A discussion on Twitter inspired me to write a companion piece to Dustin Lovell’s wonderful article on the modern portrayal of women in media.
In modern media, there tends to be an obsession with ‘strong female characters.’ That’s fair enough, but these characters tend not to be rather one-dimensional. They’re typically badass- they can wield weapons, wear combat boots, are master shots, can take down men thrice their size, prefer machine guns to manicures and are generally ‘cool.’ If they have to wear nice clothes and heels for an assignment, then they’ll complain about it. They’re not like other girls. They’re one of the guys. They’ll be a love interest, but only after a badass action scene.
Apparently, liking girly things makes a woman boring or uncool. In A Cinderella Story, football player Austin is fascinated that the girl he likes enjoys eating fast food. She’s not like those other girls who like going to the mall and waving poms-poms.
Historically, women were portrayed as weak-willed damsels in distress. That’s not the complete story, as we’ve seen great characters like Elizabeth Bennett written years ago, but it was a general consensus. Instead of making women more nuanced, writers have gone to the other extreme. They’re either whiny or super perfect. There’s no inbetween.
I’ve decided to share ten fictional women who are actually well-written. Not all of them are heroic, some are a bit awful, but they’re nuanced. They’re all strong women who aren’t stereotypical badasses.
*Minor spoilers ahead*
Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind (Portrayed by Vivien Leigh in the film)
The first line of the epic Margaret Mitchell novel tells us that Scarlett O’Hara isn’t particularly beautiful, but her charm makes men forget that. We first meet Scarlett at the tender age of 16 on the eve of the American Civil War. She’s spoiled, headstrong and popular with the boys. Over the course of the book- which spans over a decade- she grows from a silly teenager to a shrewd businesswoman. Scarlett suffers a lot of heartbreak and setbacks, both during and after the war, but grows from it.
That’s not to say Scarlett is an inherently heroic person. Despite her character growth, she remains somewhat cold, uncaring and selfish. Her vices are not totally numerous, but her virtues do not overcome them either. She is balanced. She does good and does bad. Scarlett’s loyalty to her family, in spite of issues, and home, is unmatched. She does what she has to do in order to survive a post-Civil War age. In some ways, she is a deconstruction of the Southern Belle stereotype. She embodies it before pushing it away when it becomes necessary to survive.
Vivien Leigh plays her wonderfully in the hit film. Despite the film clocking in at three and a half hours, it still does not give us the full picture that the 1000+ page book gives us. Scarlett O’Hara and her love story with Rhett Butler is famous in culture. Flawed but fierce, Scarlett O’Hara is a multidimensional character. Well done Margaret Mitchell, well done.
Elle Woods, Legally Blonde (portrayed by Reese Witherspoon)
Blondes are stereotyped as fun-loving but dim. Elle Woods may be fun-loving, but she’s far from dim. When her boyfriend dumps her (‘I need a Jackie, not a Marilyn’), sorority queen Elle Woods decides to get him back. She does this by applying to, and getting into, Harvard Law. Nobody expects anything from her.
Elle Woods is a great fictional woman simply because she’s essentially the opposite of the ‘strong female lead’ that we expect. Firstly, Elle is not a physical combatant. Her talents lay in her brain. Secondly, she’s super girly. Elle loves pink, shopping, her dog, parties and manicures. Usually, female characters who subscribe to that lifestyle are the mean cheerleaders or the like. Instead, we get a character who’s like a lot of women.
Her getting into Harvard isn’t all that unrealistic. She has a 4.0 GPA, near perfect LSAT, great recommendations and a host of extracurriculars. Elle doesn’t get in because she’s the protagonist, she gets in because she would in real life. On top of that, Elle is genuinely kind and nice. Whilst the other girls at Harvard treat her cruelly, Elle is nothing but nice. She also befriends the beautician Paulette and motivates her. Another great thing about this film is Elle’s sorority. They help her study for her LSAT and are there for her no matter what, despite not understanding her.
Elle shows that kindness and femininity are nothing to be ashamed of. Being a girl is great.
Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs (portrayed by Jodie Foster in the original film)
Often, female characters are written as overly-perfect with a range of unbelievable skills. Clarice Starling is a perfect example of a competent character who is not overblown. We’re introduced to Clarice when she’s about to graduate from the FBI Academy. It’s immediately made clear to the viewer that she’s an excellent student, but not unrealistically so. She’s intelligent, athletic and clearly has the aptitude.
Clarice’s humanity is what makes her so compelling. She’s disgusted by the evil that is shown to her and shows great compassion. Like many protagonists, Clarice has undergone trauma. Writers have a tendency to make their characters victims of trauma pain in that their lives have been awful. Clarice is clearly still affected by said trauma, but realistically ignores it until it’s forced out into the open. She’s vulnerable. It’s normal.
Clarice is also fundamentally a good person. She wants to fight monsters and do so without compromising her morals. She’s also willing to seek help when it comes to the case because she knows it’s needed to save lives. Her relationship with Hannibal Lecter is one of revulsion and respect. Clarice knows he’s evil, but that he’s the lesser of two evils. Morality is hard, but she believes in it.
Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Hannibal Lecter is seen as one of the best pieces of acting in recent years, but Jodie Foster still holds her own. They both rightly received an Oscar for their performances. Clarice is played in other media by Julianne Moore and Rebecca Breeds.
