Bit harsh from Hilary Mantel?

I think that the whole point of her speech, as has been said on here, was really about how the press /society , now and historically,reduce royal women to clothes horses and breeding machines and do not value them as living people with their own ideas, skills and competencies.

I think it is amusing that all those GNs who have been hoping & speculating for news of a royal baby (? reducing Kate to a producer of heir) and the papers who always make comments on her appearance, speculate as to the reason for her thinness/fatness, hairstyle etc etc are the ones cherry picking form Mantel's speech and getting aerated in a faux defence of Kate!

She was knocking the mediation of royal women not the women themselves!

I am very sad that it is autism that springs into you mind JO8.
I also can't begin to imagine why.
Lily I think the contemporary analogy was perfectly justified in a serious article and lecture, which is what this was. I read the original in the LRB and never even thought that the media would distort like this. Even if she did realise, she might have felt that it was worth it to get some proper discussion going about the way the media and public can treat women in general and royal wives and mothers in particular.

She was attacking the Duchess. You can't get away from that.

People clever in some ways are often as thick as the proverbial two short planks in other ways.

Nothing deep, just that in a lecture about the position of royal women- fair enough given Ann Boleyn - it isn't necessary to bring Duchess of Cambridge into it. Unless you are looking for a wider audience than the TLS would normally get you. And although I agree with everyone who has said Mantell wasn't actually attacking the DoC, she's a clever woman and it must have crossed her mind how the popular meeja would present it.

I don't understand why she feltit necessary to discuss the Duchess of Cambridge at all. Does she not realise that Kate is a living, breathing, feeling person?

Mild autism springs to mind.

I think if it generates discussion on attitudes to women in (parts of) the press, then it is a good thing, absent.

I think it is because women are still seen as sexual objects in many ways, which the point Hilary Mantel was making.
I think men probably have other ways in which they put each other down.
There is a great deal of very nasty mysogyny in the press comments on Hilary Mantel, I think. The Julie Burchill article today is pretty vile too.

Somehow, I can't summon up any interest in or agitation about this.

I love Hilary Mantel's books but when I saw a photo of her recently I thought she had the oddest flat little face - you don't get men making remarks like that about each other why do women do it?

Chucklesomely good article by Hadley Freeman about this silly furore about "the Duchess of Somethingorother" (it might be Somewhereorother #doesn'tmatterwhich). Sock it to 'em Hils and Had!

Yes I would be interested too, Lily. It seems to me to be a reasoned argument about how sections of the media and the public treat women in the public eye. Do you not read it that way? Am genuinely interested to know.
It isn't that long since the media were making nasty remarks about Waity Katey and her family. Now she is on a pedestal, but for how long? That is the real scandal, I think.
For the record I am not anti the royal family and I didn't like Wolf Hall, mostly because I don't like books in the present tense. Oh and we have a subscription to that LRB and I read the original article without any thought that it would provoke a media storm. Of course the media vitriol about Mantel might be cynically induced to cover their own behaviour?

I've just read and enjoyed the article and didn't see it as an attack on Kate at all. Lazy, headline grabbing journalists have taken a phrase out of context and made something of nothing.

Would you like to expand that theme, lily?

For someone whose most successful work has been in the field of 16th century politics, Mantel's grasp of modern feminist politics seems a bit shaky.

I agree Bags. The original argument seems to have been much too complex for sections of the media, but the way that they have criticised Hilary Mantel for exposing their own obsession with Kate's fertility is unbelievably hypocritical. The breathless outrage as they misreport what was said, whilst devoting reports and column inches to her "little bump" is ridiculous.
I agree that you can dislike Mantel's prose, but I think her argument in the LRB article is very clear. It is not about Kate, it is about how the media, and to a lesser extent the public, chooses to perceive her as a royal wife and mother.

The original article is actually about the public perception of royalty figures, more than about Kate. It's a good article and, apart from a little bit of clever clever straining, is well written. What people write is often misinterpreted, or misunderstood, as we've seen sometimes on gransnet. I read the article not as an attack on Kate, but as a modern investigation of what royalty is for nowadays.

What was written, and the pictures made, of Mary Beard are in a different category altogether. Anyone who saw the images posted on the web about Mary Beard knows that. Hilary Mantel's article appeals to the intellect; the rubbish aimed at Mary Beard did not. Mary Beard, being intellectual, shrugged it off as the rubbish it was. What Mantel has written is not rubbish, even if people disagree with it.

She's been reading Heat magazine etc and is bang on trend pogs.
"Everyone" criticises attractive young women these days. it is a whole sub-section of publishing. And the more attractive the better.
Nasty I think these magazines etc and encourages young women to be bitchy and to feel that anything less than perfect is unacceptable.

Maybe we can agree that we all have different views and perceptions of what she wrote.

What I cannot understand is this. If such harsh words are spoken about the likes of Mary Beard all hell brakes loose and she is defended up hill down dale.

When an attractive woman is targetted she is fair game. Well she is not, neither is the likes of Mary Beard.

What the hell possesses, so called, intelligent women to speak like this, of anybody.

What a tedious and boring article.

According to DC on Radio 4, the Duchess is now Princess Kate. He should know better than that. His quote 'Hilary Mantel writes good books'. I bet he's not read one. I haven't either, I have waded through the Tudors with Phillipa Gregory and don't want to go there again.
As to Kate, there is some truth in what has been said. I think she is a 'Barbie' figure. Disappointing actually, she might have developed differently, she had her chance. She may yet do it.

Can't resist the temptation DC, it runs in his veins. Have we ever heard him say that it would be inappropriate for him to comment? (examples on a postcard welcome)

I've read the original speech now (thanks Mamie) and the media's 'selective reporting' of her picking on Kate becomes clear.

Sometimes, when people spout (and I agree with JessM re pretentious language) opinions - and don't "opinion pieces" abound these days - they are sometimes too clever for their own good, very naive of HM to think that it wouldn't attract attention. Having said that, I can't imagine why DC thought he should wade in.

Some interesting comment here:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/hilary-mantel-duchess-cambridge-scandal
I am just amazed (or maybe not) at how the media have misinterpreted what she said. I can't believe David Cameron had read the original article either.
The language may seem a bit pretentious, but it is the LRB.

I have to agree that the portrait was pretty naff.

It's royalty bashing time again then!