Philanderer, Fornicator,
Father of Bastards and Feminist, Maybe.

 

A man of talent, aye.
Father of illegitimate children.
A radical, aye.
Secret admirer of the French Revolution.
An enigma, aye.
Feminist or sex addict?

Whilst researching this, I realised that R. Burns Esq. was many different things to many different people. Several articles extolled the virtues of The Rights of Woman and concluded he was an early feminist. Whilst others searched deeper and found some rather damning quotes in private. So how did Burns view women.

There is no doubt he got his leg over at every available opportunity and my gut feeling is, he didn’t have to try too hard. Monogamy was not in his vocabulary.
In The Rights of Woman he tells us women have the right to protection, decorum (good manners) and admiration. A little out of step, perhaps, with the majority of his fellow Georgian Scotsmen. Did Burns really believe this or was he just saying what he thought or knew women wanted to hear. Thus making his conquests a little easier.

Did he give Jean Armour protection? He gave her illegitimate children and made her wait around three years for marriage. Did he give her good manners when he was possibly two-timing her with Highland Mary. Did he give her admiration, probably when she took in one of his barstart weans following the death of the child’s mother. I sincerely hope Jean Armour gave him some stick and was not a woman who thought any man was better than no man.

I’m not sure if Scots schoolchildren are force-fed Burns as the English are Shakespeare. In my experience this gave me a dislike of Shakespeare until I was well into my 40’s. Perhaps if they introduced young adults to the collection of his and other works titled The Merry Muses of Caledonia, they’d be hooked. How many adolescents could resist an ode called The Fornicator.
There are those that would sigh and proclaim that he was a rascal and without women would not have produced the work he did. There are those who would say, viewed through 21st century eyes, he was a sex pest. Maybe he was the Michael Douglas of Ayrshire. Either way it is difficult to deny he was a complicated man and I’m sure he enjoyed all the attention and promoting this perception of himself.

He boasted of his conquests, not displaying such good manners to the women concerned and once wrote to a friend, ‘I took the opportunity of some dry horse litter and gave her such a thundering scalade that electrified the very marrow of her bones’. I think oor Rabbie had a somewhat inflated opinion of his own prowess. Although one piece of Burns’ bragging made me smile, when I recognised the military connotation. ‘I had found means to slip a detachment into the very citadel’. Once again not conferring on women the decorum preached to others, but possibly the appreciation!

I found it interesting that most of his dalliances were with working women, I hesitate to say serving. Did a better class of woman find him somewhat crass? To bawdy for polite society. Or did they see through him? Two of his private comments, maybe show us a different side to Mr Burns.

Even a silly woman has her warlike arts, her tongue and eyes, her dreaded spear and darts.

Butterflies of the human kind; remarkable only for and distinguished only by the idle variety of the gaudy flore; sillily straying from one blossoming weed to another.

Can’t decide if this is a dig at women or the men he refers to as blossoming weeds.

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