Margaery Tyrell, Game of Thrones (portrayed by Natalie Dormer in the series)
Game of Thrones generally suffers from a ‘not like other girls’ affliction. Arya Stark calls other girls ‘stupid.’ Talisa Maegyr disparages the other noble girls who enjoy balls and pretty dresses. That being said, there are some great women in the series. Margaery Tyrell is one such woman. We first meet Margaery when she’s just married Renly, a gay man- something that she’s perfectly aware of. It doesn’t bother her, because she’s got greater ambitions.
Margaery’s greatest asset is her emotional and social intelligence. She’s quickly able to integrate herself in any situation and is one of the few who doesn’t find herself out of depth in King’s Landing. Margaery is aware that her beauty and femininity can open doors for and she uses that. Despite this, she’s not absolutely perfect and does find herself outfoxed more than once.
Whilst a lot of her kindness is essentially PR, Margaery is capable of being very genuine. She is devoted to her family, especially her grandmother Olenna and brother Loras. Margaery also does show compassion towards Sansa Stark, who at that point is living in utter hell.
Princess Leia, Star Wars (portrayed by Carrie Fisher)
It would be remiss of me not to mention Leia Organa when talking about well-written women. She’s been a popular character ever since she debuted in 1977 and remains beloved to this day. We meet the young princess when she’s been held captive but it’s not long before we realise she’d made of sterner stuff. From the moment she’s rescued by Luke, Leia takes charge.
Whilst Leia is a dab hand with a blaster, she’s more at home behind the scenes. She’s the strategist and the brains. She was the one who hid the plans in a robot so that the Empire couldn’t get them. Leia may not be the traditional fighter in the hand-to-hand combat and shooting type, but she’s not exactly passive.
Sometimes she’s flawed. Leia can be abrasive, overly passionate and sharp. She’s also lost loved ones and her home, so of course she’s going to do anything in order to defeat the Empire. Leia is also brave, loyal and ready to match wits with Han Solo. She survives torture and never gives anything away.
Vivien Lyra Blair portrays Leia in the Star Wars show ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi.’
Amy Dunne, Gone Girl (portrayed by Rosamund Pike in the film)
Not every good character is the hero of their story and if anyone deserves praise for being a bit of a villain, it’s Amy Dunne. On the outside, Amy Dunne has a perfect life. She’s beautiful, wealthy, Ivy-League educated and seemingly happily married. Then one day, she vanishes. It seems that her husband has killed her. It’s not quite that simple.
Amy is compelling because she is very, very ahead of the curve. She knows how to make things look a certain way and what people will think. Amy is cold and manipulative, yet hides behind that sunny All-American demeanor. She has some legitimate grievances, but she’s also done some terrible things. Amy also does stumble sometimes, but she’s a legitimately intelligent sociopath.
I don’t want to spoil the story beyond Amy’s character. That being said, Rosamund Pike not getting the Oscar was a sin. There’s something about that way she plays Amy that makes her very sinister and unnerving. As a villain, she’s not super unrealistic. There are no powers or anything. Amy uses her mind. You’re more likely to meet her than Bloefeld or the Joker.
Addison Montgomery Shepherd, Grey’s Anatomy (portrayed by Kate Walsh)
If there was a prize for entrances in a TV show, Addison Montgomery Shepherd would certainly be up for it. She turns up at the end of Series One and is revealed to be Derek Shepherd’s wife. Meredith Grey, the protagonist, had been seeing him but had no clue he was married. The season ends there and one imagines you’ll feel hatred for Addison, but you could not be more wrong.
Addison proves to be a classy woman who treats Meredith well. She also owns up to the fact that it was her that really broke the marriage, though it had probably been doomed for a while. Addison is extremely intelligent, being a world-class double board-certified surgeon in OB/GYN and maternal-fetal medicine. She shows huge amounts of compassion to the women and babies she helps. Addison also becomes close friends with many of the other characters. She becomes good friends with Callie despite the pair being rather opposite.
Of course, Addison is deeply screwed up in her own way. She’s from money (her family is LOADED) but her parents weren’t the best role models. She’s excellent at what she does but is arrogant and not the best communicator. Addison’s popularity allowed her to head the six-series spin-off ‘Private Practice.’ She’s also made several appearances back on GA after officially leaving in Series 3.
Æthelflæd, The Last Kingdom (portrayed by Milly Brady in the series)
We’re slightly cheating here because Æthelflæd is based on a real person, but we’re counting her because it’s not like it’s an exact match. Æthelflæd is only a child when we first meet her, but it’s not long before she’s a grown woman. She proves to be more than a match for her famous father, showing herself to be intelligent, spirited and wise.
When her husband died in real life, Æthelflæd was named Lady of the Mercians. Women in leadership roles were extremely rare at this time, so people must have thought very highly of Æthelflæd to allow her such an honour. In the show, it’s clear why. She’s devoted to her adopted land, protects the people and gives good counsel. Æthelflæd also isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.
She scores great victories but also suffers defeat. Her love for her family, especially her daughter, and her people is unwavering. Æthelflæd is sometimes naive, but she knows how to learn a lesson and grow from it.
Jody Mills, Supernatural (Portrayed by Kim Rhodes)
Supernatural ran for a long fifteen series and it was often criticised for its treatment of female characters. One woman who received wide praise and frequent billing was Jody Mills. We first meet Sheriff Jody Mills in series five. She’s a policewoman in a small town and she immediately shows off her credentials when she assists the protagonists with their supernatural foes. Jody proves an important ally to the Winchesters as a recurring character.
