Deborah Orr
by Deborah Orr
For those of us who need to be reassured, it was probably reassuring to see the Queen, conducting business as usual at a Commonwealth reception. She had missed a Commonwealth Day Observance service earlier in the day, and footage of Prince Philip attending the event at Westminster Abbey without his wife had been broadcast. Which must have been rather less reassuring.
For those of us who have no need of reassurance, the forensic attention and breathless speculation that has been directed at an 86-year-old woman because she is too unwell to work can seem both prurient and unnecessary. But Monday evening’s event was too important, it seems, for the excuse of an inflamed stomach to wash. The Queen signed a new charter calling for equal rights in all Commonwealth nations. Obviously, this is significant.
In some Commonwealth countries, such as Nigeria and Uganda, homosexuality is illegal. Can the Queen’s endorsement of the charter be seen as a criticism of such repression? Apparently not. A Buckingham Palace official said: “The Queen is apolitical and is signing the document in her capacity as head of the Commonwealth.”
So – signing the charter was important enough for a sick octogenarian to feel she had to turn up for it, while at the same time her own views and opinions were irrelevant, even unwelcome. It’s strange, isn’t it, this huge investment in the visible presence of an individual, but only under the condition that her individual thoughts and feelings should not be part of the package. No wonder some of us subjects have difficulty grasping the concept.
The comedian and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s News Quiz, Sandi Toksvig, for example, was criticised in some quarters for complaining of the Duchess of Cambridge: “I can’t think of a single opinion she holds – it’s very Jane Austen.” D’oh, Sandi! That’s the point. It’s precisely because the Duchess of Cambridge keeps any opinions she may have entirely to herself that she’s been welcomed so enthusiastically into the royal family. They promised to learn from the experience of bringing Diana, Princess of Wales into the firm, and the lesson has been that vivid and complex personalities are a royal PR disaster.
Being royal in contemporary Britain is all about resisting self-expression, projecting yourself as an archetype, because anything else risks being perceived and discussed as a stereotype. No one has yet explained this better than Hilary Mantel. In her now notorious London Review of Books speech, Royal Bodies, Mantel said of Diana: “Her tragedy was located in the gap between her human capacities and the demands of the superhuman role she was required to fulfil.”
I can hardly believe that I’m obliged to describe Mantel’s essay as “controversial”. But reports that the much-celebrated novelist had described the Duchess of Cambridge as “plastic” or “a shop-window mannequin” who is “at no risk of showing character” were designed to make the essay appear controversial. If it was, the essay was “controversial” in the way that it described pity for the recipients of royal attention, suggesting that the most avid royalists were the people who made the position so difficult. No wonder it was resented by such people. It was they who were being criticised, not the duchess.
In fact, all of Mantel’s supposed criticisms of the duchess were prefaced by the word “appears”. Mantel wasn’t being critical of Kate as a woman. She was being critical of the image that a woman joining the family was obliged to project and fulfil. Mantel has explained that her words were taken out of context, in order to make a “hate figure” of her. She’s right. It’s an astonishingly sad and savage indictment of the British media that an essay so wonderful, so full of wisdom, insight and beautiful writing could have been butchered and misrepresented so wickedly, when all that it contained deserved instead to be read carefully and discussed with some measure of gratitude.
Unlike Toksvig, Mantel had sympathy for the duchess. Mantel understood how strange and dehumanising her public role is likely to be in the future. She is never going to be able to defend herself, so she is never going to be able to expose herself. And ironically, of course, she will be attacked anyway, precisely because she is obliged to be so passively pleasing. To a woman such as Mantel – so fiercely curious, intellectual, creative, and driven – this must seem like a life of insidious torture. And that’s the great paradox. Those who dislike the monarchy because it embodies aristocratic privilege tend to hold their views at least in part out of resentment and envy. There are better reasons for disliking the monarchy – such as the horror of locking people in a gilded cage and denying them the most basic freedom of all, the freedom to be themselves.
the guardian
by Deborah Orr
For those of us who need to be reassured, it was probably reassuring to see the Queen, conducting business as usual at a Commonwealth reception. She had missed a Commonwealth Day Observance service earlier in the day, and footage of Prince Philip attending the event at Westminster Abbey without his wife had been broadcast. Which must have been rather less reassuring.
