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tree_and_leafI've been seeing a bit of Joan-bashing on various journals and comms, springing from two sources: one, a perception of Joan as a 'slut' (I've lost the link, but the term was definitely used) and, more frequently, that she's an unpleasant snob and racist (because she didn't believe that Martha was training to be a doctor).
The first charge is ridiculous, of course. 'Slut' is an appalling, and pretty much meaningless term, but even if you grant the premise that Joan should be censured for not conforming to the most conservative standards of her time (she does blatantly set her cap at John Smith), there's absolutely no grounds for calling her promiscuous. There's no sign that she's interetested in any of the other masters - she just likes John, and as a widow with some experience of life, she knows how to go about matters. Which is just as well, because although John clearly also likes her, he equally obviously hasn't the faintest idea how to go about it, is apparently completley sexually inexperienced, and a bit scared by the whole thing.
If the first charge rested on insisting on judging Joan by a perception of what was appropriate for a woman of her age (well, either that or it was a Martha/Doctor shipper looking for mud to fling), the second seems to me to rest on the opposite. Yes, Joan, for a variety of reasons, isn't motivated to believe Martha - for one thing, she's a tremendous threat, not as a sexual rival in the crude sense, but because she's suggesting that John Smith is just a phantasm, and she does voice her disbelief in terms of sex, race and class - but I'm not sure her scepticism about Martha's medical training is that unreasonable.
I know that the first medical school for women in Britain was founded in 1874, and it obviously wasn't impossible for women to become doctors by 1913, though that doesn't mean that they would have had an easy ride. The race and class issues are a big complicating factor, though. I can't thus far find any informtion on when the first black person, of either sex, registered as a doctor; the London Medical School page on Wikipedia informs me that the first Indian woman qualified in 1894, and that increasing numbers of female students from the subcontinent followed. However, they seem to have been (presumaby high-status) Indian nationals, who returned to India to practice. It seems, therefore, that the first 'woman of colour' succeeded in becoming a doctor nine years before the events of Human Nature - that's not long for a big social change to become widely accepted, especially as the Indian women doctors went home to practice. Martha's not in that position - she's obviously English.
However, I think, as Joan's speech suggested ("and certainly not a skivvy", or words to that effect), it's actually class that's the kicker. Medical training costs money; it also requires a decent education before you start. The likelihood of someone who spends long days scrubbing floors and doing physically hard cleaning jobs having the opportunity to save enough money to go to university/ college, and the resources and energy to learn what she would need to know, seems to me to be vanishingly small (Maisie Dobbs, I'm looking at you). And the likelihood that anyone would give a woman in that position a temporary job as a housemaid seems even smaller (yes, Maisie, that applies to you too). Why would anyone want to employ an obviously strong-minded and pushy young women when there were many more easily exploitable people out there? I suspect she might have believed Martha if she'd said she was a nurse: there were more ways to train as a nurse if you didn't have much money to start with, though it did mean doing a lot of cleanery jobs as well as looking after patients.
So - yes, Joan's very rude, mostly because she's understandably frightened. on a lot of different levels. But given that she's still thinking in the terms of her ages, I don't think we can convict her of overt racism. She has a lot of examined assumptions - but so do we all; they're just different assumptions. It certainly doesn't mean that she would have been unfit as a companion - 'Companion has ideas shaken up' is quite a common motif in Who. The Doctor's offer does illustrate once again for those who didn't realise it that he's really, really bad at relating to humans (although since it's not unrelated to the 'but I still want to be best friends' school of dumping, I suppose we can't entirely blame his Gallifreyan hearts for that piece of insensitivity).
Anyway: thoughts, people?
The first charge is ridiculous, of course. 'Slut' is an appalling, and pretty much meaningless term, but even if you grant the premise that Joan should be censured for not conforming to the most conservative standards of her time (she does blatantly set her cap at John Smith), there's absolutely no grounds for calling her promiscuous. There's no sign that she's interetested in any of the other masters - she just likes John, and as a widow with some experience of life, she knows how to go about matters. Which is just as well, because although John clearly also likes her, he equally obviously hasn't the faintest idea how to go about it, is apparently completley sexually inexperienced, and a bit scared by the whole thing.
