Society
Cristina Odone sees blood on women's hands
Published 05 May 2003
Can't men stand on their own feet, without women to help them make mistakes?
Lady Macbeth, bloodstains on her hands, haunts us to this day. A plotting Diana Ingram lurks behind the cheating major; a calculating Posh whispers into Becks's ear; Cherie is obviously manipulating Tony as Hillary once manipulated Bill; and a greedy Nancy controls Sven's business deals. You can't get a high-profile man making controversial decisions without someone blaming the woman in his life.
She machinates, calculates, orchestrates; he, poor dear, merely does her bidding. Whether it's his plan to cheat a quiz show out of £1m; or to trade his talent to Real Madrid; or to jettison Labour principles for The Project - he's nothing but the conduit of her evil genius.
A sinister ventriloquist, Lady M stands behind her other half and unleashes her energy and her ambitions; he, compliant, speaks her lines and acts out her will. For though he has proved that he can achieve great feats - in politics, football or intellectual life - he is nothing but a pushover when it comes to her. When we hear that Leo Tolstoy depended on his wife Sonya for proofreading and suggestions during the time he was writing War and Peace, or that Clara Schumann was instrumental to Robert's compositions, many of us dismiss these claims as right-on posterity rewriting history to afford the "little woman" a larger role. The man's genius cannot possibly owe anything to the wifelet.
Yet the converse is true when the man's judgement is called into question: suddenly, the little woman is everywhere - inflated into a monstrous creature of greed and unrestrained ambition. She is responsible for his decision to go to war or into the euro; she is responsible for his betrayal of his home team or his failure to bring back a trophy. For every mistake he makes, she is guilty.
And we round on her immediately. The paparazzi snap humiliating photos of her at her worst (or in her nightie), the tabloids condemn her as the evil witch who deserves our opprobrium, and the pundits indulge in some long-winded musings about how strong women castrate their men and urge them to self-destruction.
It's all most puzzling. For surely, we have been taught that a man stands on his own two feet.
Or does he?
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