Eliza Carthy on Caroline Norton
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eliza Carthy chooses the life of 19th-century poet and campaigner Caroline Norton to discuss with Matthew Parris.
Following separation from her controlling husband, Norton fought to gain access to her three children. She campaigned for 30 years resulting in changes to English Law that gave women a separate legal identity for the first time.
Eliza first discovered Caroline Norton when she was researching broadside ballads and came across Norton's verse ' Love not! love not! ye hopeless sons of clay'. It stood out, becoming the inspiration for her track 'Fade and Fall' and sparking an interest in Norton and her extraordinary life.
The expert is Dr Diane Atkinson, author of 'The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton'.
Producer: Toby Field
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2016.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:06.3 | I will not tamely see a woman dragged down and trampled upon to bear the punishment which, if just, should be inflicted on both. |
| 0:15.0 | I will not crawl to shore and leave and look around upon her drowning. |
| 0:19.0 | I will stand upon my word for her as well as myself. If I feel the stigma, the abuse, the dread of comment, |
| 0:26.5 | what must it be like for her who has neither position, connection, nor influence to enable |
| 0:31.5 | her to bear up against it, and who being a woman must be crushed |
| 0:35.8 | by the tone of disbelief. |
| 0:38.3 | Those are the words of Caroline Norton, who, as well here, spent most of her life in the early and mid-19th century |
| 0:45.0 | campaigning for the establishment of legal rights for women. |
| 0:49.0 | Choosing her is Eliza Carthie, who describes herself as a modern English musician and who's best |
| 0:55.7 | known as one of the chief cheerleaders of the English folk revival. |
| 1:00.3 | She's been twice nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and is currently touring with the Waywood Band. |
| 1:06.0 | Why Waywood, Eliza? |
| 1:08.0 | It was taken from a biography. A very nice lady wrote a book about me about three years ago. She decided to call |
| 1:16.0 | the book Wayward daughter although as some people will know I did go into the |
| 1:21.8 | family business so as Way would daughters go I'm fairly tame in that respect. |
| 1:27.0 | Why have you picked Caroline Norton? |
| 1:30.0 | I encountered Caroline Norton last year when I was for the BBC doing some research into two |
| 1:39.2 | collections of broadside ballads and I came across a song of hers well a poem of hers called |
| 1:47.0 | love not you hopeless sons of clay and reading it there's something about it told me that it wasn't traditional. |
| 1:55.5 | It wasn't anything to do with the quality of the writing. |
| 1:58.1 | It just, it was just a voice that really stood out. |
... |
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