Is Doctor Foster A Modern Medea?

**********WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS************

As the delicate ceramic pomegranate falls from Gemma Foster’s carmine nailed fingers and splinters into pieces, we know all attempts at reconciliation with her straying husband are over. 

It’s war. 

The pomegranate - symbolic of marriage - is as irretrievably broken as Gemma’s trust - but not her will. 

Far from it. 

The title of BBC drama, Doctor Foster, was not one to seduce me, but it was at the insistence of friends, already bewitched, that I began to watch it. Both women had experienced wandering spouses, and were impressed at the show’s verisimilitude: ‘That’s how it feels - they really capture how it feels to have that happen,” my friends explained. 

Immediately plunged into the about-to-be-rocked world of Gemma Foster, the viewer encounters a successful GP, the adoring wife of property developer, Simon Foster, and mother to pre-pubescent Tom. This beautiful family reside in a stunning statement Cotswold house with a bare-brick open-plan kitchen that would have interior design mags hammering on the door. 

But this is Simon’s home town, Simon’s neighbourhood, Simon’s friends, and Gemma, like Medea, is the stranger transplanted by marriage to a place where she is regarded with suspicion and envy. 

And, in the same way Medea assisted Jason’s quest for the fleece, Gemma has supported her husband through one of his toughest business ventures, only to discover he has fallen in the love with another woman. And his lover Kate, like Glauce, is the daughter of a powerful man - Simon’s main (and secret) financial backer. 

Two clues to the husband’s infidelity are introduced within the first few minutes and all too soon Gemma’s extraordinary resourcefulness comes into play, determined to uncover the truth. But we also see her maverick side. Medea bribes Aegeus with her witch’s fertility potion, Gemma promises sleeping pills to a patient in return for snooping on Simon. 

Like any of us these days, Gemma turns to the internet for information about her situation, yet in using this very 21st century method she turns up a 17th century text that sums up her feelings perfectly: “Heav'n has no Rage like Love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury like a Woman scorn’d."

Medea’s ability to exercise her vengeance and fury is limited by the society she lives in; distorted by the lack of power in a world where intelligent, creative women turn to witchcraft and sorcery, becoming liminal creatures who cannot not flex their intellectual muscles and realise their own potential alongside men.  

And while Medea, and Lady Macbeth suffer the frustration of  exercising their power through the men they serve as wives, Ford Madox Ford’s notorious Sylvia Tietjens becomes a petty tyrant of epic proportions. Rich, pretty, spoilt, nothing drives her more than the desire to wreak havoc and misery on her husband. One wonders how things might have been different if  she’d put all that effort into a career. 

But Gemma Foster refuses to be the victim and boasts that her cleverness will ensure that she doesn’t lose out, if her husband leaves. But in contrast to the unhinged Gone Girl heroine, Amy, who takes murder and self-harm in her stride as she takes revenge on a cheating husband,  we are always reminded that Gemma retains a moral compass. 

While her ethics may be questionable, she fiercely believes in doing what she sees as the right thing.  

She can be weeping and beating her head on the dashboard, watching her life unravel before her eyes as she unearths her husband’s other phone and realises her supposed friends already know about his affair, but it doesn’t stop her from having the cojones to threaten the violent drug-addled boyfriend of one of her patients, or phone the pregnant wife of a patient to tell her about a serious condition he has been concealing.

And, incredibly, on discovering that Kate is pregnant, Gemma’s moral dilemma is that Simon should know that he has fathered a child, even if this threatens their marriage still further.

The backstory of Gemma is subtly revealed. Orphaned at 16, she has attained everything she has and is through her own intelligence, determination and hard work. 

But faced with the enormity of her husband’s betrayal, it isn’t enough just to be clever. As a former colleague reminds her, “I’m clever and I’m a drunk who hasn’t showered for three days.” So, while Gemma might share the sexual scheming and ruthless allure of her literary prototypes, she is also a modern heroine who wields genuine power - to own property; to earn money; to have legal redress. Her ambitions may be modest by Lady MacBeth’s standards, but she also wields power in her own right as a pillar of the small community she has joined. She has independent wealth and her own home. She plans to keep it that way.

As the story reaches its denouement, our anticipation teeters on an edge of what we believe this character is capable of - we may know that Medea’s perfectly appalling punishment of Jason was to murder their sons, but we certainly don’t want to believe it of Gemma. Yet, when she returns home from the school pick-up brandishing scissors and a hank of Tom’s hair - but no Tom - we slip under Simon’s skin to live the eviscerating horror of believing our own child to be dead. 

It’s then that Gemma plays her next brilliant move, with beautiful timing Tom is despatched home to be greeted by a trembling panic-stricken father who practically prostrates himself with relief at the boy’s feet. 

Utterly blind with fury at how he has been played, Simon walks into Gemma’s final trap in a heartbeat, assaulting her and sealing his fate to be branded the adulterous and violent partner.  

In its conclusion Dr Foster is no Medea, nor a Lady Macbeth for that matter. The only blood she washes from her hands is her own. She is a feminist heroine; a modern heroine, shaped by a society where scorned women can do far more than sacrifice themselves or their children to get even. 

Semi-detached

They are popping up everywhere, as a panacea to the ills of our high-speed lifestyles; as a secular means to reducing anxiety and reducing stress… Too busy for a class? Download an app! 

I’m talking about meditation and mindfulness.

They have enabled me to experience welcome relief from a prolonged period of depression. My practice helps me to believe that through nurturing my family and friendship bonds with loving kindness I can appreciate the value and pleasure of life, learn to be present, and experience happiness in this chaotic and brutal world. 

But the more meetings I attend and the more practitioners I listen to, the more questions I have. 

While the intention may be to take the ‘middle way’ through regular meditation and mindfulness,  one also has to ask if such a potent tool for tinkering with our minds holds any dangers. 

Finding the most suitable meditation practice is crucial, but so is a skilful teacher. The meta bhavana meditation which focuses on cultivating loving kindness towards all beings has the potential to promote a compassionate attitude to the people that we encounter on a daily basis and appears to be the antithesis of Zen detachment. But even this technique can take for granted a level of self regulation when it comes to choosing suitable subjects to meditate upon (e.g. deciding to send positive wishes to your grumpy postman rather than your childhood abuser).

The apparent paradox of being ‘present’ through mindfulness, yet being detached from the forces that bend and bow our emotions, is not easy to navigate. Just where does one end and the other begin? Good teachers don’t pretend to know all the answers, but they should be able to support and guide you. Above all they should listen and honour your individual experience.

However, while spiritual teachers can be wise, insightful, inspiring and compassionate, they are not professionals. They aren’t necessarily counsellors or psychologists, yet they have the power to impart disturbing ideas about the nature of our existence, or insist that in order to dispel unhappiness you should learn to accept things as they are. 

It deeply concerns me that people turn up to such meetings to sort out their shit, yet without a skilled teacher alert to the nuances of the teachings being espoused, or in tune to the kind of vulnerabilities people carry around, some serious damage could be sustained. 

Through the millennia, it has never been everybody’s calling to detach themselves from life and meditate, to be a ‘renunciate’. Lorin Roche, a scholar of meditation and its social and psychological implications, argues that most people are ‘householders’, i.e. the majority of people who “live in the world and evolve through working and playing with it.” 

The renunciate detaches from the world, the householder engages. But what if a householder is encouraged to detach themselves? To weaken their desires, instincts and emotional intelligence? According to Roche, this can have serious implications.

I perceive a dangerously blurred line between accepting what is - in order to dissipate unnecessary drama and discontent -  and accepting what is morally and ethically … unacceptable. And how are people struggling with past trauma, or living with abuse, given their vulnerable, warped realities, supposed to perceive the difference?

It’s the concept of detachment that both intrigues and disturbs me too. Ultimate detachment from the material world might bring enlightenment, but Buddha was only able to do this after a prolonged and profound journey through his own and others’ experiences. 

Meditation is a powerful tool that can enable us to glimpse our deeper, higher self and sense our human potential. But we need to find the right approach and a skilful teacher to show us how to use it - for ourselves, not against ourselves. As Roche says, “it’s easier to destroy than to create.”

