It was reported quite widely that Rowan Williams had referred to the Da Vinci Code in his sermon on Easter Sunday. I’ve seen quite a few comments that imply that he didn’t provide a proper rebuttal of it or that he was somehow trying to close down discussion of the topic. Having read the full text of the sermon (http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/060416a.htm) and an article he wrote for the Mail on Sunday (http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/060416.htm), I think his critics have got this wrong and he actually made some very important points.

A sermon isn’t really the place to point out the problem with Dan Brown’s theories; for one thing, a sermon isn’t long enough. There have been whole books published, pointing out the vast numbers of errors in his account. Anyone knowledgeable about early Christianity or early medieval history or art history (or probably several other topics) could easily tell you just how ludicrous his book (and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) are. If people believe what they read in Dan Brown, it’s not for want of scholars trying to correct them.

So Rowan Williams was considering the question: why do people choose to believe these ideas even when they're not from anyone with any authority? His answer (implicitly): Because it’s not by someone with any authority. The conspiracy theory view of history means that anyone in authority (which gets interpreted to mean anyone from a parish priest to a lowly academic) must be covering things up and trying to hide The Real Story!! The archbishop, therefore, points out a simple fact. When the gospel stories were written, Christians weren’t in authority, they were a persecuted minority. Indeed, becoming Christians lessened any power they might have: it put them outside any previous religious tradition, including Judaism.

In the rest of his sermon, Rowan Williams goes on to talk about other Christians who have voluntarily accepted this powerlessness, even to the extent of being martyrs today. In his newspaper article, however, he engages with the Gospel of Judas (the newly discovered gnostic work). Again, his point is a simple one: look at the Jesus of the New Testament and the Jesus of this gospel and judge for yourself. (So much for the claim that he’s trying to stop discussion and discourage us from reading such things).

I think this is one of the best arguments that Christians have (see http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060213fa_fact2 for similar comments about Mary Magdalene in the Bible and the Gnostic gospels). If people actually read some of the key works of gnosticism (much easier than previously, since they’re on the web , see e.g. http://www.gnosis.org/library.html) they may well be much less impressed by them. After reading Dan Brown I went and looked at the Gospel of Thomas and thought: all the good bits I knew already. If it was a source for the New Testament gospels, as has sometimes been claimed, then they either had a lot of other sources or they were some of the most marvellous writers ever known. The Gospel of Thomas isn’t a book worth dying for - or living for. If someone finds some truly inspirational passages in all the gnostic writings, then I’d be interested to hear about it.

But in one sense, I’m missing the point by saying that. The whole point once of Gnosticism was to learn the secret knowledge (gnosis) of God so that one could come to the Truth. The interest in gnosticism now, however, isn’t to find a knowledge of God, it’s to debunk it. The Gnostic gospels, the Dead Sea scrolls etc aren’t of interest to most people because they might provide a real truth to live by, but as a handy excuse for why they needn’t take Christianity seriously. They don’t want to know, they just want to know better than us poor benighted Christians. I’ll stick to my gospel: at least it doesn’t require me to believe in the holiness of the Merovingians.

There seem to be ever more articles about the demographic decline in the whole of Europe (including the UK) and quite often this gets linked to ‘selfish’ career women. Middle class women are supposedly choosing to have careers rather than babies, while the lower orders are still reproducing away merrily. I had always presumed that the basic facts were correct, even if my view of motives was rather different. Then I saw a passing mention in an article that the number of middle class children actually wasn’t declining. So I headed over to the Office of National Statistics section on birth (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=5768) and found some surprising data:

In 1990 there were 230,000 births to women from non-manual social classes (46%), 254,000 births to women from manual social classes (50%) and 21,000 to ‘others’ (4%). By 2000, there were 199,000 births to women from non-manual social classes (55%), 148,000 births to women from manual social classes (41%) and 18,000 to ‘others’ (5%).

There are a few caveats on this data. First, though there’s more recent data on births and social class available, it’s not comparable, because they’ve changed the definitions of class. Secondly, the data is based on a 10% sample of births, not all births, so the errors in the data are larger. Finally, the class statistics are based on the father’s occupation. This means there is some extra uncertainty, because of the possibilities of the parents of a child being from a different social class or the father not being known/recorded (these are presumably covered under ‘other’).

