Greer Garson as Mrs. Miniver
We don’t get offered crises, they arrive.
— Elizabeth Janeway
Have you ever lost yourself so completely in a book or a movie that you became part of it? Something about the story, the writer’s voice, the heroine, or the conversations in the dialogue strikes a profound mystical chord in you.
However, when millions of people around the world have the very same reaction, it is the work of Spirit, even if it springs from a human heart, mind and hands. The 1942 Oscar winning English wartime saga Mrs. Miniver starring Greer Garson is such a Divine inspiration for me. It depicts an English middle-class family’s heroic efforts to preserve what was precious in their daily life as they learn to cope during wartime.
Mrs. Miniver is the embodiment of a sacred archetype of a woman defending her family and home from all danger through her faith, intelligence, strength, courage, determination, unshakable optimism and love. And she’s such a powerful heroine because each of us can see ourselves in that role.
I met Kay Miniver after September 11th, 2001. At that time, I had an apartment in New York and my daughter, Kate, had just enrolled in New York University. As America reverberated from the shock of terror on our own shores, I was frequently asked to give advice and comfort to other women. But I felt so inept. Secretly I needed a woman in my life whom I could emulate; one who possessed “repose of the soul.” I needed a grown-up heroine to help me remember what mattered most: Making a safe haven in a scary and tumultuous world for my daughter and myself. That’s when Mrs. Miniver and I found each other.
I want to share my love of Mrs. Miniver because she inspired me to create a Caution Closet for emergency preparedness in the new Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life. Preparing for the unexpected is a task I’ve known I should tackle, but every time I’d tried, the plethora of disaster scenario books would scare the heebie-jeebies out of me. Instead, I’d watch Mrs. Miniver. Finally, I made the connection between my role model and the Caution Closet. And “Becoming Mrs. Miniver” became my metaphor and mantra. Certainly, now more than ever. I’ll be invoking her wisdom and calm presence throughout the coming months and I know she’ll become a great friend of yours, too.
Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon in Mrs. Miniver
Start by watching the movie Mrs. Miniver directed by William Wyler, which is available on many movie streaming sites. However, before Greer Garson so beautifully embodied Mrs. Miniver on the screen, she was the figment of English journalist Jan Struther’s domestic reveries, written anonymously and featured in the London Times between 1937 and 1939. Known for her stylish prose, witty poems, and modern hymns, Jan had been asked by her editor to write “about an ordinary sort of woman who leads an ordinary sort of life—rather like yourself.”
Charm makes everyone feel better and during this time, threats of war were daily headlines in Britain. English readers adored Mrs. Miniver’s musings about the little things in her daily round because it mirrored their own. As one reader said, Mrs. Miniver was the only cheerful and bright bit in the papers.
Nothing in Mrs. Miniver’s life was too insignificant that it couldn’t become an uplifting source or reflection, revelation or renewal and she reminded readers how much they had to be grateful for in the small particulars of their (and our) everyday epiphanies: the familiar route to a holiday home; unread library books to look forward to; the comforting feel of the banister beneath your hands as you climbed the stairs; having another’s hand to hold and eye to catch at a dinner party; the small indentation at the nape of your child’s neck, so perfect for a quick kiss; the pang of parting from the old family car; finding the perfect calendar to give pleasure throughout the year; the notches on the nursery door as the children grew; a hat with a floppy bow; the mingling scent of roses and a fire in the hearth; crumpets for tea on a rainy afternoon, choosing beer over wine if on a budget.
But even in her readers’ darkest hours, Mrs. Miniver’s repose of the soul was a comfort in between the lines. By September 1940 at least two million British children and pregnant women had been evacuated to escape the nightly German bombing campaign that lasted nine months. Here Mrs. Miniver is preparing to evacuate what’s left of her beautiful home so that her children would be out of danger.
“Another thing they had gained was an appreciation of the value of dullness. As a rule, one tended to long for more drama, to feel that the level stretches of life between it, a waste of time. Well, there had been enough drama lately. They had lived through seven years in as many days; and Mrs. Miniver, at any rate, felt as though she had been wrung out… She was tired to the marrow of her mind and heart, let alone her bones and ear-drums; and nothing in the world seem more desirable than a long-wet afternoon at a country vicarage with a rather boring aunt.”
Fifty years after Mrs. Miniver comforted the brave and courageous women of the British and American Home Front, Greer Garson recalled that “Like the whiff of a certain perfume wafted from an earlier period of one’s life” Mrs. Miniver brings back a time when the Western world was in turmoil. “It was suddenly a world of quiet heroism, compassion, faith, and all the best in the human character—the world, in other words, of Mrs. Miniver—summoned to combat the worst.”
Today we need Mrs. Miniver more than ever to remind us that the most important resource to have in our Emergency Closet is our repose of the soul and you can’t buy this at the supermarket. One of the most important lessons that women of the past have taught me and for which I am extremely grateful is that each generation of women have found the spiritual moxie to respond, survive and recover from their crises. We don’t know how long the curtailing of our daily activities will remain or what it will look like. But we all share the ability to rise to the occasion and harness the transformative power of Gratitude to meet it. I know that you are a woman in possession of repose of the soul and that each day in different ways, you too, are becoming Mrs. Miniver.
Sending my dearest love, prayers and blessings on your courage,
XO SBB