Fundamentally, Jody is capable. She’s excellent with a firearm, has a cool head and thinks logically. Whilst she prefers human cases, she’s always a good person to call. Jody has seen a lot of tragedy in her personal life but breaks out of the cycle by helping those in need. Her home is open to orphans and runaways and strays in need of security. Jody is a great friend and pseudo-mom.
You’ll always see Jody in social situations and she’s got a knack for forming friendships that the leads don’t. There’s also a maternal aspect that isn’t mocked or laughed at. That capacity for kindness is what makes Jody who she is, whether she’s in uniform or at home.
Ellen Ripley, Alien (portrayed by Sigourney Weaver)
How could we leave out sci-fi’s greatest heroine? Ellen Ripley burst onto (if you’ll pardon the pun) our screens in 1979 in Alien. Since then, the character has remained a perennial favourite and is widely regarded as one of the coolest women on screen. In the first film of the series, Ripley is part of the crew of the Nostromo, a spaceship which answers a distress signal. If you haven’t already guessed, what’s calling is not human. Ripley is already level headed as a crewmate but really shows herself off when things go bump in the night.
There’s a reason why Ripley is so popular. Not only is she competent, but she keeps a cool head and works with the situation. She may seem cold, but her pragmatism really helps save her life. Ripley is what you expect of an action heroine- not particularly feminine, surrounded by guys, yet she’s written with more depth. Aliens expands her role- she’s more prepared to take on the enemies this time. Her relationship with young survivor Newt is heartwarming. She just fundamentally wants to help.
Ripley was written as a man, but was flipped to a woman in production. Is that why she’s well-written, because she was not imagined as a woman at first? I’d argue that the character would still be cool as a man, but Weaver’s portrayal gave Ripley that extra depth. She’s one of the guys, but not in that cringe, women-hating way. She’s Ellen Ripley.
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Immaturity as Slavery
“… but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a world of secondhand, childish banalities.” – Sir Alec Guinness, A Positively Final Appearance.
The opening quote comes from a part of Alec Guinness’ 1999 autobiography which greatly amuses me. The actor of Obi Wan Kenobi is confronted by a twelve-year-old boy in San Francisco, who tells him of his obsessive love for Star Wars. Guinness asks if he could do the favour of “promising to never see Star Wars again?”. The lad cries, and his indignant mother drags him away. Guinness ends with the above thought. He hopes the boy is weaned from Star Wars before adulthood, lest he become a pitiful specimen.
Here enters the figure of the twenty-first century man-child, alias the “kidult”. He’s been on the radar for a while. Social critic Neil Postman prophesies the coming of “adult-children” in The Disappearance of Childhood from 1982. American journalist Joseph Epstein calls this same creature “The Perpetual Adolescent” in a 2004 article of the same name. But the best summary of this character I’ve yet found is by the writer Jacopo Bernardini, from 2014, to which I can add but little.
The kidult is one who lives his life as an eternal present. As the name suggests, his life is a sort of permanent adolescence. He is sceptical of traditional definitions of adulthood, so has deliberately shunned milestones like marriage and childbearing, in favour of an unattached lifestyle which lasts indefinitely. His relations with other people remain short and shallow; based entirely on fun and mutual use (close friendships or passionate love-affairs are not for him).
Most importantly, the kidult doesn’t change his tastes or buying habits with age. The thresholds of adolescence and maturity have no bearing on the things he likes and purchases, nor how he relates to these things. Not only does he like the same toys and cartoons at thirty as he did at ten, but he continues to obsess over them and impulsively buy them like when he was ten. Enjoying childhood fare isn’t a playful interlude, but a way of life which never ends. He consumes through instant gratification, paying no thought to any long-term pattern or goal.
Although it must not strike the reader as obvious, I think there exists a link between Guinness’ “secondhand, childish banalities” and a kind of latter-day slavery. To see the link needs some prep work, but once laid, I think the reader will see my point.
First to define servility. I believe the conservative writer Hilaire Belloc gave the best definition, and I shall freely paraphrase him. The great mass of people can be restricted yet not servile. Both monopolistic capitalism and socialism reduce workers to dependency, but neither makes them entirely slaves. Under capitalism, society retains an ideal of freedom, enshrined in law. Even as monopolists manipulate the law with their money, the ideal remains. Under socialism, state ownership is supposed to give all citizens leisure to do what they want (even as the state strangles them). In either case then, freedom is present as an ideal in theory even as it ceases to exist in practice. Monopolistic and socialist states don’t think of themselves as unfree.
Slavery is different. A slave society has relinquished even the pretence of freedom for a large mass of the working people. Servility exists when a great multitude are forced to work while having no productive property, and no economic independence. That is, a servile person owns nothing (or effectively nothing) and has no choice whatsoever over how much he works or for whom he works. Most ancient civilisations, like Egypt, Greece, and Rome were servile, with servility existing as a defined legal category. That some men were owned by others was as enshrined by law as the ownership of land or cattle.
Let’s put a little Aristotle into the mix. There are two kinds of obedience: from a free subject to a ruler, and from an unfree slave to his master. These are often confused but distinct. For while the former is reasonable, the latter involves no reason and is truly blind.
