Why chivalry has met a watery end
After the traumatic early weeks of term, a couple of friends and I fretfully searched for methods of soothing the twitching and other resultant manias of essay-induced insomnia. One dismal day, while walking off the convulsions, we chanced a glimpse of the campus lake – and for the first time it spouted inspiration and not spurts of watered down bird sewage. It was time for a date with Darcy. Mmm, Mr. Darcy - the emblem, nay beacon, of masculine perfection. What better antidote to the last dregs of essay frenzy than slurring heatedly at the screen, “They just don’t make ’em like that anymore, chivalry’s dead!”
But then, as with most morning afters, I took some time to reflect on what induced the throes of passion the night before. Despite the wine, which as always mollified inhibitions, I found it difficult to believe that it was Darcy’s acts of gallantry that got us all hot and bothered and declaring his unparalleled glory, while lamenting the comparative failings of what we’re stuck with today. The Darcy of iconic status is the one moodily surveying the lake, plunging in and then emerging all soaked shirt and drops of water glistening from his perfectly tousled hair, trickling down his sideburns… sorry, I’ll refrain. But you have to agree, this is the Darcy we want, not the stifled, polite conversation rehearsed to a tee version, whose flawlessly cut breeches are only attractive because they give the impression of being a tad too snug. Chivalry isn’t dead, it’s just not desired.
A brief review of literary folklore heroes would suggest that conventional swoon-inducements are often grossly misconstrued. Emily Bronte’s Cathy and Heathcliff (from our very own Yorkshire moors) offer an instructive example. In a recent poll of the greatest love stories conducted by The Guardian (even the news has occasional lulls, it would seem) the fraught affair between Cathy and Heathcliff topped the charts. Now, describing Heathcliff as decorous would be like referring to a pony with alopecia as cute and fluffy. Heathcliff would probably be more likely to smack a door in Cathy’s face than open one for her to delicately step through. Furthermore, she would probably re-open the door just to thwack it back in his face. Their bond was a complex one of fraught passion - so tempestuous in fact, that the ‘zenith’ of this passion was accompanied by scrabbling, scratching and a smidgen of strangling. Yet, it seems, the nation loves it. Probably because the majority shares in the notion that real ardour is better marked by a few bruises than exhibited via some affected hanky dropping.
So from whence came all this chivalry malarkey? Shall we blame those medieval legends of coyly dropped Kleenex and hard-to-get minxes with unfeasibly long hair extensions? Yet, let me remind you that the most desired knight of that era, Sir Lancelot, eschewed decorum and ravaged his best mate’s wife. For the most part, Arthurian Legend skipped over ‘nice guy’ Arthur and tended to focus more on his rakish band of knights. Arthur always gave the impression of being just a tad too civil, the kind of guy who may have pulled out the Sword from that auspicious stone but probably had no idea how to, erm, wield it. Practiced courtesy just isn’t what women want. Mr. Collins tried it – and his bandy legged dancing and simpering flattery got him a verbal bitch slap from Lizzy. Frankly the only ‘wet’ men that women want are of the post-lake Darcy variety.
Our modern equivalent of ‘courting’ offers a useful example. A friend of mine recently went on a romantic dinner date with her long-term boyfriend. Yet when I caught up with her, she rather forlornly sighed: “Yeh, it was alright, I guess. It’s just that he was being a bit too nice, he wouldn’t stop complimenting me”. Obviously, my heart bled for her. But in all seriousness, after getting over the initial resentment, I oddly enough found myself empathising. Being treated like a delicate flower all night is suffocating and a little insulting. Darcy never really flattered Lizzy. He may have muttered a few veiled compliments about her reading, but in the pivotal scene when he finally declares his passion for her, it’s through a series of insults.
Camille Paglia once described the Elizabeth/Darcy rapport as a sequence of “epigrammatic thrusts”; suggesting that what makes their verbal sparring so engaging is that it’s 20 hours (BBC, not pouty-Knightly version) of foreplay. Flattery only gets you so far, some wit may get you further and if you top it all off by jumping into a lake clad in a precariously thin white shirt, who knows, we might even return the affections.
Go on, gobble this down
Apparently there’s a new national calamity brewing, or indeed swelling, into existence. Forget terrorism or global warming, they veritably wane in comparison to this far more hefty issue. Yes, the fearfully termed ‘Obesity Crisis’ has descended upon us.
The other day while hanging around the gym, doing my bit to alleviate this catastrophic crisis, I caught my first sighting of the ‘combat obesity’ campaign. A bunch of cattle, sorry children, were being herded onto a slew of stationary bikes and then forced to peddle away while being verbally abused by GI Prick. I can’t say I wasn’t momentarily amused when one of the little hamsters was dragged off his bike and made to perform jumping jacks in front of the others, but after he collapsed I got bored and sauntered off to watch Fern and Phil. While Fern, Phil and a child trainer chatted about the perils of the Crunchie, the kids valiantly bounced around on inflatable animals and chucked Frisbees at each other. Conveniently, said Frisbees kept slipping through the little tykes’ already waning fingers (result!) causing them to waddle off a few miles in retrieval missions.
Unfortunately, while busy spawning a generation with thighs of steel, little has been done to market the salad leaf as more appealing than a Burger King burger. Perhaps, if those M&S food-porn adverts employed Bono to teasingly sigh: “Crunchy, succulent, iceberg lettuce leaf, tossed in a melange of grated carrot and juicy cucumber”, the crisis could be averted. Or not. Whichever way you cut it, the fact remains: the cow still tramples the foliage.
