Women, Classics, & the Labour Party

Emma Reynolds MP, Sneerer of the Year

The low point of the week for me was watching the sneer on Emma Reynolds’ face when Jeremy Corbyn’s election result was announced. Reynolds is MP for Wolverhampton North East and until recently Shadow Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government.  I used to have a lot of time for her. Now she refuses to sit on the front bench with Corbyn.

I can’t find the clip online. But Reynolds’ bile was palpable. How can people elected to represent us display their contempt in this sickening way for the decisions made by ordinary voters in political parties?

My indignation was fuelled by researching women who were active in the Labour Party—then the Independent Labour Party—in its earliest days. They would all have been cheering rather than sneering at this week's focus on poverty, mental illness, and union freedom. Some had developed their radicalism while studying the Greek and Latin Classics. In my latest book, co-edited with Henry Stead, Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform, I have a whole essay about them available online here.

The most influential was Katharine Glasier, a rebellious Newnhamite classics teacher. She worked at Redlands, a private girls’ school in Bristol, until an encounter with demonstrating women cotton workers.  She resigned, became a full-time activist,  and married ‘down’ several social classes in choosing John Bruce Glasier, who succeeded Keir Hardie as Chairman of the ILP.  She was one of the 15 founding members of the ILP in 1893 and the only woman elected to its first national administrative council. A highly successful editor of the Labour Leader, she ran campaigns for the provision of baths at the pit-heads for miners, free school meals for the poor, nursery education, and the Save the Children fund.

Katharine Bruce Glasier

Her most brilliant pupil was Enid Stacy, who when not studying classics campaigned for striking Bristol workers. She often arrived home at midnight ‘with draggled skirt and swollen feet after hours of patient standing about in the effort to win laundrywomen to a trade union’. Enid annoyed the Bristol police and was sacked from her job as schoolteacher. So she devoted herself to the ILP’s campaign for the rights and suffrage of women.

Hamilton

Glasier was ecstatic when Mary Agnes Hamilton, another Newnham classicist and author of several books on classical topics, was swept to victory for Labour in Blackburn in 1929, having won the trust of the Trade Unions. She gained more votes as MP than any other woman Labour candidate. Against stiff odds, the ILP woman, so many of whom were classically educated, had finally taken up their rightful place in parliamentary politics. I bet they would have served in Corbyn’s team.

Adventures with Aristotle in Germany and Greece

Stressout of the week was delivering the annual Erasmus Lecture, the venue being the Technological University of Darmstadt. The stress was exacerbated by the red-faced pilot who arrived late from his hotel to the Heathrow gate. This meant I arrived at the lecture hall only half an hour before kickoff.  

Then the event’s host, the local Professor of Computer Science, refused for a while to accept my powerpoint demo because he did not believe that I was actually the person giving the lecture. (This happens a lot: I don’t look very intelligent and people—or rather men—who have only read my work are invariably disappointed when they meet me in middle-aged maternal person).

Aristotle, Scientist-Philosopher

Prof.  was punished by the she-gods, however. His computer broke down at the precise moment when he told the European Academy that his institution was At The Apex of World Computational Science. Someone had put a vase of flowers on the platform in a place which made it inevitable that the technician would kick it over. The water zapped the electricity. Prof. was at a loss how to mop up the puddle. I reached into my mumsy handbag and offered him a packet of tissues, explaining that Lo-Tech Is Sometimes Best. He never spoke to me again.

Aristotle inventing Zoology on Lesbos

But I ploughed on. Having been asked to ensure that my lecture could be enjoyed by the 90% of the audience who are scientists, I hit them hard with Aristotle.  He is a tough read at the best of times, despite a few laboured Stageirite puns. But he did after all invent systematic Zoology, statistical analysis of volcanoes, self-conscious use of logical syllogisms, the concepts of Collective Intelligence, theory, and above all of potentiality and its actualisation—teleology.

