Behind the Scenes Minis: Caroline’s Trials

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy D. Wilson. Okay, I'm gonna get it out of the way before we get into Caroline's story, because if you listen to Wednesday's episode, you might still be going Jim excuse. Carrie Fisher wrote the Mada Harry episode of Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and in it that is Indiana Jones's first sexual experience. WHOA, So I don't know if I've seen all of that show. I remember watching it when it was on, and I remember being really disappointed when it wasn't on anymore. But I also like there's a void in my mind of how much of it have I actually seen? Well, and like not everything sticks right, so it's easy to forget stuff. But yes, yeah, that's a good episode. Obviously plague asked and loose with historical fact. But yeah, I also don't remember this episode in any way. So either I saw, I mean more and more of my life, I have no recollection of it anyway. Right, it comes to things from long ago, yeah, she I. Carrie Fisher talked about having having written that episode a few times, like when she would do interviews and stuff, and it's pretty interesting and fun. But to move to Caroline, which is, you know a little more serious. Yeah, here is what I find so utterly. I don't know if it's compelling, but really a really interesting aspect of Caroline's story that has not really talked about much. Right, Obviously, her husband was horrible. Yeah, he is one of the easier villains we've had. There's like, not really anything redeeming about him. Yeah, we don't swear on the show, but there was a moment in the outline that I was just I wanted to say a lot of very bad words, and it was I mean it was early on. Oh yeah, I was just yeah, monster, he was an absolute monster. But there's an interesting thing. Historian Claire Tommelin wrote, She's written a lot of things, but she in writing about Caroline, she makes a really interesting point, which is that she definitely seems to side on the element of like, Caroline was not having affairs with anybody because her own sexual experiences in her marriage were so bad obviously that she wouldn't want to have anything to do with men romantically at all, which is an interesting take on it. It makes a lot of sense. Again, we don't really know for sure, but there's another aspect to the affair rumors with Caroline and Melbourne that make me think, person these are two people that would not have wanted to have an affair because Lord Melbourne had already been involved in a pretty embarrassing affair scandal not of his but of his wife. And if you listen to Criminalia you know this story. But Lady Caroline Lamb had a pretty public affair with Lord Byron while she was married to Lord Melbourne. Okay, I'm laughing because I'm like, how'd Byron get in this? Okay, She's everywhere everywhere Romanson whoever he can, and he, I mean, it was very very torrid and passionate. And then he was tired of her and moved on. And then she kind of stalked him for a long time and did some very creepy things in that enterprise. But like when he broke up with her, Lord Melbourne so completely scantalized, and also like he took Lady Caroline to Ireland on a vacation though because she was such a mess at her boyfriend having broken up with her. That her husband was like, let's just get you some rest. He probably would not have wanted anything to do with any kind of scandal after that, And so that's another thing that kind of supports the like, no, they were probably just good friends. Yeah, And I mentioned that there were letters that would be a lot more potentially damaging to have introduced during their court case. But like, it's interesting because if you if you read them with the bias of presuming that they had a sexual relationship, yes they can be read as very scandalous, but if you think about it from the other point of view of like they were just very close friends and he was a mentor to her, then they feel like a very sweet, you know, incredibly loving and endearing thing. However someone wants to interpret it is how they're going to interpret it. There this was such an upsetting thing to read about, yeah, because I feel like, I mean, domestic violence is always hard to read about, obviously, and it is still a problem that men can abuse women. It goes the other way at times, but predominantly that's how it plays out, and people look the other way or they don't get involved. And in this case, like there were a lot of witnesses to this person beating a pregnant woman, burning a pregnant woman, being so violent he had to be restrained so she could run away, and like there was nothing to help her. Yeah. I think that infinite with a tea kettle was what had made me almost just have it like a stream of absentities onto the podcast. Right, this is when it's good that there's not a time machine, because I would be very, very prone to violence. Yeah, which is not great, but like, yeah, well, and today the dynamics of abusive relationships mean that it can be really hard for somebody who is being abused to get out. And she had so little legal recourse for anything that I can barely even imagine, like being in such an impossible situation, and