Peter’s blog for July
The film BELLE centres on the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the daughter of a Royal Navy captain, John Lindsay, and an African woman, a slave, named Maria Belle. When her mother died Dido was raised at Kenwood House in north London by her great-uncle, Lord Mansfield. There she became the inseparable companion to her half-cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray with whom she had an extraordinary affinity from the start. This relationship is given expression in an unsigned painting which is at the heart of the film.
1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle and her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray
The picture depicts what Amma Asante, the Ghanaian-British director of the film calls “a bi-racial girl, a woman of colour, who’s slightly higher than her white counterpart” and this indicates a significant social equality extraordinary in the late 18th century. But what does the hand of one young woman upon the waist of the other imply – sisterhood or rivalry? And what should we read from the expressions (playful? defiant? mischievous?) upon the faces of the artist’s subjects? In the film the relationship between the two women is depicted by Asante who says of herself, “I’m bicultural and walk the division that Belle walked every day”.
For me the picture speaks about how Dido sought to free herself from the crippling constraints of living in a situation that tended to deprive her of her identity. Elizabeth’s hand reaches out to prevent her from leaving the only world she knew and was unable to escape from. The more sedate and lifeless role Elizabeth had resigned herself to is symbolised by the chair she is seated in and by her sombre expression. The more intelligent and resourceful Dido has a very different expression on her face as she heads off into the world where her dream of ‘liberty, fraternity and equality’ is beginning to be realised. She like us will have to contend with with the many things that enslave us and prevent the realisation of our dream.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed”,
Luke 4:18
Loosening the grip of slavery
The story of Belle is played out against the backdrop of slavery, for Mansfield as lord chief justice, had to adjudicate slavery cases that involved huge commercial interests as well as a growing consciousness that slavery was fundamentally wrong. A lot of the film focuses on how this issue affected Dido and her relationship with Lord Mansfield and the young legal activist John Davinier. In particular there was the Zong ship case, which hinged upon the deliberate drowning of human “cargo” for commercial gain. This forms the backdrop for the film’s narrative and the discussion of human rights versus property law, arcane legal argument circling the growing conviction of the fundamental injustice of slavery. In all of this Dido’s apparent influence upon the judgment of Lord Mansfield raises more than just eyebrows in polite society, as the country awaits his ruling on a case that cuts to the heart of Britain’s commercial interests.
The quest for identity
All this provides the context for Asante’s enthralling portrait of a woman struggling to define her identity. She is caught between upstairs and downstairs in terms of social custom and protocol for she is too elevated to eat with the servants, yet too lowly to dine, when there is company, with her “family”. Dido is challenged to find her own space in a world in which her colour marks her as unique among her peers. While this proves problematic enough within the confines of Kenwood House, her situation becomes more complicated still as the prospect of marriage looms. Dido and Elizabeth are torn between variously unsuitable partners, as fortune and standing are starkly juxtaposed with love and affection in time-honoured fashion.
Added to the mix is Dido’s relationship with John Davinier, a clergyman’s son who is employed by Lord Mansfield. When he becomes over involved in the slavery issue he is dismissed but something has been ignited between him and Dido. The story of their relationship with all its twists and turns is played out as in a Jane Austen novel which, like all the stories we tell, is about our inner journey into love and relationships as where our dream is fulfilled. In the end Davinier is the one who finally answers in an unambiguous way the question Dido has been asking herself throughout her life, Am I somebody?
Are You Somebody?
Nuala O’Faolain called the first part of her autobiography “Are You Somebody?”. She got this title from an experience she had in a supermarket. One day while she was out shopping she noticed three young women with trolleys passing her a number of times and each time they did so they had a good look at her and then passed on. Eventually they summoned the courage to ask her, “Are you somebody?” They had obviously seen her on television and wanted to find out was she the well known person they thought she was. On reflection she realised that this was the question she had been asking herself all through her life and that it was thus a good title for her autobiography.
The basic call of adult life
Being somebody or having worth, value or significance is very important for us. To find out who we are or our identity is according to Erik Erikson the first call of adult life and on it depends all the others. I have written at length about this call in pages 75-97 in my book called The Search For Something More.
