Twenty-Something

It’s far too easy to assume that I would be just another twenty-something with a chip on my shoulder. But, you see, you would be right to assume that. Obviously, the world has ‘done me wrong’ and all that stuff that millennials say all the time. It doesn’t help us (by the way).

Note to other millennials: Some of you are not helping the rest of us.

Take Joanie. Joanie was in my Victorian Literature class during third year at university. She said, in a seminar, that Wuthering Heights is anti-feminist, racist… just basically everything that is accepted as a ‘bad thing to be’ by millennials: by todays standards, yes. I guess it is all those things.

But, Joanie, lay off of Emily Brontë for two seconds, because I have news for you. The world hasn’t always been this open and accepting of women or otherswise. Think about your grandma. Bet she wore a white collared uniform, and if she didn’t, a white collared apron, or both, at least once. We complain about how much is left to change in the world and - yes - there are changes to be made but we hesitate to explore and acknowledge all the things that actually went well for us in the past.

Side Note: There were no boys in our class.

Thus, our male lecturer was just stood, his mouth gaping open like a brainless guppy, despite his PHD, Doctorate and academic awards. Because, well, how dare a middle aged, middle class, middle everything, white, male have a contrary opinion to a twenty-something year old girl with mediocre A-Levels and a £50,000 student loan? How dare he?

Joanie continued to argue her case until some slouch in the back snored themselves awake. I nudged the girl next to me, (I think her name was Sarah? Sara?), who jolted up from her phone as Mr Lecturer replied candidly to Joanie with something like:

‘So, Joanie, are you suggesting that Emily Brontë was not a feminist?’

Joanie malfunctioned.

‘Pft, uh! No!’ Sounds similar to these sputter from her lips.

‘Well, what makes you think this is anti-feminist? I have heard many reasons why it isn’t up to contemporary standards of feminism, but I am hearing little about why it is inherently anti-feminist,’ he finishes, having wandered closer to her seat, into which she had sunk as a response to his intellectual interrogation.

‘Well,’ Joanie started, ‘well.’ She stared around at all of us.

Everyone was suddenly painfully awake.

‘What about you, Mel?’ Mr Lecturer pointed his smart board pen at me.

‘Me?’ Gauntless idiot. Mr Lecturer nods and all eyes grace my dry complexion and burn into it, expecting an answer.

‘I disagree with Joanie,’ I remark, slowly. In three years, I don’t think this girl had ever been told that she is wrong.

A wave of gasps rolled around the room, which became suddenly stuffy and in need of an open window.

Joanie’s face contorted.

‘Explain,’ Mr Lecturer stated.

‘The Brontë sisters are known for being some of the early pioneers of women’s writing. Women were not expected to write, or accepted to be writers long before this. Emily Brontë is merely trying to stay published.’ The words spewed from my mouth as if I knew what I was talking about.

‘Go on.’ Mr Lecturer rolls the balls of his feet agains the squeaky floor causing his whole body to rock in my direction.

‘Well, if she was too radical, no one would read anything she wrote and she would be out of a job. Yeah, okay, so Cathy is not self-sufficient and, lets me honest, she’s a spoilt brat, but she inevitably subverts many of the things a woman should be during the Victorian period. She is not passive, by any means. She is a strong woman, perhaps only in will, but she seems to be wanting to subvert the patriarchy from the inside out,’ I concluded.

Mouths gaped around me and Mr Lecturer smiled, nodding slowly. I almost expected him to start tapping his finger to his cheek like a thinking villain.

‘What about you, Joanie, any response to Mel’s stance?’ Mr Lecturer twirls the pen like a tiny fencing sword and Joanie turns a vile shade of pink with a gentle green hue.

Joanie shakes her head.

‘Shall we agree, then, that our current world is not relevant in the debate about whether a past text is progressive or not? Or shall we regress?’ Mr Lecturer gloats.

This was not the end of the seminar. Nor the end of the course, or year, or my diplomatic debates with Joanie. But it was the end of that twenty-something ruining it for the rest of us.

I bet Joanie is the sort of person that would smack a boy for opening a door for her.

That’s not new wave feminism. That’s assault.