Princess Diana's meanings for women: results of a focus group study

The death of Princess Diana set in train a series of official and popular r esponses which are broadly consistent with Durkheimian ideas of civic ritua l. Mass media accounts of Princess Diana's purportedly extraordinary appeal are speculative, lack methodological foundation, and fail to give adequate consideration to potential variability in responses to her life and death. In order to explore popular understandings of Diana, focus groups were con ducted in Australia with Anglo-Celtic women of different ages within three weeks of her death and funeral. The women professed a diversity of orientat ions and experiences towards Diana. Significant barriers to identification with Diana included a wealth gap between her and the participants in the st udy, the routine nature of charity work and suffering for many ordinary peo ple, the irresponsible circumstances of her death and reflexivity about the media as a source of information. Sources of identification included her p hysical and character attributes, the mothering role and the universal trag edy of death. There was no support in the transcripts for the view that wom en identified with Diana as a feminist heroine. Caution is expressed about both the generalisability of the results of the study to other groups of wo men and also the comparability of the study with data collected at other po ints in time.