Whatever happened to the Great British Battleaxe?

‘She’s no better than she should be.”

“If we had some ham we could have ham and eggs, but we’ve no eggs.”

“Think on.”

These were the phrases I grew up on. They were delivered by zaftig grandmothers, aunts, female friends of aunts and grandmothers, neighbours, teachers and any other woman you came across who was old enough to have earned the right to non-sequitur you into submission. These were the communal matriarchs, whose remit to remake the world according to their own convictions extended beyond their own families to anyone who had the temerity to cross their paths with a cheeky look on their face or fewer than 50 years of donkey-stoning steps under their belt. Every neighbourhood had a heavy-coated, steel-permed phalanx of them, local legends all.

Alan Bennett lamented in an interview this week that these women no longer dominate social or domestic life. His ear for dialogue, he has said on many occasions, was honed by his early years spent absorbing the constant conversation spilling forth from Yorkshire women of a certain age all around him. “There’s a tradition, or there used to be, of women ruling the roost a bit longer than they do down here [in London] ... My auntie worked in Mountfields, the shoe shop in Leeds, when she was in her 50s. Nowadays, a woman in her 50s wouldn’t be working in a shoe shop – it’s girls out of school. And you miss that age range now. It’s a shame, really.”

He is talking, in essence, about the disappearance of the battleaxe, a figure once so common and beloved – nay, revered – that Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough were able to build their careers on a tribute act to her. Their bosom-hitching, world-weary duo Cissie and Ada, as indomitable as they were unimpressible, was recognisable – with certain regional adjustments – nationwide, though the northern form has always been the standard by which all others are judged.

The women of Bennett’s childhood, and mine,were a wonder. Battleaxedom in popular culture is virtually synonymous with heavy corsetry, and this indeed is a large part of it (I was unaware until puberty that brassieres did not necessarily have to be made in a shipyard) But it is primarily a state of mind, comprising equal parts misanthropy, self-confidence and pride.

They were a product of an age, or rather several succeeding ages, when men weren’t expected to do much at home except put their wages on the table, eat their tea and expire quietly by the fire or down the pub without asking for too much sex in between (“He never bothers her” being the greatest expression of approbation in a battleaxe’s gift). The women ruled over everything else, the domestic sphere gradually widening beyond home, hearth and children to include cleaning other people’s houses and on into “little” jobs such as working in shoe shops or cafes. And once they were in those jobs, they stayed. You can’t sack a matriarch. It would be like killing your mother, except it’ll get back to your mother and she’ll have your guts for bloody garters.

But times change, and battleaxes don’t, so they are now in the throes of extinction. Communities are not the stable entities they once were, and it is hard to put down legendary roots in their constantly churning soil. Respect for age and experience has been crushed to death between growing worship of youth and the equal adulation of the short-term bottom line, which means that cheap school-leavers will always be favoured over the more expensive older worker, and so their public presence fades.

At the same time, fewer battleaxes are being produced. Greater parity between the sexes and opportunities for women have dissipated many of the tensions and frustrations that you need to fuel successful domestic tyranny. Effective contraception must take some of the blame too. You can’t whet a tongue or temper a steel core effectively on just one or two children. (That’ll barely even prolapse a womb, and without that a husband may still feel he can come and bother you and use up precious local legend-building time. The battleaxe must beware the domino effect.)

I suppose we must be grateful. Gainful employment and control over our wayward reproductive organs has probably added to the sum of human female happiness, though our future playwrights are probably not being as aurally nurtured as they should. But I also wonder if we are lacking in battleaxes for the same reason that we also, in these denatured modern times, are lacking bona fide bitches. Women’s confidence, despite all the practical gains made over the years, is taking a beating like never before. The bullying and backlashing on social media is cowing younger generations. A smiling face and neutral commentary becomes the default position, and the need to be liked is undoing us all.

A true matriarch, a true battleaxe, is fearless. She deals only in moral absolutes, so that those around her flailing in a sea of moral relativism can cling on to her rock-like convictions when mental cramp eventually sets in. She cannot be forged in such tremulous times.

Nay, Alan, tha’s right. The matriarch’s day has come and gone. We shall not see her like again. No point mithering. If we had some amenable sociopolitical conditions, we’d have battleaxes, but we’ve no amenable sociopolitical conditions so we’re all no better than we should be. Think on.