Masaryk university faculty of education
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MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature
The Diana Myth
Bachelor Thesis
Brno 2008
Supervisor: Written by: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. Dana Ebringerová
BIBLIOGRAPHY EBRINGEROVÁ, Dana. The Diana Myth; bachelor thesis. Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2008 61 pages. The supervisor of Bachelor thesis is Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.
ANNOTATION Princess Diana, the British Heir to the Throne Prince Charles’s former wife, was a mythi- cal being and during her life, especially then after her death, there emerged a plethora of myths both about her personality and her life. This thesis will explain some of them or at least make an attempt to do it. First, Diana is briefly introduced from her birth to death while some of discrepancies that had been discussed in the books about her life are already foreshadowed. Then, of course, plenty of speculations and conspiracy theories appeared in connection with her death and these ones are also presented in this thesis. Finally, the my- ths connected with Diana’s character are pointed out. For better acquaintance with the events and for getting some additional information, there is added the appendix at the end of this thesis. I have paid my attention to the sources that should be reliable and authentic, compared them and tried to be impartial.
Keywords: Princess, Queen, King, Viscountess, Earl, Duchess, myth, discrepancy, bulimia, suicide, conspiracy theory
BIBLIOGRAFICKÝ ZÁZNAM EBRINGEROVÁ, Dana. Mýtus Diana; bakalářská práce. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Pedagogická fakulta, Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury, 2008 61 stran. Vedoucí baka- lářské práce je Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.
Princezna Diana, bývalá manželka britského následníka trůnu prince Charlese, byla mýtic- kou bytostí a během jejího života, obzvláště pak po její smrti, se objevila spousta mýtů jak o její osobnosti, tak o jejím životě. Tato práce vysvětlí některé z nich, nebo se o to přinej- menším pokusí. Nejdříve je Diana stručně představena od jejího narození po smrt, zatímco jsou již nastíněny některé z nesrovnalostí, které byly diskutovány v dílech o jejím životě. V souvislosti s její smrtí se pak samozřejmě vyrojila spousta spekulací a konspiračních teorií, a tyto jsou v této práci prezentovány také. Nakonec je věnována pozornost mýtům týkajících se Dianiny povahy. Pro lepší obeznámení se s událostmi a získání dodatečných informací je na závěr přidán dodatek. Svoji pozornost jsem věnovala pramenům, které by měly být spolehlivé a autentické, porovnávala jsem je a pokusila se být nestranná.
Klíčová slova: Princezna, královna, král, vikomtesa, hrabě, vévodkyně, mýtus, nesrovnalost, bulimie, se- bevražda, konspirační teorie
Declaration I declare that I wrote the bachelor thesis myself and used only the sources listed in the enclosed bibliography.
Brno, 20 April 2008
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Dana Ebringerová
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. for her kind help and valuable ad- vice, which she provided me with as a supervisor of this bachelor thesis.
Brno, 20 April 2008 Dana Ebringerová CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 7 1 DIANA’S CHILDHOOD ........................................................................................... 9 1.1 D IANA ’ S B IRTH ...................................................................................................... 9 1.2 T
P ARENT
’ S D IVORCE ........................................................................................ 9 1.3 D
C HILD
................................................................................................ 10 1.4
D IANA THE P UPIL
................................................................................................. 11 2 DIANA’S ADULTHOOD ........................................................................................ 12 2.1 “W HAT A S AD
M AN “ ........................................................................................... 12 2.2 E NGAGEMENT ...................................................................................................... 13 2.3
W EDDING
............................................................................................................. 15 2.4
M ARRIAGE
........................................................................................................... 16 2.5
M ORTON
’ S B OOK ................................................................................................. 18 2.6 T
D IVORCE
....................................................................................................... 18 3 DIANA’S ADULTHOOD ........................................................................................ 22 3.1 D IANA ’ S N EW S TART ........................................................................................... 22 3.2
D ODI
(E MAD
)
A L F AYED ..................................................................................... 23 3.3
D IANA
’ S D EATH ................................................................................................... 25 3.4 D
’ S F UNERAL ............................................................................................... 27 4 MYTH OR REALITY? ........................................................................................... 30 4.1 S EARCHING FOR THE C ULPRIT
.............................................................................. 30 4.2
C OSPIRACY T HEORIES
.......................................................................................... 35 4.3
M YTH OR
R EALITY
? ............................................................................................. 37 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 42 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 44 APPENDICES .................................................................................................................... 47
