The tragedy of Fleabag: a 19th-century morality tale

Four years after it was first released (2016), I’ve finally caught up with the TV series Fleabag. I’ve watched the first series of six episodes, and the impression of the series has been exhilaration followed by great disappointment. How can six episodes of less than half an hour produce such a mixed impression?

The initial premise of Fleabag, created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as exemplified in the first episode, is exhilarating. Here is a truly original fictional character; a 21st century type. Fleabag is a woman in her late 20s living a life of sexual voraciousness, failing in her job of running a café, but blissfully unconcerned with convention. She gleefully punctuates pretension in the world around her, not least her more conventionally successful, but straight-laced, elder sister, and her appalling domineering step-mother. Fleabag’s repeated asides to the camera, commenting on the action, bond her with the viewer, and her assortment of male lovers, whether over-assertive or inadequate, provides both a biting social comment and uproarious comedy, all in one. One lover, who is credited only as arsehole guy, is particularly offensive. It is very sad but revealing that a 21st-century story shows a woman obtaining sexual pleasure only by herself, not with any partner: there is no mutual pleasure to be found here. The script, the editing, the acting, are all exceptional. To see Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s face is a joy: the wordless gestures are a delight. She can express a feeling without any words.

Fleabag’s sheer incompetence and inability to deal with the world make her very entertaining to watch, because of her devil-may-care attitude to authority and disregard for politeness. She is also remarkably human: incapable of admitting to her family she has no money; she then charges her sister for £25 for a sandwich.

Here, then, is a character worthy of Boswell in his journals, and in some ways very similar. Both Boswell and Fleabag are convinced of the rightness of their actions and cannot understand why they find themselves constantly disappointed by the behaviour of others.  Fleabag identifies posers and frauds, both male and female, with outrageous frankness, but fails to benefit in any way from her honesty.

Yet growing throughout the first series is a very different story: a tragic subplot that jeopardizes the entire premise of the character. Fleabag’s close friend died in a road accident and it is slowly revealed that the cause of death, possibly suicide, was the result of the friend (Boo) discovering her boyfriend was having sex with someone else – none other than Fleabag herself. This subplot of transgression has a very different tone to the rest of the plot. Although the transgression is echoed by Fleabag being kissed by her sister’s husband, in this case the guilty party is Fleabag herself.

Fleabag’s innate sense of morality makes it quite clear, to her and to us. Fleabag is speechless at her brother-in-law’s transgression; however unconventional your behaviour, trying to seduce your sister-in-law is unacceptable. But by the same token, sleeping with the partner of your best friend is similarly unacceptable, and in the latter case it happens to the leading character, with whom we identify. Fleabag, in an outpouring of grief and self-loathing, admits as much in the last episode, stating something like “I fucked my friend by fucking her boyfriend - I fuck everything that moves – there is no good in me – is there anything worse than someone who doesn’t want to fuck me”. Suddenly, the moral ground of the entire series has shifted. From a woman who, for all her anarchy and outrageous behaviour, had a kind of grandeur, perhaps the only uncompromised woman on the planet, she has become one of the figures she herself condemns so ruthlessly; now she is just a soap opera character. Her magnificent promiscuity is condemned, as if she were the heroine of a 19th-century novel by Flaubert. We all know how Flaubert had no qualms about orgies with prostitutes in Cairo, while condemning the slightest stepping out of line by a “respectable” woman like Madame Bovary. Fleabag has plunged us back 150 years, into the same misogynist stew. From a woman of principle (we forgive her petty theft because we know that in her heart she is principled), her sexual desire now condemns her. For this viewer, that is a difficult lesson to take. I was not just disappointed; I felt undermined. One of the great characters of modern fiction had been shackled back to 19th-century morality, with its condemnation of raw female desire.

Mary Beard, The Shock of the Nude

Mary Beard in her inimitable unconcerned style tackled the representation of the naked human body in art in a two-part programme, The Shock of the Nude. It was always watchable, but could not hope to resolve the many questions it raised over the two hours.  

