THAT'S MEN:Do men really find fierce women attractive in real life, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
WHY DO men find fierce women so attractive in literature and, perhaps, in real life? The fierce female has been a feature of literature and myth for a very long time and almost all literature was, until recently, written by men. So something about the fierce female tickles men’s fancy even as we get ready to flee.
If you have ever read the novels of PG Wodehouse you know that they derive their energy from Bertie Wooster’s attempts to comply with, or avoid complying with, the demands of his fierce Aunt Agatha and more friendly, but still fierce in her own way, Aunt Dahlia.
There are, of course, younger women in the novels too but many of them are brisk and snappy and heading towards fierce womanhood themselves.
Oscar Wilde gave us the fierce and formidable Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. Without her ferocity would we still flock to the play? I doubt it.
In the Christian tradition we have been deprived of fierce women as characters to look up to. Female saints are an insipid bunch from a male point of view. Even poor Joan of Arc seems more deluded than fierce. The Virgin herself is more like an adoring Irish mother (who is also a virgin, as it happens) than a woman to make you shake in your boots.
Even if you go back to the Garden of Eden, Eve was more of a nag than a fierce woman. You can just imagine the scene:
Eve: “It’s at least two weeks since I asked you to take that apple down off that tree.”
Adam (thumbing the remote control): “I’ll get onto it later.”
Eve: “Don’t bother. I’ll do it meself, that’s the only way to get anything done around here, etc, etc.” Slam.
Cranky, yes but she doesn’t really cut it in the ferocity league.
We’re far more interested in fierce characters like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra whose mixture of fierceness and sexiness made her irresistible not only to Mark Antony but to generations of male theatre-goers – a real case of fatal attraction, as Mark Antony learned to his cost.
And look at Lady Macbeth. Though ‘sexy’ is not the word that springs to mind in her case, we remember her, the iron lady, more than we do her husband who perhaps reminds us of ourselves a little too much.
She does rather disappointingly fall apart at the end though.
Mention of iron ladies brings us, of course, to Margaret Thatcher who embodied fierceness and who was surrounded by adoring male cabinet ministers. Had she put herself across as soft and gentle, would she have lasted half as long? I doubt it.
Psychologists would probably tell you this all has something to do with mothers. But then again some psychologists believe everything has something to do with mothers. Considering the mothers some of them had, you can’t always blame them.
The mother of Fritz Perls, who developed Gestalt Therapy, used to beat him with carpet-cleaning rods. She was a fierce woman by all accounts and, what do you know, Fritz hated his father more than his mother.
In the modern era we still have our fierce women, both fictional and otherwise. There’s the fierce and edgy Carol in Fair City and Blanche embodies ferocity in Coronation Street.
How many men would have heard of Naomi Campbell if she hadn’t been a bit fierce and known to lose the temper now and then?
And there’s a look of ferocity about Madonna, too – not somebody I’d want to be getting into a domestic argument with. If Madge told me to take out the bins, tell you what, I’d do it and I’d do it now.
The goddess of fierce women, by the way, is an Egyptian called Sekhmet. She was a very angry lady who once had to be given barrels of blood-coloured beer to knock her out and stop her destroying the world.
Sekhmet also had a part-time job as the goddess of menstruation. The ancient Egyptians, fair play to them, held a huge beer festival every year in her honour. Now, why couldn’t we have had a saint like that?
pomorain@ireland.com
Padraig O’Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy