Hamnet and "A More Feminine Sensibility"

As I keep writing, I read, years ago, the German sociologist Georg Simmel who wrote that while the public square -- Öffentlichkeit in German -- was invented by men for men, the emergence of women into the public square starting in the 19th century meant that women would start to change the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

I pondered that for a few years but have since come to believe that women don't relate to the public square, not at all. The public square is a relic of the duel, the fight between two men for dominance, only conducted today with words rather than fists. That is not how women live, or interact. As I say, women communicate one-on-one over coffee and in that conversation they do not disagree with each other, not at all. They talk about other women, as in "I can't believe she said/did that." The public square is not just a thing invented by men for men. It is inaccessible to women because they are women and their brains are wired differently.

So whenever I read a woman author I am thinking about her world-building: how does she present her women characters? Are they presented as just like men only better, like Mulan or a thousand martial-arts female heroes in the movies of the last two decades? Or are they handmaid victims in The Handmaid's Tale? Or what?

Recently a friend gave me a copy of Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O'Farrell, an Irish-born writer that seems to have worked her way up in the Brit world as a journalist. The book is about the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet, as experienced by Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway, of the well-known cottage.

Hathaway -- called Agnes in the book -- is not your regular feminist kick-ass heroine. Instead the whole book is about her feelings and emotions: what it was like when she first had sex with our Will, what it was like to be left behind in Stratford with the in-laws when Will went to London. And above all what it was like when her beloved son Hamnet dies of the plague and our Will heads back to London after a couple of days: things to do, people to see. And what it was like when Will wrote and produced a play called Hamlet.

Considering that Maggie O'Farrell lives and works in the liberal and woke environment of Brit journalism -- being at one point "deputy literary editor of the Independent on Sunday" -- it is remarkable that she writes a book so free of feminist cant and orthodoxy. And it makes me feel that the worm is turning, and that high-status educated women are starting to get beyond the fantasy of competing mano-a-mano as "independent women" with men in the public square. Instead these high-status women are realizing that the life of a woman just isn't anything to do with strutting your macho stuff on the public stage. It is about who you love, who you hate, who you look after, who you mourn, and what you feel about the day-to-day events of life -- oh, and, of course, the kind of people you invite to dinner.

Now, of course we know, with Curtis Yarvin, that for people in the educated Gentry life is all about "ambition, honor, and vanity." So well-born women are still going to be all about that, only of course, in the feminine sense of ambition, honor, and vanity. And don't forget from Honor: a History by James Bowman that honor among men is the reputation for courage, and honor among women is the reputation for chastity -- or as they say over at Washington Examiner, "Am I a good person?"

Nobody should doubt the emotional wear and tear that come from living a life in a male skin suit, doing that male swagger and male hierarchy thing while still being a woman inside that instinctively is programmed to life a completely different life.

I've been appreciating this more and more from reading Jung and his notion of the battle between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. When you remember that almost the whole animal world lives only by the instinct and stimulus and image-making from the unconscious mind -- or whatever it is that prompts ants to ant and swallows to swallow -- it helps you appreciate that we humans, that have distinguished ourselves from all other animals by our conscious mind, are still complete beginners in the consciousness game. And, to use Jung's emphasis on the importance of dream analysis in understanding the operation of the unconscious, every time we fall asleep the unconscious mind rears its head and rushes forth from the shadows on to center stage and performs a little playlet, starring the archetypes.

So, I would say that the worm is starting to turn on the women-in-the-public-square front. But don't get your hopes up. Not yet. Not for a while. But it is a start.