JENNI MURRAY is, for many, the acceptable face of feminism. She is firm when
it matters, conciliatory where appropriate, chastising where necessary. She
navigates the choppy waters of post-feminism with a steady hand and a good
nature. She is not just the “voice of Radio 4's Woman's Hour”, as the jaunty
yellow sticker on the cover of Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter reminds
us; she IS Woman's Hour.
She is also neatly representative of her generation of females - a generation
to whom people like me owe a great deal. It was they who dug the trenches in
the battle for equality; who determinedly forged successful careers in
male-dominated environments, who rebelled against the precepts upheld by
their mothers, who put up with being labelled unnatural, immoral and
irresponsible. They successfully bucked an age-old trend - and in doing so
gave us all a crack at the train set.
As you would expect, then, this is book written in a rather brusque,
practical, keep-your-lamps-lit style. There is no shilly-shallying, no time
for self-pity or regret. This is a woman who has lived a full, purposeful
life in a determined and conscious fashion, and who is keen to get on with
the rest of it. As a reader (and as a listener to her programme), you cannot
help but sit up, straight-backed and to attention, as Murray launches into
the first chapter, on her way to visit her dying mother and distraught
father in hospital. The tone is terse, frustrated. The tensions that all
women feel, between family and career, are evident from the start.
This is not, however, the heartless memoir of a hardened careerist. The true
joy is the full emergence of the emotion that Murray often hides behind her
professionalism and which here flows free and unfettered. For inside the
public persona of the acclaimed broadcaster is an ordinary woman, as
afflicted by doubt, fear and insecurity as the rest of us. Inside her is an
anxious little girl, the bright only child of working-class parents from
Barnsley, so desperately seeking the love of one disapproving parent that it
makes the heart weep.
The time frame of the book encompasses the death of her mother, the subsequent
death of her father and Murray's own battle with breast cancer. This
heightened emotional period is the perfect backdrop against which to wrestle
with a few personal demons. There is fascinating social detail - about her
background, upbringing, education, her father's work abroad, Murray's
rebellious teenage years and her early forays into journalism.
There are, as you would expect, pockets of classic Murray-style campaigning.
For example, the account of her mother's traumatic labour leads to an
impassioned rant about the rights of women in childbirth, with a sweet aside
about the benefits of cranial osteopathy (Murray was a forceps delivery, and
suffered from terrible headaches that were finally cured by a cranial
osteopath). Principally, however, this is the story of her relationship with
her mother - and, by extension, of the cultural abyss between the postwar
generation and the baby boomers.
The real meat, however, is a heady mixture of love and loathing that Murray
expresses for her mother. It is complicated, and it is everywhere: in
discussions with nurses about palliative care; in her relationship with her
father; in love affairs, in the way she nurtures her sons. It is a study in
how our parents' prejudices lodge in our hearts like poison darts: Murray's
mother longing for a boy; the rivalry for her father's attentions; and
endless, heartless comments about her daughter's hair, weight and general
demeanour.
Especially damaging is her mother's constant need to assert her sexual
superiority over her child. Murray constantly describes her mother as
elegant, dainty, slim. For herself she reserves less flattering adjectives
such as “hefty” and “chubby”, although she does concede, grudgingly, that
she has nice hair and eyes. Her sense of physical inadequacy is acute: “I
knew I would never be able to compete. From time to time [my mother] would
bemoan the lottery of genetic inheritance. ‘Such a pity you seem to take
after your dad and not me when it comes to bone structure.'”
Even much later, as her mother is approaching death and Murray is ministering
to her every need despite a broken ankle, the old woman cannot resist a dig:
“You were always careless, you know,” she says, adding “It always seemed
funny to me that such a big-boned girl should break so easily”. Murray
comments: “I find myself leaving her presence feeling hurt and angry - and
guilty that I can be cross with someone who's in such dire straits.”
A lesser talent than Murray might easily have painted her mother as a mean old
tyrant, and directed this memoir towards the section marked “misery”. Not
Murray. She instinctively knows that her mother's barbed comments are
themselves an expression of her own frustrations: a woman struggling with
economic hardship, class barrier and her own unfulfilled dreams.
To have a daughter for whom intellectual development and a glittering career
were all so readily available must have seemed, however subconsciously, so
unfair. She sought to reassert authority by pointing out the areas where she
was strongest and her daughter weakest. Little wonder that Murray chose to
define herself almost entirely by her intellect.
Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter by Jenni Murray
Bantam, £14.99; 320pp Buy
the book from Books First £13.49 including free delivery
Extract
And so, at the age of eleven, I accompanied my mother to Manchester airport to
wave her off. On the way there I simply wanted to be rid of her. No more
fussing about what I was wearing; no more lectures on the dangers of boys;
no pressure about whether I spoke nicely or not; no hassle about my hair; no
more whingeing about “that revolting Elvis Presley on your wall” (he was
dressed in leather and sitting provocatively astride a motorcycle - the
devil incarnate to any anxious mother); no complaints about “always having
your nose stuck in a book when you should be here helping me”. Grandma and
Grandpa were guaranteed to run around and do everything for me and find me
totally adorable no matter what. The “me, me, me” little voice in the head
that's dominant in the personality of every child was running on top-grade
fuel.
I had not anticipated the horror of watching my mother walk across the tarmac
- her presence slipping away with every footfall towards the steps of the
plane. She, of course, had needed a boxful of tissues before she let go of
me as her flight was called. When she sobbed and clung and told me over and
over how much she loved me I found it embarrassing. Now, though, as she
turned back one last time and waved and I felt the first hollow pangs of
separation, I truly thought my heart was breaking. She had meant it. She was
really going. She was abandoning me.
