The Mitford Sisters and The Kardashian Sisters

On the parallels between two large families of famous women

The famous Mitford family, including Muv and Farve and brother Tom / Getty

The first Mitford book I read was perhaps the most iconic: the fanciful memoir Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford of growing up in the Cotswalds, England countryside, in an isolated manor full of children ( all girls but for one brother ) where the totality of life took place: school was at home with a teacher, playtime was at home with siblings, socializing was in the home on the terms of the parents. I was head over heels in fascination with this family from the very title of Decca’s ( Jessica’s family nickname which soon became her name for all intents and purposes ) book: Hons and Rebels was mysterious and charming with the air of a secret club- ‘hons’ made me think of great land wars, while ‘rebels’ defines itself. Hons and Rebels also reminded me of some of my favorite childhood books, something that C.S. Lewis’ children or the kids in Bednobs and Broomsticks would have come up with. The mention of Christopher Hitchens on the cover further drew me in- I had recently finished his great, glowing yellow collection of essays, Arguably, and was still entranced with the enormity of his intellect- even though I sometimes vehemently disagreed with his opinions and chafed at his arrogance. It is connections like this- one book reminds me of a writer who mentions a subject in the book who wrote a collection about the original writer- that send me happily down a rabbit hole of a certain subject or time period.

The cover photo also immediately drew me in: the angelic child on a wooden bench gazing directly at the camera while her older sister with the short bob and practical manner reads to her from a large book. The photos of the family engrossed me, and this is the first similarity between what drew me to both the Kardashian clan and the Mitford clan, the masses of girl children with the same hair color, being joyfully engaged in the private intimacy of the physical play of their relationships: lap sitting, tickling, hair braiding, wrestling, hugging, as well as the emotional: sharing secrets, venting anger, consoling hurts. Since childhood, I have loved stories about large families where the children were intimate and close, and especially when- for a reason I cannot articulate- they are all of the same sex. Little Women was perhaps my entry point to this particular kind of captivating world. I grew up with one sister, two years younger than me, and I had always longed for a large, bustling family- just the kind my father and mother had grown up with and were determined not to repeat. Many people who grow up in large families find the overwhelm and the struggle to be seen individually as too burdensome to continue. Both the Mitfords and Kardashians grew up in one large house, intimately bound in the day to day of each other’s lives, close in the heart and not just in proximity.

The Mitfords were these: Mother, Father, and in order of oldest to youngest- Nancy Mitford, Pamela Mitford, Tom Mitford (more on him in a bit), Diana Mitford, Unity Mitford, Jessica Mitford, and Deborah Mitford. All the Mitford sisters were born in the early 1900’s and died in the middle or late 1900’s. During this time period, each sister managed to become anywhere from terribly famous to well-known for what can only be described as wildly different reasons.

I happened to be watching TV the day that the first episode of The Kardashians came on. I was enjoying certain types of reality TV shows; my favorite were the family stories. Here were a large group of young women and girls -sisters- fighting, wrestling, hugging, weeping into each other’s arms, cartwheeling. Masses of long, dark hair swinging in front of their faces, their mother moving among them as witness, they had my American dream: a large, close family. I began watching each episode as it popped up and while it was entirely intellectually unstimulating, I did not care- I received that elsewhere, in my daily reading, in conversations, and what I wanted from the Kardashians was a close look at the inside of a close family. At the time I was a mother to three children and would in the next few years have my fourth. While I had no interest in and actively disliked some aspects of the Kardashian’s life, I had enormous respect for the importance and joy of the safe space their extended, loyal family created for each other. A great transformation in American life has been our move away from large, close-knit families, and in many ways this has served important growth, allowing us to remove ourselves from toxic family members and grow more as individuals. At the same time, we have let go of our mental health safety net- a large family as a place where one can land, similarly to the Alcoholics Anonymous idea ‘we don’t have to like you but we will take you'.’ Most friendships, however close, do not have this clause, and although of course all families do not function this way, many do- or did.

Like the Mitford sisters, the Kardashians- Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kendall, and Kylie- have one brother -Rob- who has remained under the radar. Tom Mitford never had a chance to truly stake his claim in history; he died in action in WW2 at 36 years of age. Rob Kardashian was a part of his family’s reality show until his mental struggles and personal issues had him choose to disengage from the show, almost entirely, and from all publicity associated.

