Mind Moves: Handbags are important. Anyone of sufficient advanced age and good fortune to have seen the late Michael MacLiammoir at The Gate Theatre play Lady Bracknell, or more recently to have witnessed Alan Stanford bring that good lady to life in The Abbey, will know the importance of a handbag.
For the handbag is central to the plot and final denouement in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest. The play portrays, as never before, the importance of a handbag in terms of owner and occupier identity.
For this reason, a case may be made for more earnest psychological attention to the handbag as the site for assessment of owner idiosyncrasies. Handbags also provide psychological insight into their owners' organisational capacity. Simply ask for some everyday object and observe what emerges from the bag. Retrieval versus rummaging is the key.
Research should start with women's handbags. For while men and women have carried their belongings since they had belongings to carry, women's handbags have cultural significance warranting investigation. Handbags are private and personal. Analyse the handbag and you analyse the woman. Whether custom made or mass-produced, once acquired, the chosen handbag incorporates the public persona and secret life of its owner.
The type, colour, shape, fabric, decoration, individuality, flippancy or functionality of a woman's handbag provides crucial clues to the holder's character. And while its external appearance, age, quality and purpose yield some information, it is upon examination of the inside of the bag that the potential for more penetrating psychological analysis of the owner resides.
The choice of contents, their number, purpose, location, organisation and accessibility are a revelation. Consider the efficient bag owner who can extract any required object immediately upon request. This is the person who can remove her mobile phone on the first ring, whose diary appears like magic at the suggestion of a meeting, who always has accessible pen and paper, who, with one quick wrist flick, produces a tissue for those who sneeze, a bandage for the unexpected cut, a silent lozenge for those who cough at the Concert Hall and a compact umbrella at the first raindrop.
She will always have the correct coins for bus, toll or parking meter. Her ticket will not be lost, nor will it emerge with sticky postage stamps, lipstick daubed and make-up tainted from the bowels of her bag. Locating car keys does not require ungainly pounding of her person in the hope of a jingle. Hall door keys are ready so that shopping need not sit in puddles on the doorstep. Routine rummages in the depths of a disorganised handbag are not required. Her office keys are never left at home and her family do not engage in daily hunts for her handbag.
The organised handbag person is someone whose business card, passport and boarding card are available in neat wallets while her opposite number dives into a handbag the size of a suitcase in which nothing can be found amongst the clutter, the detritus of days, yesterday's sandwich, last Christmas's gift tokens and the note her child has forgotten to give the teacher for five consecutive days.
While women often have one favourite handbag, few women confine themselves to one bag. Handbags may be fashionable or functional, stern or stylish, elaborately embroidered works of art, ergonomically efficient, designer driven, ridiculous reticules or perfectly practical hardwearing specimens for everyday wear. They may be classic or ethnic, day or evening, outfit matching or clashing, with clasps, fasteners and buckles that click, snap, tie or zip.
Handbags may be circular, rectangular, oval, chunky, elongated, chic, simple, understated, sequinned or ornately adorned. They may be metallic, bronze, gold, silver or copper, mono or multicoloured and have handles, shoulder straps or none.
They may be carried, clutched, held with panache or worn with grace. They may be crafted, carved, knitted, woven or sewn, of silk and softest leather, or cheap and cheerful straw. They are more than accessories. They are life companions so that a woman without her handbag feels bereft.
Lady Bracknell had it wrong when she said that "to be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, displayed a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life". Because the handbag is an integral part of family life.
Children mimicking mummy still portray "ladies" by gender markers: the click-clack of high heels and the carrying of handbags. And every child knows that from a mother's handbag come miracles: cotton for cut knees, cents for sweets, combs for tangled hair, wipes for noses, drinks for dry throats, a remedy for each exigency in a child's life.
At the bottom of the bag lie the secrets of womanhood: sweet-smelling perfume, magical compacts with minuscule mirrors, scissors and shiny lipsticks, mobile phones, notebooks with joined writing, envelopes with mysterious contents, unidentifiable objects and money for everything.
A handbag? Mothers' handbags contain memories. Memories of childhood emerge at the sight of that handbag, memories bred and evermore connected to that handbag. Whether it had handles or not!
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Fairview, Dublin.