c. 1997 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ Diana was everywhere.
On a recent trip to New York City, I saw her face on every block, at every newsstand, on virtually every magazine cover. They were images from happier times, as if by common agreement only the moment of Cinderella at the ball would be preserved. It reminded me of visiting Boston the week after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
In time _ not much time, probably _ magazines and tabloids will turn to other news. But for now a defining moment seems to be at hand. Something that people hold dear about themselves has been lost.
What is it? My read is the Princess of Wales meant one thing to the British, and something else in Americans.
To the British, it seems Diana was, at first, intriguing, romantic, a true princess, a delight to watch in her endless costumes and shy smile. As time went on, she became something else: a glimpse of worthiness in an otherwise burdensome monarchy.
They talked about her being human and warm-blooded, in contrast to the grim-faced Windsors. She went among the people. Even if those outings were photo-ops, they were more endearing than photos of a tweeded prince walking royal dogs. At least, she seemed comfortable with people.
Diana seemed present to the nation, not a distant wave or carefully calibrated walkabout. I was stunned to read that Elizabeth’s televised message after Diana’s death was her first direct statement to her subjects in 45 years as queen _ and she had to be shamed into doing even that. Diana’s messy divorce seemed to unleash widespread public resentment of such aloofness.
The imperfect princess gave the English something to love. The equally imperfect princes, by their humorless distance, seemed only a reminder that England has paid dearly for the whims of its monarchs.
As descendants of rebels whose one desire was to escape those royal whims, Americans took a different view of Diana. My sense is she was a curiosity, like Mick Jagger; a celebrity who photographed well; a taste of glamour.
But her death revealed a deeper meaning. To many, I think the Cinderella dream was real: the belief that a regular person could fly with the big birds, that a combination of pretty, charming and gutsy could open palace doors. Even in democratic America, every small town has its landed gentry, every city its ruling families, every suburb its closed circles. In the Cinderella dream, even a char maid can break through those barriers. It’s the dream that has driven American education: not a thirst for knowledge, but a hunger to enter the charmed circle.
The doors, however, aren’t open. Diana was shunned, just as the rest of us would be shunned. The glowering royals don’t want to embrace our common humanity. They live to be partial, to maintain the chasms of life. Public opinion forced the palace set to allow Diana a stately funeral, but we sense they will never speak of her again. Prince Charming is an oaf. The ugly sisters found a way to win. Cinderella was too different.
And so are we.
Diana’s death reminds us that America has become highly stratified, with an upper crust who pay themselves handsomely and want nothing to do with their fellow citizens except as markets to sell or payrolls to trim. We have become a nation of members-only clubs, closed doors, gated communities, self-protective churches, and retirement colonies where only”our kind”are welcome.
In the end, Diana seemed to discover that gaining admission to the royal ball was a dull aspiration, that life was more real outside the palace. If she is to be frozen in time, I hope it will not be as the princess happily fitting the glass slipper, but as a human, albeit tortured, soul who discovered that holding a baby born with AIDS means infinitely more than posing stiffly inside the charmed circle, where spontaneity is threatening.
America’s putative royalty won’t be shamed into decency. Wealth always serves itself. But it may be that the paired demises of the shunned Diana and the saintly Teresa will help us see that freedom matters more than money, that caring for others matters more than status.
MJP END EHRICH