True authority is neither persuasion nor force. If an officer argues to a soldier why he should obey, then the two are equals, and there’s no chain of command. But if the officer must hold a gun to the man’s head and threaten to execute him lest he do his duty, this isn’t authority either. The soldier obeys because he’s terrified, but not because he respects his superior as a superior. True authority lies in the trust which a subordinate has for the wisdom and expertise of a superior. This only comes if he’s rational enough to understand the nature of what he’s a part of, what it does, and that some people with knowhow must organise it to work properly. A sailor understands he’s on a ship. He understands that a ship has so many complex functions that no one man could know or do them all. He understands that his captain is a wiser and more experienced fellow than he. So, he trusts the captain’s authority and obeys his orders.
I sketch this Aristotelian view of authority because it lets us criticise servility without assuming a liberal social contract idea. What defines slavery isn’t that the slave hasn’t chosen his master. Nor that the slave doesn’t get to argue about his orders. A slave’s duty just is the arbitrary will of his master. He doesn’t have to trust his master’s wisdom, because he doesn’t have to understand anything to be a slave. That is, while a soldier must rationally grasp what the army is, and a citizen must rationally grasp what society is, a slave is mentally passive.
Now, to Belloc’s prophecy concerning the fate of the west. The struggle between ownership and labour, between monopoly capitalism and socialism, which existed in his day, he thought would result in the re-institution of slavery. This would happen through convergence of interests. The state will take an ever-larger role in protecting workers through a safety net, that they don’t starve when unemployed. It will nationalise key industries, it will tax the rich and redistribute the wealth through welfare. But monopolies will still dominate the private sector.
Effectively, this is slavery. For the worker is protected when unemployed but has entirely lost the ability to choose his employer, or even control his own life. To give an illustration of what this looks like in practice: there are post-industrial towns in Britain where the entire population is either on welfare or employed by a handful of giant corporations (small business having ceased to exist). To borrow from Theodore Dalrymple, the state controls everything about these people, from the house they inhabit to the school they attend. It gives them pocket-money to spend into the private sector dominated by monopolies, and if they want to work, they can only work for monopolists. They fear neither starvation nor a cold night, but they have entirely lost their freedom.
This long preamble has been to show how freedom is swapped for safety in economic terms. But I think there’s more to it. First, the safety may not be economic but emotional. Second, the person willing to enter this swindle must be of a peculiar mindset. He must not know even a glimmer of true independence, lest he fight for it. A dispossessed farmer, for example, who remembers his crops and livestock will fight to regain them. But a man born into a slum, and knowing only wage labour, will crave mere safety from unemployment. Those who don’t know autonomy don’t long for it.
There now exist a troop of companies that market childish goods for adult consumption. They typically do this in one of two ways. First, offering childish products to adults under the guise of nostalgia. The adult is encouraged to buy things reminding him of his childhood, with the promise that he will relive it. Childish media and products are given an adult spin, and remarketed. Toys are rebranded as collectibles. Children’s films get unnecessary, adult-oriented, sequels or remakes (what Bernardini calls “kidult movies”). Originally child-friendly festivals or theme parks are increasingly marketed to childless adults.
The second way is by infantilising adult products. Adverts, for example, have gradually replaced stereotypical busy office workers and exhausted housewives with frolicking kidults. No matter how trivial, every product that is not related to Christmas, is now surrounded by giddy, family-free people engaged in play. The message we’re meant to get is that the vacuum cleaner or stapler will free us to act like children. By buying these things, we can create time for the true business of life: bouncing and smiling with one’s mouth open.
I believe infantilism to be a kind of mental slavery. In both the above examples, three elements combine: ignorance and mass media channel anxiety into childishness. This childishness then binds the victim in servitude to masters who take away his freedom while robbing him in the literal sense.
An artificial ignorance created by modern education is the first parent of the man-child. Absent a proper and classical education, the kidult’s mind is an empty page. Lack of general knowledge separates him from the great achievements of civilisation. He cannot seek refuge in Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, or Dante, for he has never heard of these. He cannot draw strength from philosophy and religion for the same reason. Neither can he learn lessons from history, for the world begins only with his own birth. Here is a type of mental dispossession parallel to an economic one. Someone utterly ignorant of the answers great people have given to life’s questions will seek only safety, not wisdom.
The second parent is anxiety. Humans have always been terrified of the inevitable decay of their own bodies, followed by death. The wish for immortality is ancient. Yet the modern world, with its scepticism, creates a heightened anxiousness. When all authority and tradition has been deconstructed, there is no ideal for how people ought to live. Without this ideal, humans have no certainty about the future. Medieval people knew that whatever happened, knights fought, villeins worked, and churchmen prayed. Modern man’s world is literally whatever people make of it. It may be utterly transformed in a very short time. And this is anxiety-inducing to all but the most sheltered of philosophers.
Add to this the rise of a selfish culture. As Christopher Lasch tells us, the nineteenth century still carried (in a bastardised way) the ideal of self-sufficiency and virtue of the ancient man. Working and trading was still tied to one’s flourishing in society. Since 1960, as family and community have disintegrated, the industrialised world has degenerated into a Hobbesian “war of all against all”. A world of loneliness without parents and siblings; lacking true friends and lovers. When adulthood has become toxic and means to swim in a sea of disfunction, vulgarity, substance abuse and pornographic sexuality; it’s no surprise some may snap and long for a regression to childhood.
