Mary's Birthday
Mary’s Birthday
or
“Vindicating the Rights of Woman”
-a short presentation by words and music group Sounds Like
Mary Wollstonecraft talks to a friend about the status of women- with a few interruptions from a male authority on the subject. Lively conversation is further enlivened by songs
The Mary’s Birthday performance
Mary’s Birthday is so called because the original performance was at an event organised by Susanne Griffin, a resident of Camden Town, on 27 April 2009. She wished both to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mary Wollstonecraft’s birth and also to publicise a campaign by local residents to improve footpath access and shortcuts for people walking in and around St. Pancras/Kings Cross. Mary was a great advocate of physical activity as part of the education of both boys and girls.
The central event was the cutting of a specially made birthday cake in front of Mary’s tombstone. When Susanne spoke to Edward Lee about the idea he suggested that the event could incorporate a tribute to the writer in words and music, to be performed by the group Sounds Like.
Susanne responded enthusiastically and the performance took place. It was planned to be given in front of the tombstone, but the weather was not favourable, and so it took place inside St Pancras Old Church.
Having created the piece, the group then decided to produce a recorded version.
Mary’s Birthday the CD /mp3 download; content
This is a short spoken introduction, explaining what is to come. It has been separated out, so that listeners who wish to return to the piece do not need to listen to it again.
The piece is an imagined conversation between Mary and two visitors – a sympathetic female friend, and a reactionary man. All the words (with very minor alterations s to give continuity) are taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and are either Mary’s own words or quotations given and discussed by her.
The piece begins with an instrumental backing which is meant to suggest a traditional French folk group, using a bagpipe (cornemuse). After the opening announcement the group go into the song Ça ira. This was a popular song of the French Revolution. Mary would have undoubtedly heard it during her stay in France, and been stirred by its revolutionary sentiments. There are various versions of the song, from which the lyrics used here were selected. After hearing several interpretations of the song, including one by Edith Piaf, Edward Lee decided to give it a rough folk-like quality.
The announcer (Jan North) sets the scene – in Mary’s Somers Town house. A woman passes by the open window singing Sorry the Day.
The conversation begins. We imagine that such conversations brought to the surface ideas which Mary later put into her book.
After the discussion turns to marriage, we hear the full version of Sorry the Day. The song is traditional Irish, and is old enough to have been known to Mary. Even if it was not, is fair to say that the sentiments suitably reflect the conversation. The group worked together to add folk-like harmony.
The women return to assert Mary’s call for the rights of women to be recognised.
The piece ends with Man, Man, Man. This is the only song with a known composer, Henry Purcell, who set words by Peter Motteaux. The song was written for Thomas Scott’s’ play The Mock Marriage of 1696. The proper title of the song “The United Lovers or The Poet’s Opinion concerning the Male and Female Sex: being a new Song lately Sung in the Theatre”. The publicist adds “To a pleasant new Tune”. The original song has six verses. We have used only the first(slightly modified). It is possible, though rather unlikely, that Mary may have known the song. Again, the sentiments seem to reflect the balanced and complementary relationship which Mary Wollstonecraft sought between the sexes. The song is given as a single line in the original manuscript, but Edward Lee realised that it would work in imitation – it is very nearly a round in form.
Track 3 Song: Ça ira
Credits
Grateful thanks to Peta Webb of the Cecil Sharp House for her help in finding the songs.
The sources which were consulted in researching the songs are:
Ça ira : Wikipedia (French language version)
Man, Man, Man and Sorry the Day: My Song is My Own, Kathy Henderson, Frankie Armstrong and Sandra Kerr, Pluto Press, 1982
Last but by no means least, we thank Susanne Griffin for conceiving of the event, and encouraging us to create and perform Mary’s Birthday.