She started with the ancient Greek nude, and mentioned, of course, the distinction so loved by traditional art historians such as Kenneth Clark between the naked and the nude. Greek sculpture dealt with both male and female nudes. But the problems started here. There was an element of box ticking about the programmes, a wish to ensure that all areas of current concern have been covered. So she began with the female nude, which was the exception, rather than the rule, in Greek art, and fundamentally different to the male nude in Greek sculpture: “unlike the women, the men don’t appear to be controversial at all”. Women were kept out of the way in ancient Greece, so a nude female sculpture had in some way to be explained (but she didn’t explain). She described the Greek nude as highly idealised, and that corresponds with Clark’s description of the Greek nude as “art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish” – in other words, the Greek nude is inherently idealising. That idealisation has continued to the present day, and Mark Quinn’s marble sculpture of Alison Lapper, pregnant, simply continues the tradition of the focus on the stylized nude torso.

In the first programme, Beard skipped over any move away from the idealised body, with only passing mention of any art of the last 150 years, apart from Picasso. But, to her credit, she did point out that the idealised Greek male has a smaller penis than in real life – but didn’t hazard any explanation. She didn’t point out that pubic hair is present in ancient Greek sculpture, but then disappears from Western art until the late 19th century and Courbet.

Her tone through all this was rather down to earth, perhaps desexualising. She pointed out that Greek males did not spend their time working out. Instead, the representation of the nude was actually the depiction of Greek citizenship, and represented a moral stance. I’ve often read that Greek nudes represented a moral attitude, and it has always intrigued me. If Greek nudes meant something moral, then what do nudes mean today? Do they mean (simply) something sexual? Or something more? Beard approached this idea at the end of the second part, on the relevance of modern nudes. One of her interviewees stated how Art is a conversation with the world around us, and Beard pointed out the nude is still unsettling people, although I wouldn’t describe most ancient Greek nudes as unsettling, at least to the Greeks themselves; they are only unsettling to us, because we struggle to explain why they are naked.

Fundamental to Beard’s argument is the male gaze, and she wonderfully exemplified the male gaze with reference to two pictures: the Venus of Urbino by Titian in the Uffizi, and a very strange painting by Zoffany in the Royal Collection. I see the Titian as one of the most erotic paintings in pre-1900 art; but, following her desexualising tone, she trivialised the sexual reference by imagining herself standing behind the model and laughing at the males observing the model – not at all Titian’s intention.

The other painting mentioned by Beard is The Tribuna of the Uffizi by Zoffany. Although the painting shows nudes, it does not appear to be contributing to the debate about the nude at all - except that all the viewers are male, and there appear to be some sexual references in it. I couldn’t quite see the relevance. Another question Beard did not, I think, fully answer, is what the modern female equivalent to the male gaze might be. There were some rather uncomfortable images of art critics facing the camera, and at the same time facing a woman undressing in front of them – a rather contrived situation that did not advance our knowledge of either male or female gaze.

Nor did I see the relevance of a special trip to Paris to see Courbet’s Origin of the World, a close-up of a woman’s very hairy genitalia. I wouldn’t call this a nude either; there is no face or even upper body visible.

To her credit, Beard mentioned the tradition of depicting Christ naked, in fact stated that Christianity would be unthinkable without the naked body of Jesus (I’m not sure if this applies to all Christian churches). But these sections of the programme were so brief as to be almost not worth including. Similarly brief was a mention of the coverage of the black body in art; how the Raft of the Medusa by Gericault has for the most important figure on the raft a black man; but immediately the focus on the nude was lost as we drifted into the story behind the painting.

Among the works she unearthed was one magnificent nude by Chasseriau, pupil of Ingres, and claimed as the first black nude by an artist of colour. But we continued at our breakneck pace to mention another theme, the absence of older women in art history. Without drawing breath, she then quizzed a model of Lucian Freud to see if he had tried to have sex with her, showed a few very tormented drawings and paintings by Egon Schiele, and then modelled naked for some studies of her body.  And by the way, she had a moment to mention Sally Mann, the American photographer who published books of photos of her naked children, considered whether to remove all Eric Gill art from public display, before finally returning (breathlessly) home.