Mass media is the third condition. It floods the void where education and community used to be. The space where general knowledge isn’t, now gets stamped by fiction, corporate advertising, and state propaganda. These peddle in a mass of cliches, stereotypes, and recycled tropes.
My critique of kidults isn’t founded on “good old days” nostalgia, itself a product of media cliches. Fashions, customs, and culture change; and the citizen of today doesn’t have to be a joyless salaryman or housewife to count as an adult. Rather, the man-child phenomenon is a massive transfer of power away from the small and towards the large. The kidult is like an addict, hooked on feelings of cosy fun and nostalgia which are only provided by corporations. These feelings aren’t directed to the good of the kidult but the organisation acting as a dealer. The dealer controls the strength and frequency of the dose to get the wanted behaviour from the addict.
Now we see how kidults can be slaves. First, they’ve traded freedom for safety (false as it is) like Belloc’s proletarians made servile. Unlike the security of a traditional slave, this is an emotional illusion. The man-child believes that there’s safety in the stream of childish images offered to him. He believes that by consuming these the pain of life will cease. Yet man-children get no material or mental benefit from their infantilism. Indeed, they’re fast parted from their money, while getting no skills or virtues in return. The security is merely psychological: a Freudian age regression, but artificially created.
Second, while authority in Aristotle’s sense means to swap another’s judgement for your own, for the sake of a common good you understand; here you submit to another’s judgement for the sake of their private good, which you don’t understand. Organisations seeking only profit or power impose their ideas on the kidult, for their benefit. An immature adult pursues only pleasure, lives only for the present, and thinks only in frivolous stereotypes and cliches implanted during childhood. He’s thus in no position to understand the inner workings of companies and governments. He follows his passions like a sentient puppet obeying an invisible thread, leading always to a hand just out of sight.
In the poem London, William Blake talks about “mind-forg’d manacles”. These are the beliefs people have which constrain their lives in an invisible prison of sorts. For what we think possible or impossible guides our acting. Once mind-forg’d manacles are common to enough people, they form a culture (what’s a culture if not collective ideas on how one should act?). Secondhand childish banalities are such mind-forg’d manacles if we let them determine us wholly. Their “secondhand” nature means the forging has been done for us, and this makes them more insidious than ideas of our own creation. For if what I’ve said above is true, they threaten to make us servile. If enough people become dependent on secondhand childish banalities, as the boy who met Alec Guinness, then the whole culture becomes servile. Growing up may be painful, but it’s a duty to ourselves, that we remain free.
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The Decline of Public Intellectualism (Magazine Excerpt)
POC are just like you and me. Sure, there are technical, mostly visual, differences between us. However, considered in the grand scheme of things, such differences are quite trivial.
Far from a weakness, this diversity is a strength; we all play a role in moving our democracy forward, and ensuring the public realm remains a lively and vibrant place. Of course, by POC, I am referring to People of Commentary.
POC are everywhere. Turn on the television and you’ll be greeted by POC. Scroll through any social media feed, and without much effort, you’ll find posts made by POC. Walk through the middle of London, and soon enough, you’ll sight chattering congregations of POC.
Given the apparent omnipresence of POC, one eventually begins to ask: where did they come from? Were there this many POC in Britain 50 years ago? Yes, I know I’m pushing my luck.
In all serious consideration, the voice of commentators, self-described or not, for better or for worse, constitutes a large chunk of public, especially political, discussion in Britain.
Conversely, and it would seem simultaneously, we have witnessed a rapid decline of public intellectualism over consecutive decades. Indeed, the noted absence of intellectuals from public life is underscored when most people struggle to define what an intellectual actually is.
Many are inclined to believe that the British are, by their very essence, an anti-intellectual people. Distrustful of abstraction, they very much prefer a hodgepodge philosophy of empirical observation and sainted “Common Sense” – both of which, especially the latter, intellectuals supposedly and infamously disregard.
An immediate glance at ongoing matters would support this position. Despite the fundamental disagreements constituting the “Gender Wars”, it is clear that both sides consider Britain, thankfully or regrettably, uniquely resistant to transgenderism. In my view, this can be traced to our Anglo-Saxon forbearers, who gradually removed the notion of gendered words in our language besides the ones which speak to the empirical (that is, biological-anatomical) distinction between men and women.
All this said, empiricism isn’t exactly synonymous with “anti-intellectualism”, just as the names Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, George Berkeley, or Edmund Burke rarely come to mind when discussing “anti-intellectuals”. We can safely assume that intellectuals primarily deal in ideas, but we can’t safely assume said ideas are purely rationalistic and abstract.
Herein lies the distinction: there’s a difference between contemporary “anti-intellectualism”, which has contributed to the explosive ascendancy of POCs, and the “anti-intellectualism” which is distinctly “intellectual” in nature – pertaining to the limits, rather than uselessness, of intellectualism-as-abstraction. As such, we should consider post-war anti-intellectualism as a degeneration of a healthier and more measured position.
Without placing too much weight on the origins of Britain’s post-war anti-intellectualism, I would argue that such a precise attitude be attributed to the popularity of the ideas of George Orwell, as conveyed by cultural osmosis, rather than extensive reading; specifically, his preoccupation with ‘Ordinary People’ and the ways in which they are different to the class of ‘Intellectuals’ whom Orwell sought to disassociate himself.
This is an excerpt from “Ides”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.
