‘The Knight's Move’: Fluidity of Identity and Meaning in Mary Butts's Armed with Madness

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. In The Crystal Cabinet, first published in 1937, Butts writes strongly against the then current rise of Nazism in Germany and its attendant loss of liberties (180). In her introduction to Mary Butts's journals, Nathalie Blondel responds to criticisms of anti-Semitism levelled against Butts, particularly in respect of The Death of Felicity Taverner. Among other things, Blondel notes that Butts was enraged and horrified when a friend ‘riled me [by] calling me “anti-Semite”, when I hate cruelty as much as he, & only want—not to repeat pious platitudes about how wicked it all is, patting myself on the back for being English—but want to understand how & why it all happens; why people like ourselves can concur at least in things, action, which make him & me sick’ (Butts qtd in Journals, 18–20).

2. Blondel reports that Butts had read both Freud and Jung and was particularly influenced by the latter's work (Journals, p. 2).

3. Butts's intellectual interests were wide-ranging; in addition to the arts and psychology, she was fascinated by mathematics and physics. Her journals include many references to Einstein and demonstrate how he influenced her work when she was beginning to think about Armed with Madness. In October 1925 she wrote, ‘All in Einstein, what's going to happen to me isn't known to another, because it hasn't happened yet. Things have happened & have not happened. Are they ever happening? Yes. Do they ever stop happening? Are they ever over?’ (Butts 2002:217)