Thatcher as a Symbolic Mother

~ Clarissa

The widespread glee over Thatcher’s death seemingly serves no practical purpose. She hadn’t been in power for a long time, so why would strangers care whether she is alive (and living as a recluse as a result of her illness) or dead?

There is, of course, a reason why people explode in celebration as a result of Thatcher’s death. For them, she symbolizes the punishing, distant, cold Mommy who wasn’t nurturing enough and who kept rejecting them. Today’s joy is their way of repudiating the symbolic Mother.

I’m sure you’ve heard how the Soviet people wept collectively for a week when Stalin died. This isn’t a myth. They really cried and felt desperate. This happened because Stalin was a symbolic Father for them. A protective, strict, overbearing Daddy who took away the people’s freedom to act (and what freedom can little children expect to have, anyway?) and in return assumed every responsibility. Given that he died during the time when many people were fatherless as a result of WWII, this felt like being orphaned twice. First, the biological father died, and now the real father was gone, too.

I find it fascinating what this emotional outburst over Thatcher’s death tells us about the culture(s) that experience it. Since people who are celebrating are quite advanced in age, this rage against the Mother who had the gall to refuse to nurture them is a sign of one thing and one thing only: immaturity. There are many grievously immature people around us.

N.B. for new readers: On this blog, we discuss things in a way that is more profound than “People celebrate her death because they didn’t like her policies.” I don’t like Bush Jr.’s policies. I detested him while he was in power. But I can’t even begin to imagine getting emotionally involved with his life or death now that he is out of power. Intellectualizing emotions is a childish defense. Welcome to the blog!

Unknown's avatar

Published by Clarissa

48 thoughts on “Thatcher as a Symbolic Mother”

  1. “There is, of course, a reason why people explode in celebration as a result of Thatcher’s death. For them, she symbolizes the punishing, distant, cold Mommy who wasn’t nurturing enough and who kept rejecting them. Today’s joy is their way of repudiating the symbolic Mother.”

    Well, this is not why I celebrate her death personally. And you’re right, this is not a good reason to celebrate. The fact that she was not nurturing “enough” was probably her best quality.

    “I’m sure you’ve heard how the Soviet people wept collectively for a week when Stalin died. This isn’t a myth. They really cried and felt desperate. This happened because Stalin was a symbolic Father for them. A protective, strict, overbearing Daddy who took away the people’s freedom to act (and what freedom can little children expect to have, anyway?) and in return assumed every responsibility.”

    The same thing has occured with Chavez and will occur with Castro. And yet, Chavez, Castro and Stalin were worse than Thatcher…

    Like

    Reply

    1. “The fact that she was not nurturing “enough” was probably her best quality.”

      – By “not nurturing” I mean the privatization of public services, destruction of the unions, tighter law & order measures, assault on the social safety net, in short, everything that gave her the nickname “The Iron Lady.”

      “The same thing has occured with Chavez and will occur with Castro. And yet, Chavez, Castro and Stalin were worse than Thatcher…”

      – Chavez was in power when he died. The Castro brothers are in power still.

      Like

      Reply

      1. I know but Fidel is almost (or maybe really 😉 ) dead, so…

        “By “not nurturing” I mean the privatization of public services, destruction of the unions, tighter law & order measures, assault on the social safety net, in short, everything that gave her the nickname “The Iron Lady.””

        So, it was about her politics, finally?

        Like

        Reply

      3. It’s just become crystalized for me (a whole bunch of small random data points finally coming together).

        It’s not about budgets at all. There is a concentrted agenda at work (that takes different forms in different places at different times depending on circumstances) with the goal of eliminating universities as potential seats of intellectual thought. What is desired in their place are glorified vocational schools.

        I have a hypothesis and will now look for contradictory evidence…

        Like

        Reply

        1. “It’s not about budgets at all. There is a concentrted agenda at work (that takes different forms in different places at different times depending on circumstances) with the goal of eliminating universities as potential seats of intellectual thought. What is desired in their place are glorified vocational schools.”

          – I agree completely. COMPLETELY. Although I’d much much rather disagree about this. If you find that evidence, remember that I’ll be happy to learn about it.

          Like

          Reply

      4. “I have a hypothesis and will now look for contradictory evidence…’

        I should clarify I don’t intend to actively search for evidence will just classify evidence that comes my way as either contradictory or coroborating, and if enough contradictory evidence comes my way I’ll discard the hypothesis.

        Where I am the evidence is largely in the form ever more absurd and counterproductive ways of evaluating faculty (ways which cannot possibly raise the the prestige of local institutions or improve the quality of research being carried out or published). It does keep people mired in mindless busy work though.

        Like

        Reply

  3. Socialism is designed to keep individuals immature and dependant on the state. Thatcher rejected such dependency and many people cannot forgive, even thougfh deep down they must know that she pulled the country out of serious economic and political decline. Chavez will be mourned by those desperate to be dependant on the state and sad because he died before he could force complete dependance.. That is a completely different, if equally pathetic story. Thatcher did not only withdraw the mother’s milk. She put some serious stick about.

