‘AWANT OF DELICACY?’

“Their powers of conversation were considerable….”

Ch. X1. Pride and Prejudice In a world of mistr ust, lack of integrity, rivalr y; today’s women remain at a loss. The loss of sisterhood is rife. Are we too proud or, prejudiced towards our own gender? Can we not relate well, woman to woman? How do we estimate ourselves… each other? How should women r elate to each other… whether mar r ied or single? Should we accept Austen’s examples of friendship and sister hood as our own paradigm? Do we, as women, ‘love one another’?

In Pride and Prejudice, L ydia Bennett regales her two elder sisters with the idea that being mar r ied, she takes precedence when leading into dinner…

“… She, (Elizabeth), hear d them passing through the hall. She… joined them soon enough to see L ydia, with anxious parade, walk up to her mother’s right hand, and hear her say to her eldest sister , ‘Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a marr ied woman.’ (Ch. 9 Pride and Prejudice) It is not my intention here to examine motives. Indeed we are exhorted not to judge either ourselves or each other, but to tr ust in God. Yet let us unpack what’s going on in the above passage and whether the actualities stand the test of time.

L ydia; newly mar ried, seeking her mother as a sou rce of authority, pleads for precedence over her elder sisters, r elishing the opportunity to ‘lord it’ over them:

L ydia: “… you must go lower… because I am a mar ried woman.”

L ydia asser ts her mar ried woman’s social status is ‘higher’ than her unmar ried sisters: using her mother’s authority to uphold her cause, enforcing the abdication of her elder daughters’ rights to seniority. Her marriage gave L ydia new privilege; degrading her single sisters. This scenario rings bells at the hear t of social infrastr ucture even today... though we may congratulate our Royal Family that at long last, sibling privileges of seniority extend to the eldest child whether male or female, whether married or single.

Singleness still creates questions for single women who, r eaching some plateau in their careers, find themselves isolated. It is suf ficient here, to refer to cinema, and Bridget Jones’ Diar y… When Bridget is ‘in-between’ her r elationships with the characters played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, she is urged by her mother and her friends, to ‘get out and about and get rid of her self-pitying her mitlike existence’.

She attends a dinner-party where she encounters a solid front of ‘thir ty-something’ couples spr outing of fspring; who interrogate her concer ning her mar riage prospects. Bridget replies drily, with some gusto, “I don’t know why there are so many unattached women over 30… per haps we sprout scales all over our bodies, under our clothes…”

I venture to suggest here the attitudes exposed in both novel and film, are somewhat similar. Single woman over 25 gradually feel: a) isolated b) disorientated, c) inadequate. We may consider each factor in turn: a) Obviously, single women are excluded from all factors per taining to mar riage. Married women have sex lives. Implication: Married women are obviously ‘loved’. They have special celebrations, and receive an intimate, as well as public, privileged status. They are potential mothers. They are ‘brides’.

Mar ried women share common experiences together: Coffee mornings, telephone chats concerning their new lives; the joys of marriage, new homes, mor tgages, decorating, buying fur niture… often unheedingly excluding their single feminine friends. The sister-in-law occupies a new intimacy… she ‘supplants’ both the natural sister, and the single friend. Marriage is the great divide between single and marr ied people. The actuality of the exclusion for single women, is to feel, and often become, isolated.

b) Single women feel ‘disorientated’. Celibacy pr esents its own set of challenges. Psychiatrists inform that many of life’s dilemmas spring apparently from sex, or its lack. Indeed the notion of celibacy is become quaint. Secular opinion is that celibacy fr ustrates, and is ‘ abnormal’… Hence cross-generational ribaldry amongst men concerning single women … ‘who don’t’. Few people practice celibacy these days, apparently, if the tabloids are to be believed. Yet as St Paul encourages, celibacy has its advantages, par ticularly for women contemplating the single life.

The Julia Rober ts’ film: Mona Lisa Smile depicted the seriousness of the issue of singleness in the 50s: women were (are?) regarded as having something wr ong with them if they remained single into their 30s. Today’s generation encounters almost no help when contemplating what singleness means for the woman who has no desir e to marr y; who has no ‘word from the Lord’ concerning marriage.

Whereas there are many Counselling ser vices for marriage, Counselling for Singleness remains a rarity.

Many women encounter the notion of singleness as disturbing: disorientating in a way few pr evious generations have had cause to ponder. Historically, celibacy was honoured, whereas today’s society considers it ‘weir d’. Modern ‘nor ms’, concer ning homosexuality and adulter y, provide additional burdens, and snares, for single Christians who perceive singleness as a ‘lack’ instead of a blessing.

A complication for moder n womankind is the female body was never so publicly scr utinised before. Since CoCo Channel and the shor ter hem-line, women’s bodies have been posed, photographed, ridiculed, r eviled, ‘changed,’ and generally held to be public pr operty as never before.

Grooming contributes to self-confidence: Debates concerning norms of dress are inhibited by inter-faith perspectives. It becomes easy for the single woman to experience estrangement within herself ‘disorientation’. Thus, she experiences:

c) Inadequacy. Inadequacy occurs when uncertain how to develop one’s prevailing life-style. In this, there is a further disparity: that between the single young woman and the single mature woman.

Christian festivals highlight the single experience. The bir thday of the isolated female single may go unnoticed. Mature women become cut of f from their University and childhood friends. Those suffering the loss of parents may become prematurely ‘middle-aged’: isolated in ways that others rarely encounter prior to retirement.

All too easily, the isolated mature single woman, is ‘relegated’; pr ematurely, into the ‘invisibility’ of over-50s women. Here, I raise the question why matur e single women become socially ‘invisible’? Attitudes of mar ried people towards single women ar e historically negative: isolated single women rarely receive social invitations.

Mar r ied women and single women therefore, encounter obstacles to relating on viable levels mutually r ewarding, and respectful.

A few questions to ask may be: ‘Do I have a womanfriend I can r eally call ‘sister’ in spirit?’ ‘Does another woman perceive me as her closest friend?’ ‘Do I make it clear to other women I need them?’ ‘Do I really wish to see my women friends when they need me? Such Questions highlight the Lord’s challenge ~ ‘You are my disciples if you love one another.’

Ending the loneliness of many women today will be, I am sure, an honourable tribute to the challenges Austen presented to us in her writing. In her 200th anniversar y year, they become per tinent points to ponder.