7 INTRODUCTION Princess Diana has her iconic status all over the world and more or less her destiny has touched all of us. Maybe the reason for that is the fact that her problems were so similar to each average person’s ones. And maybe it is just her ability to present herself in media. She did not have ambitions to become Queen. She claimed that she would like to become Queen of People’s Hearts and she managed. There is often discussed the question about her influence on monarchy. According to the survey of public opinion which is remembe- red in Diana. A Princess and Her Troubled Marriage by Nicholas Davies and that was conducted by Daily Express in January 1992, Diana’s popularity raised to 29 per cent, while Charles’s decreased to ten per cent. Queen and Princess Ann were both given 15 per cent. Diana was also elected to be the most entertaining member of the royal family by 49 per cent, Charles got just six per cent (Davies 14). Nicholas Davies also pointed out that the royal family had never been so criticized as it was at that time. About one fifth of citi- zens do not think that they need the monarchy and the youth even wished to end the mo- narchy. On the other hand, it was just Diana who helped to popularize the monarchy. Thanks to her indisputable empathy and sympathy for suffering people all over the world she was worshipped the same as Mother Theresa, whom Diana visited too and who died five days after Diana’s death. She was a patron of plenty of foundations. The photographs of Diana meeting people suffering from AIDS, shaking hands with them and hugging small dying children, changed people‘s attitude to this illness. Diana encouraged people not to be afraid of the contact with these seriously ill patients. Also her campaign against land mines was so successful that after Diana’s death, in Ottawa in December 1997, there was conclu- ded an agreement about the ban on using of land mines that was signed by fourty countries. Mike Whitlam, the head of British Red Cross, was even persuaded that if Diana had not visited Angola, the negotiation in Canada, where the agreement was ratified, would not have taken place at all.“In fact, it was the appreciation of her work“ 1 Whitlam is cited in the book by Rosalind Coward, Diana: The Portrait (Bradford 345). Unfortunately, during her childhood and her marriage as well, she went through many sad events that influenced her life. One of the purposes of this thesis is to get closer to Diana’s 1 „Ve skutečnosti šlo o uznání její práce.“(translated by the author)
8 personality. According to given information the reader possibly can find out if without bad treating, Diana’s worse character traits transpired, or if the treating her was really so bad. And because, as the title hints, the main aim of this thesis is to clarify some myths Diana’s life is shrouded in, her life will be described here in chronological order from her birth to death. On the basis of comparing of available sources, this work will objectively assess Diana’s person and her surrounding and then also some hazy events connected with her death as well as discrepancies that appeared during the investigation of the fatal car acci- dent and conspiracy theories that emerged after including the question whether Diana was killed being pregnant. Besides the hazy circumstances it was Diana’s intuition and her abil- ity to forecast her death (and there are tangible proofs for it) that became the breeding ground for conspiracy theories, but partly also the fact that people were not or some still are not willing to cope with their model’s death. They simply are not able to admit that life of their icon could have ended in such a common way. Finally this thesis will briefly sum- marize her personality and according to the established facts try to find some of reasons for Diana’s behaviour and her psychic instability and disorder, because it is just Diana’s character that indisputably belongs to the most mysterious myths.
9 1 DIANA’S CHILDHOOD 1.1 Diana’s Birth “Viscountess Althorp Gave Birth to the Daughter on Saturday“ On the 1st July 1961 at 19.45 Diana Frances Spencer was born as the third daughter of Lord Edward John Spencer, the late 8th Earl of Spencer, and his wife Frances Ruth Burke Roche, the daughter of the 4th Lord Fermoy and close friend to the King George VI. She was born in the bedroom with a bay windows, where also her mother was born, in Park House on the Royal Estate of Sandringham, Norfolk, England (Bradford 17, www.princess-diana.com). The Times daily announced briefly:‘Viscountess Althorp gave birth to the daughter on Saturday‘ 2 (Davies 23). She was born into thunderous applause. The motive for this applause was not her birth, but the end of the anniversary cricket match hosted by Diana’s father. On the contrary, her birth was considered to be a great disap- pointment, because her parents desperately needed a son for their dynasty. If Diana was a boy, she would probably be named Charles or John as the boys were traditionally christe- ned in her family. For girl her parents could not find a name for a week. Finally she was named Diana after the first Earl Spencer’s sister who lived her short life from 1735 to 1743 (Bradford 17, Stern 33-34, Morton 20). 1.2 The Parent’s Divorce In fact, the rows between her parents began after the death of her brother John who was born deformed and unable to breath on 1st January, 1960 and was alive just for ten hours. Diana was persuaded that if he had survived, she would never have been born (Morton 24). John Spencer blamed his wife for not being able to give birth to son and although their son Charles was born three years after Diana‘s birth, the relationship between them never im- proved (Bradford 24). John Spencer was said to treat his wife roughly, although in Diana, Her Marriage Troubles is meantioned that Frances “was bored with the life in Norfolk“ (Davies 24). In 1969 the marriage was divorced and unluckily for Frances her husband obtained custody for Diana, her elder sisters Sarah and Jane and the three-year-old 2 ,,Vikomtka Althorpová v sobotu přivedla na svět dceru.“(translated by the author)
