Edited by Steve Bamlett, Thursday, 24 Nov 2016, 19:00
If you have a chance go and see this play at the Live Theatre at Newcastle (just across from the Sage). CLICK HERE for details in a NEW WINDOW.
I went (TODAY) because (now an old man ruined by psychology and psychologists) I was once a raw Literature student in London. Since then, I have loved Harriet Martineau. Known as a 'bluestocking' in the nineteenth century and a classic
bore (Thomas Carlyle's comment is used in the play), she was the intellectual equal of George Eliot - even
worked with the latter on the Westminster Review under Eliot's editorship and was writing work on Comtian theories of social change (and the peasantry) when Eliot was preparing Romola.
Her causes linked always to her feminism but never stopped there, such that she was a grew into an international anti-slavery campaigner. She wrote for children to bring to them an international idea (Feast on the Fjords) as well as adults and was resuscitated in her novel Deerbrook by Virago, the feminist publisher in its heyday.
But she also lived in an upstairs room in Tynemouth (for 5 years I believe but I'm going from a poor memory) where she wrote - Life In a Sick Room. Convinced she was dying, some theorists link her role as an invalid (like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's) to the invalidity once the damning judgement of the worth (outside vapid ideals) of women's lives in the nineteenth century.
This play's Martineau has a lighter turn (though equipped with the same ear trumpet). It is a feel-good play (almost an adult pantomime as the play once self-consciously jokes) about values of social justice, life and transformative learning. Class, race, gender (all get mixed) - the beautiful symbol for instance of Beulah, a cross -dressing young woman whose memories span her mother's enslavement passage (in a memory reminiscent of Turner's Slave-Ship) to A London that was changing though Tynemouth was not. Funny - it therefore sanitises white racism in humour in order to emphasise a positive youthful changefulness and hope. For a time, in the clog dancing passage for instance, I believed it all possible - and still want to do.
This is a play to cheer us up in Brexit Northern England. See it, please. It is a joy!!!!
Who cares about Harriet Martineau
If you have a chance go and see this play at the Live Theatre at Newcastle (just across from the Sage). CLICK HERE for details in a NEW WINDOW.
I went (TODAY) because (now an old man ruined by psychology and psychologists) I was once a raw Literature student in London. Since then, I have loved Harriet Martineau. Known as a 'bluestocking' in the nineteenth century and a classic bore (Thomas Carlyle's comment is used in the play), she was the intellectual equal of George Eliot - even worked with the latter on the Westminster Review under Eliot's editorship and was writing work on Comtian theories of social change (and the peasantry) when Eliot was preparing Romola.
Her causes linked always to her feminism but never stopped there, such that she was a grew into an international anti-slavery campaigner. She wrote for children to bring to them an international idea (Feast on the Fjords) as well as adults and was resuscitated in her novel Deerbrook by Virago, the feminist publisher in its heyday.
But she also lived in an upstairs room in Tynemouth (for 5 years I believe but I'm going from a poor memory) where she wrote - Life In a Sick Room. Convinced she was dying, some theorists link her role as an invalid (like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's) to the invalidity once the damning judgement of the worth (outside vapid ideals) of women's lives in the nineteenth century.
This play's Martineau has a lighter turn (though equipped with the same ear trumpet). It is a feel-good play (almost an adult pantomime as the play once self-consciously jokes) about values of social justice, life and transformative learning. Class, race, gender (all get mixed) - the beautiful symbol for instance of Beulah, a cross -dressing young woman whose memories span her mother's enslavement passage (in a memory reminiscent of Turner's Slave-Ship) to A London that was changing though Tynemouth was not. Funny - it therefore sanitises white racism in humour in order to emphasise a positive youthful changefulness and hope. For a time, in the clog dancing passage for instance, I believed it all possible - and still want to do.
This is a play to cheer us up in Brexit Northern England. See it, please. It is a joy!!!!
All the best
Steve