In his Confessions Alfred Sant told us how he travelled around Europe, often on his own, from country to country. There was no one to prevent him from doing it. His parents may not have encouraged it, but certainly did not stop him. For us girls that was unimaginable at the time. We did not even dare dream of it let alone propose it. Travelling alone? Unthinkable.

My first trip abroad was with a well-chaperoned school group to Sicily on the ill-fated Star of Malta. And you know what it’s like. Once you have tasted ‘abroad’, well, you want more and more of it.

So the following year a good friend who had already travelled there with her mother, proposed we go to visit Rome. It took months to persuade my father to allow me to go. ‘Two girls alone?’ He kept on repeating every time, taking my courage in my hands, months before the proposed trip,  I tentatively brought up the subject. Talk of a ‘winter of discontent’! Richard III was certainly not alone. I can vouch for that. Father finally conceded – after we promised ‘to stay with the nuns.’ So to appease him we reluctantly wrote to the Maltese ‘sorijiet’ whose address had been passed on to him and they booked us a room. 

Ah! Freedom at last. But it was miserable there, in the periphery of Rome and we had to be in by 8pm, just like home, or we would have been locked out. Anyway, we had had a lifetime of nuns. Educated and cultured nuns, true but we wanted a break now that our schools days were over. We wanted to see fewer nuns not more. So we stayed for one night and moved to a pensione in the centre of Rome, in an old palazzo, with too many stairs and Signor Dolo, master of this mediocre establishment. Every time we passed him in the corridor on the way to the bathroom-with-a-trickle-of-water he would exclaim: ‘Ah! Benedetta saponetta!’

Those of my generation will recall Malta then. In those days young  girls had to sneak all kinds of things. We had to sneak a life because the real one was not given room enough to thrive. We were starved. We sneaked unsanctioned books – Alberto Moravia, Simone de Beauvoir; we sneaked unsanctioned music – Je t’aime, moi non plus; Kiss of Fire.  After all the prohibited has always been more attractive to the young. We sneaked driving lessons; we sneaked wearing what we wanted – a dress which was slightly short, trousers, coloured nail varnish; we sneaked a fag; we sneaked dreams – of places where we could just be ourselves and where we were not expected to go to  mass everyday of the year. We wanted to get away from the dry and perfectionistic value system then prevalent. We wanted to escape this life in a cage.

Some of us wanted accomplishments for ourselves (apart from playing the piano badly) but we had to pretend not to be ambitious. A woman ambitious for herself? No, she had to be ambitious for her husband and children (male) and give them backup to fulfill those ambitions and forget about self. Self. Selfish. Self-seeking. Self-sufficient. All rotten words. Especially self-sufficient. Women had no business to be self-sufficient.

We tried to sneak little shreds of life whenever we could, wherever we could. But it was not easy.

Ah! Once we got to Rome, the feeling of liberation, of sitting on the edge of the Fontana dei Trevi without our shoes, throwing endless coins to make sure we would return. The bliss of being independent of curfews and sitting up talking until the early hours. How heavenly a cigarette tasted! We did not have to put it out at the sound of a footstep. I used to smoke black Sobranis  then. I don’t think they exist anymore.

Now, I am happy to say, our daughters have access to it all. They take it for granted that they will go to University, drive a car, book flights to far-flung places. They don’t ask us anymore. They merely inform us. They stay out late, have a much more balanced  relationship with young men and feel at ease with them. 

And they don’t realize that these are benefits we fought for. We don’t want them to be grateful. Just to enjoy them. To make the best of it. 

* * * 

But still, for all this freedom the underlying local culture hasn’t changed enough. We are influenced by many collectives that surround us: political, familial, religious,  social. These collectives work to influence and control all manner of things – from our thoughts to how we should vote. Society tends to demean or discourage efforts that are not concomitant with its preferences. There are deeply ingrained cultural attitudes which have as yet to be overcome completely.

The rigid keepers of collective tradition are still there; the enforcers of the unquestioned status quo, the behave yourself, don’t make waves, don’t think too hard, just keep a low profile, be a carbon copy, be nice, say ‘yes’ even though you don’t like it, it doesn’t fit, it’s not the right size or it hurts and so on. This is the often lifeless value system which women are handed, even today. The collective expects you to fit into one of its pigeon holes and woe betide you if you don’t. 

And yet surely the aim of us as individuals is not to merge with any collective but to distinguish ourselves from those who surround us. It is in rejecting collective thinking that we get a chance to become who we really are – unique individuals with unique talents. It is essential to promote individual development, not to stifle it.

We are expected to digest values, propagandas  and philosophies  wholesale. And many do. 

Inspite of all the opportunities women have many still fail to go on studying beyond primary school. A person with a good education has capital value just like shares in an industrial enterprise. There are still so many young women starved of basic encouragement and support and who are filled with resignation. So many years in the lives of these young women are spent in not going, not moving, not learning, not finding out, not becoming. Often because they still have this idea that they have to be ‘rescued’ by some man or another and hopefully will not need to earn their own living after that. They are waiting for Godot… for Prince Charming, for Mr X to rescue them. Instead of becoming  someone themselves they are waiting to live through someone else… who  may not turn up, who may beat them, leave them for a Bulgarian bottle blonde, a Romanian floozie,  a Felipino bonne à tout faire. Worse still, if they have been unlucky and made a bad choice they will be constrained to live in an unhappy marriage till the end of their lives. Mr Godot  may not turn out to be one of the Barbara Cartland heroes they have always dreamed about. So, if marriage does happen but is unhappy, it is moeven more of a pity that they have remained stunted for education is an index of an individual’s growth.

Having experienced a very happy, if all too brief marriage myself, I am the first to say that it is wonderful when it works out.  But women should not make it the only option.  Self development and growth are essential to every individual and these come first of all with education. Men have set us an example. Marriage should not be a substitute for education. No matter how a woman’s life will evolve – marriage, children, career or not - it would benefit everyone if those women who are still in the ghetto, get out of it. Learning how to work a washing machine is never enough.

As Sue Ryder, wife of Leonard Cheshire wrote somewhere: ‘It is extremely foolish of women if they think marriage is one of the solutions of life.’ A wise caveat.