Princess Diana, Immigrant Women, and Generational Trauma
A look at how the media and royal family’s treatment of Princess Diana mirrors the experiences of immigrant women and how the next generation is taking matters into their own hands
By Isha Rihal
My earliest memory of the royal family is waking up at 5 am in fifth grade to watch William and Kate’s wedding with my mom. My mother is an Indian-American woman but was born in Kenya (under British control at the time) and grew up in Canada (another commonwealth country). She was incredibly excited for the event. However, her excitement didn’t stem from her loyalty to the country that colonized her homes, but because William was one of the few remaining connections to her beloved Princess Diana.
As I watched my parents spend the evening after the wedding discussing the tragedy that was the life and death of Princess Diana, I felt a strange sense of deja vu. Diana died before I was born, so I didn’t know why her story of hope, conviction, and betrayal rang so familiarly in my 11-year-old ears. As I grew older, I began to realize that the familiarity of the story did not come from Diana but rather from the stories I heard from women in my own life. In many ways, Princess Diana’s life in the public eye mirrored the experiences of South Asian (and many other immigrant) women.
To start, Diana was presented to the public as the “commoner” whose life took flight once she got married. Adoration for Diana swelled in the hearts of the people of Britain, as well as British subjects (like my mother) as she became a wife, and later, a mother. The public watched her achieve every girl’s dream: marriage. At this point in her life, Diana represented the belief held by so many immigrant families, and repeated to so many immigrant women, that your life begins once you are married.
Perhaps the most compelling way Diana mirrored the experiences of immigrant women was the way in which she, very publicly, faced disrespect and abuse, both from her family and from the public. Diana was a woman who stuck her neck out for what was right; her philanthropic efforts even won her a Nobel Peace Prize. However, society saw her independence as a threat. She was setting a “dangerous example” that women could be more than wives and mothers, and the media took every chance they could to vilify her.
This cycle of publicly shaming women when they try to reach for something greater than the roles they are expected to fulfill is unfortunately not unique to the royal family. Immigrant women face the same sort of public shaming when they try to achieve something other than fulfilling their traditional role as a woman. Additionally, many immigrant women also have to deal with a lack of support—and often respect—from the men in their lives the same way Diana did with Charles. Charles, despite having cheated on his wife, was never publicly shamed nor held accountable for the end of their marriage in the way Diana was. In my mind, the power that Charles had (and didn’t use) is akin to the way that men in immigrant communities let their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters bear the burdens of their mistakes and shortcomings. Like Diana, immigrant women are held to impossible standards and expected to exceed those standards, while also being held accountable for the actions of the men in their lives.
My childhood sense of deja vu returned this past month as Harry and Megan sat down with Oprah to discuss what they had experienced during their time in the royal family. However, this time the sense of familiarity was not because of stories I had heard, but because of my own thoughts and experiences. Harry’s remark that he was “worried history was going to repeat itself” rang familiar in my ears. I, and many other young women like me, hold that same fear that our lives will take a similar path as our parents, that we will inherit and unconsciously perpetuate the trauma our foremothers had to endure. Harry and Megan’s quest to end the generational cycle of silencing women, and instead to empower them to carve their own path in life, sparked a sense of hope in me. It was a feeling that I imagined my mother and her peers felt when they saw Princess Diana, one that brought comfort to my inner conflicts. One that told me: I’m not alone.