Happy Valley’s Catherine Cawood: From Unsung Hero to New Archetype

I shouldn’t say Catherine Cawood, the heroine of the BBC/Netflix series Happy Valley, is unsung, because literally she is sung in the opening theme song - “In this trouble town/trouble I’ve found.” written and sung by Jake Bugg. Maybe I’m old, but if you take the time to find Jake Bugg, he seems incredibly young; his youth and plaintive voice just make the words more poignant.

I want to talk about Catherine and the other characters in Happy Valley as characters, even real people, not as actors in a show, though, in order to talk about the show at all, I have to identify it. I want to talk about Catherine as we experience her.

When we first see Catherine in the opening scene, she is trying to talk down a despondent young fellow about to light himself on fire – “I’m Catherine by the way. I’m 47, divorced, I live with my sister who’s a recovering heroin addict. I have two grown up children; one dead and one who doesn’t speak to me, and a grandson. So… It’s complicated. Let’s talk about you.”

Catherine’s younger sister, Clare is Catherine’s caregiver. Clare is really the only one who reaches out to help Catherine. To hear Clare tell it, she looks to Catherine who “has been taking care of everyone” since Clare was 13 and Catherine was 15, when their father and mother died.

Clare does the cooking and housework, while Catherine fights crime. Clare also volunteers at a local mission. Catherine’s grandson, Ryan is a handful, often getting into trouble at school. Ryan is the child of the rape of Catherine’s daughter, who hung herself soon after his birth. Catherine is still mourning her. The rapist, Tommy Lee Royce is just out of prison for drug dealing, not for the rape. Catherine, and Happy Valley, are about to endure more pain and suffering at his hands. As it is, Catherine finds only one thing to be too hard for her – to remain happy for more than a few moments.

Have you ever seen a burned out woman weep? She sobs for three seconds, then she’s done. Just enough to let the pressure out.

That’s how Catherine Cawood cries. Not for herself, mind you, but out of frustration at not being able to help a victim.

I know that Catherine Cawood is more than a hero, more than a role model. If I had to search for a word, I would say, Catherine Cawood is a new archetype. But, an archetype of what? I want to say matriarch.

I will say matriarch. I don’t know if the producers of Happy Valley will find the term sufficiently sexy. Catherine is definitely sexy. Her blonde hair is tousled, though an attempt has been made to tie it neatly back. Her face is just barely hanging on to pretty. Her figure appears tall and full, long-legged. She’s indulging herself in a secret affair with her ex-husband. Attractive men from her past seem to react sexually to her presence, getting somewhat nervous and awkward when they speak to her up close.

Catherine strikes me as a kind of Amazonian Matriarch. Natural and powerful. When I watch her, I don’t get distracted by false eyelashes, ridiculously tight leather pants or voluminous hair extensions. When I watch Catherine Cawood, I think about what she is thinking.

Catherine is not a detective. She is a soldier. Not a foot soldier, a sergeant. We never see her posing with her gun because Catherine doesn’t carry a gun. She is armed only with her intelligence, her bravery, her strength, and, oddly, her vulnerability – oh, and a stick, a torch and a spray. She doesn’t want to be a detective because she doesn’t want to sit behind a desk, or leave the action of the street. I believe she wants, hands on, to take care of the people.

Catherine should be Queen.

Catherine is a good listener. She listens to everyone. She knows the truth can come from any random source, and usually does. Her sister has broken a case, her son has. Information has come to Catherine from all sides, and she has listened. And seen the connection. I love that about Catherine – that she can see connections where others can’t, usually her superiors. But, she isn’t rogue. And, man, is she quick! Tell her a thing once, and she’s off! Whether the culprit is a drunk police official in a traffic accident or a drug-dealer on an ice cream truck, Catherine doesn’t mind looking foolish or taking a beating. When she’s not in her uniform, Catherine tends to slouch. She’s not graceful, she’s a bit awkward, stumbling a lot, head down, watch cap, natty scarf, down jacket; Catherine holds her head up when she’s in her uniform. Her aging face is beautiful. But, she’s, to coin a phrase, “beat up.” Quite literally. When she appears at a party with a shiner, she mumbles proudly, “It’s just work.”