A fascinating topic, and worthy of a book. Not something to be squeezed into two hours.

Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s recent novel Unsheltered (2018). First, I haven’t finished it, and second, it’s the first Kingsolver novel I have read, so my response may be unbalanced, but my reaction to the novel has been somewhat mixed. Let’s start with the difficulties:

First, the novel is narrated by the author herself. What could be more authentic? But Ms Kingsolver has a very lilting delivery. Although it is perfectly intelligible, she makes the content seem almost sugary. I find the experience of reading the text, rather than having it read to me, and imagining the characters for myself, a much more balanced experience.

The novel itself is vast, and incredibly detailed. We know when the baby's nappies are changed, and if he has started on solid food yet. It’s as if Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism had created one additional mode, the ultra-Ironic, where we sit watching the clock ticking.

As for the plot, alternating chapters present two separate narratives, linked because they take place in a single, decrepit house – hence the term “unsheltered”. The present-day story is based around Willa Knox and her family. Willa is sharing her house with her husband, two grown-up children, Tig and Zeke, a new-born grandchild, and her elderly father-in-law. Willa discovers that a pioneering female scientist lived in the neighbourhood in the 19th century. As the book blurb states: Could this historical connection be enough to save their home from ruin? And can Willa, despite the odds, keep her family together?

In parallel with the modern story is a 19th-century historical narrative, about Greenwood Thatcher, a biology teacher, his struggles to introduce his students to Darwinian evolution, and his meeting with the real pioneering botanist, Mary Treat, who corresponded with Charles Darwin.

Although I have only read two-thirds of the novel, I don’t think it really matters what will happen by the end. 

The rather worthy theme of the 19th-century plot is the opposition of Creationism and Darwinian evolution. Greenwood Thatcher is trying to introduce his pupils to the theory of evolution, while the school principal firmly resists any departure from a Biblical interpretation. Unfortunately, this plot is hammered to us repeatedly and insistently, and we of course from the benefit of hindsight know that Thatcher is right; it doesn’t make for much drama. I feel as if I were reading a gently dramatized version of an introduction to 19th-century views on evolution by a well-meaning secondary school teacher, who makes it very clear indeed what the right interpretation is. Secretly, I admire the school principal (although perhaps that's just my perversity). 

The present-day plot concerns the efforts of Willa to protect her family in the ramshackle old building that is structurally unsound. A less charitable interpretation might be a mother’s forlornly clawing back her children from their adult life, trying to pretend they never stopped being dependent. The novel is narrated from Willa’s point of view, so we never learn what the now adult children think of their mother’s behaviour.  

The modern plot of Unsheltered is very maternal. Willa likes to have something to worry about, and continues to fret about her offspring even after they have fled the family home. Their return, whether or not intentional, is an opportunity for her to care for them even more, to provide Wilma, with something to worry about. Perhaps this represents an entirely new strand in the novel: after the epistolary novel, the confessional novel, the picaresque novel, here is the maternal novel: everything in the present-day narrative is narrated from the point of view of the mother. While the mother may not be Kingsolver, the combination of the maternal concerns and the winsome narrative voice grates on this listener.

Overall, the novel is rather insistent in pushing its points home, and at the same time rather idealistic, while being almost smug in its defence of bourgeois family values. By way of example, Kingsolver was criticized for a Los Angeles Times opinion piece following the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks. She wrote, "I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming at each other, 'He started it!' and throwing rocks that keep taking out another eye, another tooth. I keep looking around for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, 'Boys! Boys! Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt."

The present-day plot of Unsheltered seems almost to be a plea for the mother’s point of view. A typical exchange is between Willa and her son Zeke:

“Your dad always used to carry Tig on his shoulders like that in crowds. So she could see more than just people’s belt buckles. Remember?”

“I remember childhood, yes. I understood it was supposed to end.”

“Of course.” People like Willa and Zeke never stopped being surprised when it didn’t.

And here are some typical Kingsolver views:

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.

Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

If you see the world like that, you will enjoy Unsheltered.