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Charles’ Personal Rule: A Stable or Tyrannised England?
Within discussions of England’s political history, the most famous moments are known and widely discussed – the Magna Carta of 1215, and the Cromwell Protectorate of the 1650s spring immediately to mind. However, the renewal of an almost-mediaeval style of monarchical absolutism, in the 1630s, has proven both overlooked and underappreciated as a period of historical interest. Indeed, Charles I’s rule without Parliament has faced an identity crisis amongst more recent historians – was it a period of stability or tyranny for the English people?
If we are to consider the Personal Rule as a period in enough depth, the years leading up to the dissolution of Charles’ Third Parliament (in 1629) must first be understood. Succeeding his father James I in 1625, Charles’ personal style and vision of monarchy would prove to be incompatible with the expectations of his Parliaments. Having enjoyed a strained but respectful relationship with James, MPs would come to question Charles’ authority and choice of advisors in the coming years. Indeed, it was Charles’ stubborn adherence to the Divine Right of King’s doctrine, writing once that “Princes are not bound to give account of their actions but to God alone”, that meant that he believed compromise to be defeat, and any pushback against him to be a sign of disloyalty.
Constitutional tensions between King and Parliament proved the most contentious of all issues, especially regarding the King’s role in taxation. At war with Spain between 1625 – 1630 (and having just dissolved the 1626 Parliament), Charles was lacking in funds. Thus, he turned to non-parliamentary forms of revenue, notably the Forced Loan (1627) – declaring a ‘national emergency’, Charles demanded that his subjects all make a gift of money to the Crown. Whilst theoretically optional, those who refused to pay were often imprisoned; a notable example would be the Five Knights’ Case, in which five knights were imprisoned for refusing to pay (with the court ruling in Charles’ favour). This would eventually culminate in Charles’ signing of the Petition of Right (1628), which protected the people from non-Parliamentary taxation, as well as other controversial powers that Charles chose to exercise, such as arrest without charge, martial law, and the billeting of troops.
The role played by George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, was also another major factor that contributed to Charles’ eventual dissolution of Parliaments in 1629. Having dominated the court of Charles’ father, Buckingham came to enjoy a similar level of unrivalled influence over Charles as his de facto Foreign Minister. It was, however, in his position as Lord High Admiral, that he further worsened Charles’ already-negative view of Parliament. Responsible for both major foreign policy disasters of Charles’ early reign (Cadiz in 1625, and La Rochelle in 1627, both of which achieved nothing and killed 5 to 10,000 men), he was deemed by the MP Edward Coke to be “the cause of all our miseries”. The duke’s influence over Charles’ religious views also proved highly controversial – at a time when anti-Calvinism was rising, with critics such as Richard Montague and his pamphlets, Buckingham encouraged the King to continue his support of the leading anti-Calvinist of the time, William Laud, at the York House Conference in 1626.
Heavily dependent on the counsel of Villiers until his assassination in 1628, it was in fact, Parliament’s threat to impeach the Duke, that encouraged Charles to agree to the Petition of Right. Fundamentally, Buckingham’s poor decision-making, in the end, meant serious criticism from MPs, and a King who believed this criticism to be Parliament overstepping the mark and questioning his choice of personnel.
Fundamentally by 1629, Charles viewed Parliament as a method of restricting his God-given powers, one that had attacked his decisions, provided him with essentially no subsidies, and forced him to accept the Petition of Right. Writing years later in 1635, the King claimed that he would do “anything to avoid having another Parliament”. Amongst historians, the significance of this final dissolution is fiercely debated: some, such as Angela Anderson, don’t see the move as unusual; there were 7 years for example, between two of James’ Parliaments, 1614 and 1621 – at this point in English history, “Parliaments were not an essential part of daily government”. On the other hand, figures like Jonathan Scott viewed the principle of governing without Parliament officially as new – indeed, the decision was made official by a royal proclamation.
Now free of Parliamentary constraints, the first major issue Charles faced was his lack of funds. Lacking the usual taxation method and in desperate need of upgrading the English navy, the King revived ancient taxes and levies, the most notable being Ship Money. Originally a tax levied on coastal towns during wartime (to fund the building of fleets), Charles extended it to inland counties in 1635 and made it an annual tax in 1636. This inclusion of inland towns was construed as a new tax without parliamentary authorisation. For the nobility, Charles revived the Forest Laws (demanding landowners produce the deeds to their lands), as well as fines for breaching building regulations.
The public response to these new fiscal expedients was one of broad annoyance, but general compliance. Indeed, between 1634 and 1638, 90% of the expected Ship Money revenue was collected, providing the King with over £1m in annual revenue by 1637. Despite this, the Earl of Warwick questioned its legality, and the clerical leadership referred to all of Charles’ tactics as “cruel, unjust and tyrannical taxes upon his subjects”.However, the most notable case of opposition to Ship Money was the John Hampden case in 1637. A gentleman who refused to pay, Hampden argued that England wasn’t at war and that Ship Money writs gave subjects seven months to pay, enough time for Charles to call a new Parliament. Despite the Crown winning the case, it inspired greater widespread opposition to Ship Money, such as the 1639-40 ‘tax revolt’, involving non-cooperation from both citizens and tax officials. Opposing this view, however, stands Sharpe, who claimed that “before 1637, there is little evidence at least, that its [Ship Money’s] legality was widely questioned, and some suggestion that it was becoming more accepted”.
