Red Jenny: A Life With Karl Marx

by Heinz Frederick Peters

Traces the life of Marx's wife, the former Baroness Jenny von Westphalen, and describes the many sacrifices she made during her forty years of marriage to the political theorist

Genres: Biography

182 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sad story of a woman who doesn't get a voice even in death. She is the wife of the prophet so she has to be perfect and supportive. The problems of this bourgeois family receive proletarian attributes. And the poor woman is just an accessory to embellish the prophet. Sure, there is some biographic data, which could have been useful in the pre-Wikipedia years, but right now the volume might have some use use to the scholastic bureaucrats.

[Sarah Ensor · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is interesting in parts especially where Jenny Marx is quoted directly but otherwise it is deeply frustrating because despite the title it does not take its subject seriously. Jenny Marx is described as, “keen participant in her husband’s political activities”, she work’s “in her husband’s cause” and devotes herself “intensively to party work for her husband”. Even when responding to a direct question Jenny answers, “in the spirit of her husband”. Through all this sexism it looks like we are meant to understand that Jenny adored Marx so she took an interest in his work. Yet the author himself shows that Marx took Jenny’s political analysis seriously. For instance, when she wrote to him about the 1844 attempted assassination of the Prussian king, Marx sent her letter for publication to the editor of the German newspaper Vorwarts, in Paris who printed it. Peters describes this as her first publication in her husband’s cause. (Aaaaaargggghhhh)

There is no reason to expect every biographer to agree with his subjects and the lives of revolutionary socialists are hard for non-revolutionaries to understand. Why don’t they just give up their weird political activism and settle down with decent jobs and have nicer lives? Jenny Marx didn’t give up because beyond the poverty and the loss of three children she could imagine a better world and was part of the fight for it.

[Saeed Aj · Rating 4 out of 5]

شاید بزرگترین نقد به کتاب ارائه تصویری است از جنی و مارکس برخاسته از فرضیات و ایدئولوژی نویسنده؛ مارکس علافی که هر روز به انتظار تحقق انقلاب کمونیستی و برقراری آرمانشهر مورد نظرش نشسته است و جنی همسری که عقده زندگی اشرافی و بورژوایی بر دلش سنگینی می‌کند. با توجه به اینکه کتاب متمرکز بر زندگی جنی نوشته شده طبعا مارکس نقشی پررنگ ولی نامحوری ایفا می‌کند و این تا حدی باعث پرش‌های متعدد از فعالیت‌های این دوره مارکس می‌گردد. در کل نقل‌ قول‌های مستقیم نویسنده از جنی و مارکس و نامه‌هایشان بی‌واسطه‌ترین و معتبرترین منبع برای رهیافت به اندیشه و زندگی‌شان است تا نظرات شخص نویسنده در خلال آن‌ها.
از 7 فرزند مارکس، در دوران شدید تجربه فقر در دهه 50 و اواخر 40، 4 تا در کودکی و نوزادی به علت بیماری و فقر درگذشتند و دو دخترش بعدها در 1898 و 1911 خودکشی می‌کنند(یکی به‌خاطر خیانت شریک زندگی‌اش) و بزرگترین دختر(جنی) هم در 39 سالگی بر اثر سرطان می‌میرد.

[Rye · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I regret the blindness of those who believe that they can achieve economic equality and justice in any other way except by freedom. Equality without freedom is a terrible fiction, created by swindlers to mislead fools. Equality without freedom means state despotism."