While Catherine is not unsung, she does remind me of all the everyday, unsung heroes: the nurse who delivered my daughter when the doctor refused to come down because a first time mother “couldn’t be ready yet”; the EMT who leaned over my wounded, bleeding husband and told me, “You have to be strong now. He needs you to be strong.” probably recognizing that I was about to cave, that I’d always relied on him for strength, just by one glance in my direction, she summed me up. Those are just two I heroes know of, two out of all the millions of women who do their job every day and night, helping people, saving lives, giving courage by grace of their own courage.

Catherine is not a superhero. She has no superpowers. She does not fly through the air, nor breath fire, or change the weather. She’d probably get a kick out of it, if she could.

But, Catherine is more than an everyday hero. She is an archetype. An ideal. In a way, she does have superpowers – her intelligence, bravery, strength, vulnerability, all mentioned before – and, her endurance. If she’s knocked down, and she’s been knocked down plenty, she just keeps getting up again.

Catherine also reminds me of the female Boston Irish cabdriver, who made an offhand remark that became famous while she remained anonymous, “Oh, honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” She declared this homage one night in the turbulent ‘60s, to her passengers, who happened to be Gloria Steinem and Fay Kennedy.

Catherine is capable of making such a remark, and forgetting it the next instant because she’s on to something else, something equally earth-shattering.

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

The world would split open.”  Muriel Rukeyser

I worship Catherine Cawood. If she knew me, she’d have none of it, for Catherine does not suffer fools, nor does she think very highly of herself. She’d say, “I’m just doin’ me job.” But, since watching Happy Valley, Season 2, I am in awe of her.

Here’s a wonderful exchange between Ann Gallagher and Catherine Cawood:

Ann: “I know I’m pissed [Pissed is Brit for drunk], but, do you know what I think God is? I think God is like this collective goodness that’s in all of us. In someone like you. It’s like you have so much of this goodness. This bigness. It’s like you embody what God is.”

Catherine: “Omnipotent and ubiquitous. God, I’m good.”

Ann and Catherine have a deep relationship, not a sexual relationship, more like the deep bond that arises between two soldiers in combat. I cannot elaborate further without giving away the story, but Ann has very good reason to feel the way she does about Catherine, and Catherine, about her.

Yes, I am in awe. I am transfixed by Catherine’s blue eyes, at the end of the last episode, gazing off into the future thinking, what? What is she thinking? Is she thinking about possibly killing her grandson, the one who broke up her marriage, drove her daughter to commit suicide, the kid whose dad is a deviant criminal still powerful and manipulating from his prison cell? Will she have to do what she just discovered her friend had had to do, assassinate her own flesh and blood because he turned out, finally, despite all her love and care and teaching, to be a monster like his father? Is that what she’s thinking?

Season 3. Please, Season 3.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2016

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation.

HOLY DAYS - THE GLORIA

     

     Last Saturday night, November 7, accompanied by my husband and daughter, I made a pilgrimage to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to see the immortal Patti Smith.

     I was never a punk. Punk came after my hippie generation of the late ‘60s. I remember the first punks coming from Europe in the early ‘70s to learn macrobiotics. I loved their fierceness and their originality. But, I was nothing like them. I would never have stuck a safety pin through my nose. I was more of a Laura Ashley, white lace, pink rose kind of girl. I never liked drugs. I liked being myself, and hated the time spent high, just to please my friends. Patti and I are nothing alike in the way we live – judging from her description of her room, she is informed by the debris of life - I am informed by the serenity of cleanliness – nor in our tastes – she likes to travel, I am severely travel challenged. I needed my entourage that night in Portsmouth. I knew only two of her songs – “Because the Night” (which was a little too commercial for me, come to find out the music was written by Bruce Springsteen) and what I like to call, The Gloria.

     I love the Gloria. I love the original by Van Morrison, performed by his band, Them in 1964. For some reason, even though my name is not Gloria, the boys really did sing that song when I walked by, “G*L*O*R*I*A! G*L*O*R*I*A!” I was 12. Not ready to hear it. I was older when I heard Jim Morrison of the Doors sing Gloria. (Trigger Warning: this link is to the dirty version from a private rehearsal) That was a revelation. His smooth voice, his nasty intention, played a girl’s nerves like guitar strings. But, it wasn’t until I heard Patti’s Gloria that all of my Catholic pain came tumbling down. I have to say that hearing Patti sing, was experienced in combination with all three versions of the song, mixed together with Catholic fear, anguish, hope and a statement I’d heard from another Gloria – Gloria Steinem – really spoken to her by a female Irish can driver in Boston – “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” What has that statement to do with a horny teenage girl going up to my house? Or imagining I was that horny teenage girl? How can you not know the answer to that question?