Khloe and Kourtney wrestling

The physical intimacy of the Mitfords and the Kardashians is important to me. I am a physically expressive person, the kind of mother who pretends to eat my children when they are small, who actually mouths and nibbles them, who holds them day and night as babies, co-sleeps, extended nurses, never spanks or physically punishes, and spends the rest of their growing-up years snuggling, hugging, sleeping, and being gross in our gross, human bodies with them. I consider this an important primer for intimacy and body love, to accept and laugh and even find joy in the stench of pits, bad morning breath, farts, burps, and to find animal comfort in the heap of a loved one on your legs. I remember when my youngest, Ever, was a toddler, she would occasionally wake up her big sister Lola by sitting her naked butt on her face. Lola thought this was hilarious, and I felt like this was a gold star for my mothering. Of course, boundaries, as stated by each person, and respect for those individual preferences, are crucial to making this work.

The Mitfords and the Kardashians are also fond of something I adore: nicknames.

Diana Mitford: Honks. Unity Mitford: Bobo or Birdie. Jessica Mitford: Decca or Hen. Deborah Mitford: Debo or Hen. Nancy: Lady. Pam: Woman. Mother and Father were Muv and Farve.

Kim Kardashian: Kimmie or Keeks. Kourtney Kardashian: Kourt. Khloe Kardashian: Ko-Ko or Khlo. Kendall Kardashian: Kenny or Ken. (Side note: my youngest Ever’s nicknames are Everkins, Kinny, and Kin, spelled with an ‘i’) Kylie Kardashian: Ky. Kris Jenner, their mother, goes by Lovey to all her grandchildren, and her girls often call her Momager. (Kris Jenner trademarked this term. Of course she did!)

The Mitford sisters, 1935

The Mitford girls grew up to one by one become famous, perhaps beginning when Diana -the oldest and considered the great beauty of the family- married in 1929, Bryan Guinness, the heir to the brewing fortune. After this, Decca made the news by using her teen ‘running away money’ at 19 to buy a ticket for herself and her new love, Esmond Romilly- a young man well-known for his audacious acts of political resistance- to join the Loyalist cause in the Spanish civil war. They were married soon after, had a baby girl who died tragically of measles, moved to America, and while Jessica was pregnant with their second child, Esmond was shot down and declared dead in the war.

As Jessica became more and more entrenched in progressive political activism and anti-fascism, her sisters Diana and Unity became famous and hated public faces of fascism, and were friends of Hitler. Unity moved to Germany and became part of Hitler’s social circle until she shot herself in the head during the Allied invasion. She was transported back to live with her mother, and Unity died not many years later. Diana and Unity had both been photographed with Hitler, and Diana had long since divorced her first husband and married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. The details of their lives over this ten-year span are an absolute whirlwind of serious political and personal drama. Diana and husband were imprisoned, Unity was transported with help from Hitler to her home in England, Jessica became a journalist, remarried a lawyer, and they became deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement and devoted their practice to its efforts, while Jessica eventually published her seminal work, The American Way of Death, a famous expose of the business of death and burial in the States.

The divide between Diana and Jessica was severe and never resolved (although it was eventually broached at Decca’s too soon end of life, from lung cancer.) The Guardian headline from Diana’s death reads: “Diana Mosley, Hitler’s angel, dies unrepentant in Paris.”

Deborah Mitford married her husband, Andrew, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, and became Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire. Her husband inherited extensive states including Chatsworth, the family seat in Derbyshire, and Deborah became the head of this enormous and breathtaking estate. She eventually wrote a few photograph books about the history and upkeep of the estate, as well as a memoir of her life.

The quieter sisters, Nancy and Pamela, lived full and accomplished lives themselves. Nancy Mitford became a well-known novelist, with her most famous work, Love in a Cold Climate, being made into various movies and miniseries. Pamela Mitford, considered ‘the quiet sister’ eventually divorced and lived on a farm in the English countryside, publishing a few cookbooks and toward the end of her life, sitting at home and speaking on her family for the documentary, Nancy Mitford: A Portrait By Her Sisters. The Mitfords are always surprising me by popping up in an unexpected connection to some well-known person, literary story, political history that I was not aware of. When Stella Tennant died, I was especially touched because she was a Mitford- granddaughter to Deborah Mitford, the Duchess of Devonshire.

Stella Tennant and her grandmother, Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire

The Kardashian sisters have become famous, it is mockingly said, ‘for being famous’ but I disagree. I am one of the people who made them famous, after all, a fan from day one who continues to watch them and their new series, titled simply, ‘The Kardashians’. I was engaged with their show and following their lives before they were famous, before they grew up, really- when the oldest three were running Dash, a clothing store, and still unsure what they wanted to do. They became famous inseparable from their sisterhood: their arguments, their fall-outs, their holiday gatherings and birthday parties, their vacation confessionals to each other, late-night slumber parties, attending to the milestones of each other’s life with, if not always tenderness, definitely dedication. In between filming their show, they still attend each other’s parties and childbirths and come together in times of grief and pain, as it was before they ever filmed. They are deeply flawed, sometimes massively fuck up, and they are also loyal, loving, joyful, and never give up on each other or the unity of their family. There are other factors that speak to the sheer level of their fame now ( Kim’s business savvy being an important one) but it is the fact of them as an imperfect, loving, intact family who almost all are willing to participate in publicity, that got them there.

