Leading Ladies

By Nancy HoneyInterviews by Hattie Garlick

Carmen Callil

Dickens was a major presence in my childhood home. I was Pip in Great Expectations, I didn’t imagine myself as Estella. But I definitely wasn’t always the adventurer. I was quite timid, you know, and you shouldn’t imagine just because of what you see and read that I’m not still that way.

I’ve been talking a lot to my friends about this recently, and we all agree that we were raised not to have self-esteem. A lot of effort went into making us feel that we couldn’t achieve. We were taught to get married and have children, to keep our virginities.

It was difficult because I loved my brothers and I didn’t want to feel cross with them. But I didn’t see why I should iron their shirts when they didn’t have to do mine.

My mother always asked, “have the boys had enough?”Later, I named Margaret Foster’s novel. Her grandmother said the same, only her version was ‘Have the men had enough?’ So that became the book’s title.

My feminism came from my mother. The women who lived between the wars had it worst of all. They were always patronised. I hated the way she was treated. She was a young widow and was always on the receiving end of charity.

You don’t examine your choices till you get older. But other opportunities were offered to me as a young woman, like getting married and relying on other people’s money, but I couldn’t do it. I had to earn my own.

A male colleague told me that what I did by founding Virago was to put women’s experience at the centre of the world. And women’s experience is different, absolutely. Just recently I had a letter from my bank. They wanted their members to vote for a new director. I looked at the pictures of the people shortlisted and they were all men. I won’t do it. I refuse to take part.

I am in favour of all women shortlists. Perhaps in Scandinavian countries they aren’t necessary. But here, the only things they allow women to be is the Queen or a Margaret Thatcher. It’s hardly a broad spectrum of choice, is it?

As a child, I was utterly silent. I still don’t speak in public with ease. But I learnt to bang my fist on the table and say “wait a minute, I have a view on this too.”

We just aren’t the same as the men of our generation. They were told as children: “you’re wonderful, darling, speak up in front of everyone.” We were told: “Carmen, you’re talking too much, go to the back of the class.”

CARMEN CALLIL Author Critic and Publisher

1938 Born in Melbourne, Australia1960 Moved to the UK1972 Founded Virago Press1982 Managing director of Chatto and Windus

I’m always apologising for misbehaviour because I was raised not to be who I am. I became who I am, later on, but I still always hear the voice saying, “Oh, Carmen, really...”

Because of the way that I am, people always talk about how confrontational I can be. But there’s more to me than that. I couldn’t have run the publishing houses that I have without being part of a team, loving many of the people I worked with and being loved back.