     Sexual freedom, of course. Sexual freedom. The gender bending of Patti’s Gloria only added to the surprise and delight – and the wild, new sense of freedom. Complete freedom including, as in my Gloria’s case, the freedom to not have sex, for, like Athena, my Gloria, until she is raped, cherishes her virginity, as she calls it, “a shield and a sword.” But, my Gloria feels no shame at being raped. No guilt.

     I named my character in Holy Days, the little girl who represents me, after Patti Smith’s Gloria. Gloria, the glory of God, the glory of man, the glory of woman, the glory of little girls, the seeker, the wisher for glory, glory that is natural, sexual, life-affirming, transmuting, the God-given glory of heaven and earth, the little girl Gloria who loves to hear the choir sing her name at mass, "Gloria in excelsis Deo!"

     Gloria is a common Italian name. I love that. Like Maria and Jesus, to name your child Gloria is a wish for him/her to partake in the glory of God.

       As everyone knows by now, Patti’s version of Gloria begins with these almost whispered words, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”

     As a Magdalena, I am familiar with the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. In this gospel, hidden for centuries, and rejected from the official Bible, Jesus says, “There is no sin, except that you make it a sin.”

     We apply shame to sex. The Catholic Church and many other religions wanted to control people, so they made them ashamed. And fearful. They threatened people with hell fire and eternal suffering. But, it’s all a ruse. We have the truth from Jesus himself, whom I believe was married to Mary Magdalene, and proposed that we all marry, eat well, live simply and work in small, healthy communities. In macrobiotic theory, the shame of sex comes from unhealthful elimination. Problems in the bowels make the whole area smelly and unclean. When we eliminate, it should be quick and clean. Ideally, there should be no need for toilet paper. Meat eating, according to macrobiotics, makes our bowels hard and blocked, which in turn makes us fearful, heavy, guilty (another form of fear) and depressed. It’s really that simple, and I predict that you won’t hear me, except maybe to have a good laugh.

      I don’t believe Jesus died for our sins. I believe he died because of them. In other words, we failed him. I do believe he taught us how to live. And we failed to hear him, both in ancient Rome and today. When Patti sings, “My sins, my own!” I say to God, as Gloria does in her final prayer in Holy Days, “Thank you for my sins…You’ve given me wounds and the salt to heal them. I thank you.”

     Patti Smith has become our mystic. She is an old soul who can communicate without words, though she chooses words. I love her line: “I did not sell my soul – to God!” I don’t believe God wants us to sell our souls to Him. That’s just another Catholic ruse. But, I admire Patti for being brave enough to proclaim her independence. I believe God allows us to be our own person, whatever that is, good or bad. Yin and yang. Consider this: I have heard on good authority that Satan is still in heaven.

     When I made my small pilgrimage to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I found there an elder, shining, silver Patti, dressed simply, holding up her hands in giving graceful gesture, singing “Wing” acapella. She was generous, intimate, honest, wise, silly, tender, reverent, irreverent, sweet, shy, mad, messy, absent-minded (Her phone rang at exactly 8:00 p.m. and she said, “No wonder my phone didn’t wake me up this morning.”), sad, funny, foolish, eye-opening, seeking, searching, wonderful.

     To close, rather than quote Patti's books, Just Kids or M Train again, I opened Patti’s darling Rimbaud’s book, Illuminations at random and found this – “Venus enters the caverns of ironsmiths and hermits…Savages dance ceaselessly in celebration of the night.”

    

     And from my poem, “I Must BeAbout The Work Of My Fathers” -

      

      Patti Smith

You do not think it’s bravery. I do. Because I need to be quiet.

But, I adore your horses and your ties.

Kiss me with your words and your beats, Oh Prince!

I do not know if you are father or mother, but I love you.

Gloria!

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation.