[lbo-talk] Mary Gabriel on "the tool" Jenny von Westphalen married

[Julio Huato]

"That was the Romantic rebel Jenny von Westphalen fell in love with.
This provincial man-child, who dared to declare himself *a tool* for
the improvement of all mankind, embodied the heroes in the books her
father gave her---he was Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister and Schiller’s Karl
von Moor, and he would be Shelley’s Prometheus, chained to a precipice
because he dared to challenge a tyrannical god. In the young man four
years her junior who stood before her bursting with self-confidence
and courage, absolutely convinced of the powers of his intellect (even
if he wasn’t sure where those considerable powers and that intellect
would take him), she recognized her idol."

Gabriel, Mary. Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of
a Revolution (Kindle Locations 1366-1369). Hachette Book Group. Kindle
Edition.