Performing Social Tragedy: Exploring the “New British Spirit” a Decade Beyond the Death of Princess Diana

Abstract

There is a line in rudyard kipling’s “if” where he recommends remaining resolute in the face of adversity: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” The poem’s emphasis on cultivating self-restraint over emotional expression is reference to the (unwavering) “stiff upper lip” as an ideal moral virtue. It is an emotion norm associated with Victorian stoicism that has become synonymous with British culture. It was striking then when the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, resulted in unbridled displays of public emotion. In contrast to the subcultural significance of most celebrity bereavements, the media gave the impression of Britain as a nation “united in grief” (Jackson, 2007). In the immediate aftermath of the incident, and the week that followed, media coverage focused on the scale and style of public mourning. Images of thousands of floral tributes and crowds assembling to sign Diana’s book of condolence were used as evidence that the British had transformed into a more “emotional people” (Biddle & Walter, 1998). But how did Diana’s death come to assume the magnitude of a social tragedy? And what did the visibly bereaving nation reveal about British culture? Only weeks prior to Diana’s death, Tony Walter (1997) published an article: “Emotional Reserve and the English Way of Grief,” the irony of which was not to escape him. For, as the twentieth century came to a close, Britain experienced a social tragedy that appeared to rupture the social imagination.