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Mrs. Brown
For a long time, no one could understand what Victoria, the most powerful and long-reigning monarch ever to sit on the throne of England, possibly saw in John Brown.
Victoria had become queen at eighteen, and two years later had married her darling Prince Albert, with whom she had nine children and twenty happy years of marriage. But when Albert died of Typhoid fever at the age of forty-one, Victoria fell into so deep and pervasive a depression that she boarded herself up in her room and refused to appear before her public for the next five years. Politicians began to worry, her subjects thought she must be mad with grief, and Victoria, who clad herself in the sombre black dress of a perpetual widow, could barely rouse herself to eat or drink let alone govern the country. She had lost the love of her life; the fact that she alone ruled supreme over a vast empire stretching from England to Australia, that she alone was the highest authority in the land and had absolute power and control, was of little or no comfort to her in the face of such grief.
John Brown was a Scottish servant who had been a favourite of Prince Albert's during the royal couple's many visits to their residence at Balmoral. He was summoned before the queen in an attempt to cheer her, to help her venture out of doors again for some fresh air, and to comfort her, something no one else, not even her children, were able to do. None of Victoria's courtiers had any idea of the effect this brash, domineering Highlander would have on their fragile queen, or how close the two would become.
By all accounts, John Brown was a decent, hardworking man who sincerely cared for Victoria but who nonetheless had little respect for the decorum or etiquette required of those who pander to royalty. He was brusque with her when she made him impatient, he referred to her, usually out of exasperation, as "woman", he personally adjusted her shawls and blankets when he didn't think she had covered herself well enough, and he defied her orders when he thought them given out of peevishness or ill temper. Coupled with the fact that he was overly fond of whisky and completely commandeered the social pecking order of the servants whose quarters he shared, his behavior made him an instant celebrity and universally denounced as the roughest sort of savage who didn't belong anywhere near so austere and dignified a woman as the queen of England. When political troubles put the queen's life at risk he dedicated himself to preserving her safety, and thwarted several assassination attempts, although the credit of such rescues was usually given to someone more respectable.
Victoria became as close to John Brown as she had ever been to another living soul, and often wrote him sweet letters praising him as her dearest friend. They rode out on horseback together nearly every day, spent many hours in private conversation away from the prying curiosity of her courtiers, and were so inseparable that London society began referring to her as Mrs. Brown. Some even speculated that the two had been secretly married, although modern historians discount this rumour. What had developed between Victoria and John Brown may have made for a wonderful marriage in this era, but in the era named for her, propriety and rigid social rules would have made a marriage between them an impossible idea.
Then, as now, most people were completely flummoxed by the level of affection Victoria developed for a mere servant, and a whisky-loving Scottish one at that. How could so powerful a woman be so humbled by a mere servant? It seemed scandalous to most observers - perhaps it was her grief, they thought. Perhaps she went mad from mourning and was no longer possessed of all her wits. Nothing else could explain why she would "fall" for such a fellow, why she would let herself become so attached to someone so clearly beneath her.
What has become clear about their relationship, when looking at it now, is that there was a very simple reason Victoria became so enamoured with John Brown. As powerful as she was, as respected and admired, as supreme as her authority was, she was still a woman, and psychologically speaking, was not happy unless she had a masculine, dominant man to look up to and admire, a real hero for her to worship.
Women are just as capable, just as intelligent, and just as rational as men and can naturally perform any skill as well as men, but the one thing they don't want is to be men, an idea that seems to have become lost in our post-feminist world. Women, in general, still enjoy feeling feminine and still enjoy finding a strong, capable, intelligent man they can admire. Ayn Rand called it "hero worship", in explanation as to why she believed that any woman could be president of the United States but that a woman shouldn't want to, because in becoming the most powerful authority in the most powerful country on earth she would have no men above her and every man below her, which would never satisfy her emotional need to worship an admirable man. A woman would need an equal, at the very least, to feel emotionally satisfied, and would not be able to find one if she were deemed unequal - superior - to every man around her.
This is not a popular idea, especially among militant feminists who find this idea offensive. There are a great many people who espouse the notion that dominance and submission, masculinity and femininity, are inherently evil or a means by which one sex (guess which one) can exploit and subjugate the other. This is not true. No woman would ever enjoy being sexually submissive to some grunting hulk of a brute who cared nothing for her and wanted only to keep her under his thumb - and no such brute would ever care whether the woman he was repressing was feminine - that is, pleased by his dominance - or not. Masculinity and femininity are respectful of each other - men feel protective towards the women they care about, and are most certainly gentle and careful with them, something women appreciate. It should be clear to anyone who enjoys being the sex they are that masculinity and femininity are wonderful counterparts, and that neither one has any hold over the other or any predisposition to do so, and that being manly or being womanly, and enjoying it, is really only relevant in the emotional realm.
But the emotional realm is extremely important to most people, and a woman who claimed that emotional, psychological and sexual satisfaction were not important to her would be pitied more than admired. She would become less of a woman and more of an asexual being, a kind of soul-less automaton, and what's more, no one would believe it. Simple observation is usually sufficient to prove this point - the strongest, most powerful women, women like Madonna, like Gloria Steinem, are often quite unhappy emotionally and everyone knows it, despite whatever bravado they display. They are only truly happy when they find a man who is stronger, more powerful, and more masculine than they are. When they do, it takes nothing away from their accomplishments or their abilities, it merely adds a component of emotional contentment to their lives that they never had before, and often makes them even more creative, more independent, and more productive than they were before. It is merely a facet of our identity, an inescapable truth about who are we are, and something which all the rhetoric or re-education or guilt-ridden campaigns will ever change.
Victoria understood this. She needed a strong man to look up to, a strong shoulder to lean on when the burden of her duty as queen became too heavy for her to bear. She needed a masculine presence in her life after the loss of her husband, instead of the simpering obedience of the male politicians who curried favor with her to further their own political ambitions. With John Brown's friendship she was able to rouse herself from her depression and continue to rule her empire for the next forty years, ably, capably, with much wisdom and grace. She did not need him to guide her career or make her decisions, and neither did he ever try to do so; she merely needed a capable man to love. Their relationship is perhaps the gentlest example we have of the power of masculinity and femininity to improve the quality of our emotional lives, how harmless and in fact helpful dominance and submission are to our wellbeing, and how self-destructive it is to try to ignore this aspect of our psychological lives.
Perhaps the expression "Behind every great man there is a great woman." ought to be extended, to include the words... "and vice versa".
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