I find an unlikely parallel in Jonathan Glazer’s film Under The Skin where an alien life force, in the process of navigating human existence, finds itself moving from the dispassionate observation of human suffering and emotions to being overwhelmed by wonder, love, mercy and fear through its experience of wearing a human body. 

Detachment is what makes it alien. And, though the human condition encompasses joy and tenderness as much as savagery and pain, we can’t escape this. But like Glazer’s alien, it’s possible to make our own tentative steps towards cultivating compassion - for our own wondrous bodies and the embattled spirits they contain -  as well as for other people we encounter. 

We are householders of our own bodies, our own relationships, our own lives, and I agree with Roche: to detach from these aspects risks destroying our own humanity. What are we then? Perhaps a distant, detached alienated force of existence that simply observes life instead of living it. 

N.B. I'd like to credit Heidi Hanson's superb blog on trauma and healing for inspiring this post.  

#HaveKindlewilltravel? Living Life Unplugged

When you read this I will have travelled through Spain from Barcelona in Catalunya in the northeast down to Cortes de la Frontera in the Serrania de Ronda, Andalusia - the far south of Spain. 

And for once, I won’t be checking audience stats, or seeing whether anyone has actually read this post, because I will be unplugged. 

No phone. No Kindle. No laptop. 

Seriously, how else do you really get away from it all? For all its wonder (complete strangers across the globe can share my innermost thoughts and personal observations) and convenience - ‘How do you make cornbread? Just let me check online… I’ll just email so-and-so …I’ll just make a bank transfer …I’ll just look at Matthew’s wedding photos …’

But it’s relentless. Because, let’s face it, we don’t just stop at the recipe, or the one post or the photo, and before we know it hours have passed and we are still caught in the fascinating labyrinth of Wiki, or sniggering at yet another video on Youtube. Then perhaps your memory dredges up a name from the past, and instead of being content with merely wondering over that person’s fate, we think: ’Oh, Becky Smith! I’ll Google her…’

Have any of you heard of post restante? This precursor to instant electronic communication is still around, but the very name smacks of a previous era.

A traveller would head off to their destination - to Spain, or Morocco, or Thailand - but not before she had made sure all her best friends and family had the address of the post restante in that country. Basically, it is a postal collection point at a post office where your correspondence is kept safe until you call in to pick it up. 

A friend of mine recalls the emotional impact of receiving a cheery letter from her mother after having travelled through Iraq to Pakistan. She had suffered numberless kilometres, bone-sore from being tossed around trucks bouncing along stony, unmettled roads. To top it all she was also dealing with sickness and diarrhoea. On arrival in Quetta, weak as a kitten, she had to be held up by her companions in order to make the short journey from the van to the  post office. But her struggle was worth it for the sheer joy of  holding a letter from home in her hands. As she read the opening salutation, tears coursed down her cheeks.

I can’t imagine the receipt of an email provoking quite as much bitter-sweet drama.

But back to now. The internet age. Despite my nostalgia for real letters, my attempt to go off the network this summer isn’t just a romantic ploy to relive the early 90s. 

I’m seriously concerned about the effect all this technology is having on my child. I hate that we are expected to take it for granted, as inevitable, and accept the giant wedge that this technological hegemony is driving between parents and their children. 

Parental controls are soon circumvented and the blurred line between using a computer for work and for leisure makes usage all the more difficult to police. Allowing internet access to kids means you are walking along a thundering motorway desperately hoping that the distraction of their game won’t lead them into the path of adult content and that the oncoming behemoth of predatory paeodophiles won’t come crashing into your home. 

It’s tough to try and allow our children to merely dip a toe in the ocean of the internet, when they are more likely to take a running jump and dive right in. 

I’d like to spend a whole other post exploring the psychological crack that electronic devices and their entertainment are - repetitive, addictive games are particularly damaging, in my opinion. But suffice to say, I feel I should practice what I preach when I decide to erase the iPad and its seductive games from my child’s summer.  Sitting beside his bored, fidgety little body while glued to my phone or my Kindle, hardly sets the right example. 

