Lady Pamela Widmerpool

My best friend from university days and the best man at our wedding has always disagreed with me about Anthony Powell. Like a lot of people, he sees Powell as a sort throwback and he, like Aloysius, prefers something a little more modern. In some ways, you have to see his point. Powell's explanatory style can seem terribly old-fashioned. As time goes on, however, I think Powell gets to be more convincingly "modern" than those contemporaries. What seemed modern in some others is now obviously just the fads of the time whereas some of Powell was deeply prophetic.

Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the character of Pamela Flitton later known as Lady Pamela Widmerpool. She is a very good portrait of a type of modern woman who can love men in the abstract but not in the flesh.

Emotional warmth in her was directed only towards the dead, men who had played some part in her life but were no more there to do so.

Not all modern women are like this but she is a common enough type that most woman can probably find latent tendencies of the type in herself and learn to fight against them. And every man should know these tendencies for the sake of our own mental health. I say this because one of the things that women like Pamela Widmerpool are very good at doing is making you think that everything that goes wrong in a relationship and in sex is your fault.

The clearest indicator of the type is her treatment of other women. Women in her life fall into one of two categories. They are either there to play a supporting role in her life or they are a rival to be feared or conquered. The two categories are fluid and she will leave a trail of angry friends in her wake who used to think they were best friends until one day she suddenly turned on them. She will also surprise you and others by suddenly turning around and becoming close friends with another woman whom she has used as a pinata up until now.

It's worth noting in passing, how many romantic comedy and chick lit heroines match the type. In these stories the heroine seems a compelling and likeable character but that is only because the writer creating the thing is making sure the heroine's twisted world view is vindicated at every step. In real life, there are women who live in a romantic comedy they write, direct and act the lead part in. This is a full time job for them and it is shocking how easily other women and men get dragged into supporting the fiction.

And she will have an unshakeable belief that what she is doing is the route to personal happiness for her. Other people's happiness isn't even on the radar except insofar as it vindicates her self image that she is doing enough that others should be happy. In her life, as in the movies, her best friend is or should be happy in her role because the script says so.

Always sexual, never intimate
No doubt some are thinking, "Surely there are men like this too?" There certainly are bad men in the world and there are men and women who are much worse than the Pamela Widmerpool type. But, those points conceded, I'd argue that there is something uniquely feminine about the type and it was a particularly brilliant stroke on Powell's part to have drawn this out as well as the fact that she is modern; the Pamela Widmerpool type could only occur in the modern world.

Where we see this most clearly is in her attitudes towards sex; she is both aggressively sexual and sexually unresponsive at the the same time. She advertizes a frank and open attitude to sex and outwardly displays a strong sexual appetite but has a limited or even (as in the specific case of Pamela) no interest in being pleased.

Usually her particular form of self-projection excluded conceding an inch in making contacts easier, outward expression, no doubt, on an inner sexual condition. She was like a royal personage. prepared to converse, but not bestowing the smallest scrap of assistance to the interlocutor, from whom all effort, every contribution of discursive vitality, must come. (Emphasis added)

The thing about this illusion is that you will fall for it every time. And it is worth noting that a big part of the reason you will fall is that you convince yourself that she is a welcome relief from or, at least, no worse than what can seem "the usual run around". Most women will respond warmly in a social way while keeping their sexual cards very close to their chest. You will think you never know where you stand with most women sexually for the very simple reason that they don't want you to know. And most women will keep this up even after a sexual relationship has begun. The Pamela Widmerpool type seems like a refreshing change because she is so direct and open.

But, while she will advertise herself as 'sex positive", she will not show any warmth, thereby putting all the responsibility for making things happen in your lap, so to speak, and what you will not see is that, from her perspective, this is the whole point of the interaction. She doesn't see intimacy and pleasure as worthwhile ends in themselves. They are always means to to the real end which is maintaining her position as the heroine of the story. She may, unlike the extreme example of Pamela, be capable of pleasure but she always will see this as a form of surrender and will dole it out grudgingly because she doesn't want to be vulnerable. (Or she may only allow herself to really let go in casual relationships while holding back with men who are committed to her.)

You, on the other hand, will make yourself increasingly vulnerable and exposed because, for you, intimacy and pleasure are the real point. She, not believing these things are worthwhile in themsleves, will remain self-confident in the face of what would seem to you to be failures if you were in her place. What is more she will support and encourage your tendency to believe that what you need to do is to always try harder. And if you ever start to push her, she will encourage you to think that you are inadequate. Ultimately, she will destroy your confidence and leave you with little sense of dignity (as she does to X Trapnel and even to Odo Stevens in the Dance).

No she isn't just f__ing like a man
And the people around you may support her. She may not actually be a feminist but others will invoke feminist and pseudo-feminist arguments in her favour and you will be told that she is merely giving you a taste of your own medicine. And you may believe this. There is no shortage of culture out there making heroines out of women like this. Thus the horrid expression "sex positive". And note well that the expression means a positive attitude toward sex, not toward other human beings.

Now, as I say above, the defence that will always be advanced for such a woman is that she is merely doing what men do and it is important to understand that, deplorable as some of things men are capable of doing may be, she is not doing any such thing. And you can grasp this point by a simple thought experiment.

Think of the most manipulative male swine you can imagine. Imagine a guy who wouldn't hesitate to use guilt, moral manipulation, social position, money, lies or whatever to get a woman into bed and who then dumps her before any real relationship can develop. If you've never actually known a guy like this, there is a good example here.

Now try and imagine that this guy doesn't want to actually enjoy the sex as sex? Try to imagine him getting into bed with these women and holding back on his own pleasure? It simply can't be done. The guy at the link obviously fears intimacy, he spends more time beating up on the kind of "nice guy" he is scared of being than in promoting any alternative. But the sex itself is never less than good for him.

If he fails sexually, then he fails and he will see this as his failure, although he may try to hide it. The staggering thing about a Pamela Widmerpool or a Samantha Jones is that she always sees the failure as yours and not hers. And no amount of evidence to the contrary—her whole life consists of a series of short-term relationships that never go anywhere along with a failed marriage or two after all—will ever shake her from this belief.