In terms of his religious views, both personally and his wider visions for the country, Charles had been an open supporter of Arminianism from as early as the mid-1620s – a movement within Protestantism that staunchly rejected the Calvinist teaching of predestination. As a result, the sweeping changes to English worship and Church government that the Personal Rule would oversee were unsurprisingly extremely controversial amongst his Calvinist subjects, in all areas of the kingdom. In considering Charles’ religious aims and their consequences, we must focus on the impact of one man, in particular, William Laud. Having given a sermon at the opening of Charles’ first Parliament in 1625, Laud spent the next near-decade climbing the ranks of the ecclesiastical ladder; he was made Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1626, of London in 1629, and eventually Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Now 60 years old, Laud was unwilling to compromise any of his planned reforms to the Church.
The overarching theme of Laudian reforms was ‘the Beauty of Holiness’, which had the aim of making churches beautiful and almost lavish places of worship (Calvinist churches, by contrast, were mostly plain, to not detract from worship). This was achieved through the restoration of stained-glass windows, statues, and carvings. Additionally, railings were added around altars, and priests began wearing vestments and bowing at the name of Jesus. However, the most controversial change to the church interior proved to be the communion table, which was moved from the middle of the room to by the wall at the East end, which was “seen to be utterly offensive by most English Protestants as, along with Laudian ceremonialism generally, it represented a substantial step towards Catholicism. The whole programme was seen as a popish plot”.
Under Laud, the power and influence wielded by the Church also increased significantly – a clear example would be the fact that Church courts were granted greater autonomy. Additionally, Church leaders became evermore present as ministers and officials within Charles’ government, with the Bishop of London, William Juxon, appointed as Lord Treasurer and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1636. Additionally, despite already having the full backing of the Crown, Laud was not one to accept dissent or criticism and, although the severity of his actions has been exaggerated by recent historians, they can be identified as being ruthless at times. The clearest example would be the torture and imprisonment of his most vocal critics in 1637: the religious radicals William Prynne, Henry Burton and John Bastwick.
However successful Laudian reforms may have been in England (and that statement is very much debatable), Laud’s attempt to enforce uniformity on the Church of Scotland in the latter half of the 1630s would see the emergence of a united Scottish opposition against Charles, and eventually armed conflict with the King, in the form of the Bishops’ Wars (1639 and 1640). This road to war was sparked by Charles’ introduction of a new Prayer Book in 1637, aimed at making English and Scottish religious practices more similar – this would prove beyond disastrous. Riots broke out across Edinburgh, the most notable being in St Giles’ Cathedral (where the bishop had to protect himself by pointing loaded pistols at the furious congregation. This displeasure culminated in the National Covenant in 1638 – a declaration of allegiance which bound together Scottish nationalism with the Calvinist faith.
Attempting to draw conclusions about Laudian religious reforms very many hinges on the fact that, in terms of his and Charles’ objectives, they very much overhauled the Calvinist systems of worship, the role of priests, and Church government, and the physical appearance of churches. The response from the public, however, ranging from silent resentment to full-scale war, displays how damaging these reforms were to Charles’ relationship with his subjects – coupled with the influence wielded by his wife Henrietta Maria, public fears about Catholicism very much damaged Charles’ image, and meant religion during the Personal Rule was arguably the most intense issue of the period. In judging Laud in the modern-day, the historical debate has been split: certain historians focus on his radical uprooting of the established system, with Patrick Collinson suggesting the Archbishop to have been “the greatest calamity ever visited upon by the Church of England”, whereas others view Laud and Charles as pursuing the entirely reasonable, a more orderly and uniform church.
Much like how the Personal Rule’s religious direction was very much defined by one individual, so was its political one, by Thomas Wentworth, later known as the Earl of Strafford. Serving as the Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1632 to 1640, he set out with the aims of ‘civilising’ the Irish population, increasing revenue for the Crown, and challenging Irish titles to land – all under the umbrella term of ‘Thorough’, which aspired to concentrate power, crackdown on oppositions figures, and essentially preserve the absolutist nature of Charles’ rule during the 1630s.
Regarding Wentworth’s aims toward Irish Catholics, Ian Gentles’ 2007 work The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms argues the friendships Wentworth maintained with Laud and also with John Bramhall, the Bishop of Derry, “were a sign of his determination to Protestantize and Anglicize Ireland”.Devoted to a Catholic crackdown as soon as he reached the shores, Wentworth would subsequently refuse to recognise the legitimacy of Catholic officeholders in 1634, and managed to reduce Catholic representation in Ireland’s Parliament, by a third between 1634 and 1640 – this, at a time where Catholics made up 90% of the country’s population. An even clearer indication of Wentworth’s hostility to Catholicism was his aggressive policy of land confiscation. Challenging Catholic property rights in Galway, Kilkenny and other counties, Wentworth would bully juries into returning a King-favourable verdict, and even those Catholics who were granted their land back (albeit only three-quarters), were now required to make regular payments to the Crown. Wentworth’s enforcing of Charles’ religious priorities was further evidenced by his reaction to those in Ireland who signed the National Covenant. The accused were hauled before the Court of Castle Chamber (Ireland’s equivalent to the Star Chamber) and forced to renounce ‘their abominable Covenant’ as ‘seditious and traitorous’.
