Helen Redfern's weekly look at the fictional women she loves...
Even though I was highly entertained by The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella, I didn’t feel the main character, Samantha, was inspirational. She is clever and in a position of great importance, soon to be a partner of a law firm, yet I felt, a tad stupid at real life. As the story unfolds the message her character expressed to me is that women cannot cope with highly stressful jobs and should stay out of the city. Then, she is waiting for a man to ‘save her’. I thought this was a book with a plot set in the dark ages only dressed up as modern because the woman has a fancy career.
Yet when I was talking to a few of my friends this woman came up as a good inspirational character. A woman who had inspired them to look at their life differently and make a few changes. So I looked at her afresh. I saw she had turned her life around. She didn’t put up with the pompousness of city life. She saw through it and realised that there is more to life than working yourself to the bone. And maybe there is something in that. I gave up my city job when I’d had my child as I couldn’t face the politics, the egos, the trying to impress someone all the time. Until I rediscovered my love of writing I was disappointed with myself giving up on my old career, so maybe I was transferring some of these issues onto the unsuspecting Samantha. But then it isn’t a sleight at the feminist movement to not work all hours and have a brilliant city career. True equality surely means a woman has a choice.
Samantha Sweeting is a workaholic. Her working life is divided and dictated by six minute chunks. Every six minutes she is supposed to bill a client. She doesn’t have time for anything else. For sorting out her home life, for life with family, or even for having a life. As Samantha says “You get used to measuring your life in little chunks. And you get used to working. All the time.”
Samantha is also highly intelligent. She has a fantastic head for figures but her office looks like a bomb has hit it. When she realises she has made a mistake she leaves the office in a daze and walks onto the nearest train, finding herself at the door of a household that requires a housekeeper. She is undomesticated, in her own words she admits “OK, maybe I can’t sew on a button. But I can restructure a corporate finance agreement and save my clients thirty million pounds.” This fails to impress her neighbour leaving Samantha to call out “Did you never hear of feminism?” And Samantha is right. Why should it be expected that women be domesticated. But by the same argument why are domesticated women seen as letting the feminist side down?
Of all the characters I have studied for this column, so far, Sophie Kinsella’s creation has been the character I have had to think about the most. She is not straightforwardly brave, like George Kirrin, or Nancy Drew. She isn’t doing a dangerous job like Tonks, or Jane Rizzoli. In this day and age where much is expected of women in the working world but there still aren’t the same opportunities as men, it is incredibly brave of Samantha to take on the law firm that accused her of messing up a £50 million deal, to clear her name, but then to turn her back on the partnership and the money for a calmer life. The man in the story didn’t save her. He just demonstrated that there is more to life than working. Samantha saw she had a choice and saved herself.
