Mary Kenny
I suppose one of the most reviled stereotypes by liberal progressives is the “trad wife”. This is the figure of the woman who stays at home to care for her family, preside over the kitchen and mealtime, and manage the household.
There used to be, in Ireland long ago, popular entertainments which actually rewarded this “trad wife”, such as the crowning of the “Housewife of the Year”. This is now only revisited to blush with shame that women in the home were once treated with such condescension.
Erase
We all recall how, last year, every effort was made to erase any Constitutional references to that woman-in-the-home – although to everyone’s surprise, the public saw through the political agenda behind the proposal.
And now – who turns out to be quite a model of a “trad wife”? Step forward Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex – and of all that is Californian and cool. Her new show, “With Love, Meghan”, hits the global screens next week, and it’s focused on what the French call “les arts domestiques”: baking, cooking, flower-arranging, bee-keeping, and, quite literally, motherhood and apple pie.
Scoffed
Some commentators have scoffed at Duchess Meghan’s “pursuit of joy” in the kitchen, but surely there is a case for welcoming this trend established by the ultimate trend-setter? Meghan sees herself “taking something ordinary and elevating it”: she views cooking and baking and the pretty presentation of a shared table as something to be valued (which it is). Pleasing – even serving – family and friends and fondly embracing a spouse in a glowing domestic setting defines happiness and satisfaction.
As a young girl, Meghan wrote to a manufacturer of washing-up liquid to chastise them for assuming that only women laboured in the kitchen – and fair play to her! That’s what made her a feminist, she said.
But now she is all grown up, she has chosen to reinvent the kitchen as, indeed, a woman’s realm, where she can display her joy and refinement, almost like the “good wife” of the Old Testament, whose value is “beyond rubies”.
A film that captures the complexities
I am interested in how nuns are portrayed in films – they have gone from the angelic to the demonic over the past sixty years. But Meryl Streep gives a truly compelling portrayal of a nun in the movie Doubt, recently made available on Netflix. It was originally a play, written by John Patrick Shanley, first performed in New York in 2004.
The storyline concerns a strong-minded religious sister – Streep – who, as principal of a Bronx school in 1964, suspects that the local priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has been engaged in an abusive relationship with one of the boy pupils. But the clue is in the title, and the viewer senses it too – ‘doubt’.
The situation is complicated. The lad is the only black kid in the school and he’s being picked on by a brattish, bigger boy. Maybe the priest is only trying to be protective – even if that also means he favours this young black boy, who, it is implied, is probably gay in orientation. There’s a deeper back story with the family too – the boy’s mother doesn’t want to hear negative information from Sr Aloysius, as it means more trouble at home and a scandal could damage the child’s further education chances.
We regularly read about paedophile allegations, and even proven cases, in news media: but a drama like Doubt brings out the complexities in a specific human situation.
Meryl Streep is one of those commanding nuns who is determined to tackle what she believes to be wrong. She is certainly not intimidated by the priest’s status, and challenges him audaciously. And yet, at the end of it all, she too is afflicted by doubts. A brilliant performance, and a genuine insight into the tangled stories that often lie behind the evident facts.
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I have nothing against New Year resolutions – why not use a change in the date to self-improve? But I do notice how obsessively materialistic the suggestions are. Not materialistic in the sense of acquiring possessions – but in the sense of almost total focus on the physical body and its functions.
Aspirations for a ‘new you’ promote more exercise, less fatty, sweet or processed food, less alcohol, more striving for what is now called ‘wellness’. The notion of improving the spiritual side of life is largely absent – although occasionally, it’s said that doing some volunteering will make you ‘feel good’. ‘Feeling good’ was not exactly the purpose of serving a worthy cause, so far as I know.
The odd thing is that we are also told that younger generations are more mentally fragile than ever before; more prone to anxiety and depression; and experiencing a huge increase in diagnoses of conditions like ADHD, the attention-deficit-disorder. Perhaps a spiritual element in New Year self-improvement might help?