The Mitfords, though well-known, were not famous until Decca published Hons and Rebels, the memoir that gave readers an inside, intimate look into a time of life when all the sisters lived together in a large house. The Kardashians became famous for this same interior glimpse, though theirs was on camera. The Mitford and Kardashian sisters both expanded their fame by marrying successful men who were also famous in their own right, the most notable for the Kardashians being Kim marrying producer, rapper, and clothing designer Kanye West, which catapulted Kim into not only plebian fame but acceptance among the elite of fashion and social circles. For the Mitfords, it was both Diana marrying Walter Mosley- famous politician- and Deborah marrying the Duke of Devonshire that sent the family’s fame into the stratosphere.

While the Kardashians have expanded a great capitalist empire comprised of makeup and clothing lines- Kylie Jenner and Kim and Kanye West all being billionaires- the Mitfords fame rose through news stories on their political choices, marriages, and the books that were written both by various sisters, as well as about them. I myself have read five books about the Mitfords, including Hons and Rebels, The House of Mitford, The Mitfords: Letters Between the Six Sisters, The Letters of Jessica Mitford, and the biography Nancy Mitford by Selina Hastings, as well as a few of the books written by Nancy, Jessica, and Deborah.

When someone in the family is making choices or behaving in a way that is embarrassing or could be harmful to their brand, they do not cast this person aside. When Khloe Kardashian got a DUI in the beginning of the Kardashian empire-building, her family rallied around her while also encouraging her to look deeper into her behavior- she was still grieving the loss of her father, Robert Kardashian, to cancer, and angry that he was gone. When Rob Kardashian began showing serious signs of deepening depression, although the family argued about how to handle it- and were hurtful at worst and clumsy often- they refused to give up on him, and they did not shy from talking about his struggles. Many other people in their position would have made some shallow and cruel calculations that Rob’s overweight, miserable and angry presence should be vaporized from the public consciousness, but the sisters and his mother were clearly more concerned with the actual human condition of their brother than the judgment of the public; they continued pushing Rob to get help (hiring him coaches, nutritional therapists, doing family therapy, and at one point doing an intervention to get him into therapy). Also, and this is harder to pinpoint, there was just not that feeling, watching the show, that Rob was emotionally abandoned. Even when the spouses of the sisters struggle, the family stands by them- when Khloe’s ex Lamar Odom was hospitalized, Khloe showed up at the hospital and sat with him day after day as he healed from a near-death overdose, and other members of the family visited as well. When Kanye lashes out publicly against Kim and the entire family, criticizing them, revealing intimate and upsetting secrets ( I still feel badly for North ) the family does not go public with their response. They don’t attack Kim for not ‘handling Kanye’ the way many people -under the eye of the entire world, essentially- would. They deal with it surprisingly privately, as a family. The only public response to Kanye’s announcements and attacks was Kim writing an Instagram story asking the public for compassion. Scott Disick ( nickname: Lord ) ex of Kourtney Kardashian, has struggled constantly with alcoholism and terrible behavior drunk in public, as well as terrible behavior toward Kourtney over the years. Kris Jenner and the Kardashian sisters have gone out of their way to support him both publically and privately, and after the death of both of Scott’s parents, the family embraced him even more.

Their family is deeply performative and not performative, as their familial act is now so intertwined with their life that surely even they cannot tell the origins of things at this point, but when you look back far enough, you see that before any of the cameras or fame, they were for each other. Their actions make clear that each other is a priority, and when they stray from this, inevitably there is an earnest conversation, an intervention or a blow-up of screaming and recriminations and mocking. Eventually, they find their way back to each other.

This was true of the Mitfords as well, with the one exception of Diana and Jessica, and well, when one of your siblings has Hitler at her wedding, what else can really ensue? The Mitfords, however, were severely lacking when it came to the warmth part of family. While they were close in many ways (and as would be expected in a large family, some much closer with one or two than the others) and remained in close contact with exception of years here or there, they were traditionally British as adults: stoic, not inclined to share emotion or bond in that way, and famously barbed in their humor. While the Mitfords succeeded intellectually and artistically, the Kardashians have done better emotionally and relationally. Either way, both families have given me great diversion over the years, which I appreciate.