So, I'm going to do it - even though Amazon are spending a fortune on dazzling adverts featuring cosmopolitan mothers in Patagonia to remind me how cool and handy a Kindle is, even though I know it would be the easier option compared to humping seven novels across Europe …

Aargh!

#Havedeviceamaddicted

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Skinny?

The topic of fat as a feminist issue has hit the headlines again. Namely the gob-smackingly smug missive Michelle Thomas received from her Tinder date, who considered her too fat to fancy. 

Then, in the same week, I watched a video of comedian, Luisa Omielan.  I was expecting to find it funny, and it was - but I wasn’t expecting it to land a punch right quite so firmly on my ego. That ego that still witters on annoyingly in the background with its doubts and criticisms. 

As Luisa hugged her belly and knocked her thighs together (and how the words ‘ample’ and ‘shapely’ beg to be collocated to those nouns) Ego/Vanity - whatever you like to call it - gave a horrified scream and Real Self raised her regal head and nodded - “That’s right, Love. You are still influenced by the bullshit beauty standards that were instilled from the moment your boobs began to bud and hormones wreaked havoc on your girlish, bum-less, beanpole body and turned it into that of a bodacious-buttocked sexually mature female. 

Remember?

Yes. Cue criticism and self loathing. 

In fact I can remember the exact moment. It was a Sunday. I was wearing jodhpurs, about to go riding. I was looking out of the window, my back to the door when my mother walked in and uttered a cry of dismay. I turned around. What could it be, I wondered. What could be so bad that it made my mother exclaim out loud? I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell me of a catastrophe, an awful omission…

“Your arse!” she gasped. “It’s absolutely huge!”

And from then on, she felt duty bound to remind me of this, along with her keen observations on my imperfect nose, my meager breasts and my appalling posture. As I described in my post about Marilyn , I came to realise eventually that such afflictions did not preclude me being attractive to men. However, the ‘ huge arse’ comments and the complete contempt in which my mother held anyone even slightly overweight made its impact. 

I recall the first time a man said I was beautiful, I thought he must be slightly mad, or a flatterer, or just kind. I didn't know what to do with compliments.

I was far too busy frantically trying to stave off any trace of fat. It was so hardwired I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I’d say things like ‘I can eat anything I want!’ and partly in thanks to a youthful, maniacal metabolism firing on nicotine and caffeine, the minimum exercise came up with the right results: skinny. 

When I checked my height to weight ratio I was bemused by the fact that it always came up as ‘underweight’. But I’m not! I thought. 

For a while taking the contraceptive pill and being actually quite happy put pay to my skinny obsession. When my ex-husband saw photos of me from this time in my life he remarked: “What a fatty!”

What a crime! I was proving my mother right - inside me there was just a hideous fat cow waiting to slip out when I was preoccupied with silly things like enjoying myself. “I’ll show her!” I thought. 

Living in Japan was the perfect place to nurture such an ambition. Imagine living in a place where no shoes are big enough - and when you tell the shop assistant your size, she exclaims, “Gigantic!” Imagine discovering you even too big for the fat-granny’s oversize department.  Imagine only being able to buy clothes from American catalogues (apologies guys). This was a sorry episode in my personal style. I was so happy when Freemans became available overseas. British fashion in my size! 

But, by then, I had subjected myself to such a gruelling regimen of exercise and food control (in my head I was never on a diet) that I had slimmed down to the largest size available in most Japanese fashion boutiques: British size 8 (American 4, European 36). But I still believed I was too big. Especially when another smirking shop assistant was kind enough to ask me when the baby was due. Miaow! 

It was years later, on that watershed day I have reflected on in a previous post, when my mother was finally too ill with dementia to recognise me, that it finally dawned on me how the chief motivation in my battle with weight-gain was simply to spite her! Now she didn’t know who the fuck I was, there was no one to prove wrong anymore. 

I’ve done enough work on myself to extinguish almost entirely the spiteful voice that once had the power to reduce me to a baseline of self-loathing and self-harming every time I did something ‘wrong’ or looked less than very slim. And now I am suspicious of my relationship with exercise - I question why exactly I do it; whether it’s doing me more harm than good.  