    Like

    Reply

  4. Personally, I rejoiced when she lost power.
    The person who died this week was not the ‘Iron Lady’, she was a sad, lonely, somewhat demented old woman. I don’t find anything to celebrate in that.

    Like

    Reply

  5. The main point is that it’s sick and pathetic for a citizen of a supposed modern democracy to be so emotionally invested in a head of government.

    She had a job and she did it (better or worse depending on your criteria). Investing her with such power that her death (20 years out of power) needs to be greeted with gnashing of teeth and solemn mourning or looting celebrations is the sign of a infantalized medieval personality that has problems with boundaries and separating people from their jobs. I don’t trust anyone celebritng her death to be able to make intelligent choices at the ballot box.

    Like

    Reply

    1. “The main point is that it’s sick and pathetic for a citizen of a supposed modern democracy to be so emotionally invested in a head of government.”

      – Exactly. This is not a healthy reaction. She has no influence on politics any longer, so her death changes nothing in practical terms.

      “Investing her with such power that her death (20 years out of power) needs to be greeted with gnashing of teeth and solemn mourning or looting celebrations is the sign of a infantalized medieval personality that has problems with boundaries and separating people from their jobs”

      – That’s what I’m saying. The degree of emotional investment here is scary.

      Like

      Reply

      1. There was one guy who kept posting on my Facebook link that Thatcher had done nothing to advance the cause of feminism but had instead adopted male mannerisms. When I asked him what the point was in saying that, he got upset with me and posted something else about her. When I said that wasn’t relevant either, he asserted that the only person I wanted to speak to was myself. I think this revealed his attitude, that women are wherever they happen to be to nurture him and express gratitude for journalistic tidbits, but not to disagree with him. I also think this epitomizes the attitude of many calling themselves feminists. They think it’s about being nurturing and starting a goddess cult.

        Like

        Reply

  6. “There are many grievously immature people around us.”

    I think that explains it pretty well without having to mother figures involved in this atll.

    Like

    Reply

  7. Also there have been a lot of male leaders who have been extremely harsh. Ronald Reagan is the ideological equivalent of Thatcher, only more mystifying. He made people think that whatever their fortunes happened to be, they were a just harvest from the universe. Thatcher at least said what she meant and did not set out to bamboozle the poor souls. But Reagan is hardly hated today, despite being a charlatan and making fools of so many.

    Like

    Reply

      1. Yes, of course it is. I don’t know why the gender bigots can’t see things for what they are. I used to think everyone could be made to see it. But people really are that stupid — or perhaps it is like fish swimming in a liquid they haven’t taken time to analyse.

        In the mean time, I have to try to persuade people that you cannot simply “infer” anything meaningful about a complex literary text if you have not taken the time to understand the context of the writing, or indeed to read the text itself from which a short extract has been derived. Really, Richard Dawkins is teaching people to be stupid apes when it comes to navigating their worlds.

        Like

        Reply

          1. He seems to be incredibly deluded about things one ought not to be so mystified by. For instance, anyone who has engaged in any social discourse at all knows that that it does not occur only in terms of a simple binary operation, whereby one is either making positivist pronouncements or collapsing into a heap of slapstick nonsense. Yet he demands that French philosophy be understood to fall either on one side of this binary or the other. In other words, like a typical bigot, he misreads something and then blames his misreading on the other person.

            Like

            Reply

            1. These are also misreadings that are very convenient for him. He pretends not to understand or to see only the most simplistic readings. But many audiences appreciate him because of this : he stoops to their levels.

              Like

              Reply

              1. I have a feeling that this attitude of his will come around and bite him on the butt hole some day. People like that eventually start to believe in their own lies, which means they easily fall into complex traps set for them by others.

                Like

  8. It is clear nobody from the North of England has yet commented here.

    This current thread denies that a lot of real suffering took place as a result of her actions. Children went unfed and unclothed, old people died from lack of heating.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Yes, yes, it is wrong to psychologize everything, because there are actual material conditions that people often rightly protest. But, at the same time nobody protests Reagan. Nobody hits back at the fact that he taught them to think in purely narrow terms that wealth makes right. There has been a whole generation whose thinking has been messed up by Reagan’s metaphysics.

      Like

      Reply

      1. I believe that directing one’s anger with the situation at a single proponent of such policies is deeply immature. With Thatcher’s death, neo-liberalism did not go away. It still has as many proponents as ever. People are channeling their energies away from real political activism into idiotic, infantile songs about witches. The witch, I want to remind everybody, is a character of fairy-tales that, yet again, symbolizes “the evil mother.” Small children project their hatred of the real mother into the figure of the witch and this helps them remain obedient little kiddies outside the safe space of fairy-tales.