Seemingly in keeping with figures from the Personal Rule, Wentworth was notably tyrannical in his governing style. Sir Piers Crosby and Lord Esmonde were convicted by the Court of Castle Chamber for libel for accusing Wentworth of being involved in the death of Esmond’s relative, and Lord Valentina was sentenced to death for “mutiny” – in fact, he’d merely insulted the Earl.
In considering Wentworth as a political figure, it is very easy to view him as merely another tyrannical brute, carrying out the orders of his King. Indeed, his time as Charles’ personal advisor (1639 onwards) certainly supports this view: he once told Charles that he was “loose and absolved from all rules of government” and was quick to advocate war with the Scots. However, Wentworth also saw great successes during his time in Ireland; he raised Crown revenue substantially by taking back Church lands and purged the Irish Sea of pirates. Fundamentally, by the time of his execution in May 1641, Wentworth possessed a reputation amongst Parliamentarians very much like that of the Duke of Buckingham; both men came to wield tremendous influence over Charles, as well as great offices and positions.
In the areas considered thus far, it appears opposition to the Personal Rule to have been a rare occurrence, especially in any organised or effective form. Indeed, Durston claims the decade of the 1630s to have seen “few overt signs of domestic conflict or crisis”, viewing the period as altogether stable and prosperous. However, whilst certainly limited, the small amount of resistance can be viewed as representing a far more widespread feeling of resentment amongst the English populace. Whilst many actions received little pushback from the masses, the gentry, much of whom were becoming increasingly disaffected with the Personal Rule’s direction, gathered in opposition. Most notably, John Pym, the Earl of Warwick, and other figures, collaborated with the Scots to launch a dissident propaganda campaign criticising the King, as well as encouraging local opposition (which saw some success, such as the mobilisation of the Yorkshire militia). Charles’ effective use of the Star Chamber, however, ensured opponents were swiftly dealt with, usually those who presented vocal opposition to royal decisions.
The historiographical debate surrounding the Personal Rule, and the Caroline Era more broadly, was and continues to be dominated by Whig historians, who view Charles as foolish, malicious, and power-hungry, and his rule without Parliament as destabilising, tyrannical and a threat to the people of England. A key proponent of this view is S.R. Gardiner who, believing the King to have been ‘duplicitous and delusional’, coined an alternative term to ‘Personal Rule’ – the Eleven Years’ Tyranny. This position has survived into the latter half of the 20th Century, with Charles having been labelled by Barry Coward as “the most incompetent monarch of England since Henry VI”, and by Ronald Hutton, as “the worst king we have had since the Middle Ages”.
Recent decades have seen, however, the attempted rehabilitation of Charles’ image by Revisionist historians, the most well-known, as well as most controversial, being Kevin Sharpe. Responsible for the landmark study of the period, The Personal Rule of Charles I, published in 1992, Sharpe came to be Charles’ most staunch modern defender. In his view, the 1630s, far from a period of tyrannical oppression and public rebellion, were a decade of “peace and reformation”. During Charles’ time as an absolute monarch, his lack of Parliamentary limits and regulations allowed him to achieve a great deal: Ship Money saw the Navy’s numbers strengthened, Laudian reforms mean a more ordered and regulated national church, and Wentworth dramatically raised Irish revenue for the Crown – all this, and much more, without any real organised or overt opposition figures or movements.
Understandably, the Sharpian view has received significant pushback, primarily for taking an overly optimistic view and selectively mentioning the Personal Rule’s positives. Encapsulating this criticism, David Smith wrote in 1998 that Sharpe’s “massively researched and beautifully sustained panorama of England during the 1630s … almost certainly underestimates the level of latent tension that existed by the end of the decade”.This has been built on by figures like Esther Cope: “while few explicitly challenged the government of Charles I on constitutional grounds, a greater number had experiences that made them anxious about the security of their heritage”.
It is worth noting however that, a year before his death in 2011, Sharpe came to consider the views of his fellow historians, acknowledging Charles’ lack of political understanding to have endangered the monarchy, and that, more seriously by the end of the 1630s, the Personal Rule was indeed facing mounting and undeniable criticism, from both Charles’ court and the public.
Sharpe’s unpopular perspective has been built upon by other historians, such as Mark Kishlansky. Publishing Charles I: An Abbreviated Life in 2014, Kishlansky viewed parliamentarian propaganda of the 1640s, as well as a consistent smear from historians over the centuries as having resulted in Charles being viewed “as an idiot at best and a tyrant at worst”, labelling him as “the most despised monarch in Britain’s historical memory”. Charles however, faced no real preparation for the throne – it was always his older brother Henry that was the heir apparent. Additionally, once King, Charles’ Parliaments were stubborn and uncooperative – by refusing to provide him with the necessary funding, for example, they forced Charles to enact the Forced Loan. Kishlansky does, however, concede the damage caused by Charles’ unmoving belief in the Divine Right of Kings: “he banked too heavily on the sheer force of majesty”.
Charles’ personality, ideology and early life fundamentally meant an icy relationship with Parliament, which grew into mutual distrust and the eventual dissolution. Fundamentally, the period of Personal Rule remains a highly debated topic within academic circles, with the recent arrival of Revisionism posing a challenge to the long-established negative view of the Caroline Era. Whether or not the King’s financial, religious, and political actions were met with a discontented populace or outright opposition, it remains the case that the identity crisis facing the period, that between tyranny or stability remains yet to be conclusively put to rest.
