“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
August 26, 2017 1:37 AM   Subscribe

The princess myth. "She was the White Goddess evoked by Robert Graves, the slender being with the hook nose and startling blue eyes; the being he describes as a shape-shifter, a virgin but also a vixen, a hag, mermaid, weasel. She was Thomas Wyatt’s white deer, fleeing into the forest darkness." Hilary Mantel on Princess Diana, as we approach the 20th anniversary of the princess's death. (SLGuardian)
posted by Ziggy500 (8 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
There's so much in this. The kind of biography that makes the reader more human.
posted by ambrosen at 2:43 AM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


"When people described Diana as a “fairytale princess”, were they thinking of the cleaned-up versions? Fairytales are not about gauzy frocks and ego gratification. They are about child murder, cannibalism, starvation, deformity, desperate human creatures cast into the form of beasts, or chained by spells, or immured alive in thorns." This is good. Thanks, Ziggy500.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:28 AM on August 26, 2017 [10 favorites]


Ah, Hilary Mantel.

My Welsh mother-in-law was obsessed with Diana.
The closest I got was reading Grant Morrison's Invisibles mythos.
posted by doctornemo at 6:47 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


"When people described Diana as a “fairytale princess”, were they thinking of the cleaned-up versions? Fairytales are not about gauzy frocks and ego gratification. They are about child murder, cannibalism, starvation, deformity, desperate human creatures cast into the form of beasts, or chained by spells, or immured alive in thorns."

I think that's exactly the way that Diana was a fairytale princess, though. She's in the story of Bluebeard - given all the jewels and dresses and food that she can want, on the condition she not open that one door - the door of her husband's 'friendship' with Camilla Parker-Bowles. She tried to be happy - everyone around her told her that the door was barely a door, and nothing important was behind it anyway. That she was married to a prince, that she had everything she desired.

Still she opened the door. And they cast her out from the kingdom, they tried to murder her reputation. Even now, they consciously make efforts to avoid her - William says "this will be the last time we speak of her." She is disappeared but not forgotten - present only in the whispers of her bones.

That is fairy tale as FUCK.
posted by corb at 8:27 AM on August 26, 2017 [47 favorites]


She was the White Goddess evoked by Robert Graves

JESUS Hilary Mantel. I admire her writing and thinking very much, I had an unfortunate Robert Graves period in my youth, and I am old enough to have vague memories of seeing Princess Diana on magazine covers when she was still alive. and fuck no, Diana was not that. the only thing she has in common with that archetype is that she was female and used by men for their own symbolic purposes. but that's really really not a whole lot more than you could say about any woman. and maybe Robert Graves would say EXACTLY! but I sure wouldn't. particularly since the White Goddess is the opposite of a figure that women imagine women to be for their own symbolic purposes.

this must be generational more than anything else because there's no other good reason to find it so repellent. the essential idea that a quiet woman is a blank slate to write on with any idea that comes to mind, I understand, though I understand it intellectually and not instinctively. but even intellectually I don't understand the persistent idea that any thing that comes to mind to project onto a woman is as good or as powerful as any other thing, and just as fitting, regardless of its host. even when it is being put forth as an observation, even a sickness of sorts, and not as a recommendation.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:14 AM on August 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


It is irrelevant to object that Diana alive bore no resemblance to Diana dead. The crowds were not deluded about what they had lost. They were not mourning something perfect, but something that was unfinished.

whelp. That last sentence hit me right in the feels. Not because I ever had any special interest in Diana, but anyone who's had a loved one who died too young knows that sentiment all too well.

A thought provoking essay. Thanks for the post.
posted by pjsky at 10:34 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


I post this here because I'd never do it anywhere she could read it: Ms. Mantel, I am down on my knees begging you, stop writing other stuff until you finish the third Cromwell book.

I don't even mean that--I always find her writing worthwhile--and yet I kind of do.
posted by praemunire at 11:09 AM on August 26, 2017 [7 favorites]


From the article:

When Diana died, a crack appeared in a vial of grief, and released a salt ocean. A nation took to the boats. [...] The term “mass hysteria” was a facile denigration of a phenomenon that eluded the commentators and their framework of analysis. They did not see the active work the crowds were doing. Mourning is work. It is not simply being sad. It is naming your pain. It is witnessing the sorrow of others, drawing out the shape of loss. It is natural and necessary and there is no healing without it.

I really liked this analysis of mourning and the idea that Diana's death was a 'safe' (because the public did not know her) outlet for all those feelings of pent-up mourning that they weren't really letting themselves feel in their personal lives for their own personal losses. Not sure how psychologically accurate, but it makes sense to me.
posted by Ziggy500 at 12:49 PM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]


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