
Why? Too erudite for UH perhaps?
Not a good report.
Cause ” the world has gone bad today.. day’s night today..and anything goes”!
You are a funny fella, but is your day consumed by being in UH comments sections?
I think you mean UH not IH?
However as a fully paid up member of the “Waiting for Death Cohort”*I do have sometime on my hands, as you observe.
(*WFDC.)
Lol! I like your sense of humour.
I’ve not quite reached WFDC status yet, but I hope when I get there I’ll retain my sense of humour when all else is f****d.
It’s funny how a novelist can have so little insight into herself.
No one who thinks wearing a see-through dress to catch a man is a decent thing to do is “irreproachable”.
Anyone who thinks that is all she did to catch William is bonkers, or doesnt undersrand relationships. But again, are you channelling Meghan?
I’ve no time for the gold-digging little madam in Montecito, either. Both brothers seemed to have married similar types.
Why do we talk of women catching men/ Kate catching William? Is William a fish? Sorry, am too working class to understand all this. The generous dose of royal news recently somewhat made me realise that the British obsession with the royal family is deeply intertwined with the British obsession with class. But what do I know? Would rather be ignorant me and have a happier life. Gladly exchange a happy life with less knowledge of gossip on other families. XO
Because it seems that this was a deliberate ploy dreamed up by the mother to “catch” William. Kate went along with it, which also implies a certain spinelessness that, if she didn’t want to do it, she didn’t tell her mother.
All of which begs the question: why are you so obviously obsessed with her? As KH commented regarding “less knowledge of gossip”, it’s something that appears to be making you unhappy.
For my part, i’d observe that William could easily have done a lot worse for himself and there would’ve been no end of females looking to occupy the position of future queen consort.
Perhaps “Amelia” wanted William for herself…
QED! Well done Sir!
No thanks. I like my men with a backbone, and an independence of thought.
Who cares?
I’m sure that most of us in our youth were guilty of our own fashion disasters, whether it was to attract a male or just simply because we could. It brings to mind the awful tarty lurex and animal print garments I wore in the 1970s for clubbing, along with the huge clumpy platform shoes….. ah, happy days sadly long gone.
Mantel was a plain fat woman dissing a poised and slender one with really nothing to skewer. She djdnt label her other queens in that way. Awful.
Didnt.
I think your criticism of Hillary Mantel might have been better couched in terms of what she’
had said and done rather than her looks!
It makes me laugh when feminists talk about sisterhood, when do often women make catty, bitchy and plain nasty comments many women make about others!
Anyway Anna, we now presumably have your permission to ignore absolutely everything you say on every subject and demand a picture of you instead and form a judgment of you on that basis.
Agree with all except that it’s not true that the majority of online posters indulged in this ugly conjecture. It was a tiny but very loud and persistent minority. And while I’m here, I’m tired of this lazy caricature being applied to all social media users.
The person does not understand the definition of character.