Toughness of Two Pioneers: Daphne Oram and Mary Shelley

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Introduction

In this essay, I am going to discuss how two true pioneering women managed to stand out in a men’s world. Despite the situation at their time, they were able to be key figures in Music and Literature.

Firstly, I will cover how Daphne Oram, with her Oramics Machine, was the first full-time Electronic Music composer in Britain, despite not having the support she needed from BBC and being a woman in the 50s and 60’s of the 20th century.

Secondly, I am going to talk about Mary Shelley and how she went through a lot of adversities, turning that anger and sadness into writing and creating the most well-known terror character of all times, Frankenstein.

And finally, I will explain how the social and political factors at their times potentially influenced their life.

Psychological Resilience

We can say that resilience is fully related to Psychology. For a long time, the psychologists’ view on this matter was not very positive. Not long after World War II the main institutions of psychology began to receive funding to research on this field. (Patterson, J. and Kelleher, P., 2005)

Resilience has been described by experts as the copying agents required to subsist a variety of risk factors. They used a deficits model, observing how people reduced the distance between their shortfalls due to adversity and what they require to work in survival mode. (ibid.)

Nowadays we know resilience as the act of bouncing back or resisting cracking under pressure. According to the American Psychological Association, is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of risk. (American Psychological Association, 2019)

The death of a loved one, losing a job, serious illness or other traumatic events are examples of challenging life experiences. Many people react to this circumstance with a sense of uncertainty, confusion and strong emotions. (ibid)

However, people generally adapt well over time to life-changing situations and stressful conditions. Resilience is the process that enables them to do so, although it requires time and effort. Everybody has resilience. It’s just a matter of how much and how well you put it to good use in your life. (ibid)

Three dimensions form this comprehensive resilience framework: Interpretation of Adversity, Resilience capacity, and Actions to Achieve Resilience. (Patterson, J. and Kelleher, P., 2005)

Success despite difficulties

Life is not easy, as everyone affronts difficulties and obstacles every day, we would all agree that, apart from being beautiful, life is a tough path where the strongest are, most times, the most successful.

If you think about very successful people nowadays, there is always a huge story behind them. Normally a story full of failures and mistakes. The way we learn is through errors, and that is how we become strong. Imagine being underrated by your own company just for being a woman, or losing three of your children and husband before your 30s. That is a massive wall for anyone, but these two women jumped wall after wall, till they reached the goal.

Daphne Oram: Music visionary

When she was eighteen, she rejected a place at the Royal College of Music (London) because she chose to work as a music engineer at the BBC. In just a little time, she became a studio manager and began the struggle to set up a place (freelance studio) located in Kent where she would be able to produce electronic sound effects and music. (Williams, H., 2017)

Daphne early realized the capability of tape handling as soon as the necessary tools to do so came up in the early fifties. Many possibilities like speed up, slow down, splice, chop or layering different sounds could be distorted to make new compositions. (ibid.)

“Just as the camera and cinema film has exploded ideas of time and space in telling stories, surely the microphone and tape could do the same for music,” (Oram D., 1952. As found in Williams, H., 2017)

The main point of joining the BBC back in the forties was the quality and the strength of the courses made for the new workers. Oram did a formation training focused on broadcast engineering. While running this course a special machine aroused interest to Oram, the Cathode Ray Oscilloscope. This device basically is used to show the features of waveforms graphically and therefore helps to understand how the sound works as a physical phenomenon. She wanted to go ahead and research deeply on this machine for her own creative purposes so she did a specific question to the tutor at the course. Would it be possible to reverse the process of the oscilloscope, drawing the waveform in and thereby controlling the harmonic content of the soundwave? (Lehmann, B., 2011)

He said a simple “no,” a word that Daphne interpreted as completely new defiance. It was not very long after this meeting when she started to speak about a “graphical music” system, the beginning of an idea that would change the way of understanding music for the years to come. (ibid.)

BBC didn’t believe in her work; the company was reluctant to invest. Oram had to work on her own using her free time, often staying at the studios till late at night to develop her experimental vision of music, purely electronic music. (ibid.)

