Robert Burns and Women's Rights

The 25th of January is the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). On the evening of that day, millions of his fans around the world gather for a "Burns' Supper" in his honor. After a meal of haggis, neeps, and tatties* they drink a toast of whisky to "The Bard" and listen to some of his poems. At midnight on January 1, much of the world sings "Auld Lang Syne," the song based on Burns' poem of that name. They pledge to "take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne!" 

Kindness appears in short supply around the world these days, and the supply is dwindling as rapidly as the number of eggs in Trump's USA. I wonder how many MAGAts sang those words about kindness this New Years with sincerity. 

But kindness, however crucial, is not my main theme here. It is human rights. Burns was a staunch defender of the rights of women as well as men. He wasn't always sensitive to that need. He was something of a womanizer, to put it bluntly. 

Before he became famous for his poetry, he had decided to take a job as an overseer and bookkeeper on a Jamaican sugar plantation, which was worked by enslaved Africans. He changed plans after his book of poetry was published to great acclaim in 1786. It is not clear if he ever denounced African slavery, at least directly. But he denounced injustice and inequality, notably in  "A Man's a Man for a' That."

For a few years after the publication of his book, Burns was the toast of Edinburgh, mingling with and lionized by Scotland's elite. That changed after the French Revolution began in 1789. Like many young men in Europe, he supported that revolution, and the earlier American one. The Scottish elite did not, and most of them distanced themselves from the radical Burns. He left Edinburgh and returned to farm near Dumfries, close to his birthplace. He married and became an exciseman (collector of customs duties), a government job that may have restrained his political radicalism. 

In 1792, Burns wrote "The Rights Of Women." The first stanza sets the tone:

While Europe's eye is fixed on mighty things,

The fate of empires and the fall of Kings;

While quacks of State must each produce his plan, 

And even children lisp the Rights of Man;

Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,

The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

The poem was highly topical. Thomas Paine had just published The Rights of Man and Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. These works alarmed and horrified the elites of Britain and much of Europe. By echoing their rhetoric in poetry, Burns marked himself as suspect in their eyes. 

The last stanza of the poem quoted approvingly a rallying cry of the French revolutionaries, "ca ira!" ("it will be fine") and seemed to place the "Majesty of Woman" above that of kings. 

By today's standards, Burns' list of women's rights may seem rather conservative. The rights he demanded were not political or even legal. They included protection, decorum (good manners), admiration and respect for women's opinions and influence. Good romantic that he was, Burns argued that the power of women lay in their ability to soften the harsher aspects of man's nature. 

All that may sound old-fashioned and anti-feminist, and certainly the sentiments were seized on by Victorian conservatives as an argument against women's suffrage and legal rights. But juxtapose Burns' praise of women to MAGAt statements and behavior toward women, and the difference is stark. Burns may have been something of a womanizer, but he never claimed things like "Your body, my choice." 

On this January 25, let's "take a cup of kindness" and have a wee dram in honor of "Rabbie" Burns, recently voted "The Greatest Scot." He narrowly beat out William Wallace, "Braveheart." 

*Neeps are turnips, tatties are potatoes.

PS. The first Burns Supper took place in Greenock, the town where I was born, on January 29th, 1801, which the organizers mistakenly though to be his birthday. It was later changed to the correct date of January 25th and has been held every year since on that day.

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The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818) exists at the borders of Gothic horror and science fiction. Much of what she wrote in that novel was inspired by actual scientific research and experiments of her era. 

As the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was exposed to many of the latest scientific ideas of the time, including the idea that matter might be animated into life through chemical and/or electrical means. [Below: Two Portraits of Mary Godwin Shelley]

Although the novel does not explain how Victor Frankenstein brings his creature to life, Mary Shelley was inspired by the writings and researches of men like Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin and a friend of Mary's father), the chemist Humphrey Davy, the physicist Luigi Galvani, and her husband Percy's tutor at Eton College, Adam Walker.