Even so, it shows that while the number of births dropped steeply between 1990 and 2000 (from 506,000 to 365,000) the really big drop was in the number of working class women having babies. The age profiles for women having their first babies are also interesting (though only given in broad age groups):

1990
Manual social classes:
Under 20: 6%, 20-24: 37%, 25-29:41%, 30+:16%
Non-manual social classes:
Under 20: 3%, 20-24: 19%, 25-29:46%, 30+: 33%

2000
Manual social classes:
Under 20: 4%, 20-24:20%, 25-29:38%, 30+:38%
Non-manual social classes:
Under 20: 1%, 20-24:10%, 25-29:35%, 30+:54%

What this suggests is that middle class women tend to start having children later than working class women, but also that both groups now start having children several years later than they did a decade ago. (That alone probably explains a lot of the overall drop in birth numbers: there is just less tiem to have children before fertility declines). This rather knocks on the head the idea of it just being career women who are delaying children, unless you’re going to include working on a supermarket till as a career. Instead the delay is more likely to be either financial (couples are saving up first) or simply that women are taking longer to find suitable partners.

Whether demographic decline is really something that governments should be worrying about and trying to influence is a different matter. But if they really want to change things, maybe they need to start a few new tacks. What about, say, if when you have your first child your student debt gets wiped out? Now that’s something to get future middle classes breeding early again!

The application of evolutionary theory (specifically evolutionary psychology) to literature seems to be one of these faddish theories that keeps on cropping up. I’ve just read another article extolling it (http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/04/shakespeare_meets_the_selfish.php) while last year a book, Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: a Darwinian Look at Literature came out (see http://denisdutton.com/barash_review.htm for reviews and further links).

I am sceptical about evolutionary psychology anyhow, which seems to me prone to combining poor scientific method with reactionary ideology, but its application to fiction seems particularly half-baked. Given much of the literature discussed was written before the theory of evolution was known (and thus the author can’t have been influenced by it), why would we expect to find examples of evolutionary processes in their work?

There are two possible answers to this. One is that if behaviour that is evolutionarily adaptive is happening in real life, then an author writing naturalistically might portray it accurately. The other is that an author may subscribe to (or may have his/her characters subscribe to) a morality which has some overlap with Social Darwinism/evolutionary psychology. For example, an author may write about a society where the capture and rape of women in warfare is admirable.

But the problem for literary Darwinists is that an author creates his/her fictional world, not simply reflects real life, and the characters don’t necessarily abide by ordinary patterns of human nature. And a lot of humans’ actual behaviour isn’t in accordance with evolutionary theories. For example, in Darwinian terms it is suicidal (almost literally) to be celibate, yet a substantial percentage of the medieval population took up this lifestyle.

The example that Jonathan Gottschall gives in the latest article is pretty daft if you consider it for a moment. Homer’s works are really all about the winning of women? Has he read the Odyssey? There are several heroes (Odysseus, Agamemnon, Diomedes and probably others) who lose or almost lose their wives simply because they’re away from home so long. Helping to retrieve Helen of Troy and acquire some slave girls hardly compensates in genetic terms for ten years on the windy plains of Troy for anyone with a family. And what is more contrary to Darwinian imperatives than Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia, his own daughter? The whole ethos of the heroic life is that a heroic early death is better than ignominious survival. In evolutionary terms, however, Achilles, dying without (as far as Homer tells us) leaving any children, is a dead end.

Many other literary motifs are equally daft in evolutionary terms. In a world of Darwinian fiction, Romeo and Juliet, still in the prime of their fertility, would not kill themselves over their lost love. There would be little or no homoerotic literature (exclusive homosexuality is another evolutionary dead end). Wives would not sacrifice themselves for their husbands (since they are not genetically related), while fathers would sacrifice themselves for their daughters as much as they do for their sons. Romantic fiction would rather lose its thrill, since the hero would inevitably chose the most beautiful or richest girl to wed. If the Darwinian literary theorists really aspire to being scientists (as they claim), I think this is one hypothesis that needs to be tested and then falsified.

I’ve been in my temporary job for just over a month and even with good day care, a flexible employer and a helpful husband I’m already concluding that work and small children don’t mix. L has had two minor illnesses in the last five weeks that have meant that she can’t go to nursery and Edward and I have had to take time off work. There have been cases of chicken-pox at nursery; if she gets that she may be off for a week.

I can write this blog this morning because I’m not working. On the days I’m working a full day I have to be out of the house at 7.30 am. On a good day I’m back at 6.30 p.m., on a bad day it’s nearer 7 p.m. This is actually pretty easy as far as commuting from Hitchin goes - one couple I’ve spoken to recently mentioned getting the 6.40 am and 7.20 am trains respectively. L’s nursery is open 8 a.m.-6 p.m.: it’s only the fact that Edward has a relatively short trip to work that makes using it feasible.