Greek Science made statues seem to move

I explained what I like best about Aristotle—his application of everyday experience to elevated theorisation. When illustrating the moment that biological reproduction instils potentiality (what we would call the fixing of the genetic code or DNA transfer) the man from Stageira draws an analogy from temple cult. He has seen gadgets in the form of ‘wonderful puppets’ (automata) which trick people into thinking that gods’ statues are alive. They use hidden wheels that transmit movement to gears, edge-to-edge, through friction.  The potential for the statues to move is created when the first wheel of the series is set in slow, grinding motion, some time before the potentiality is actualised. 

You can go to see reconstructions of such wonder-inducing mechanisms, reconstructed by Kostas Kotsanas at his Museum of Ancient Greek Technology and Inventions in Katakolo, western Peloponnese. The museum, charmingly, is free of charge. So remember, when not marvelling at the ingenuity of the ancient Greeks in this ordinary seaside town, to eat out a lot and inject some money into the modern ones’ economy.

What Position did Oedipus have Sex with his Mother In?

Bijan Sheibani--Director of Almeida Oedipus Event

I’m delighted to be discussing mother-son incest at a staged public workshop and reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus at the Almeida Theatre on Sunday. The other speaker is David Bell, an eminent psychoanalyst and great company. He’s asked me about Jocasta’s famous line in Sophocles' Oedipus, which captivated Sigmund Freud--the one where she famously tells her husband/son not to worry, since lots of men have had sex with their mothers in their dreams (981-2).

It is less well known that our surviving ancient dream book, by Artemidorus, shows that many real ancient men reported such dreams when they paid for a session with the local interpreter. Artemidorus says (1.79) that the case of the son dreaming about sex with his mother is such a big category of common dream that it has different meanings. It depends on several factors including your occupation, sexual position, and whether she is dead or not in reality.

Mounet-Sully--the actor whom Freud saw playing Oedipus

For working-class men this dream is always good, as for politicians, especially if you dream that you are very much manually in control of your mother. If you are estranged from your mother it means you will be reunited.  It’s never good to dream about having sex with your mother if she is dead as this means you will die yourself soon, returning to ‘Mother Earth’. That is, unless you are currently involved in a lawsuit, in which case it signifies that your opponent’s case will wither away and you will win.

Jocasta thinks her baby died of exposure

Face-to-face sex with mum means you will fall out with your dad or your dad will die.  It is not good to penetrate your mother if she is looking away from you, standing up, kneeling or immobilised as this portends oppression and possibly slavery. If your mother is on top it usually means you will live an easy life, full of health and leisure, as she is the one out of breath from doing all the work. Oral sex with your mother is simply disgusting and portends terrible suffering—death of children and confiscation of property.

So there you go. I have never personally dreamt about having sex with either of my parents. My dreams are, I flatter myself, more Kleinian than Freudian--wicked stepmothers and enormous buckets of milk. I did once dream I had sex with Leonidas of Sparta (NB this was before 300 and NOT Gerard Butler), and on another occasion with John Cleese, or, to be precise, with Basil Fawlty. Unfortunately these gentlemen do not appear in any of the dreams described by Artemidorus, so I’ll have to interpret them for myself.

Drowning in Droves

Zuwara docks last night

 The death toll of migrants at the borders of Europe just keeps on rising. More than three hundred thousand have tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea this year, already 40 per cent up on 2014. The International Office of Migration has confirmed 2,432 deaths ‘associated with the sea crossings’ in 2015. Many more people have disappeared. ‘Associated’ deaths and disappearances mean DROWNINGS, of which more anon.

When we do get serious information about conditions in Syria or Eritrea it becomes obvious why so many are leaving. Faced with barrel bombing, starvation and homelessness, let alone arrest or compulsory conscription,  I would be the first to risk death in exchange for some hope of a decent life for myself and my children.

Papyrus of Timotheus' 'drowning barbarian' poem

As I write, the TV screen witnesses to the despair of people rescued from the boats which capsized yesterday off the Libyan coast. Scores of orange body bags fluoresce on the Zuwara docks. The estimated fatalities from Thursday already amount to two hundred. I just can’t understand how the drownings can keep on coming while the world looks on.  We may try to wash our hands clean of the toxic fallout from 500 years of colonialism plus 25 of ill-considered ‘western intervention’ in sovereign states. But posterity will despise us to a man and woman for our pathetic inaction now.