Food and drink are two other contenders for addiction and abuse. That’s a whole blog post in itself.

But, as Luisa Omielan says as she cuddles her middle. “I love this - this means I have dinner with friends.”

She’s so right. Listen up, Ego. 

Something for the Weekend

Baking, scorching, melting ...

The current British summer has taken us all (as usual) by surprise. And (as usual) the transport system has failed in a huge way, electrics are blowing up, and many a fair-skinned bod has been toasted a startling shade of scarlet.

As this taste of the tropics continues, the comely invitation of al fresco pleasures and picnics will be impossible to resist this coming weekend. Nevertheless, I feel the lull in my blogging should be interrupted, so that if anyone is so inclined to peruse their 'device',  they might stumble on this amuse bouche.  

An offering that, in my languorous state, requires little more effort than a few clicks, is a story that I adapted for inclusion in a story cabaret held by the delightful editorial duo Little Fishes, here in Lewes, East Sussex. 

The theme of the cabaret was 'Objet D'Art' and offered such an array of talent, that when I finally took my place for the final slot, I felt a tad amateurish and intimidated. However, the cocktails worked admirably at steeling my nerves, and it was well received. 

So, here it is - The Ersatz Idol.

 I was still teaching English when I saw Kinkakuji for the first time. If you're anything like me, that won’t mean much. It means Golden Temple. That golden temple in Japan, on all the postcards and stuff? I went along because that’s what you see when you're in Kyoto. We spent five hours on a train to get there. I bloody wanted to see that temple.

It was almost Autumn, but it was still hot. It was late in the afternoon when we got there, me and my two Aussie colleagues, Chris and Kate. It wasn’t even that crowded, but it felt like there were too many people. I started to feel panicky and suffocated. I fumbled for my camera and watched helplessly as the lens cap fluttered to the ground and disappeared into the grass. The camera felt slippery in my hands as I squinted through the viewfinder at the temple.

It was so golden; I was dazzled. It was delicately perched above a pond like a dancing maiko draped in her wedding kimono. I had never seen a building like this. It was too beautiful to be true. Too beautiful to exist.

I felt butterflies in my stomach. I had senses only for this beautiful object. The incomprehensible muttering of the visitors faded. I only heard birds, the wind in bamboo and I seemed to sense the temple itself resonating with a tone too low or too high in frequency for my human ear. I wondered if it was a time machine hosting the spirits of eagle faced samurai and emaciated zen masters. Shifting in its shimmering form between eras; appearing to me now in my stunned and static present.

Then I felt the tourists pressing against me, anxious to do the next thing on their itineraries.  The brief, magical rapport between me and the golden temple faded. I realised Chris and Kate were both hovering hesitantly, eyes questioning. I ignored them, turning away to skirt the boundaries of the tiny wooden fence, my head inclined awkwardly, with one aim: to capture the temple at any and every angle and fix those visions in my mind’s eye.

Reluctantly, driven on by the surge of the crowds, I followed the path to the gardens, and still my eyes searched for the temple that winked in tantalising  instances through dense bamboo.

I found Chris and Kate near the exit. We sat on a dry dusty rock across from the souvenir shop and waited for the bus. I began to read the creased pamphlet in my hand. I must have gasped.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kate.

 “The temple. It’s a fake.”

Chris grimaced as he swallowed cold tea from a can.

“Yeah,” he said. “Some guy burned down the original.”

“I think there was a book about it,” added Kate.

I couldn’t believe they'd known and hadn’t said a word.

“It’s still amazing though, isn’t it?” said Kate.

I didn’t answer. Kate stood to join Chris in an attempt to flag down a taxi.

I thought about how I had been sold this fake thing. How I’d been cheated. I had wanted to possess that thing of beauty -  I wanted to suck up its essence inside me.

And now, here I am in a hostess bar, perched up on my high stool staring at my reflection in the black granite table top.  Now when I try to imagine the man who could destroy something as beautiful as Kinkakuji,  I can. All too easily.

When I hear the door,  I keep my eyes cast down and put on my demure smile that’s twisted into a smirk by my reflection. Mama-san rattles out her greeting with fraudulent delight and I listen to the reply.

