Everyone has missed the point about Iris Robinson. The woman is a feminist icon. Were it not for the fact that she’s an arch-Protestant, she should be sanctified as St Iris, the patron saint of middle-aged women brave enough to rebel and stick it to the God-fearing men of Ulster.
Why, instead of regarding her as a sinner, we should be celebrating Iris for her modernity, her spirit, her black lacy underwear and her sheer chutzpah in breaking centuries of convention.
At its fundamentalist worst, Northern Irish Presbyterianism is up there with the Taleban when it comes to the suppression of women, although the Taleban might even have the edge when it comes to enlightenment.
The average hardline loyalist, secure in the knowledge of his own rectitude, thinks women were placed upon this Earth to support him in his struggle to keep Ulster on the straight and narrow. For him, the female sex are keepers of cleanlinesss, defenders of family respectability and child-bearing vessels of future loyalism. They go to church; they bake; at night they lie back and think of King Billy. Conjure up a vision of Ian Paisley — I know, I know — and repeat that in his accent, and you’ll begin to get the feel of being a prisoner in that society.
That’s why, when Iris went rogue, and introduced a plot from Sex and the City, or maybe it was Desperate Housewives, into one of the most traditional, conformist societies on this planet, it was a spectacularly brave thing to do. Shaped by the society she grew up in, she had been a dutiful mother of three, homemaker and Christian wife for the best part of 40 years. I bet she’s never hung out her washing on a Sunday.
And if Peter Robinson has been forced to deny rumours that he was violent to her, and if he looks capable of being tyrannical, well, it is man’s eternal fate to be misunderstood; just another hurdle for the righteous to bear on the path to salvation.
Somewhere along the line, thankfully, Iris realised that that there was more to life than Leviticus, and became a woman behaving badly. Metaphorically, she shrugged off the burka to uncover a face that deserves to be made famous. Here is a heroine for a deeply flawed middle-aged rebellion. She got glamorous. She smouldered. She took lovers — at least three, it is rumoured, and one of them was, at 19, young enough to be her grandson.
What can we say? To a woman hellbent (to coin a good Presbyterian phrase) on self-fulfilment, pleasure, escape, vanity, money, silk, satin and all things non-puritanical, having spent her best years being stifled, subordinate and holy, I’m inclined only to say: “Atta girl.”
But we shouldn’t underestimate the terrors of being trapped in a society like that. When her pitiful transgressions were exposed, Iris felt her only option was suicide. Meanwhile, back in the 21st century, most women in a similar predicament would have got a divorce and a new BMW, or gone on daytime telly.
To understand the full measure of Iris Robinson’s iconic achievement, we need only turn to the language employed by her husband. How many women shuddered at his choice of words in the aftermath: the sense of martyrdom, the arrogance, the utter self-centredness? “I love my wife. I have always been faithful to her. In a spirit of humility and repentance, Iris sought my forgiveness,” Peter Robinson said, in one of the creepiest public statements I’ve ever heard. “She took responsibility upon herself alone for her actions and I have forgiven her. More important, I know that she has sought and received God’s forgiveness.” He had set her “inappropriate behaviour”, he said, “against 40 years of bringing up our children — often alone.”
Not menacing at all, was he, this man-God whose wife must seek his forgiveness? As night follows day, we knew what would come next. When a woman transgresses in any antediluvian society, she is promptly dealt with by being declared insane. Well, of course there’s something wrong with her, isn’t there? She’s defied the rules of God and Man, and therefore by rights she must be mad.
Iris, it emerged, suffered from depression. We bet she did, stuck with Mr Robinson all her life.
She described hers as a “personality-changing illness”, in a statement written, no doubt, with an enforcer standing at her shoulder. And she is now said to be under “acute psychiatric care”. How deliciously, vindictively, Victorian.
Actually, I much prefer to believe the rumour that Iris is bunkered down in Chamonix, trying on designer ski gear; but if it comforts her party to think she’s in an asylum, then so be it.
If she has any sense she’ll be using this period of enforced invisibility to get some work done — a few nips and tucks, a bit of Botox perhaps. A perfect, practical way to fill the time and be ready for the rest of her life.
And no, not one word of this column is to excuse that Iris Robinson is probably fairly ghastly in her own right. But she’s ghastly in that thrilling, outrageous Sarah Palinesque way. She believes homosexuality is an abomination; and she has been less than transparent over £5,000 of start-up cash she took back from her 19-year-old lover.
In the fight for freedom, let’s face it, all girls make a few mistakes. Iris Robinson is both courageous and pitiable. She was an unhappy prisoner of fundamentalist Christianity who woke up to the fact that there is, after all, only one life to enjoy. And who knows, maybe she needed the £5,000 for new shoes. After 40 years, I think she deserves them.
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