„Watching the English” by Kate Fox was first published ten years ago. The history of its perception and feedbacks is quite interesting. The book received some cold reviews from professional authors, for instance from Catherine Bennet in “The Guardian” (23th July, 2004). On the other hand, it became very popular among common readers in England and North America. “Watching” was also translated into other languages, including Polish. The book of Kate Fox seems to have more luck outside her own country or, let’s say, far away from the English intellectual elite. It is not surprising since the author, a social anthropologist, describes her natives. However, “Watching” remains a fascinating and revealing text for many foreign readers. There are some reasons for that.
First of all, the content of the book covers every aspect of human life. “Watching” is divided into two parts entitled: “conversation codes” and “behaviour codes”, and many chapters which describe “talk rules”, “linguistic class codes”, “home rules”, “road roles”, “dress codes”, “sex rules” and “rites of passage”. As we can see, Fox guides the potential reader into more and more private or intimate areas of everyday life, including love, death and religion. She aims to reveal and explain hidden and unconscious rules which govern the English society.
What makes this book unique is the approach of the author towards the described issue. Kate Fox writes about her natives, so she deals with the problem from the inside. She explains her choice in her characteristic witty style:
“Really, I don’t see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to remote corners of the world and get dysentery and malaria in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizzarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when the weirdest, most puzzling tribe of all is right there, on our doorstep!”. Some representatives of this “puzzling tribe” seem to be offended and annoyed, like Catherine Bennet who criticized and ridiculed certain thesis in “Watching”. The foreign receivers may have different attitude (which is the perspective of the author of this review). They do not have any reason not to believe Kate Fox. She is the English woman, scientist and writer; in other words, an expert.
However, it is very easy to see that the book is not strictly scientific. In fact “Watching” seems to be rather popular – scientific text. In my opinion it makes this book even more interesting. Kate Fox is constantly present in the narration and engrains it with her sense of humor. So why is she convincing for many common readers? To prove her thesis, she puts a lot of descriptions of the social experiments into “Watching”. Sometimes they were very simple and funny, like “bumping into people for checking if the say <sorry>” or “starting very awkward and personal conversation with new people”. All of these experiments she must have conducted by herself, what is another argument against her work for some critics. Anyway, she tries to reconcile scientific methods with an easy, fluent and colorful way of writing. The narration in “Watching” is an original mixture of reporter’s style and a survey with autobiography extracts. There can be as much enthusiasts as opponents of this kind of writing but in my opinion it works. Instead of a tough, difficult analysis of English national character, Kate Fox offers witty, but intelligent descriptions. She is also a good observer, which is proved by the fragment about her visit to Poland. After about half an hour of driving on the narrow Polish roads, she noticed a special, unspoken rule, which most of the drivers follow. “The third line”, as she calls it, means that, if a car overtakes another car, the drivers who move from the opposite direction, instinctively make the space, a line.
Fox in her book deals with some basic clichés about the English. Other nations describe them as reserved people who constantly talk about the weather and have very peculiar sense of humor. Is their hunch correct? According to Kate Fox, yes. Additionally, she tries to explain the sources and the meaning of all the clichés. Why do English people start every talk with the weather issue? The Fox’s answer is: “not because of any special feature of the weather which in England is very common, but because of a very special “dis-ease” of English people”. The same with other opinions about her natives. That dis-ease, in her view, is the incompetency and lack in social interaction. She calls it “the core” of the English character. Is she doing right, when she confirms these stereotypes? They are always a kind of simplifying. But Kate Fox gives some argument and proves her thesis very consistently. And we have to remember, that there is always a grain of truth in clichés.
During the whole process of reading the book one important thing might be disappointing. Fox does not give the answer to the question why they are the nation with this peculiar dis-ease. She suggests some answers, mentioning, after a few other authors, “climate”, “history” and “geography”. However, she sincerely admits that none of these reasons is satisfactory. If this book is a kind of adventurous journey through the mentality of the English, we still do not know where this journey has started.
To sum up, “Watching” is a very original and intelligent book, undoubtedly worth reading. The readers receive a key to the English character. Some phrases, like “money talk taboo”, “my home is my castle” or “jumping queue is strictly forbidden” would stay in their minds for a long time”. I think that the book could help the outsiders to understand English people better. It stays up to date, as the great, entertaining and intelligent lesson about one European nation.
Agnieszka Małecka