At 91, my mother refuses to behave as others think old ladies should

My mother has never done what other people wanted her to. Now that she is 91, her refusal to behave as others think old ladies should is as strong as ever.

Sometimes she has regretted her natural contrariness. Her headmistress pooh-poohed her desire to be a speech therapist and tried to persuade her to attend university. Her teacher believed she had what it took to succeed academically – and for a girl from Manchester in the 1940s, that was a rare compliment – but she took offence and dug her heels in.

My mother did not become a speech therapist. She did shorthand and typing and became a secretary, a role she did not enjoy. She did end up going to university, thanks to Gough Whitlam abolishing university fees, but not until she had migrated to Australia and raised four children. To my alarm, she did the HSC at the same time as I did, and enrolled in the same university.

Macquarie University in the mid-’70s was full of highly motivated, fiercely feminist adult women who’d grabbed the chance previously denied them. They were referred to as “mature-aged students” and they left us recent school leavers in their dust. My mother was a straight-A student. I was a straight C.

Our uni was also a hotbed of left-wing politics, so once again my mother’s contrary nature came to the fore. Despite her feminism, she was much more conservative politically then than she is now (another example of her refusal to do what is expected). She had fierce debates in her history and politics tutorials, battles she would energetically recount as we drove home together. She had a much better time in her English literature classes, where her sharp analytical mind and contempt for received wisdom came into its own.

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I remember she wrote a superb essay about Jane Eyre in which she argued that Mr Rochester’s mad wife was a manifestation of repressed female sexuality and the fear Victorians had of the chaos that would ensue if it was ever released. You can see why I gave up competing with her.

Such was her determination to go her own way that she became an early and very active member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, stood for pre-selection for the Senate for the Liberal Party, and was the founding president of the Liberal Feminist Network – a group that fell victim to John Howard’s clean sweep of the so-called Liberal “wets” when he became leader. Though how anyone could consider my mother wet, I cannot imagine.

Eventually she trained as a relationships counsellor and worked with the counselling arm of the Uniting Church, Unifam, even though, true to her contrarian nature, she is emphatically an atheist. I know she was an exceptional therapist because I have been on the receiving end of her wise counsel all my life and have benefited immeasurably from it.