In the introduction, Shelley quotes Darwin as saying that the creation of life from animated matter was not impossible. (Image: Erasmus Darwin)

Professor M. Waldman, who instructs Victor in the new creative powers of science, was probably modeled on Sir Humphrey Davy, the pioneering chemist. Waldman's character says things similar to what Davy had written. (Image: Humphrey Davy)

Davy is featured (holding the yellow pot) in this 1802 satirical cartoon by James Gillray below, a satire of the new craze for scientific experiments.

Electrical experiments "animating" dead animals and animal parts, conducted by Luigi Galvani, were another source of inspiration for Mary Shelley. (Image: Galvani)

Percy Shelley's tutor at Eton, Adam Walker, popularized Galvani's work in Britain and argued for a connection between electricity and life. (Image: illustration from Walker's book System of Familiar Philosophy, 1799)

By Shelley's time, the idea that a corpse might be "galvanized" into life by electricity was being mooted, even attempted.

In 1818, the year Shelley's novel was published, Scottish physician Dr. Andrew Ure tried to reanimate a corpse using electricity. The body of the man jerked upwards when Ure applied an electric shock, but did not, alas, come back to life. [Image: Ure's experiment]

Shelley does not mention Ure's experiment, but it and her novel both reflect the scientific knowledge and claims of her day. 

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William Blake: Naked Spirituality

In his seminal biography of William Blake, published in 1863, Alexander Gilchrist relates that one day a visitor to Blake's house arrived to find William and his wife Catherine sitting in their garden summer house, stark naked. "Come on in," Blake famously called out to his friend, the aptly named Mr. Butts. "Its only Adam and Eve, you know!"

The artist and poet William Blake (1757-1827) was both brilliant and eccentric. Some of his contemporaries considered him mad, but that seems a step too far. Blake's artistic brilliance has recently been on display in a magnificent, comprehensive exhibition at the Tate Britain (ended Feb. 2, 2020). His eccentricity appears as well, in his style, subject matter, and comments by contemporaries. Gilchrist, who rescued Blake from obscurity, called him "a new kind of man, wholly original." It's hard to disagree with that.

Blake was unconventional in his life as in his work. His work, including paintings, engravings, etchings, and drawings, is chock full of spirits, angels, demons, humans experiencing pleasure and pain. Some of Blake's images were inspired by his reading and cultural milieu. Others sprang from his fertile imagination. Blake claimed to have seen supernatural beings, even conversed with angels in a tree. (Below: "The Good and Evil Angels")

Many of Blake's characters have one thing in common: a lack of clothing. Blake obviously delighted in the human form, whether in physical or spiritual versions. In Blake's vision, mystical religion cavorts with eroticism. He portrays Adam and Eve in the buff, of course, but in a wholly sensual pose. Satan, angels, and God keep an eye on them. Only God is decently attired. 

Lots of other nudes, some in erotic positions, are juxtaposed with religious imagery and symbolism. (Below: "Satan before the Throne of God")

"Lot and His Daughters" shows the scantily clad daughters checking out their drunken Dad's equipment before, well, you know.

What we can see today was probably the tip of the iceberg. His executor, appointed by Catherine Blake, burned many volumes of  her husband's drawings and manuscripts. 

William Blake certainly had highly unusual ideas for his time regarding sex, ideas influenced by religious mystics such as the Moravians, and the radical feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. At times, he endorsed a version of free love and condemned marriage as a legal prison. But his ideas were complex and changed over time, becoming more conservative as he grew older.

He once told a barrister friend that it was part of God's plan that he should have access to a "community of women." He cited the Bible: Did not God's Chosen, the Patriarch Abraham, have concubines? Blake's friend was taken aback: "Shall I call him Artist or Genius--or Mystic--or Madman? Probably all." 

When Blake told his wife Catherine of his Abrahamic vision, she cried, and he abandoned his quest for concubines. It seems he was motivated towards the Abrahamic idea in part by Catherine's apparent inability to bear children.  

William and Catherine Blake are buried in Bunhill Fields Cemetery, Finsbury, London.