For those of us who have no need of reassurance, the forensic attention and breathless speculation that has been directed at an 86-year-old woman because she is too unwell to work can seem both prurient and unnecessary. But Monday evening’s event was too important, it seems, for the excuse of an inflamed stomach to wash. The Queen signed a new charter calling for equal rights in all Commonwealth nations. Obviously, this is significant.
In some Commonwealth countries, such as Nigeria and Uganda, homosexuality is illegal. Can the Queen’s endorsement of the charter be seen as a criticism of such repression? Apparently not. A Buckingham Palace official said: “The Queen is apolitical and is signing the document in her capacity as head of the Commonwealth.”
So – signing the charter was important enough for a sick octogenarian to feel she had to turn up for it, while at the same time her own views and opinions were irrelevant, even unwelcome. It’s strange, isn’t it, this huge investment in the visible presence of an individual, but only under the condition that her individual thoughts and feelings should not be part of the package. No wonder some of us subjects have difficulty grasping the concept.
The comedian and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s News Quiz, Sandi Toksvig, for example, was criticised in some quarters for complaining of the Duchess of Cambridge: “I can’t think of a single opinion she holds – it’s very Jane Austen.” D’oh, Sandi! That’s the point. It’s precisely because the Duchess of Cambridge keeps any opinions she may have entirely to herself that she’s been welcomed so enthusiastically into the royal family. They promised to learn from the experience of bringing Diana, Princess of Wales into the firm, and the lesson has been that vivid and complex personalities are a royal PR disaster.
Being royal in contemporary Britain is all about resisting self-expression, projecting yourself as an archetype, because anything else risks being perceived and discussed as a stereotype. No one has yet explained this better than Hilary Mantel. In her now notorious London Review of Books speech, Royal Bodies, Mantel said of Diana: “Her tragedy was located in the gap between her human capacities and the demands of the superhuman role she was required to fulfil.”
I can hardly believe that I’m obliged to describe Mantel’s essay as “controversial”. But reports that the much-celebrated novelist had described the Duchess of Cambridge as “plastic” or “a shop-window mannequin” who is “at no risk of showing character” were designed to make the essay appear controversial. If it was, the essay was “controversial” in the way that it described pity for the recipients of royal attention, suggesting that the most avid royalists were the people who made the position so difficult. No wonder it was resented by such people. It was they who were being criticised, not the duchess.
In fact, all of Mantel’s supposed criticisms of the duchess were prefaced by the word “appears”. Mantel wasn’t being critical of Kate as a woman. She was being critical of the image that a woman joining the family was obliged to project and fulfil. Mantel has explained that her words were taken out of context, in order to make a “hate figure” of her. She’s right. It’s an astonishingly sad and savage indictment of the British media that an essay so wonderful, so full of wisdom, insight and beautiful writing could have been butchered and misrepresented so wickedly, when all that it contained deserved instead to be read carefully and discussed with some measure of gratitude.
Unlike Toksvig, Mantel had sympathy for the duchess. Mantel understood how strange and dehumanising her public role is likely to be in the future. She is never going to be able to defend herself, so she is never going to be able to expose herself. And ironically, of course, she will be attacked anyway, precisely because she is obliged to be so passively pleasing. To a woman such as Mantel – so fiercely curious, intellectual, creative, and driven – this must seem like a life of insidious torture. And that’s the great paradox. Those who dislike the monarchy because it embodies aristocratic privilege tend to hold their views at least in part out of resentment and envy. There are better reasons for disliking the monarchy – such as the horror of locking people in a gilded cage and denying them the most basic freedom of all, the freedom to be themselves.
the guardian