Sounds Like
This is a group of readers, singers, writers and musicians. It was formed by Edward Lee to give performances and create recordings of both published and original work. The technical aim is to explore as wide a range of links within the world of sound, but centrally of words and music. The members who will be performing on this occasion are:
Edward Lee (director, reader, guitarist)
Ed (ward) started in his musical career in jazz, and first read English but later obtained a Music degree at Oxford. He spent many years in teaching and contributed significantly to the literature on music education. He has always been interested in composition and in linking words and music, which led to his formation of Sounds Like.
Frances Lee (reader, singer)
Frances teaches at the University of Westminster (originally French and now English for Foreign Students). This awakened an interest in reading poems aloud to present them to her students, which in turn brought her into Sounds Like. She decided a few years ago to realise a long-standing ambition to sing, and is currently a member of the City Lit A Cappella Choir.
Jan North (singer, reader)
Janlives in Camden Town. She has been an active trade unionist for most of her working life. Originally trained in Drama, she developed an interest in singing, and enjoys performing all sorts of music from choral to folk, jazz and more recently a cappella.
Lyrics
Ça ira
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Le peuple en ce jour sans cesse répète,
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Malgré les mutins tout réussira.
Nos ennemis confus en restent là
Et nous allons chanter « Alléluia ! »
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Avec plaisir on dira :
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira !
Ça ira, malgré les mutins tout réussira.
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Le peuple en ce jour sans cesse répète,
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Malgré les mutins tout réussira.
Nos ennemis confus en restent là
Et nous allons chanter « Alléluia ! »
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Celui qui s’élève on l’abaissera
Celui qui s’abaisse on l’élèvera.
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Tout Français s’exercera.
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira !
Ça ira, malgré les mutins tout réussira.
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Les aristocrates à la lanterne ;
Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,
Les aristocrates on les pendra.
Sorry the Day
Sorry the day I was married
And sorry the day I was wed,
And it’s O, if I only had tarried,
When I to the altar was led.
When I was a young girl I was bonny,
Had silks and fine jewels to wear.
Red were my cheeks like the berry,
My heart it was free from all care.
Silks now I’ve none for the wearing,
My jewels have all flown away.
Surely this life is past bearing,
I’m pale as a primrose today.
So think all you girls ere you marry ;
Stand fast by your sweet liberty.
As long as you can you must tarry,
And not be lamenting like me.
Man, Man, Man
Man, Man, Man is for the Woman made,
And the Woman made for the man.
As the scabbard’s for the Blade,
As for Night’s the Serenade,
As for liquor is the can,
As for Pudding is the Pan,
Man, Man, Man is for the Woman made,
And the Woman made for the man.
The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April, 1759 in Spitalfields, London. Her family were merchants who had prospered in the City of London. But her father was drunken and profligate and dissipated the family’s wealth. In his drunken moments he would beat his wife, and it seems reasonable to suppose that his behaviour resulted in Mary developing a strong character, who forcefully resisted oppression in many of its forms, and in particular became a vigorous defender of women, and an agitator for their rights.
In 1778 she set out to make her own living and first became a lady’s companion. Her personality did not respond well to that of her employer, so she moved on to set up a school in Newington Green, then a village a little way from the City of London. This was a joint venture with her sisters and a close friend Fanny Blood. After the death of her friend, she took a post in Ireland as a governess, but again the situation did not suit her and she returned to London and decided to become an author.
This was a very bold move, as at that time, and indeed now, few men and even fewer women could make a living from writing. In fact she wrote to her sister Everina in 1787, that she was trying to become "the first of a new genus". Fortunately she won the support of a publisher, Joseph Johnson, who had very liberal attitudes. She wrote reviews, mainly of novels, learned French and German and translated texts on moral and philosophical subjects.
As a result of this work she greatly expanded her knowledge, and so got the opportunity to meet famous radical thinkers, notably Thomas Paine and William Godwin. This led her to write a number of works on political, philosophical and moral topics; the most notable are Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). After this Mary was very attracted by what seemed to be the new dawn of the French Revolution, which had begun with the storming of the Bastille in 1789. She went to Paris in December 1792, arriving about a month before Louis XVI was guillotined. Here experiences led her to write An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (published 1794).
