IS
DIANA'S REPUTATION NOW AT THE MERCY OF TIME?
The British are fickle about the reputations of
great women. Take Nell Gwynne: she was the inspiration
behind Charles II founding the Chelsea Hospital, but we
only remember her as his mistress. And what of Diana? Amanda
Foreman asks whether, in 25 years' time it will be the
hemlines rather than the humanitarian causes that we remember,
the love affairs rather than the lifelong altruism.
The evil that men do lives after them.
Mark Antony observes in Julius Caesar, "The good is
oft interred with their bones." Women should be so lucky.
Few enjoy any posthumous reputation at all and even when
they do it is often a travesty. Death seems to have become
the last bastion of male chauvinism. It may seem unimaginable
now, while the media still feels a little guilty about its
role in Diana's life, but her reputation faces a bleak future.
By 2025, it will be virtually unrecognisable to the generation
who knew her when she was alive. Her legacy, if she has one
at all, will be a rampant commercialism surrounding her name
and image. The woman herself will have long vanished.
Time is cruel to women. The worst thing a woman can do,
it seems, is to grow old. In life, it renders her invisible;
in death it sends her to oblivion (unless, of course, she
happens to die in her prime, as both Marilyn Monroe and Diana
did). Even today, women remain the silent partners in history.
When they do appear on stage, they rarely have speaking parts,
except as queen or mistress. It is no wonder that much of
women's history is about reclamation. For the past three
decades, historians have been rescuing once-famous women
from the dust heap. Recent rehabilitations include the playwright
and spy Apha Behn, the linguist and adventurer Lady Jane
Digby, and Mary Carpenter, the 19th-century founder of Britain's
industrial schools. In fact, so many fascinating figures
have emerged that the claim to have rediscovered yet another
lost reputation is fast becoming a cliché. Critics
groan every time they hear of another "brilliant" woman
who "defied convention" to become a cultural/social/academic
leader. They may have a point about the prevailing sense
of déjà vu in women's history, but the work
still needs to be done if society is to take the contribution
of one half as seriously as it takes the other.
I didn`t know that I would be doing my own bit for women's
rehabilitation when I began to research the life of Georgiana,
Duchess of Devonshire. But the first thing I discovered was
that the intelligence and the cultured voice in her letters
bore no resemblance to the oft-repeated description of her
as an "aristocratic super-tramp".
Georgiana's erasure from history was typical. Women don't
completely disappear they are just trivialised out of existence.
Even today, it is an easy matter to remove women from the
historical canon, much harder to reinsert them. Rosalind
Franklin, one of the three scientists who traced the structure
of DNA, has a better chance of rehabilitation than most.
Her death at the age of 38 was untimely and her erstwhile
colleague J. D. Watson rather downplayed her contribution
in his memoirs. But in 1968, 10 years after her death, the
first of many articles began to appear which questioned Watson's
account. Rosalind Franklin currently inhabits the nebulous
realm of "historical controversies", which is where
she will remain until historians reach a consensus about
her significance.
For the moment, Diana also inhabits this realm. It is far
too soon to judge her legacy. Until all the papers of the
present Windsors enter the public domain in perhaps 50 years'
time or more judgements about her life and character will
be no more than educated guesses. Of course, that won't stop
people trying to make judgements. Nor will it protect the
real Diana from being analysed out of all recognition. By
2025, there will be many competing versions, most of which
will have been tailored to suit the prejudices of the 21st
century.
The revision of Diana could go two ways. If Britain in 2025
is an insignificant region within a European superstate,
the image of Diana may become a symbol which reminds people
of their British identity. Like the Romanovs today, her life
will become imbued with nostalgia and romance. She will be
adored and revered as an icon of a lost Britain. On the other
hand, if Britain has become a republic, with a dour, egalitarian
attitude towards its past, Diana might symbolise the bad
old days of privilege and a parasitic aristocracy. The name
Diana will have the kind of negative resonance which was
once so firmly attached to Marie Antoinette. It will become
newspaper shorthand for upper-class self-indulgence. Either
way, she will not resemble the Diana of our generation.
The danger, meanwhile, lies in the very real likelihood
of Diana's reputation being hijacked by the entertainment
industry. Her immediate legacy is not going to be the resurgence
of community charity not an advance in women's rights, but
a Diana industry which peddles a mixture of royalty, glamour
and mystery. It will not be dissimilar to the other industries
that have grown around Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Jackie
Onassis. The mix of show-business, politics and untimely
death has proven to be a goldmine for anyone willing to exploit
it. Conspiracy theorists are still making money out of Marilyn's
suicide. There is every reason to expect that Diana will
provide several decades-worth of material of her own, particularly
since Mohamed Al Fayed seems determined to spend his vast
wealth keeping the conspiracy stories alive.
Exploitation followed by appropriation is a nasty prospect.
Nobody approves of the ideal, and yet Diana will not, by
any means, be the last woman to lose her reputation to casual
misogyny. There have been great gains in equality before
the law and in the workplace, but the afterlife belongs to
old-fashioned prejudice. Men enjoy the same status afforded
to paintings death can make their value soar. But women are
like cars their reputations depreciate the moment they are
no longer on display. Two generations on, and the achievements
of an actress, a fashion designer or a poet have often shrunk
to a footnote. A hundred years later, and their best hope
of rediscovery is a PhD thesis.
Diana may have to wait a long time
indeed.
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