Tempestuous Themes and Times

Commenting on a recent Scotland Yard report which claimed that 600 incidents of domestic violence occur every hour in Britain, Ms Mary Kenny informed Sunday Telegraph readers last week that there was more to domestic violence than statistics: complex stories often lay behind the figures.

We were told about a now deceased friend of Ms Kenny, Fidelma, who apparently might have deserved the occasional battering she got from her husband. Fidelma was "funny, generous, wonderful company" but also "maddening". She "had a poisonous tongue and would make the most breathtaking allegations".

Served her right then. Another friend has been beaten up quite seriously once or twice by her "attractive, generous and entertaining man" (when the charmer had drink taken). Ms Kenny urged her to leave him, but she chose not to: "I do know that my young friend would prefer an interesting man who was sometimes tempestuous to a boring man who was perfectly behaved."

Tempestuous. Hmm. Finally we were told how Ms Kenny herself, way back in her "drinking days" once flung a crystal glass at her husband, hitting him in the forehead and drawing blood. The shame and remorse over this made her finally give up drink - "but I also came to see that statistics alone can never explain the deep complications of people's intimate lives."

What eejit ever said they could? All of the above only makes one wonder why men and women do not hammer each other more often than they do. If an intelligent woman like Ms Kenny can make a spirited defence of domestic violence and be so understanding about it, why can't more women take such an enlightened attitude, and try to grasp the complexities behind a good beating instead of whingeing about it? It is surely up to the sisters to spread the word and change the culture of complaint, and Ms Kenny has made a good start.

I especially liked the stuff about the attractions of the "tempestuous" man. We non-tempestuous men have long envied this lad, who sweeps the women before him despite the odd clout he is liable to deal them when in his cups. Now it turns out this is an essential part of his charm, and Ms Kenny thinks it is worth considering the thesis put about by some psycho-biologists (whatever they are) that violent men attract women because they have more testosterone - in other words they are sexier.

Well of course they are. They clearly pick up a lot more women. So why are our young men not taught such essential information while still at school? Why are they not told about the sexual turn-on provided to women by a good thumping? Where does this fit into the infamous "Exploring Masculinities" programme, which can't even recognise the aggressive testosterone-fuelled value in a bit of harmless locker-room towel-snapping, man to man?

As it happens, I recognise the young woman Ms Kenny referred to, the one obsessed with the occasionally aggressive partner. "Plenty of nice men have sought her favours, and been rebuffed," says Ms Kenny. Alas, I am among those pathetic wimps, the meek creatures spurned in favour of the macho man. And what have we done about it? Well, we have wrung our hands, we have cried and we have gone home to our mothers. None of this made a damn bit of difference. The young woman only laughed at us, and her boyfriend, the tempest (as we call him, rather nastily), sprayed us with champagne, which made us even wetter. Now we have finally got tough: we have formed a support group, and he better look out.

Ms Kenny says that one of the most instructive texts on this subject is Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, wherein Pegeen Mike shuns her dreary fiance for the exciting Christy, a man who claims to have murdered his own father.

Fair enough. Christy Mahon is hardly a man throbbing with testosterone, but he certainly knows how to fake it. That much is certainly instructive. But perhaps the text we really need to reinterpret (where are those damned psycho-biologists when we need them?) is Shakespeare's The Tempest. We need to know who is actually in question when we hear the strain of strutting Chanticleer ("Cock-a-diddle-dow") and we might even discover that Ariel is not the kind of fairy we thought he was. We are indeed such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a slap.