Fay Compton as Granny (aka The Mater)
in The Virgin and the Gypsy
(dir. Christopher Miles, 1970)
I.
It's not only stars that can collapse and form black holes: there are elderly women at the end of their natural life - pushing, eighty, ninety, and beyond - who can also wilfully exert a gravitational pull so strong that nothing and no one can escape from it.
Who knows, perhaps these supermassive maternal bodies exist at the centre of every family (even when bed-ridden or endlessly sitting in an arm-chair); feeding off the energy of their adult children until the latter are burnt out and exhausted, or sent spiralling into depression and thoughts of murder.
II.
We find one such malevolent matriarch at the dark heart of a family only nominally headed by the forty-seven year old rector, Arthur Saywell, in D. H. Lawrence's short novel The Virgin and the Gipsy (1930).
Granny, "who was over seventy and whose sight was failing," [6] became the central figure in the household after the vicar's wife had scandalously run off with a young man, leaving her husband with two young girls and an ageing parent to care for (a task in which he was helped by Aunt Cissie, a pale and pious woman, also over forty, who was "gnawed by an inward worm" [6]).
Granny, "who was over seventy and whose sight was failing," [6] became the central figure in the household after the vicar's wife had scandalously run off with a young man, leaving her husband with two young girls and an ageing parent to care for (a task in which he was helped by Aunt Cissie, a pale and pious woman, also over forty, who was "gnawed by an inward worm" [6]).
They called her The Mater - granny, not Aunt Cissie - and she was "one of those physically vulgar, clever old bodies who had got her own way all her life by buttering the weaknesses of her men-folk" [6], particularly her son, the rector. Maternal instinct provided her with the great clue to his being and she was able to exploit and manipulate him to maximum effect - though always, of course, in the name of Love.*
With her delinquent daughter-in-law - She-who-was-Cynthia - out of the picture, The Mater "climbed into the chief arm-chair in the rectory, and planted her old bulk firmly" [6] into it, determined to never again be dethroned or to see her son remarry.
Not only did the silver-haired Mater tremble with hate at the thought of She-who-was-Cynthia, so too did she secretly despise her granddaughters, Lucille and Yvette; "children of that foul nettle of lust" [7]:
"Her great rival was the younger girl, Yvette. Yvette had some of the vague, careless blitheness of She-who-was-Cynthia. But this one was more docile. Granny had perhaps caught her in time. Perhaps!
The funny thing was, Granny secretly hated Lucille, the elder girl, more than the pampered Yvette. Lucille, the uneasy and irritable, was more conscious of being under Granny's power, than the spoilt and vague Yvette." [7-8]
So, Granny - The Mater - was not a warm, kindly soul: she only pretended to be. And gradually, having left school and returned home, the girls realise that under her "old-fashioned lace cap, under her silver hair, under the black silk of her stout, short, forward-bulging body, this old woman had a cunning heart, seeking forever her own female power" [8].
Nor was it physically pleasant to be around the old woman, particularly at meal times when Granny - who loved a bit of pork - would quickly devour her special dishes of "beef-tea and rusks, or a small savoury custard" [10], half-spilling the food as she did so. "The girls ate with repulsion [...] Yvette's tender nose showing her disgust" [11].
And, of course, when you live with the old - as with cats - the rooms are never fresh, no matter how many windows you open; everything smells of Granny and cabbage and "degenerated comfort which has ceased to be comfortable and has turned stuffy, unclean" [10]. Home is where the heart is, they say, but it's also where you'll find that awful domestic sordidness which is so fatal to any joy in life.
No wonder poor Lucille and Yvette can't stand being at the rectory, The Mater presiding from her arm-chair "with her stomach protruding, her reddish, pendulous face, that had a sort of horrible majesty" [13] like Queen Victoria, or an old toad.
What the girls minded most, however - even more than her gross physical complacency - "was that, when they brought their young friends to the house, Granny was always there, like some awful idol of old flesh, consuming all the attention." [14]
But what could be done? You couldn't actually say to poor old Granny: "'lie down and die, you old woman!' She might be an old nuisance, but she never really did anything. It wasn't fair to hate her" [17].
Having said that, Yvette can't help imaginging Granny being strangled by a wolf-like gipsy woman, putting an end to her horrible persistence and parasitic agedness.** Fortunately, however, it doesn't come to this - The Mater meets her Maker after a terrible flood washes her away, the waters advancing upon her "like a wall of lions" [69] roaring.
Her gipsy lover, Joe Boswell, saves Yvette - but poor Granny has no one to pull her to safety; she is last seen in the hallway "her hands lifted and clawing, as the first waters swirled round her legs, and her coffin-like mouth was opened in a hoarse scream" [70].
