Morris’s version of womanhood is farcically chauvinistic. It’s a world view where women are coy, decorative and bad at driving. When Morris is patronised by men — or even, in one case, sexually assaulted by a taxi driver who “kissed me roughly, and not at all disagreeably” before “patting my bottom” — it is received as a compliment.
As far as Morris is concerned, biology is destiny, and the female destiny is submission, not leadership. Of working for The Guardian, Morris writes: “I have a disconcerting feeling now that I disliked it because it was like working for a woman rather than a man.” The male body is “made to push and initiate”, the female to “yield and accept”.
I know it was always denied by JM, but there's something rather Malaga airportish about JMs views on women, along with a good dollop of examples, typical of the era, of male chauvinism.