Petronella Wyatt

Wit and women

The ongoing escapades of London's answer to Ally McBeal

At a dinner-party in Italy, from which country I have now returned, a question came up. This was, are women really bitchier than men, and, if so, why, when their behaviour can be so much more exemplary? For some reason this question was addressed to me. I hadn’t recalled, alas, saying a bad word about anyone that evening, but perhaps as the only female journalist present I was rashly considered by the others as some sort of oracle with regard to members of my sex.

The women sitting around me were surprisingly quick to agree with my rather obvious assertion that, yes, most intelligent women had sharper tongues than men and that their conversation was often much racier. Naturally, the men present were delighted to hear their long-held grievances confirmed, but wondered, given that their own sex had been responsible for most of the atrocities in the world, how this should be so?

I think the answer is both biological and social. While primeval man was out hunting and grunting and dragging the objects of sexual desire into caves, it was women who were developing the art of communication. Throughout history, with females denied access to jobs in politics, businesses and the professions, their tongues were their only weapon against men – used both to survive, prosper and win a modicum of usually vicarious power.

Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew has no legal rights, so she uses her tongue for protection and vengeance. This is true of all subject races or peoples. During his part in the Cabinet mission to arrange Indian Independence, my father found that Indians went out of their way to amuse the British conversationally, enthralling them in particular with barbs about each other. At the same time he had the uncomfortable feeling that some of these Indians despised the British.

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