Even the pay doesn’t really stack up, if I consider it objectively. I earn, gross, just under £250/week. I pay £60+/week for travel, £90+/week for day care. By the time I’ve paid tax, there’s not an awful lot left.

I end up feeling I’m short-changing both L and my employers. I think one of the big problems with most professional jobs now (and a lot of non-professional jobs) is that there is too much work to be done in a normal working week. Staff have been cut and workloads increased so that you’re running all the time just to keep in the same place. As a parent you have more excuse to avoid the long-hours culture, but when you have to take off time to look after a sick child, it still means inconvenience and problems for the employer. (And of course there’s never any corresponding flexibility from schools/nurseries etc - we had to close today, so we’ll make up the time for you in the holidays etc).

So why I am doing this? At the financial level, it is at least self-sustaining, which my time studying was not (paying for daycare for studying, while not actually earning). One alternative is being a full-time stay-at-home mum, but I would find that immensely frustrating. The job I’m doing is interesting; it gives me a certain identity and even status. Equally, it looks good on my CV: my skills are being updated and broadened. L will be starting school part-time in September, full-time a year after that. I have another twenty or more years till I retire: I have to try and make a career for myself. In the long run this job makes sense; in the short term, though, it’s tough for L, Edward and myself.

I’ve just been to see Ed Stoppard in Hamlet - a very good production at the New Ambassador’s Theatre in London. One of the things I found though, was that I was automatically analysing the action in terms of medieval kingship and court life, and so I end up with a different perspective on the action than the normal one. For example, I suspect the natural reaction to Claudius marrying his brother’s widow is to see this as a horrible crime. In medieval power politics such an action would certainly have been condemned as incest, but it would also have been seen as a shrewd political move. Marrying a widowed queen gave the new king the political support of both her and her family (presumably influential). There are certainly examples of new kings marrying their royal stepmothers (this happened to Judith of Wessex in the ninth century) and a number of Byzantine emperors got the throne on the strength of their marriages to a dowager queen. Similarly, killing one’s brother was an obvious temptation in a royal family. Competition for thrones and territory meant that royal brothers fighting brothers were commonplace, even as they were condemned for their lack of fraternal love. (All that would be unusual to a medieval audience is that of a murder being successfully disguised as an accident, without apparently anyone suspecting). As for a widow remarrying so soon after her husband’s death, Carolingian laws prevented this happening inside a month of the husband’s death, as a protection against forced marriages. Beyond this period (as Gertrude seems to be), a remarriage might well seem to be either in the widow’s own interests or those concerned about the resources she controlled.

The other noteworthy thing from a medieval perspective is how smoothly and successfully the usurpation has been managed. There is no evidence of a need to banish factions or of unrest at the court. The only portent is the Ghost; there are no other signs of crop failures, comets or the foreign invasions that were the medieval signs of God’s displeasure at a ruler. Nor does the court seem ‘infected’ by the sins of its ruler. If there is ‘something rotten in the state of Denmark’, its effects seem curiously limited. The only real intriguers at the court are Hamlet and Claudius, with their courtiers simply following their wishes. Polonius may be irritatingly sententious to a modern audience, but his shrewdness and successful advice on foreign negotiations would class him as a good royal counsellor by medieval standards.

Yet in the midst of this very medieval kingdom, there stands the extraordinary figure of Hamlet, a man from a totally different moral, emotional, intellectual world. I can think of no medieval parallels for him, real or fictional, and in some ways he does not even seem a Renaissance figure. It’s an extraordinary portrait of intellectual force and confusion. Among many other things, Hamlet’s character also provides the answer to the obvious question: why didn’t he succeed to his father’s throne? He is the heir and of age: even if his uncle had taken advantage of his absence, surely there must have been a faction ready to support him, if he’d wished? Yet once you seem him, it seems obvious that he could never be a king, or even seriously want to be. Einhard, praising Charlemagne, commented on his ‘magnanimitas’ and ‘constantia’; his spirit could never be shaken by adversity or the length of a difficult struggle. Hamlet is not inactive or ultimately indecisive, but he does not have the patience, the persistence or possibly the limited horizons to become a king. Instead, he inadvertently wrecks the kingdom far more comprehensively than Claudius could ever do.

Hamlet derives ultimately from a medieval source, a story from the historian of the Danes Saxo Grammaticus. If I can find the details I will try and post it here, if only to show what a medieval revenge tale looks like before it gets into the hands of a genius.