Just heard appalling man-excusing interview on R4

[extraspoons]

Just heard John Humphries interview some guy about letters coming to light revealing that Dickens, in his determination to get rid of his wife so he could be with his mistress, tried to get his wife incarcerated in a mental asylum (despite there being no evidence of her having any mental illness). HIs wife in the letters said that ( i paraphrase as cannot remember it all) 'the law, bad as it is, he could not quite contrive to achieve his purpose.'

Humphries said, it doesn't make him a bad person though, does it?
Interviewee, 'Oh no, and he did great work after this episode for Great Ormand Street hospital.'
Humphries, 'maybe he needed some help for his mental health himself'

WTF?

Actually, yes, trying to deprive your wife of her liberty and have your sane wife imprisoned in a mental asylum so you can shack up with your mistress does make you a bad person actually. It also makes you an extraordinary hypocrite to publicly proclaim your great morality and harangue others, whilst committing great evil (imprisoning innocents for you own benefit is evil) in your personal life. As Ani Difranco said, ' You can talk of great philosophy, but if you can't be kind to people every single day it doesn't mean that much to me.'

Normally I am quite sympathetic to people who behave badly in a period of great distress. But, seriously, I do not count wanting to shack up with your mistress an incident of great distress. Its not exactly Helen Archer cracking after years of emotional abuse and control is it?

I am just bloody fuming that the appalling complete and utter disregard of any human rights for his wife is just brushed aside as an inconvenience to be ignored to maintain the reputation of this Great Man.

Women are just dispensable it seems.

Yes...

In fact, I'm inclined to judge more harshly people who show they're capable of understanding social and ethical problems but yet who commit (or attempt) such abuses.

Just seen the Edward Bourne-Jones exhibition at Tate Britain.
The contrast between the paintings depicting his mistress and his wife, is quite obvious. Mistress is beautifully painted, his wife’s plain and virtuous. Yet another long suffering wife.

And refused to allow his wife to attend their daughter's wedding ...

Both committed suicide, one of them taking their child with her.

I remember reading an interview with one of his children, who said that the father 'quite rightly' had never allowed them read any of the mother's work or writing. Think it was a son, can't really remember, who said that he didn't want to read her work anyway.

IIRC Rembrandt did get his maid locked up in an asylum when he put his eye on someone younger.

Hang on a minute. Surely ‘committed suicide, taking her child with her’ is the sort of minimising language we would deplore if said about a man? Do you mean ‘committed suicide after murdering her child’?

I walk a line there Gently . I see your point, you absolutely have one, and yes, she did murder the child. I didn't intend to minimise that. But I can also see that a woman in a desperate situation where the child would be abandoned to the hands of a man that woman felt very unsafe about, murdering the child may seem protective, and I have sympathy for a woman acting under the pressure of DA and fearful for her child.

I think there is debatably a difference between that and the kind of suicide murder for example committed by Alan Hawe. Children murdered as part of a parental suicide is more commonly committed by men, very rarely by women and there are significant differences identified in studies.