This sense of our identity is something we see in the eyes of those around us and if over the years what we hear from others is positive, we develop a good self image, while if what we hear is largely negative we develop a poor self image. Most of us live with the latter and how we can be converted to a much more positive image is wonderfully illustrated by Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet.
When, in disgrace with fortune and in men’s eyes,
I all alone between my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee – and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Even though Dido’s father, Elizabeth and her grandparents give her a good sense of herself she is deeply influenced by what the conventions of the time thought of her as a mulatto. We see how her grandparents feel bound to respect these conventions and exclude her from dining with their guests though she may be present when they gather in another room after they have dined.
Views of our identity we must choose between
In this film we are caught in the interplay of a number of ways we answer the question, Are you somebody? For example, the film Belle takes place amid the cultural surroundings of the 1760s when people’s significance was determined by whether they belonged to the upper or lower class. Even within the upper class women, as Elizabeth clearly states, are the property of their husbands and often had little standing outside of marriage. In these circumstances Dido, as the daughter of a slave and thus un-marriageable had little or no standing and found herself rejected as a nonentity.
How much are you worth?
In today’s cultural surroundings we tend to see our significance or who we are in terms of what we have and what we do, in terms of wealth, career, possessions and the prestige these give us. What characterises this source of our significance is that it comes from outside ourselves and has to be earned by meeting the expectations of others. In fact the true source of our significance comes from within, from the inner voice of a dream that is innate to each of us.
The irrepressible voice of our dream
What fascinates me about the film Belle is how this dream keeps struggling to surface in Dido no matter how adverse the circumstances she is faced with. In fact it is probably these adverse circumstances that challenged Dido to find her identity deep within herself in the dream of love and relationships that her father, Elizabeth and her grandparents had aroused in her. In spite of all the limitations of her surroundings that kept telling her she was a nobody, it was the love she remembered and gradually learned to believe in that gave her the deepest sense of who she was.
This sense of our true significance that comes from within is what the poet wants for his daughter. He is afraid that she might identify with her physical beauty and thus not be capable of real intimacy or of finding a friend.
A Prayer for my Daughter
May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
or hers before a looking glass, for such
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
W. B. Yeats
“I have clothed you with my own splendour”
The ultimate source of our significance is found in answering the essential call of the Gospels to ‘repent and believe’ what Jesus calls the Good News of God’s love. This call to repent involves changing the way we see and feel about ourselves insofar as this diverges from the way Jesus looks at, loves and relates with us. We may have learned to see this story as about how we must love God and others whereas it is primarily about how the Father’s love is portrayed for us in the way Jesus looks at us in each Gospel story. Christianity is essentially about “repenting and believing the Good News” of God’s love as portrayed for us by Jesus. Mk 1:15 Repenting here means letting go of distorted images of ourselves we pick up along the way so that we might learn to believe in who we are in Jesus’ eyes and to live in the love he asks us to make our home in.
I have loved you just as the Father has loved me, abide in my love. … I have told you these things that you might share my joy and that your happiness may be complete. (Jn 15:9-11)
Our ultimate identity and the joy it brings us is found in the realisation of who we are in Jesus’ eyes. We get a vision of who we really are from the way Jesus looks at and treats, relates with and loves a person like Zacchaeus. Jesus asks each of us to believe that he accepts, affirms and thus acknowledges you and I in the way he does Zacchaeus. It is only our consciousness of it that ebbs and flows as we are always the centre of his attention and concern.
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount. ”Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Lk 19:1-9)
St Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians reflects on the story of how Moses had to veil his face when he came down the mountain after speaking with God. This was because he radiated such splendour after being in God’s presence that the people were so awed by his glory that they would not come near him. Paul then draws a very inspiring conclusion from this.
But all of us who are Christians have no veils on our faces, but reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord. We are transfigured in ever-increasing splendour into his own image and this transformation comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2Cor 3:18)
When Paul uses the word ‘transfigured’ here – and it is the only time he uses it – he is envisioning us being like Jesus when he appeared briefly to his disciples in all his divine glory.
Our true identity is a glorious one if we can only bring ourselves to believe that ours is “an ever-increasing splendour”.