“The BBC was an institution run by men, in a world that was more sexist.” (McArthur I., 2017. As found in Williams, H., 2017)

She continued operating in this clandestine manner and composing music for TV. This led to a series of requests within the BBC for electronic music soundtracks and incidental music. What made BBC start to take notice of developments in electronic music on the European continent as well? (Lehmann, B., 2011)

All this hard work ended up with the establishment of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, where she was designated its first Studio Manager. Yet Oram didn’t have that much time at the Workshop. The accentuation on making music for TV projects or advertising didn’t satisfy her wish to make music for its own cause. In this way one year after the Workshop started, she quit to set up her own studios, the Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition and started to develop the Oramics Machine. (British Music Collection., 2018)

Mary Shelley: The woman behind Frankenstein

Mary Shelley was most renowned for her anecdotal composition and the frightful topics she utilized in her pieces. She was conceived in 1797 to guardians who were literary as well as politically active. Her mother was a celebrated women’s activist and author. However, Mary was not fortunate enough to learn from her mother’s knowledge as she passed out not long after Mary was conceived. (Thefamouspeople.com., 2017)

She had to go through a big confusion ever since her childhood when her father got into another marriage and she faced a stepmother who was not fair to her. Notwithstanding, she figured out how to manage and deal with all these situations through her writing and usually spend her time imagining. (ibid.)

This position helped her to conquer the psychological pressure that she was exposed to and also boosted her imagination, which is a key factor to be a good fictional author. Mary didn’t have a normal education but was lucky to be surrounded of many literary prodigies like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and P. B. Shelley. (ibid)

She wrote her first novel ‘Frankenstein’, which is considered as one of the best-known horror stories to date, and the very first Sci-Fi piece. Her eloquent narration and detailed description catch the reader’s attention and absorb them into the novel. (ibid)

A life splashed with tragedy, Shelley has seen her first two children die at a very early age and suffered the suicide of her half-sister. It is the wish to get back her family that inspired many features in Frankenstein. (Hall, H., 2018)

After her husband -Percy Shelley- death in 1822, she went back to London to pursue a very successful author career as a novelist, biographer and travel writer. She additionally edited and promoted her husband’s poems and other different pieces. (The British Library., 2019)

Social influence

Social influence alludes to the manner by which people change their thoughts and behavior to satisfy the needs of a social group, perceived authority, social role or a minority within a group wielding influence over the majority. (Psychologist World., 2019)

When we want to be accepted by a group we usually behave according to their thoughts, we conform to the norms of that group. For example, when we are supporting a football team, we voluntarily wear their shirts to be part of the group. (ibid.)

Solomon Asch is viewed as a pioneer of social psychology. His accordance experiments and tests showed the intensity of social influence and its power over persons. Understanding why individuals adapt and under what conditions they would conflict with their feelings to fit in with the group enables therapists to comprehend when conformity is probably going to happen and what it can be done to forestall it. (Cherry, K., 2019)

However, not everyone follows this rule, and that can be crucial in order to develop your career. Daphne and Mary were, obviously, women at a not especially feminist time and that didn’t stop them. They were an example of how to stand out by being yourself and following your own convictions.

Daphne Oram: XX Century

The life of the normal wedded lady in the 1950s and 1960s was way different from that of the present lady. This age was mainly about conformity and respectability. Only some ladies worked once they were married; they remained at home raising the kids and keeping the house. (Castelow, E., 2013)

The man was viewed as the leader of the family and the house in every aspect; mortgages, bureaucracy, economy. Just the family benefits were paid straight to the mom. If a woman wound up in violent or loveless matrimony, she was trapped; she had no cash of her own, nowhere to go and no opportunities to be employed. (ibid.)

It was unordinary for ladies to go to college, particularly working-class women. The majority of them left school and began to work till they find a man and marry him. Schools arranged young ladies for this kind of life: cooking lessons, household management or how to iron a shirt. Young ladies were prepared to care for their families and the house. (ibid.)

This was not Daphne’s case, as she was a fully independent person. Focused on her career, she never married or had children. (Fused., 2016). Besides that, she started a “male-kind” career as a sound engineer at BBC, becoming manager and ended up opening the doors for a new music genre.

