32 Saturday April 30 2022 | the timesComment
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1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GFfrom Teddington, Middlesex, “We
are all Dickensians!”
“In the same way that there’s a
Beatles song or a Punch cartoon for
every occasion, there’s a Dickens
character to personify every human
virtue or folly. You might consider
Rees-Mogg Gradgrindian, but
perhaps he’s behaving with the
charitable magnanimity of the
Cheeryble brothers. Who is the more
Dickensian? Uriah Heep or Sam
Weller? Magwitch or Micawber?
Miss Havisham or Madame Defarge?
And is a Dickensian Christmas a riot
of Pickwickian good cheer or a
miserable Scroogian nightmare?”
I think the Scroogian nightmare is
what Dorries had in mind, but the
dictionary does give two definitions
for “Dickensian”, which are
alternatives to that grim vision —
“characterised by jollity and
conviviality” and “grotesquely
comic”. Sounds just like life in 10
Downing Street.Bottoms up
H
ugh Duncan took me to task
on a nautical point. “In regard
to the meaning of ‘careen’, I
don’t think it is necessary to actually
turn a ship ‘upside down’ to clean its
bottom. In my source of all naval
knowledge, the novels of Patrick
O’Brian, careening was done by
passing a cable under the ship to
scrape its underside. I imagine that
turning, say, HMS Victory upside
down would have presented
considerable problems.”
Yes, I can see that. Point taken.you could say that a fourth was
outstanding, in its way. Anyway, I
feel sure the reference was not
intended as a putdown. Semper’s
own career demonstrated that a
fourth was no bar to future success
in life. Oxford — the only university
which gave them — phased them out
in the 1970s but, as several readers of
the obituary pointed out, other
distinguished holders of fourth-class
degrees include the 19th-century
Tory prime minister Robert Cecil,
the cricketer and author CB Fry,
Gerald Gardiner QC, a lord
chancellor, and Colin Cowdrey.
Semper was a postwar grammar
schoolboy, and therefore not the
typical hooray who regarded a fourth
as the “gentleman’s degree”. In
Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder’s
older cousin Jasper advises him on
his arrival at Oxford: “You want
either a first or a fourth. There’s no
value in anything in between. Time
spent on a good second is time
thrown away.”
By the same token, I would guess
that second and third-class degrees
rarely, if ever, get a mention in
obituaries. And, of course, with the
present grade inflation, a fourth 60
years ago equates to a 2:2 today.All life is here
W
e reported that Nadine
Dorries, the culture
secretary, had accused
Jacob Rees-Mogg of being
“Dickensian” in his crusade against
civil servants being allowed to work
at home. But, writes, Philip Downer,among women to whom this term
might be applied.
Our correspondent Karen was,
therefore, right to say that “Karen” is
a derogatory term but she had, I
think, misunderstood the sense in
which it appeared in the Times2
article. In writing about the HRT
shortage, Anna Maxted was
parodying the response of ignorant
and unsympathetic doctors to the
menopause — “oh, boohoo, the
Karens have run out of moisturiser,
they’ll just have to put up with dry
skin and dry vaginas and being
hysterical and unhinged for a bit; calm
down ladies, untwist your knickers”.
Maxted may have been over-
egging it — I’d like to meet the
doctor brave enough to tell an HRT-
deprived woman to calm down —
but that’s the nature of satire. And I
wonder if there isn’t something just a
tiny bit Karenish about emails which
end “Do better, please”, or “Shame
on you”, or even “I expect better”.Semper primus
J
ohn Brooke wrote to ask, “Why
was it necessary in the obituary
of the Very Reverend Colin
Semper, canon of Westminster
Abbey and head of BBC religious
broadcasting, to add ‘attaining a
fourth-class degree’ after saying that
he read theology at Keble College,
Oxford. Was this a compliment or
something of a putdown? It read as
the latter. I see no need for such
additional information unless the
degree was of an outstanding nature,
a double first for example.” I supposeA
Karen has written to
complain about the use of
“Karen” in a Times2
article on Wednesday.
“Why,” she asks, “do you
allow the name Karen to be used in a
derogatory manner? Karen is my
name, a name that my mother and
father chose for me 67 years ago, a
name that I have always been proud
to have. Why is using my name (and
that of many others) in an insulting
manner acceptable? I expect better
from you.”
“Karen”, in case anyone is feeling
mystified, is current slang for white
women of a certain age who are seen
to be over-endowed with feelings ofUnlucky Karens
have been turned
into a bossy cliché
entitlement and enthusiasm for
complaining — the definitive Karen
catchphrase being “Let me speak to
the manager”. The term comes from
the US, where it is thought to have
originated in the African-American
tradition of giving nicknames to
stereotypical meddling and racist
white women. It was propelled into
(all too) common usage in 2020 after
two highly publicised incidents when
white women wrongly accused black
men of theft and threatening
behaviour.
No sooner had the bossy white
Karen become embedded in public
consciousness than a number of
female journalists and academics,
quite probably bossy but not
necessarily called Karen, began
pointing out that using this term to
demonise a group of people was
sexist, misogynistic, racist, ageist and
classist — in short, just another way
of telling women to get back in their
boxes and keep quiet. This, I believe,
is the current consensus, at leastRos e
Wild
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