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