Rachel Holmes Meet the Author


Rachel Holmes

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Now it is time to Meet The Author. Karl Marx was one of the most

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original and influential thinkers of the 19th century. His youngest

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daughter Eleanor was no slouch either. A new biography by Rachel

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Holmes revealed she was not just the keeper of her father's flame, but an

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immensely hard`working socialist and feminist up to her untimely death at

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the age of 43 in 1988. There is no question that Eleanor

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Marx was the daughter of an immensely famous and influential

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father, but did she herself, do her own achievements and justify a 500

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page biography? They justify a whole book shelf, if not a whole library

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of biographies. Novels and critical analysis and plays and much more,

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there is no doubt of her importance. What was her

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contribution? Her most important contribution was to 19th century

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feminism. The suffragettes were not all middle class, many working`class

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women were suffragettes, but she felt there was a limitation in that

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if you were fighting for rights within an existing structure, it was

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not going to solve the broader problems of economic and social

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inequality and you were only campaigning and fighting for a small

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number of people. You could not have socialism unless you have equality

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for women she would argue. Absolutely. Her father got the point

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emotionally. He got it intellectually, but he never worked

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out where women's equality and feminism stood as a programme within

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socialism. The person who did was Frederick Engels who wrote a

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wonderful philosophy about the origins of private property, family

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and the state. This is what Eleanor understood, knowing him as she did,

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calling him uncle Angel from a child. He was her second father.

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What Frederick Engels realised was that the sexual division of labour

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and the subjugation of children and child labour was a fundamental

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common precondition for capitalism to function. Without that division

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of labour, capitalism would collapse. He identified that and

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then Eleanor understood it and move it forward into a programme of

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political action and organisation. She was a great political

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organiser, she organised a famous strike, she was a great socialist,

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internationalist. You are making her out to be a dry figure. But she was

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incredibly engaging. Far from dry and when I say that we are talking

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about the original champagne socialist. For heard the trade

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unionism and politics were very much part of her interest in the new

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Theatre of the time. There were Shakespeare classes in the unions,

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and Eleanor herself was passionate like all of the Martin family about

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Shakespeare. It was the family Bible. It was the book whereby her

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immigrant German father, who did not speak English when he arrived in

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England, unlike his educated wife, Jenny, taught himself to speak and

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write English. Eleanor grew up with Shakespeare in her blood and she was

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very interested in theatre and along comes Ibsen. She was the first

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person to perform the dolls house in a reading in her house. Even more

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hilariously she had aspirations to be an actor, or as they used to

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say, an actress, and she wanted to become an actress and it was the one

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thing she was really bad at. The great tragedy of her life is that

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with all these skills and talents she made a disastrous choice of man.

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She spent the last 15 years of her life married to a man who was a

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coward, to use a good Victorian word. He was a fraudster and a

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bigamist and he was deeply, deeply unpleasant and all her friends told

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her so. Why? What was going on? She did not know, she could not see it

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and indeed her friends did tell her. He was many other things as well as

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that, but he was someone she had worked with, someone she was able to

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write with, who arrived crucially at the point her father died. When Karl

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Marx dies in 1883, in he sweeps and that moment was very important

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because he was there and he allowed her, or gave her permission, to do a

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lot of things she had not been able to do when her father was alive.

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That seemed to affect it. But she was blinded by love, she could not

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see it. And she also, like many women before her, and many women

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since, felt that perhaps by being good and helpful and loving and

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being a good housewife and producing children, that she might be able to

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make the marriage all right, make the relationship OK. But he was a

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disastrous choice. The assumption at the time was that she committed

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suicide and that had been a history of what the Victorians would have

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called hysteria. Her attempts to earn a living by herself, her

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attempts to break away from the prison of Victorian femininity from

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time to time brought on nervous collapse and anorexia. The

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assumption at the time was she committed suicide when she found out

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what Acad her husband was. The alternative theory was that he

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murdered her. You are right the assumption that was ruled by the

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coroner's court was that she had committed suicide. But even from the

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very first day that her friends and her remaining family knew what had

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happened, there were many people who, at the time, believed that he

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may have been responsible. What do you think? That is a spoiler. I have

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a very firm opinion and I think there is evidence. He conveniently

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died three or four months after Eleanor committed suicide or was

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murdered. As a consequence, it was never possible to bring him to

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criminal trial then. Rachel Holmes, thank you very much indeed.

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Lots of outdoor events coming up this weekend and we have to take the

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rough with the smooth. It will not be a wash`out. This area of cloud

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brought many of us wet weather early

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