Palatinate’s literary legacy
By Sophia Charchalou
When pondering the nature of Durham’s legacy, our very own Palatinate should come to mind. As a continuous representation of student culture from its foundation back in 1948 to the present, it is one of the oldest student legacies around. Accounting for a variety of challenges, successes, events and opinions, it truly is a souvenir from every generation. But quite unsurprisingly, a lot of the earlier contributions to this legacy were, of course, shaped by the male student population. It is only more recently that the female student population can be said to play an equal part in the paper. So, whilst in its totality the Palatinate can accurately define Durham’s legacy, it took those earlier efforts of women to eventually break through the male voice.
Books, unfortunately, did not have a dedicated section in the Palatinate until around 2008. However, the legacy of literature is timeless and therefore, has long been woven into the paper. In March 1948, L. W. George, one of Palatinate’s first editors, quoted Shakespeare’s The Tempest on the front page- “O brave new world”. The phrase itself already has a literary afterlife: in Shakespeare’s play, Miranda utters it upon encountering the shipwrecked Europeans; Aldous Huxley reworks it in Brave New World when John responds to the dystopian ways of his society. George, meanwhile, gives the words yet another meaning, using them to introduce his reflections on the women of Durham. What connects these figures is their encounter with ‘the other’ and the unease which accompanies it. For George, the women in Durham’s public and political life present a threat to the established order which existed prior to the university allowing the full entry of women in 1913. He imagines the female figure as a “distorted Eve”, who drowns in her gown and weaves her way into politics, which he considers way beyond her intellectual capacity, by “fluttering” her eyelashes. The literary quotation, therefore, is more than just a title, it demonstrates how inherited words are repurposed to reflect the assumptions of the person who uses them.
One of the oldest student legacies around
It is because of this kind of male perspective that, until 1962, we see few female roles within the Palatinate legacy. Mary Gibson, Dora Heslop and Winifred Hindmarch had graduated some 50 years prior to the foundation of the paper- marking the first female graduates of Durham, an achievement commemorated outside St. Hild and St. Bede College on a blue plaque. Therefore, whilst women were becoming part of Durham’s institutional history, it is all but clear that their voices were chosen to not be recorded or were represented through the perspectives of men such as George. It took a further 14 years for women to prove they could use their academic skills for more than just “required essays”- as Pat Ashdown-Sharp had reported in May 1962’s “Women’s Angle”. But in this monumental year, 1962, under the first female editor, Judith Hann, the typical “Women’s Angle” featured in previous prints becomes more prominent, discussing issues such as “Women in Politics”.
Susan Jourdain first introduced the “Women’s Angle” in 1958, marking a turning point for female presence in Palatinate history. She transcended the gendered boundaries of her section to address a topic that remains relevant today: the rivalry between students and locals. Her contribution marked the end of George’s “brave new world” and the beginning of women “showing a bit of leg in a different way” (Pat Ashdown-Sharp, 1962)- not merely being represented in the Palatinate but making their own mark on Durham’s legacy.
Image Credit: Geir Haval (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
