The battle of all mothers
Anita Brookner
THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTABEL by Margaret Forster Chatto & Windus, f13.99, pp. 266 The tone of Margaret Forster's last novel, Have the Men Had Enough?, was jus- tifiably angry, since the wrong which she so ardently desired to have righted was, alas, irreversible: Alzheimer's disease may come to any of us, and there is little we can do about it. In the present novel the tone is even angrier, yet the cause may seem slen- der and even unjustifiable. In any event it begins on an intemperate note and never wavers, which is regrettable, for here is a situation in which balance and satire are called for, never more so than because much of the anger is directed against social workers. This will give the novel additional topicality — indeed, everything in it is topi- cal — yet at no point is it suggested that social workers are strangled by their terms of reference. A rigorous overhaul of the syllabus is required, yet no one seems to request this. Nor does it seem entirely fair to criticise their manners and physical appearance, although to judge from recent television interviews this does seem to be bizarrely uniform: can we blame the Zeitgeist of the 1970s? There is never any doubt that Margaret Forster could trounce
the lot of them. Her scorn and her superior standards of truth-telling militate against the action of her story. Semantics may have something to do with it: jargon will never win adherents.
She encourages us to feel indignant on her behalf, or rather on behalf of her nar- rator, Isobel, yet this was something I was unable to do, although fully sympathising with her predicament. Isobel is an explo- sively critical character, much burdened by the disastrous nature of her friend and flat- mate, Rowena. Rowena might need an entire social-work team of her own; unfor- tunately, no one got there in time. Rowena has charm. She is also feckless, dirty, untidy, unemployable, promiscuous, stupid, and tearful; all her lovers are black. When Rowena decides to become a single parent, Isobel is furious, as who would not be? Yet she consents to be present at the birth, surely a curious decision, and when Rowena is killed, agrees to take the child, Christabel, into her keeping. Or so she thinks.
The first flaw in Margaret Forster's argu- ment is already apparent. Why would any- one, let alone a prig like Isobel, share a flat with a mess like Rowena? Given that some women are physically addicted to the prospect of becoming mothers, why does Rowena so hate men that she dismisses them the minute they have satisfied her requirements? There are very few men in this novel — I counted three — and they are frail, wordless creatures, no match for the energumens with whom fate has linked them. All the women, except Rowena, are furious and verbose; one imagines them to be indomitable, but this in fact is not the case.
When Rowena dies Christabel's grand- mother makes the child a ward of court, since she is too old to look after her her- self. Then the action begins, and, one might add, the thesis is launched. Because the grandmother decides that Christabel should be adopted she comes under the jurisdiction of the Social Services and even- tually the Adoption Panel, with noisy Isobel taking charge. Christabel, a bright child, is removed from Isobel and given to Betty, a foster-mother approved by the council. Betty is a decent enough woman, but she is virtually illiterate, defiantly lower-class, and in her excellent care Christabel regresses, her speech deterio- rates, and she is told that reading will hurt her eyes. This Isobel and the grandmother, Mrs Blake, view with increasing alarm and, of course, indignation. There follows the battle for Christabel, who now calls Betty `Mum'. This battle is actively engaged by Maureen, the social worker, who argues that no decision can be taken about Christabel's future until the child has done her `grief-work'. The conceptual gulf is immense, and apparently unbridgeable. At this point Isobel makes a snap decision to marry her boyfriend Fergus and adopt Christabel herself. One might ask why this suggestion never presented itself in the first place, since it seems an obvious solution to Christabel's problems. Isobel, however, is too angry to be rational; besides, she has had herself sterilised, a fact which might seem irrelevant, but is not; for Isobel, as is all too obvious, has not done her own grief- work. In any event Christabel seems happy with Betty, who has grown possessive. There is another factor. Isobel and Fergus, the prospective parents, are white, while Christabel is black. It is decided, by the social services, that she must be brought up by a couple who share her own back- ground. The Carmichaels, black father, white mother, are thought to be ideal.
There is nothing wrong with the Carmichaels. They may in fact be perfect, but there is no denying the evidence of Christabel's increasing disturbance and alienation. This is what makes Margaret Forster so angry: that Christabel, in the space of six years, has known no less than four mothers — Rowena, Isobel, Betty, and Lisa Carmichael. Here, at least, we can join in. But this reader was left with the lurking suspicion that three of these four mothers were absolutely hopeless anyway. Mrs Carmichael remains an unknown quantity. And the future of Christabel is left in doubt, while the maddening Isobel is grant- ed a sort of epiphany, a belated vision of motherhood which, she thinks, enriches her. The reader might point out that it was precisely Rowena's vision of motherhood which landed Christabel in trouble in the first place.
One sympathises with children having to be brought up by adults, many of them as silly as Rowena. One sympathises with Margaret Forster, on the rampage with the best of intentions. But the novel suffers from her indignation. Detachment might have served her better, and made a good novel out of one that is, in the last analysis, disappointing.
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