It’s for me.

Kimura-san sits at my table, eyes round with pleasure, ready to glug down his gorgeous gaijin along with his whisky. He doesn’t know I’m a fake. The real thing burned down years ago.

My Weakness for Marilyn

At 14 years old I enjoyed my first taste of recognition as a writer - I won a prize in the annual Post Office Letter Writing Competition. 

The theme was: write a letter to someone you admire, so I wrote to Marilyn Monroe. 

She is mesmerisingly beautiful and a joy to behold, so it’s not immediately obvious why a lank-haired, flat-chested English teenager might feel moved to write to a bosomy blonde American sex goddess. Yet, the moment I saw her on screen and then found myself caught by those bewitching eyes staring down at me from the shelves of the Athena poster art store, I sensed a connection. 

Reading about her unsettled and deeply unhappy childhood and her estrangement from her mother, I discovered the common ground we shared, and what I (and countless others) had recognised in Marilyn’s eyes. To the teenaged me she was a beacon of hope - she had survived suffering and become a star!

Marilyn Monroe’s gift for connecting with people has transcended her death, not just through her stunning photographic portraits. Year after year, memoirs of her briefest affairs and friendships have ballooned into books and films to feed the public appetite for all things Marilyn.

A few weeks ago, decades after my teenage crush, a paperback of Lois Banner’s Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox caught my attention, and once again I found myself bitten by the Marilyn bug. 

Banner, a scholar rather than a fan, pinpointed Marilyn’s mysterious and untimely death as a chief reason for her continued popularity. She argues that people are free to make of her story what they wish, depending on how they believe she died. And, had she survived, given the extraordinary decade of race and gender politics that unfolded following her demise, there are almost endless permutations of how she might have become.

But, for me, reading about Marilyn again was an uneasy trip back to my former self, as well as an examination of  where I am now. 

Banner’s scrupulous exploration of her highly nuanced character, the sheer drudgery and sexual exploitation that lay behind the glamour of Hollywood, her extraordinarily fast-paced, demanding life and the debilitating demons that dogged her to the last, all served to make me feel far more informed about Marilyn than ever before. But it was also difficult to distinguish where the research ended and my wisdom had grown. 

At 14 I eagerly read anything about her I could get my hands on. It was usually disappointing. Most books about her seemed to be by men who claimed to have slept with her. The experience of having sex with Monroe was not something that particularly interested me, and I was too young to appreciate the self-harm that her promiscuity signified. I was far more intrigued by the dichotomy that her meteoric success crowned by such tragedy represented. 

In fact, it went deeper than that. To some extent I wanted to be Marilyn. I didn’t see how just being me would get me anywhere. Being told on a daily basis I was a Plain Jane and I needed to ‘work on my personality’ proved that. 

But, if the physical transformation lay beyond the realms of possibility, playing the part wasn’t. I spent my Saturday afternoons listening endlessly to a cassette of Marilyn’s songs, learning every word of them down to the last boop boopy doop. Desperately hoping some of the magic would rub off. 

Marilyn’s magic is inimitable. Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn, came close to portraying it. But as I grew older I began to understand that I did have something that Marilyn had in spade loads  - and that was sex. 

It seemed like magic when, despite everything my mother had said, I realised that men found me attractive. And it easily became addictive as my shredded ego sucked up male attention like a drunk hoovering up dregs at the end of a party. 

But as intoxifying as it is, it also becomes its own trap. If your currency is sexual attraction, then age can only devalue your net worth. As your bum and your boobs shift southward and your complexion becomes less than pristine, you need to search your soul for something else to cherish. 

I wonder if she would have managed?

I no longer have a copy of my letter to Marilyn, but I think I probably asked her, why oh why, when you had everything that is supposed to make you happy in this world - beauty, success and fame - were you clearly not? Surely you are the proof of their fraud? 

Thirty years after writing that letter, I realise that she is also the proof of something else. To be absolutely yourself is by no means easy. It is a work in progress and the hardest thing you will ever do. To find yourself without being taken in and taken over by the fake promises of money and drugs and vanity is a momentous task. 

You might just die before you do it.