The intensity and unorthodoxy of Mary’s intellectual life was paralleled in her emotions. She had intense relationships with various women, and passionate affairs with two men - Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (with whom she had a daughter, Fanny ).
These did not work out – both men probably found her too intense and Fuseli was married. Perhaps not surprisingly Mrs Fuseli did not welcome Mary’s suggestion of a sharing of Henry. This precipitated her trip to France where she met Imlay.
When that relationship finally broke up she attempted suicide twice. On the second occasion she went down to the River Thames at night on 10 October 1795. It was raining so "to make her clothes heavy with water, she walked up and down about half an hour". She jumped into the river from Putney Bridge, but was seen by a stranger who rescued her. Mary was not especially grateful, as she later wrote: "I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery”.
Mary’s emotional experiences resulted in some fictional work; perhaps the best known is the novel Mary: A Fiction (1788).
Mary first met William Godwin at a dinner given by her publisher, Johnson, and was not greatly impressed by him. Godwin really wanted to talk to Thomas Paine, but Mary did not leave him alone. Instead she made a reply to everything he said, nearly always expressing strong disagreement.
However, when, after the suicide attempt, she returned to this circle she saw him very differently. They became lovers and when Mary became pregnant, they married – an event which caused much criticism of Godwin, who had argued for the abolition of marriage in his book Political Justice.
The couple moved into two adjoining houses (so that they could both remain independent) in the Polygon, a housing development named after its shape, in the heart of Somers Town, an area of London to the north of what are now King’s Cross and St Pancras stations. They were happy, and on 30 August 1797,Mary gave birth to a daughter, also named Mary, who later became known to the world as the author of Frankenstein. Unfortunately
the placenta broke apart during the birth. The subsequent infection led to several days of agony, and then to her death on 10 September. She was buried in the churchyard of Old Saint Pancras Church, where she had so recently been married.
The remains were disinterred and moved to Bournemouth, when part of the graveyard was destroyed as part of the building of the Midland Railway. The tombstone still remains, however, and bears the inscription "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10 September 1797."
As the details of her personal life became known, she fell out of favour with the moralistic Victorians, but in the Twentieth Century, her originality and deeply perceptive insight into the position of women in society was reappraised by feminist scholars. In particular, it became clear that most of her writing about women is not just of historical interest, but remains highly relevant to modern women.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
In 1790 Edmund Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he defended the status quo – the constitutional monarchy, the aristocracy, and the Church of England. Mary Wollstonecraft responded strongly to his claims in A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in which she attacked the system of aristocracy and urged the case for republicanism.
In formulating her arguments she became more clear about the position of women, and so in September 1790 began work on A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in 1792. Though generally considered to be the first major work putting forward feminist ideas, in some ways Mary’s views are quite traditional – she does not usually express hostility to men as such, or the rejection of family, arguing only that the role and social view of women must be changed. She accepts the physical superiority of men, but claims that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. This is because like men, they are created by God as rational beings, and that there is no hierarchy of reason. She points out that women have often been portrayed as inferior to men as intellects, but says that this impression derives only from the fact of being brought up to expect and accept a subjugated role, being in effect “the upper servant” in the household. This situation is compounded by a lack of education and the opportunity both for women to develop their minds and to follow careers which were then open only to men, such as medicine and business. In her book she quotes various writers who had denied the potential of women, and the need to educate them: the most notable was Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
We know that in a personal letter to William Roscoe dated 3rd January 1792, she wrote" I shall give the last sheet to the printer today; and, I am dissatisfied with myself for not having done justice to the subject. - Do not suspect me of false modesty - I mean to say, that had I allowed myself more time I could have written a better book...."
Perhaps she could. But we think you will agree that she did a pretty good job anyway, to say the least, and that her profound insights remain powerfully relevant to millions of women all over the world at this very moment.