No wonder poor Lucille and Yvette can't stand being at the rectory, The Mater presiding from her arm-chair "with her stomach protruding, her reddish, pendulous face, that had a sort of horrible majesty" [13] like Queen Victoria, or an old toad.
What the girls minded most, however - even more than her gross physical complacency - "was that, when they brought their young friends to the house, Granny was always there, like some awful idol of old flesh, consuming all the attention." [14]
But what could be done? You couldn't actually say to poor old Granny: "'lie down and die, you old woman!' She might be an old nuisance, but she never really did anything. It wasn't fair to hate her" [17].
Having said that, Yvette can't help imaginging Granny being strangled by a wolf-like gipsy woman, putting an end to her horrible persistence and parasitic agedness.** Fortunately, however, it doesn't come to this - The Mater meets her Maker after a terrible flood washes her away, the waters advancing upon her "like a wall of lions" [69] roaring.
Her gipsy lover, Joe Boswell, saves Yvette - but poor Granny has no one to pull her to safety; she is last seen in the hallway "her hands lifted and clawing, as the first waters swirled round her legs, and her coffin-like mouth was opened in a hoarse scream" [70].
The next time Yvette sees her, Granny is bobbing up "like a strange float, her face purple, her blind blue eyes bolting, spume hissing from her mouth" [71]. The gipsy also looks at her with contempt and thinks her not deserving of help: Lebensunwertes Leben, as some would say ...
Even, surprisingly - but, then again, not so surprisingly - Aunt Cissie is there to cry out at the end: "'Let the old be taken and the young spared!'" [77]
David James Gilhooly:
Frog Queen Victoria (1989)
Notes
* It's important to note that The Mater exerts her malevolent will over other women too and not just the men-folk within her circle. Thus, Aunt Cissie - her daughter - is also a victim:
"Aunt Cissie's life had been sacrificed to The Mater, and Aunt Cissie knew it, and The Mater knew she knew it. Yet as the years went on, it became a convention. The convention of Aunt Cissie's sacrifice was accepted by everybody, including the self-same Cissie. She prayed a good deal about it. Which also showed that she had her own private feelings somewhere, poor thing. She had ceased to be Cissie, she had lost her life and her sex. And now, she was creeping towards fifty, strange green flares of rage would come up in her, and at such times, she was insane.
But Granny held her in her power. And Aunt Cissie's one object in life was to look after The Mater." [8]
** And, later in the story, Yvette openly admits her true feelings for Granny:
"It was Granny whom she came to detest with all her soul. That obese old woman, sitting there in her blindness like some great red-blotched fungus [...] her Yvette really hated, with that pure, sheer hatred which is almost a joy." [63]
"The look Yvette most hated, was the look of that lower jaw pressing relentlessly up, with an ancient prognathous thrust, so that the snub nose in turn was forced to press upwards [...] The will, the ancient, toad-like obscene will in the old woman, was fearful, once you saw it: a toad-like self-will that was godless, and less than human! It belonged to the old, enduring race of toads, or tortoises. And it made one feel that Granny would never die. She would live on like those higher reptiles, in a state of semicoma, forever." [63]
Again, this seems harsh - until, that is, you have first-hand experience of such old people oneself ...
See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Virgin and the Gipsy', in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 5-78. All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.
"Aunt Cissie's life had been sacrificed to The Mater, and Aunt Cissie knew it, and The Mater knew she knew it. Yet as the years went on, it became a convention. The convention of Aunt Cissie's sacrifice was accepted by everybody, including the self-same Cissie. She prayed a good deal about it. Which also showed that she had her own private feelings somewhere, poor thing. She had ceased to be Cissie, she had lost her life and her sex. And now, she was creeping towards fifty, strange green flares of rage would come up in her, and at such times, she was insane.
But Granny held her in her power. And Aunt Cissie's one object in life was to look after The Mater." [8]
** And, later in the story, Yvette openly admits her true feelings for Granny:
"It was Granny whom she came to detest with all her soul. That obese old woman, sitting there in her blindness like some great red-blotched fungus [...] her Yvette really hated, with that pure, sheer hatred which is almost a joy." [63]
"The look Yvette most hated, was the look of that lower jaw pressing relentlessly up, with an ancient prognathous thrust, so that the snub nose in turn was forced to press upwards [...] The will, the ancient, toad-like obscene will in the old woman, was fearful, once you saw it: a toad-like self-will that was godless, and less than human! It belonged to the old, enduring race of toads, or tortoises. And it made one feel that Granny would never die. She would live on like those higher reptiles, in a state of semicoma, forever." [63]
Again, this seems harsh - until, that is, you have first-hand experience of such old people oneself ...
See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Virgin and the Gipsy', in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 5-78. All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.
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