Moaning Minnies

I once tried to collaborate with a woman in the writing of a play; she had been a quite well known actress and had, with her more famous husband, written plays which had been performed. The idea was that I would write a scene and then she would read it, comment on it and perhaps, do some re-writing.
It didn't work. I wrote the first scene and when she read it she said: "I like the idea and I like the male characters, especially the parliamentarian's agent, but I do not like the wife of the MP. She is a real misery."
"But she is supposed to be," I said. "She's miserable because he's such a bastard."
"You won't get an actress to play her."
"Why not?"
"Because she's a misery, a moaner, a pain in the neck."
I tried re-writing to make her a different sort of woman but couldn't get her right, so the collaboration didn't work and we gave up trying.
Then this morning my wife was listening to The Archers and I could hear from the other room one of those women in the programme moaning and grissling and making such a caterwauling noise that I had to go elsewhere. I thought: "They get away with it in The Archers, why couldn't I have got away with it in my play?"
And if by chance I turn on East Enders every woman on that soap is a Moaning Minnie. (And most of the blokes too!). And what about some of Shakespeare's tragic females: Lady Macbeth for example - that's all she dies is complain and criticise and moan. And what about Hedda Gabler?
Maybe I'll dig that play out again and, instead of trying to make the wife more pleasing, leave her as she was..... You never know, it may just work.