From: owner-marxism-feminism-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 02:09:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: M-FEM: Re: Centenary of Eleanor Marx's Death (fwd)


Greetings,

    Carrol Cox mentioned some interest in the biography of Eleanor Marx by
Yvonne Kapp.  I have Vol.II. Unfortunately, someone borrowed my Vol. I and
did not return it. Anyway, mine is Pantheon Books, New York, 1976. I will
try to make a call to see if they have it in print. 

   Carrol suggested I might comment on what I read. 

   I remember thinking about Eleanor Marx's suicide that it might be
related to her being a person with ideas before their time; and that when
there was an ebb in the movement after her father's and Engels's deaths,
she would have been more extraordinarily alone than even the average
person in depression. She probably had very few true comrades or friends.
She would be objectively eccentric in some ways , because of her advanced
views. The fact that in the future many of her views would become more
widely held would not have comforted sufficiently in her sadest moments. 

    I also recall having a similar thought about Eleanor's mother, Jenny.
When she got married to Marx, she probably did not anticipate just how
hard life would be and how unconventional.  They were all in a kind of
time-machine, that put them way out of sinc with contemporary society. 
Karl had his scholarship and working class struggles to throw himself into
and forget his troubles and poverty, but Jenny did not have this escape to
the same degree. 

   Of course, there was the tragedy of so many of their children dying so
young. 

   Kapp made me feel as though I was right in the Marx household. 

    Perhaps the isolation some of us feel in ebbs in the movement today
will seem less when we consider how alone Eleanor was. 

                       Charles Brown