25 June 08
Hardy and Hillary
I’ll admit it, in public, and in fact have on one of those “books you hated but everyone else loved” websites: I can’t stand Thomas Hardy. Labored, ponderous, not quite getting it right with his female heroines, and they such drips. Tess should have clocked a bunch of people around the face before setting to them with a knife.
But he straddled, didn’t he, Victorianism and Modernity. Someone had to do it. Woolf went to visit him, it is said, not too soon before he died in 1928. She straddled that same divide, more on this side than that. He paved her way.
How could he stand it? How could he stand those bloody complacent Edwardians? Well, he couldn’t, so he kept WRITING.
Hillary has straddled a similar divide. Before her, woman-as-president was laughable. She has facilitated, like Hardy, a cultural transition. Not for herself, perhaps, but for all who come after. It still pains me to recall her speech two weeks ago, when she was passionately, and vocally, and authentically Hillary (as opposed to whatever the guys managed out of her). If she had been that in, say, Iowa, Obama would have had no chance.
I’ve been as much of a fan of Hillary’s as I have of Hardy’s. It had a lot to do with how she voted on the war, and how she refused to acknowledge she’d been duped. But she’s made a lot possible for little girls (and big girls) to dream, and I salute her for that.
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Wow, terrific parallel. Yes, people at the pivot points don’t come out looking so pretty, usually. The stresses are too enormous. But you have to be grateful to them.
When I look at some of the countries that have had female presidents or prime ministers – especially in cases where their electability derived from being the wife or daughter of a popular male leader – I’m afraid I really don’t understand how having a woman president would advance the cause of women’s liberation here.
Sure, Dave. And there’s no reason having an African-American president would advance… Argh.
It’s not so much an advance as a roadmark of an advance. And if you think what Hillary is is a “wife or daughter” then you haven’t thought it through, about how the Clintons’ joint leapfrog political career was planned out. Do you really thing Bill is more, what, presidential than Hillary—or just more “electable,” acceptable, first?
Brilliant analogy, Pica.
From a European standpoint America is woefully behind in matters of social reform, but still, just that a woman and a non-white (America thinks too much in black and white) got this far is cause for celebration. It is wonderful that a woman has finally reached this level of respect, but Obama’s achievement is no less historical and no less difficult. Both of them have straddled that big hurdle, together, and, for America at least, it is symbolic. Please do not brush aside what this means for non-whites.
Now a BLACK woman… THAT would have been something!
Well, don’t discount Condi!