Mantel’s icy attack on Kate Middleton is surprising – and also unwarranted
HILARY Mantel might not need any help in the novel-writing department, but she sure could use a lesson in sisterhood. In case you missed it, the writer has rounded on poor, pregnant Kate Middleton, summoning her impressive critical faculties to entirely dismantle the young royal's appearance and personality, or lack of it.
In a lecture delivered at the British Museum, the two-time Booker Prize winner dismissed the Duchess of Cambridge as a personality-free “shop window mannequin” with a “plastic smile”.
Kate, she said, had gone from being a “jointed doll on which certain rags are hung” to a woman whose “only point and purpose” was to give birth.
Minute details of Kate's physical appearance were icily dissected: Kate “appeared to have been designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished”.
Cor blimey. You'd have to wonder what Kate did to so raise the hackles of the leading lady of English letters. Maybe she used a copy of ‘Wolf Hall' as a doorstopper, or ‘Bring Up the Bodies' to shield the royal bump from prying paparazzi?
Whatever sparked it, Mantel's callous dismissal of Kate is as surprising as it is unwarranted, coming as it does from a woman who knows only too well how uncomfortable it is to be the focus of an intense gaze on your physical flaws.
Mantel has written at length about her own body ‘issues': she gained a large amount of weight in her 30s as a result of illness and medication. In her memoir, she wrote: “One of my favourite grim sports, since I became a published writer and had people to interview me, has been to wait and see how the profiler will turn me out in print. With what adjective will they characterise the startlingly round woman on whose sofa they are lolling? “Applecheeked” is the sweetest. “Maternal” made me smile: well, almost.”
That's right, Hilary, it isn't really funny when people pick over your appearance in public like that, is it?
The other thing about Mantel's criticism is how ridiculous it is. Pointing out that Kate appears to be dull is like pointing out that water appears to be wet. Kate is the future queen of England; and so long as she wants to retain that position, she had better watch her Ps and Qs.
I don't suppose riotous behaviour is really welcomed around the dining tables of Buckingham Palace or Sandringham, at least when the senior royals are knocking about around.
But who's to say Kate's not an outrageous barrel of laughs when she gets together with her mates, or with little sister Pippa? It's unlikely those two spend all day discussing how best to arrange canapes, but if the Middletons have managed to convince us that that's the type of thing they're interested in, well, that's one excellent PR job.
Worst of all was Mantel's lament that Kate lacked Princess Diana's authenticity: “She (Kate) appears precision-made machine-made, so different from Diana whose human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture.”
Can Mantel be serious in seeming to wish that Kate were more like her poor, dead mother-inlaw? Diana was tormented – by eating disorders, by jealousy, by insecurity, by infidelity. Her life was pockmarked by drama and ended in tragedy.
Kate appears to be worlds away from that kind of rollercoaster ride; she and William patently adore one another and their relationship seems as ordinary as it could be, given their extraordinary station in life. She comes across as a welladjusted, down-to-earth young woman who just happened to fall in love with a prince. Wouldn't it be better to celebrate this kind of normality, rather than appear disappointed that the Windsors just don't seem to be any craic any more?
IN her desire to deliver a lecture filled with stirring academic insight and context, Mantel abandoned her humanity and forgot that she was directing her comments at a living, breathing young woman, one who is currently in the middle
of a difficult pregnancy – not at some long dead historical figure.
You can see the novelist in her itching to get out, her desire for good copy outweighing all other concerns. But if Mantel is looking for a really good yarn, perhaps she should go and write it herself.