17 September 2015
Men And Women for All Seasons
By Chin Chin
Of all the great literary figures, Dorothy L Sayers was amongst the most adaptable. Speak to an expert on Dante and he will talk about her as the great translator of “The Divine Comedy”. Talk to an educationalist and he will refer you to her great essay “The Lost Tools of Learning”. For the dramatist she is the author of “The Man Born To Be King”. Most of the rest of us think about her as a writer of detective stories and her fictional creation Lord Peter Wimsey is certainly a quite extraordinary man.
The thing about Lord Peter is not just that he represents an ideal (one of the more crackpot critics came up with the theory that Dorothy Sayers fell in love with her own creation) but that he is ideal in so many different ways. The son of the Duke, his social position is of course impeccable – as is his Oxford first in classics. Naturally he had a good war record (the books were written between the wars so it was the First World War in which he distinguished himself) and of course he was adored by the men he led. The detective ability goes without saying – these are detective stories after all – and from time to time the government uses him on diplomatic missions since he has great charm and tact.
Well, you might think that was enough for one man – but not a bit of it. He has a perfect palate and an international reputation as a wine connoisseur. He collects antique books as an expert. Musical and sensitive, he is a superb natural athlete. He has a cricketing blue. His horsemanship is impeccable and, when required, his wrists are like steel. Thank goodness he is a fictional character. Otherwise we would all feel wholly inadequate.
How did Lord Peter collect this astonishing list of accomplishments? Well, it happened gradually as his creator worked her way through the books. (And very good books they are, by the way; if you have not read “Murder Must Advertise” you have missed one of the great detective stories in the English language). Every time some new accomplishment came up, she awarded it to her hero, so he ended up with a chest full of them, rather like the medals of an African dictator. It makes you think, though. What are the accomplishments which we ought to encourage in the young?
Back in the 30s there was the country house list. That was a list the accomplishments which might be useful if you were asked as a guest for a country house weekend. It contained things like a reasonable competence on the piano, the ability to cast a fly across a river, to use a gun, to play a good game of tennis or croquet, to write half decent poetry, to ride a horse, to play bridge or chess, to eat asparagus without the butter dribbling down your chin and, of course, to make endless polite conversation.
Obviously you were not expected to do all those things; just some of them and, in any case, most people never got asked to country houses at all, but it was quite a helpful list of things outside education and work which would add an extra dimension to life.
Now we have moved on and a list prepared by those advising parents on the skills they should seek for their children would look rather different. That isn’t to say that the old list is now redundant. Many people get pleasure from the things mentioned. It is just that the focus has moved and that today’s young man would be encouraged to learn skills that are useful about the house. Actually, that is very sensible. Many a young bachelor cooks just as well as his female counterpart, and if he also learns that if you are going to sew a button onto a shirt it is better to take the shirt off first, he will avoid the embarrassment of finding himself sewn into his garments. Cooking, sewing, ironing and knitting should all be on his list and those skills will be useful later in life when he helped his partner with the housework in a sensitive non-stereotypical sort of way.
Then there are the bachelor girls. What are they to be taught? No right-minded feminist would want to see them encouraged towards a world of housekeeping. No indeed, their list should include the use of power tools, motorbike maintenance, and the important skill of changing the television channel while holding a beer in one hand and a bag of chips in the other.
Social progress demands that men are taught more about the activities previously undertaken by women and that women embrace the machismo world of men. Then the sexes will both be good at the same things and all that we will need to reach a modern Utopia is to find a way in which women can grow beards.
It is a truly beautiful prospect but across its splendour there lies a shadow. What if the different roles of men and women derive from their natural inclinations and not just from the prejudices of society? Then any re-education would, no doubt with many exceptions, move people away from the way of life to which they are best suited. That may be politically desirable but it isn’t very efficient. It may not be good for them either.
I once had a friend who owned a cat. Being strongly opposed to eating animals he became a vegan. It was logical, of course, that he should make the cat vegan too. I suppose it must have been the most politically correct cat in all of Hampstead. Unfortunately it did not thrive.