Nor are we hearing enough about the horror of death by drowning. Each one of those body bags contains a story of a terrifying and excruciating individual death. Drowning survivors report extreme pain in the upper chest, spreading down the lungs and arms, compounded by cramps in the legs, choking, and searing pressure on ear drums and eye balls. This agony can last for up to eight minutes before consciousness is lost.

Drowning is so vile that it has been used as a form of punitive capital punishment and in Guantanamo as a method of torture. The earliest extended description of a drowning comes in a triumphalist ancient Greek poem by Timotheus celebrating the death of a member of Xerxes’ forces who couldn’t swim and suffered terribly before expiring at the battle of Salamis. I.e. drowning is a death you do wish on your worst enemy.

Unimaginable suffering

In an obscenely first-world way, in Greece on Tuesday I experienced the terror that comes before being overwhelmed by the Mediterranean. As a privileged touristic swimmer, I stupidly assumed that I could front-crawl my way through some huge waves in a high wind against prudent expert advice. I did win my battle with the sea, just, but have a badly strained shoulder muscle as a reward for my hubristic recklessness. Feeling chastened in every sense.

DEMOCRATIC CRISES IN CORFU

Feeling glum about the prospects for democracy in either Greece/the EU or the UK Labour Party, I sought solace in visiting the location of an exciting scene from the defence of democracy in ancient Kerkyra (Corfu).

The plan was to find some tiles on the island in order to help me reimagine, if not reconstruct by nifty photo-montaging, my favourite sentence in the ancient historian Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.

"ANYONE FANCY A TILE FIGHT with the OLIGARCHS?"

During the civil war in 427 BCE, there was a street battle in Corfu’s main town between the groups supporting the oligarchs and the democrats respectively. Thucydides, whose usual policy is to ignore women, describes how not only slaves but women on the democratic side joined in the actual fighting: ‘the woman also entered the fray with great daring, hurling down tiles from the roof-tops and standing up to the din with a courage that went beyond what was natural to their sex’ (3.74).

CORFU ARCHAELOGICAL MUSEUM: VICTIM OF AUSTERITY

Having identified as venue an antique central street with plenty of promising tiled roofs, we went to the island’s famous Archaeological Museum hoping to photo a tile or two from the fifth-century BCE. Guess what? The Museum is now closed indefinitely. A huge padlock and chain locks its gates. The sign lies in the dust, already rusting. 

The staff, as public servants, cannot be paid thanks to the Eurocrats who worship Kapital and despise Greek democratic processes. So the very cultural resources underpinning the tourist industry, crucial to any prospect of Greek economic recovery, are being made unavailable through Austerity. 

ARTEMIS OF CORFU

I tried to console myself with online images of the indomitable animal-taming Artemis, from the magnificent western pediment of the archaic local temple, which tourists like me can no longer see at the museum. I like to think it was she-god images like this which inspired the democratic women of 5th-century Corfu to put two fingers up—and throw tiles down—at the rich elite forces opposing them.  Eurocrats beware: offending Artemis is always risky. Just ask the Atridae.

An 18th-century Detective Trail: Sarah Fielding's Xenophon

Success greeted my quest for the missing memorial to a Greek scholar who in 1762 published a fine translation of Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Apology of Socrates. Long hidden from intellectual history, Sarah Fielding really is right there, inside the North-West vestibule of Bath Abbey.

Part of the inscription reads ‘Athens’ Wisdom to her Sex she taught’; but it wasn’t only to her sex. Plenty of men used her translations; her Apology, chosen for the Everyman series, was reprinted until 1937.

Her Etonian brother Henry, playwright and novelist, was envious of her largely self-taught classical skills. His fame has overshadowed her completely. People also suspect that the classically educated but immoral and dissipated Molly in his novel Amelia is a covert attack on his clever sister.

Before: Sarah  Invisible

People inevitably alleged that even Sarah's bestelling novel David Simple was really Henry’s work. Elizabeth Carter, the translator of Epictetus, had no reason to talk up her reclusive friend, which might have taken the lustre off Elizabeth's own reputation as the best woman Hellenist around.

