{"id":3733,"date":"2012-09-18T13:50:40","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T18:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=3733"},"modified":"2012-09-18T13:53:27","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T18:53:27","slug":"the-lesson-for-me-of-princess-dianas-death-essay-by-james-tighe-from-tlv-164","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-lesson-for-me-of-princess-dianas-death-essay-by-james-tighe-from-tlv-164\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Lesson (for me) of Princess Diana’s Death” (essay by James Tighe, from TLV #164)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"I recently read a short story by the Englishwoman, A.S. Byatt, who is a household name in Britain. Byatt wrote the novel Possession<\/em> on which the movie of the same name, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, is based. I liked the movie, not so much the short story.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The story depicts a woman beyond middle-age who visits a beauty salon several times over the course of a few months. While having her hair done she listens to her male hairdresser talk about his personal life, and contemplates, in the mirror, her own physical \u201cdisintegration.\u201d At one point the hairdresser hands the protagonist, Susannah, off to a young female apprentice who finishes up the session. Susannah hates the results, goes berserk, wrecks the beauty parlor, and walks out. Back home, her husband enters the house (there has been no mention of a husband and now we learn from the narrator he treats his wife thoughtlessly) and tells her he loves her new hair style, saying she looks twenty years younger. End of story. (Note: A synopsis usually does a disservice to any story.)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Like I said, the story didn\u2019t do much for me. But later it occurred to me that women might identify with the story in ways that I didn\u2019t. As it happens, Byatt is wildly popular with women readers in England. The fact I don\u2019t like a story has nothing to do with it being \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad.\u201d Our response to any work of art is subjective. It\u2019s natural that women readers respond to work by women in ways that men don\u2019t, and vice versa. Different strokes for different folks. Not that we all can\u2019t get lost in a great book no matter who wrote it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no longer news that women in the art world, as in other walks of life, were relegated to second-class citizenship in years gone by. In the 30s and 40s when (male) writers were being lionized by the public and the press as they never would again, American literature began and ended with Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Yet a contemporary of theirs, Jean Rhys, born in the British Caribbean, wrote stories and novels every bit the equal of Hemingway\u2019s, in my opinion. (I admit I\u2019ve never been a big Hemingway fan.) Yet how many people have heard of Jean Rhys?<\/span><\/p>\n

Movies by and large are still a male bastion. Mainstream movies for the most part today are being produced, written, and directed by men.\u00a0 As a result most of the major roles end up in the laps of male actors. It\u2019s an often repeated axiom in Hollywood that when an actress turns forty, she\u2019s done.\u00a0 Although this is less true today than in the past. Down through the years great actresses routinely took back seats to male actors. As did writers like Jean Rhys to their contemporary male writers. Although in films there were exceptions: Garbo, Bette Davis, Kate Hepburn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take for example, On the Waterfront<\/em> (1954). We all know Brando was Brando in that great movie. For my money Eva Marie Saint\u2019s performance was equal to Brando\u2019s, granted her character had less screen time than did his. In their dramatic scenes together, Eva Marie Saint goes toe to toe with Brando and doesn\u2019t blink.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Same thing with Piper Laurie in The Hustler<\/em> (1961). Cast in another one of those thankless girlfriend\/wife roles actresses have been putting up with for decades, her great performance added immeasurably to that \u201cPaul Newman movie.\u201d She was Newman\u2019s equal throughout the film.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donna Reed received an Oscar for her supporting role in From Here to Eternity<\/em> (1953), which was a travesty because Deborah Kerr played a much more complex role in the movie as the jilted wife of an army captain. A humiliated, vulnerable Kerr takes up with the Burt Lancaster character and plays her part with as much sophistication and dignity as could be imbued in any troubled woman under the circumstances. A totally overlooked performance. <\/span><\/p>\n

The list goes on. Susan Tyrrell\u2019s performance as a bar hag in John Huston\u2019s Fat City<\/em> (1971). Teresa Wright going toe to toe with the great Bette Davis in The Little Foxes<\/em> (1941). Simone Signoret in Room at the Top<\/em> (1958). Fanny Ardant\u2019s poignant portrayal of Maria Callas in Zefferelli\u2019s Forever Callas<\/em> (2002).\u00a0 Melora Walters portrayal of a cocaine junky in Magnolia<\/em> (1999). Charlotte Gainsbourg in The City of Your Final Destination<\/em> (2009). All Oscar-worthy performances. Yet none of these women, like Brando and Newman, were, or have been, given the chance to become household names.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the all-time virtuoso performances was turned in by the British actress Maggie Smith in a little known HBO film, My House in Umbria<\/em> (2003). Yet down through the years all we hear about from England are the \u201csirs,\u201d John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, etc. Although it should be said they won their reputations in the theater. Maggie Smith is every bit their equal as a film actor and has been for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that women continue to be underrepresented in positions of prominence in society was brought home to me when Diana, Princess of Wales<\/span><\/strong>, died. The reaction to her death hit me like a thunderbolt. I had no idea she was held in such esteem, especially by the world\u2019s women. As I watched the television coverage it dawned on me that because there is such a dearth of role models for women on the world stage, when someone as charismatic as Diana comes along, women out of sheer necessity identified with her in droves. In contrast, public role models for men are everywhere: Athletes, billionaire business-types, rock stars, politicians. . .\u00a0 In terms of numbers there\u2019s no comparison. Diana\u2019s death and the worldwide reaction to it woke me up to this fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the early 1960s when Jean Rhys was dying of alcoholism, poverty, and despair, she was awarded a prestigious literary prize for her classic novel, Wide Sargasso Sea<\/em>. With the prize came some money. When notified of the award, she said, \u201cIt came too late.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read a short story by the Englishwoman, A.S. Byatt, who is a household name in Britain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[920,921,97,83,918,917,919],"class_list":["post-3733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","tag-a-s-byatt","tag-byatt","tag-film","tag-james-tighe","tag-jean-rhys","tag-princess-diana","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}