then also to have her children taken away and just to have no, no real way. That was really when my big in the research phase, my big expletive explosion happened, when it was like, oh, this law is about to be passed that gives her more rights. I'm moving the kids to another country. Right, you deserve bad things to happen to you at that point, yes, And then I mean for it to play out exactly as she would have always feared that there wasn't anybody caring for her kids enough, and one of them died as a consequence. Right, There are accounts that indicate that, and they weren't first first person accounts, so they're like interpreted. So I didn't want to include them. But that suggests that, like William was very obviously sick and suffering for like a week before George got him any help. The anger, the anger because I just I don't, okay, hate your wife whatever. That's horrible, but like it is its own thing. But then like to treat your kids that way as a whole other problem, right, and it's just awful, Like, don't don't hate your wife. I'm not saying anything he did do his wife is okay by any means, just like, but like there's a whole different dynamic in play as a parent that like, I I know people mistreat their children, but like that's I can't imagine. Again, I'm not a kids person, and I cannot imagine watching a child suffer for a week and be like I we'll see no, So he's a monster, is the short version. It's interesting to know. I when I was reading about it, I had heard of Caroline Norton before, and I knew that she advocated for divorce, but I did not realize until I was doing this work that she did all that advocacy knowing it would never help her if they changed the law right, And that shifted my gears on how I perceived some of her work after that, where I was like, Oh, this isn't going to help her at all. She's just recognizing that this is a problem. Yeah. Yeah. It's often kind of funny to me that she has lauded as like a great feminist forerunner, and I'm like, kinda, I remember taking I mean, this has been so years ago, like half my life ago at this point, but like I remember taking courses in college, like Women Studies one oh one, and there was a like women Women in Literature course, and we talked about the idea of like proto feminism and how like a lot of historical figures like we can't really characterize as feminist because that concept, like if you wanted to find feminist really broadly, sure, but like that concept didn't really exist, and a lot of individual aspects of a person's advocacy like could be seen as anti feminist today. But like given the context when they were living and doing their work, We're like really groundbreaking. Yeah, yeah, her. The part that gets me is like her whole like, oh no, no, I'm not saying women are equal to heavens, No, that's ridiculous. No, oh gracious no. So I'm like, oh, Caroline, so close. But it does say a lot that she was able to use her position even after I mean, she had every right, after the way that she was treated by the public and particularly social circles, to just be like, um, you all suck, I'm out of Harry, You're on your own. I'm gonna go live quietly and write, and instead she kind of put herself out there a lot, which is interesting. Um, you know, obviously not intersectional feminism now, and obviously you know, very much in the heteronormative man woman approach to marriage, but still pretty pretty interesting though to me that she changed really not one, but two significant laws that still had a long way to go after both of those, but that those were both big steps forward. So it's a bad legacy. Like I said, I'm gonna go visit her blue plaque in a couple of weeks because I will be in London. Yeah, I'm gonna hunt it down. I'm excited for your trip. I already have a local ready to point out it for me. Go there, it is right there. Now, let's go to a pub which something. Yea, Hopefully we will do some fun stuff soon. Yeah, I'm sorry, I keep doing really dark stuff. I don't I don't know why those are the ones that I keep fixating on. I feel like we had a really long stretch of like our early early pandemic years, not comfort episodes, but like everyone was going through a lot, and I think you and I both felt like there was a cap on what our minds could handle. And like now, the like COVID still exists, but the level of like continual stress and chaos is a little bit different for a lot of people. And that's like freed up a few brain cycles to do some other things with. Yes, although I promise I have some light plans ahead. Yeah about murder. No, I'm kidding, I'm I'm kidding, But yeah, thanks for sticking with us through all the dark stuff, all of the criminal cases. We'll be right back here again tomorrow with a classic and then next week with new stuff, and we hope that your weekend if this is your time off is wonderful and restorative, and that you have a delightful time. If you don't have time off for the next couple of days, I still hope you like get some sneaky time to do something fun for yourself, because we all need it. It's vital for our happiness. We will be right back here, like I said, for you tomorrow and beyond. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.