10 brother Charles. Even Frances’s mother, Lady Fermoy, Queen Mother’s friend, turned away from her daughter and Frances was accused of adultery: “The reality was more trau- matic than many have realized. It is significant that at one time in their lives both Sarah and Diana have suffered from debilitating rating disorders, anorexia nervosa and bulimia respectively“(Morton 18). But the staff’s opinion differs in this case, which is quite surprising. While Mary Clark whom Diana’s father employed in 1971 remembers how wonderfully the life was going past there in Park House, the children were still smiling and fooling around and Diana li- ked to tease everyone, the other former unnamed employee sees this household as an unhappy one (Bradford 30-31). 1.3 Diana the Child But hardly anybody was able to look into Diana’s soul. It is obvious that her father tried his best to compensate his children for their mother’s presence. As a child, Diana was very quiet and shy, always surrounded by her pets – animals and she cared for them really pre- cisely (Bradford 31). But sometimes her manners were arrogant, obstinate and cunning and “when she wished something, she insisted very emphatically on it and with a conviction that nobody would oppose her deceitful behaviour“ 3 (Bradford 33-34). She was often fab- ricating. Mainly, however, she was very tenderhearted and sympathetic with those who were suffering. She was also used to doing household chores with a great care even for her sister Sarah and also in her later years. “It was her response to the inner need to be useful, to show off her skillness and to keep ‘clearness‘ that is important to her(Bradford 47-48). The cliché that “from an ugly duckling has become a princess“ how some journalists entitle their articles about Diana, evidently does not correspond to the facts. It is made manifest according to the photographs from her childhood, because her father, the 8th Earl Spencer allowed access to his private family photograph albums to Andrew Morton for his books Diana, Her True Story and Diana, Her New Life. Diana is said to be her father’s favourite child, ‘the apple of her daddy’s eye‘ (Bradford 31- 32): 3 „...když si něco přála, domáhala se toho velice důrazně s jistotou, že se jejímu lstivému chování nikdo nevzepře.“(translated by the author)
“Undoubtedly I was the father’s favourite“ 4 (Diana qtd. in Bradford 32).
11 Diana was used to posing for photographers from her very childhood, which was a great advantage for her later, when she became the most photographied woman in the world. 1.4 Diana the Pupil Diana was first educated at Silfied School in Kings Lynn, Norfolk. From 1969 to 1974 she attended the public Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School. Her school results were not excellent, “she was not ambitious enough“, so she did not pass the final exams at West Heath Girls´ School (near Sevenoaks, Kent, from 1974 to 1977), “she did not have any qualification and was able to do the only thing she enjoyed: to take care of children“ 5
Rougemont, Switzerland. From her childhood she was interested in any kind of sport and was very good at swim- ming and diving. Had she not grown so tall (177cm), she would probably have become a ballerina. She played also tennis and later, in 1991, she even had the opportunity to play tennis with Steffi Graf, whose game she admired. After her return to London in 1979, Diana lived with three friends in an apartment in Cole- herne Court in South Kensington and works as a nanny at the Young England School in Pimlico, London.
4 „Bezpochyby jsem byla otcovou oblíbenkyní.“(translated by the author) 5 ,,Neměla žádnou kvalifikaci a mohla dělat jedině to, co ji bavilo: hlídat děti.“(translated by the author)
12 2 DIANA’S ADULTHOOD 2.1 “What a Sad Man“ For the first time, Diana met Charles when he was dating her elder sister Sarah: It was during her sister´s romance that Diana first came into the path of the man considered then to be the world´s most eligible bachelor. That historic meeting in November 1977 was hardly auspicious. Diana, on weekend leave from West Heath school, was indroduced to the Prince in the middle of the ploughed field near Nobottle Wood on the Althorp esta- te during a day´s shooting….Diana cut a nondescript figure in her chec- ked shirt, her sister’s anorak, cords and wellington boots (Morton, Dia- na: Her True Story, 35)
Sarah, however, was not willing to accomodate Charles’s behaviour and customs and in 1980 she married the former guard officer Neil Mc Corquodal. Later she even warned Dia- na to be careful, because Charles was an “incurable romantic“ ( Davies 63). Not only Sarah was aware of Charles’s character traits. Hugo Vickers, a skilled royal observer, even bran- ded him a “wimp“ who in fact does not know what he wants and that he prefers female company, especially of the older, married ladies (Bradford 91). After the death of Charles´s friend and adviser Lord Mountbatten who had been killed by IRA, and whose sincere advice Charles appreciated, Charles realized how vulnerable the British monarchy was and that he needed an heir. And although he, an ‘egocentric‘ (Brad- ford 136) man who was satisfied with his life having Camilla by his side, was not enthusi- astic about a marriage, he was aware of the fact that he could not marry Camilla who was living in a loose marrige with Andrew Parker Bowles and had two children. In the summer holidays of 1980, the Spencers were invited at Balmoral Castle and later Download 432.05 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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