        Like

        Reply

    2. Well yes, but when the miners were on strike and no fuel was getting through most of the country was suffering from a lack of heating. There are always two sides to a story and the other side to this one is that the unions were bringing the country to its knees so they could get their own short-term way even if it was doomed, ultimately, to failure because the mines were basically finished.

      Like

      Reply

    3. I’m from North Yorkshire. 😛 There are exactly two people from my primary who went on to higher education, and I’m one of them.
      Specifically, one of the reasons Thatcher’s death leaves me mostly unmoved is that revolting though many of her policies were, she was and is not alone in them, and I find it hard to consider her the sole source of the damage. Neo-lib political economic theory neither originated or died with her and that is the real enemy.
      More broadly, I think Thatcher like Diana is an externalised symbol to many. Don’t know that I agree with the Freudian type analysis that Clarissa posits, I lean more to the idea that Thatcher symbolizes change which, (can’t remember where this idea originated from) is the one thing the British don’t want from their politicians!
      Diana on the other hand became a focus for unarticulated discomfort with the class system – which is why she is so enduring popular – on some level supporting her is a way of sticking up two fingers to the aristocracy.

      Like

      Reply

      1. “I lean more to the idea that Thatcher symbolizes change which, (can’t remember where this idea originated from) is the one thing the British don’t want from their politicians!
        Diana on the other hand became a focus for unarticulated discomfort with the class system – which is why she is so enduring popular – on some level supporting her is a way of sticking up two fingers to the aristocracy.”

        – This is in no way less Freudian than my analysis, actually. 🙂

        “Specifically, one of the reasons Thatcher’s death leaves me mostly unmoved is that revolting though many of her policies were, she was and is not alone in them, and I find it hard to consider her the sole source of the damage.”

        – I couldn’t agree more. So she’s dead, have all the companies she privatized suddenly become nationalized with her death? Have the unions been reborn? What is there to be so joyous about? Nothing has changed with her death. Literally, nothing.

        Like

        Reply

    4. Nobody denies that at all. But how does her death this week help alleviate that suffering? How would Bush’s death help dig us out of the economic crisis he created?

      It was the same thing when Yeltsin died but in his case, he had been out of power for a very short time and many people hadn’t noticed that and thought he was still president.

      Like

      Reply

  9. It would be interesting to know if there are any studies that show how children react to the death of an abusive parent.

    I suspect that for many it might be more along the lines of “It leaves me cold” or “She means nothing to me.”

    Like

    Reply

    1. The death of an actual abusive parent is a tragedy because it is much harder to develop a critical attitude towards a dead person and start healing. It is much much harder to heal when the abusive parent is dead.

      Here, however, we are not talking about an actual parent but a symbolic one. A symbolic parent allows to direct the rage against the real parent – the rage that is perceived as a mortal threat – into a safe channel.

      Like

      Reply

  10. OT, when you said that McEwan’s post was a hatchet job, it made me think “if that’s a hatchet job it’s not a very effective one”. I think a better example of a hatchet job is the movie Iron Lady which focuses on her dementia more clearly than the life which is famous for. It’s supposed to be sympathetic but there’s this weird sort of glee in the fact she’s losing her mind and seems to have lost her husband and children. Plus it attempts her into an object of pity,which I’m sure she would have despised, from what little I’ve read about her.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I haven’t watched the movie but from what I heard about it, I think you are absolutely right.

      I didn’t watch it because my great-grandmother die of dementia and I’m very traumatized by seeing it depicted on a screen.

      Like

      Reply

  12. I think it is more complex than this. Whilst a lot of the hatred originates from the traditional regions that Thatcher decimated with her policies the real reason why her death has had so much impact 20 years after she died is the current climate of politics in the UK. The current rising inequality, welfare reforms, changes to housing benefits and reduction in disability benefits can all (arguably) be traced back to Thatcher and her undermining of the welfare state. The protests are not just about Thatcher but the state of the country today and her death is acting as an outlet valve for all the other issues that we are struggling with.

    I think that if she had dies 10 years ago the reaction would have been much more muted due the general higher levels of prosperity in the country. Its not about Thatcher, its about discontent.

    Like

    Reply

    1. ” Its not about Thatcher, its about discontent.”

      – Of course. But we are back to the issue of immaturity that channels the anger towards a completely unproductive medium of a dead old lady and not towards those who can do something today. The celebrations are over, the song has made everybody feel better, business as usual continues.

      In the US, of course, the immaturity is much much higher than that even.

      Like

      Reply

    1. And we are still in the realm of the infantile.

      The higher ed is being destroyed in the UK, just eviscerated. This has been going on for about 2 years. I only wish that the people engaging in these useless anti-celebrations mobilized for higher ed instead. But no, when the U of Wales was cutting foreign langs, the action had to be spearheaded in the US web resources. The UK colleagues of the victimized department had a lot less interest in its fate.

      But I’m sure they can all sing a witch song extremely well.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment