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Now it is time to Meet The Author. Karl Marx was one of the most | :00:00. | :00:10. | |
original and influential thinkers of the 19th century. His youngest | :00:11. | :00:14. | |
daughter Eleanor was no slouch either. A new biography by Rachel | :00:15. | :00:19. | |
Holmes revealed she was not just the keeper of her father's flame, but an | :00:20. | :00:25. | |
immensely hard`working socialist and feminist up to her untimely death at | :00:26. | :00:27. | |
the age of 43 in 1988. There is no question that Eleanor | :00:28. | :00:49. | |
Marx was the daughter of an immensely famous and influential | :00:50. | :00:54. | |
father, but did she herself, do her own achievements and justify a 500 | :00:55. | :01:01. | |
page biography? They justify a whole book shelf, if not a whole library | :01:02. | :01:07. | |
of biographies. Novels and critical analysis and plays and much more, | :01:08. | :01:11. | |
there is no doubt of her importance. What was her | :01:12. | :01:18. | |
contribution? Her most important contribution was to 19th century | :01:19. | :01:23. | |
feminism. The suffragettes were not all middle class, many working`class | :01:24. | :01:28. | |
women were suffragettes, but she felt there was a limitation in that | :01:29. | :01:32. | |
if you were fighting for rights within an existing structure, it was | :01:33. | :01:38. | |
not going to solve the broader problems of economic and social | :01:39. | :01:41. | |
inequality and you were only campaigning and fighting for a small | :01:42. | :01:47. | |
number of people. You could not have socialism unless you have equality | :01:48. | :01:51. | |
for women she would argue. Absolutely. Her father got the point | :01:52. | :01:59. | |
emotionally. He got it intellectually, but he never worked | :02:00. | :02:04. | |
out where women's equality and feminism stood as a programme within | :02:05. | :02:10. | |
socialism. The person who did was Frederick Engels who wrote a | :02:11. | :02:17. | |
wonderful philosophy about the origins of private property, family | :02:18. | :02:22. | |
and the state. This is what Eleanor understood, knowing him as she did, | :02:23. | :02:28. | |
calling him uncle Angel from a child. He was her second father. | :02:29. | :02:34. | |
What Frederick Engels realised was that the sexual division of labour | :02:35. | :02:39. | |
and the subjugation of children and child labour was a fundamental | :02:40. | :02:43. | |
common precondition for capitalism to function. Without that division | :02:44. | :02:49. | |
of labour, capitalism would collapse. He identified that and | :02:50. | :02:54. | |
then Eleanor understood it and move it forward into a programme of | :02:55. | :03:00. | |
political action and organisation. She was a great political | :03:01. | :03:04. | |
organiser, she organised a famous strike, she was a great socialist, | :03:05. | :03:10. | |
internationalist. You are making her out to be a dry figure. But she was | :03:11. | :03:18. | |
incredibly engaging. Far from dry and when I say that we are talking | :03:19. | :03:22. | |
about the original champagne socialist. For heard the trade | :03:23. | :03:29. | |
unionism and politics were very much part of her interest in the new | :03:30. | :03:33. | |
Theatre of the time. There were Shakespeare classes in the unions, | :03:34. | :03:39. | |
and Eleanor herself was passionate like all of the Martin family about | :03:40. | :03:44. | |
Shakespeare. It was the family Bible. It was the book whereby her | :03:45. | :03:49. | |
immigrant German father, who did not speak English when he arrived in | :03:50. | :03:55. | |
England, unlike his educated wife, Jenny, taught himself to speak and | :03:56. | :04:01. | |
write English. Eleanor grew up with Shakespeare in her blood and she was | :04:02. | :04:06. | |
very interested in theatre and along comes Ibsen. She was the first | :04:07. | :04:10. | |
person to perform the dolls house in a reading in her house. Even more | :04:11. | :04:17. | |
hilariously she had aspirations to be an actor, or as they used to | :04:18. | :04:24. | |
say, an actress, and she wanted to become an actress and it was the one | :04:25. | :04:30. | |
thing she was really bad at. The great tragedy of her life is that | :04:31. | :04:34. | |
with all these skills and talents she made a disastrous choice of man. | :04:35. | :04:40. | |
She spent the last 15 years of her life married to a man who was a | :04:41. | :04:47. | |
coward, to use a good Victorian word. He was a fraudster and a | :04:48. | :04:53. | |
bigamist and he was deeply, deeply unpleasant and all her friends told | :04:54. | :05:01. | |
her so. Why? What was going on? She did not know, she could not see it | :05:02. | :05:07. | |
and indeed her friends did tell her. He was many other things as well as | :05:08. | :05:11. | |
that, but he was someone she had worked with, someone she was able to | :05:12. | :05:18. | |
write with, who arrived crucially at the point her father died. When Karl | :05:19. | :05:27. | |
Marx dies in 1883, in he sweeps and that moment was very important | :05:28. | :05:31. | |
because he was there and he allowed her, or gave her permission, to do a | :05:32. | :05:36. | |
lot of things she had not been able to do when her father was alive. | :05:37. | :05:43. | |
That seemed to affect it. But she was blinded by love, she could not | :05:44. | :05:48. | |
see it. And she also, like many women before her, and many women | :05:49. | :05:55. | |
since, felt that perhaps by being good and helpful and loving and | :05:56. | :06:01. | |
being a good housewife and producing children, that she might be able to | :06:02. | :06:06. | |
make the marriage all right, make the relationship OK. But he was a | :06:07. | :06:11. | |
disastrous choice. The assumption at the time was that she committed | :06:12. | :06:20. | |
suicide and that had been a history of what the Victorians would have | :06:21. | :06:25. | |
called hysteria. Her attempts to earn a living by herself, her | :06:26. | :06:28. | |
attempts to break away from the prison of Victorian femininity from | :06:29. | :06:36. | |
time to time brought on nervous collapse and anorexia. The | :06:37. | :06:40. | |
assumption at the time was she committed suicide when she found out | :06:41. | :06:46. | |
what Acad her husband was. The alternative theory was that he | :06:47. | :06:50. | |
murdered her. You are right the assumption that was ruled by the | :06:51. | :06:55. | |
coroner's court was that she had committed suicide. But even from the | :06:56. | :07:04. | |
very first day that her friends and her remaining family knew what had | :07:05. | :07:08. | |
happened, there were many people who, at the time, believed that he | :07:09. | :07:17. | |
may have been responsible. What do you think? That is a spoiler. I have | :07:18. | :07:22. | |
a very firm opinion and I think there is evidence. He conveniently | :07:23. | :07:28. | |
died three or four months after Eleanor committed suicide or was | :07:29. | :07:34. | |
murdered. As a consequence, it was never possible to bring him to | :07:35. | :07:40. | |
criminal trial then. Rachel Holmes, thank you very much indeed. | :07:41. | :07:50. | |
Lots of outdoor events coming up this weekend and we have to take the | :07:51. | :07:57. | |
rough with the smooth. It will not be a wash`out. This area of cloud | :07:58. | :08:02. | |
brought many of us wet weather early | :08:03. | :08:03. |