Sarah had loved Henry dearly, and when his wife died she moved in with him in Lincoln’s Inn Fields to help with the house and children. He responded by impregnating the scullery maid. Sarah moved out. Most men called her ‘poor Sarah’ because she never married; women called her ‘poor Sarah’ because she was an eccentric, couldn’t cook, and allegedly tippled.

After: Sarah Rediviva! photo: R. Poynder

She also wrote the first book specifically for girls, The Governess, or the Little Female Academy (1749),* and biographies of Cleopatra and Octavia. But when she died, she disappeared. There is no known likeness. This made finding the memorial stone important, partly because Dr Rosie Wyles and I need a picture to put in our forthcoming Unsealing the Fountain: Women Classical Scholars (OUP).

Athena with pet

Several antique guide books claimed it was in Bath Abbey, but nobody there knew what I was talking about. Other literary historians have been unable to find it. The reason is that it is low down, concealed by a heavy lectern, probably for decades.  Our sharp-eyed teenager spotted just the name SARAH peeking over its top; after moving it (fortunately the Abbey attendant nearby was not officious), teenager’s father photographed her. The snake encircling Sarah was the pet of Athena, goddess of wisdom, and (because it sheds its skins) an ancient symbol of immortality.

After that

Mission accomplished, we went to the pub and raised a toast to the scholar celebrated by her close friend Dr John Hoadly, who commissioned the memorial, for her ‘unaffected manners’, her candour and benevolence. An exciting afternoon’s work.

Text of the Memorial Stone

In this city lived and died Sarah, second daughter of General  Henry Fielding; by his first wife, daughter of Judge Gould. Whose writings will be known as incentives to virtue, and honour to her sex, when this marble shall be dust. She was born mdccxiv. and died April mdcclxvih. 

Her unaffected kindness, candid mind, 

Her heart benevolent, and soul resign'd, 

Were more her praise than all she knew, or thought. 

Though Athens' wisdom to her sex she taught. 

The Rev. Dr. John Hoadley, her Friend, for the honour of the Dead and emulation of the Living, inscribes this deficient Memorial of her virtues and accomplishments. 

*See Eirlys Penn's excellent study, at http://writingpenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Georgian-JK-Rowling.pdf

Ode to Jeremy Corbyn by Me and My Muse

I woke from a dream on Wednesday night with a song about Jeremy Corbyn, to the tune of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, ringing in my ears. Since it has clearly been inspired by the Muses, I have posted it below after emendations suggested by Professor Ian Rutherford, an expert on ancient Greek lyric metre.

I believe the poem was produced by my subconscious coping with the stress related to joining the UK Labour Party for the third time, having left both when its leaders did not support the miners and when they did support the invasion of Iraq.

The stress is caused by being personally mis-described EVERY DAY in the press, which is frantically trying to identify who all the new members of the Labour Party are. So, for the record, I am not and never have been any of the following except, long ago, no. 2:

 A Member of Militant Tendency Practising Entryism.

A Young Person who Can’t Afford to Get on the Property Ladder.

A Revolutionary Trotskyite (perish the thought; I'm a Bolshevik).

An Antediluvian Naïve Idealist.

A Sinister Right-Wing Fifth Columnist.

 You can find the music to sing the poem (the first I've ever published) along to here. I wish, as Dr Lucy Jackson, an expert on Greek choruses, has said to me, that my subconscious had chosen a more upbeat Beatles song (Drive my Car, She Loves You etc.), but the picture of Corbyn on the night bus, in full melancholia, clearly affected my Muse.

Jeremy Corbyn, lowest expenses

Of any MP, at eight pounds and seventy-three;

Who can he be?

Waits on the back bench, voting against

The Iraq War, the Poll Tax and more.

What's Labour for?

REFRAIN

All the Party Members

Where have they just come from?

Tired Old Labour Voters?

Where do they all belong?

Margaret Beckett, naming the man

She thought no one would ever support

Perish the thought!

Look at him working, planning to give

Britain back to the people, the poor.

He'll fight the class war.

Jeremy Corbyn, principled man

With your straight-talking ways and your beard.

You’ve persevered!

Tony Blair hates you, says you’re a

Loser, a Trotskyite throwback and worse.

Blair's Labour’s curse.