If the first charge rested on insisting on judging Joan by a perception of what was appropriate for a woman of her age (well, either that or it was a Martha/Doctor shipper looking for mud to fling), the second seems to me to rest on the opposite. Yes, Joan, for a variety of reasons, isn't motivated to believe Martha - for one thing, she's a tremendous threat, not as a sexual rival in the crude sense, but because she's suggesting that John Smith is just a phantasm, and she does voice her disbelief in terms of sex, race and class - but I'm not sure her scepticism about Martha's medical training is that unreasonable.
I know that the first medical school for women in Britain was founded in 1874, and it obviously wasn't impossible for women to become doctors by 1913, though that doesn't mean that they would have had an easy ride. The race and class issues are a big complicating factor, though. I can't thus far find any informtion on when the first black person, of either sex, registered as a doctor; the London Medical School page on Wikipedia informs me that the first Indian woman qualified in 1894, and that increasing numbers of female students from the subcontinent followed. However, they seem to have been (presumaby high-status) Indian nationals, who returned to India to practice. It seems, therefore, that the first 'woman of colour' succeeded in becoming a doctor nine years before the events of Human Nature - that's not long for a big social change to become widely accepted, especially as the Indian women doctors went home to practice. Martha's not in that position - she's obviously English.
However, I think, as Joan's speech suggested ("and certainly not a skivvy", or words to that effect), it's actually class that's the kicker. Medical training costs money; it also requires a decent education before you start. The likelihood of someone who spends long days scrubbing floors and doing physically hard cleaning jobs having the opportunity to save enough money to go to university/ college, and the resources and energy to learn what she would need to know, seems to me to be vanishingly small (Maisie Dobbs, I'm looking at you). And the likelihood that anyone would give a woman in that position a temporary job as a housemaid seems even smaller (yes, Maisie, that applies to you too). Why would anyone want to employ an obviously strong-minded and pushy young women when there were many more easily exploitable people out there? I suspect she might have believed Martha if she'd said she was a nurse: there were more ways to train as a nurse if you didn't have much money to start with, though it did mean doing a lot of cleanery jobs as well as looking after patients.
So - yes, Joan's very rude, mostly because she's understandably frightened. on a lot of different levels. But given that she's still thinking in the terms of her ages, I don't think we can convict her of overt racism. She has a lot of examined assumptions - but so do we all; they're just different assumptions. It certainly doesn't mean that she would have been unfit as a companion - 'Companion has ideas shaken up' is quite a common motif in Who. The Doctor's offer does illustrate once again for those who didn't realise it that he's really, really bad at relating to humans (although since it's not unrelated to the 'but I still want to be best friends' school of dumping, I suppose we can't entirely blame his Gallifreyan hearts for that piece of insensitivity).
Anyway: thoughts, people?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-04 01:59 pm (UTC)In fact, I thought they handled the whole racial topic quite sensibly in those episodes -- it was brought up enough to acknowledge it without distracting from the rest of the plot. Joan's attitudes were liberal for the time and personal situation without becoming unrealistically modern, and that's the right balance to strike, I think. And on that note, has 'John Smith' come in for any bashing on the same score? You know, like when Martha tries to jog his memory by showing him his sketchbook, and he says something along the lines of 'ah right, cultural differences -- Miss Jones, this is what we call a STORY'? That made me blink a bit too, but it certainly fit in the same way.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-04 10:41 pm (UTC)I did see one person objecting to John Smith's 'cultural difference' comment; but you're right, it's far more offensive than Joan's comment. She suggested that Martha had unsurmountable barriers in front of her; he suggested she was an idiot and a savage. Possibly JS has got a bye on the grounds that it sounds a bit like the stupid excuses the Doctor comes up with of the top of his head, though...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-05 03:23 pm (UTC)I have been trying and failing to come up with a comparable situation, and the best I can do is the position of ‘ordinary’ pupils in relating to the Taylorite Brethren girls at school. Joan’s assumption that Martha will not study medicine is along the same lines as never asking a Brethren classmate what she was going to study at university. One does not expect what never happens, even though there is the possibility that it might. A housemaid is a housemaid, and C_ C_ was going to be married with several babies by the time she was 22. We didn't need to ever actually discuss it to know that there was no other option for her than the people-carrier and the pram.