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values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the Earth.

       Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron

       Writer and filmmaker

      B: 19 May 1941, New York City, NY, United States

      D: 26 June 2012, New York City, NY, United States

       Be the heroine of your life

      When: 03 June 1996

      Where: Wellesley College

      Audience: Class of 1996

      Nora Ephron is the American writer and filmmaker that brought us such classics as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia. So, you would no doubt expect sharp wit combined with humour from her — and this speech delivers both. It is imbued with her trademark insight and personality. Ephron goes further than this, however, delivering a compelling feminist message and a warning to the graduating class of Wellesley College in 1996.

      Throughout her career, Ephron took risks. At times, her films sailed close to the wind. She often surprised her audiences and made us laugh. She also took a stand when she knew it was the right thing to do. Early in her career she applied for a journalist position at Newsweek magazine, but had to accept a role as a mail girl because at that time women were not permitted to write for the publication. Later she quit, brought a sexual discrimination case against Newsweek and wrote the book Good Girls Revolt based on her experiences, which was later made into a movie.

Years after her experiences at Newsweek, she was invited to address the graduating class of her alma mater, the prestigious Wellesley College in Massachusetts, United States, delivering what's known as the ‘commencement' speech. Here she addressed the ‘class of 1996' — the women graduating from Wellesley College — and their friends, family and various college dignitaries. She warned these young graduating women against complacency. Reminding them to use their talents to become the heroines of their life, she argued they should avoid being trapped in a mere supporting role.

      Commencement speeches are usually well crafted and delivered to receptive audiences that are pre-disposed to respond favourably. This one is no exception. The gravity of Ephron's advice is further amplified because she herself is a Wellesley graduate. The assembled crowd would be well aware of Ephron's work, her professional accomplishments and her ability to capture and celebrate human interactions.

      Ephron has left behind an impressive legacy in the realm of popular culture. In the extracts of this speech included here, she offers the wisdom of her experience tempered by her trademark insights. To paraphrase the famous line from When Harry Met Sally, ‘We'll have what she's having …'

      WHAT SHE SAID

      President Walsh, trustees, faculty, friends, noble parents … and dear class of 1996, I am so proud of you. Thank you for asking me to speak to you today. I had a wonderful time trying to imagine who had been ahead of me on the list and had said no; I was positive you'd have to have gone to Martha Stewart first. And I meant to call her to see what she would have said, but I forgot. She would probably be up here telling you how to turn your lovely black robes into tents. I will try to be at least as helpful, if not quite as specific as that.

      I'm very conscious of how easy it is to let people down on a day like this, because I remember my own graduation from Wellesley very, very well, I am sorry to say. The speaker was Santha Rama Rau, who was a woman writer, and I was going to be a woman writer. And, in fact, I had spent four years at Wellesley going to lectures by women writers hoping that I would be the beneficiary of some terrific secret — which I never was. And now here I was at graduation, under these very trees, absolutely terrified. Something was over. Something safe and protected. And something else was about to begin. I was heading off to New York and I was sure that I would live there forever and never meet anyone and end up dying one of those New York deaths where no one even notices you're missing until the smell drifts into the hallway weeks later. And I sat here thinking, OK, Santha, this is my last chance for a really terrific secret, lay it on me, and she spoke about the need to place friendship over love of country, which I must tell you had never crossed my mind one way or the other.

… My class went to college in the era when you got a master's degrees in teaching because it was ‘something to fall back on' in the worst-case scenario, the worst-case scenario being that no-one married you and you actually had to go to work. As this same classmate said at our reunion, ‘Our education was a dress rehearsal for a life we never led.' Isn't that the saddest line? We weren't meant to have futures, we were meant to marry them. We weren't meant to have politics, or careers that mattered, or opinions, or lives; we were meant to marry them. If you wanted to be an architect, you married an architect. Non Ministrare sed Ministrari — you know the old joke, not to be ministers but to be ministers' wives.

      … What I'm saying is don't delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the Earth. Don't let the New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you — there's still a glass ceiling. Don't let the number of women in the work force trick you — there are still lots of magazines devoted almost exclusively to making perfect casseroles and turning various things into tents.

      Don't underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Understand: every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: get back, get back to where you once belonged. When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn't serious about her career, that is an attack on you. The acquittal of OJ Simpson is an attack on you. Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you — whether or not you believe in abortion. The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you.

      Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Because you don't have the alibi my class had — this is one of the great achievements and mixed blessings you inherit: unlike us, you can't say nobody told you there were other options. Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead. Twenty-five years from now, you won't have as easy a time making excuses as my class did. You won't be able to blame the deans, or the culture, or anyone else: you will have no one to blame but yourselves. Whoa.

So what are you going to do? This is the season when a clutch of successful women — who have it all — give speeches to women like you and say, to be perfectly honest, you can't have it all. Maybe young women don't wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I've had four careers and three husbands. And this is something else I want to tell you, one of the hundreds of things I didn't know when I was sitting here so many years ago: you are not going to be you, fixed and immutable you, forever. We have a game we play when we're waiting for tables in restaurants, where you have to write the five things that describe yourself on a piece of paper. When I was your age, I would have put: ambitious, Wellesley graduate, daughter, Democrat, single. Ten years later not one of those five things turned up on my list. I was: journalist, feminist, New Yorker, divorced, funny. Today not one of those five things turns up in my list: writer, director, mother,

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