Mary Shelley: XIX Century

During the Victorian time frame, men and women’s roles turned out more deeply defined than ever in history. On prior occasions, it was common for ladies to work with partners, brothers and children (all male members) in the family business. (Hughes, K., 2014)

As the nineteenth-century advanced men progressively drove to their place of work. Spouses, daughters and sisters were left at home to deal with the residential obligations that were mainly done by the attendants. (ibid.)

Back then, the two genres possessed what Victorians thought of as ‘separate spheres’, just meeting up at breakfast and dinner. This belief system was based on a meaning of the ‘natural’ attributes of ladies and men. Men were considered physically stronger yet morally inferior to women, which implied that they were most appropriate for household obligations. (ibid.)Shelley’s life was not conventional, as his mum died right after her birth (Lovejoy, B., 2018) and she didn’t have a ‘classic family’, she had to carry her life on her own and that made her really strong. She was married but didn’t adopt the wife model, instead, Mary dedicated a lifetime to her passion, Literature.

Contrast

In terms of context, we can say that both Mary and Daphne, had to deal with a similar situation. Anyway, there are a few factors in which they differ regarding their epoch. In Daphne’s time, women started to have more rights than a time ago as the right to vote (Adu, A., 2018), while Mary was dealing with a less feminist society.

Although Shelley found the inspiration on her traumatic events, whilst for Daphne was more a challenge to demonstrate that there is another way to create music apart from the conventional.

Conclusion

The problems, experiences, and life changes that Shelley and Oram had to confront at their times never made them give up. Quite the opposite, they became great in the face of adversity, and thanks to that resilience, these geniuses were completely pioneers in their fields.

Daphne Oram did not have the support and funding she needed for her project from the BBC, instead, they lost the chance to develop a new music genre. However, she managed to open her own studios, develop the revolutionary Oramics Machine and open a door for a new generation of musicians.

Mary Shelley suffered the loss of her mother just one month after her birth, and throughout her life –before turning 30- she lost 3 children, her husband and her half-sister, who committed suicide. Despite these tragic events, and probably because of them and the desire to bring them back to life, she created the best-known horror character of all time, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. This masterpiece is considered the very first Science-Fiction piece (Wolfe G.K., 2017). and, therefore, Shelley was a literature pioneer.

Resilience is, definitely, the best way to confront every barrier or traumatic situation. It depends on the person or the severity of the event, it would not take the same time for everyone. But one thing is sure, Mary and Daphne have shown how powerful resilience is and how that can potentially affect your success or breakdown.

References

Resilience

American Psychological Association. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Cohen, H. (2018). What is Resilience? [online] Psych Central. Available at: https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-resilience/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Patterson, J. and Kelleher, P. (2005). A Deeper Meaning of Resilience. [online] Available at: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104003/chapters/A-Deeper-Meaning-of-Resilience.aspx [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Reid, D. (2019). Resilience Theory: What Research Articles in Psychology Teach Us. [online] Positive Psychology. Available at: https://positivepsychology.com/resilience-theory/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].

Daphne Oram

Castelow, E. (2013). The 1950s Housewife. [online] Available at: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-1950s-Housewife/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Lehmann, B. (2011). The story of the Oramics Machine. [online] Available at: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/1305 [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Gardiner, J. (2015). The Story of Women in the 1950s. [online] Available at: https://www.historytoday.com/reviews/story-women-1950s [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Williams, H. (2017). The woman who could ‘draw’ music. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170522-daphne-oram-pioneered-electronic-music [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
British Music Collection. (2018). Daphne Oram. [online] Available at: https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/composer/daphne-oram [Accessed 5 Dic. 2019].
Fused. (2016). Daphne Oram. An Individual note. [online] Available at: https://www.fusedmagazine.co.uk/daphne-oram-individual-note/ [Accessed 5 Dic. 2019]
Adu, A. (2018) Votes for women. [online] Available at: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5253239/womens-vote-uk-suffragette-movement-representation-people-act/ [Accessed 5 Dic. 2019]

Mary Shelley

Hall, H. (2018). Who was Mary Shelley and what inspired Frankenstein? [online] Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/mary-shelley-movie-frankenstein-books-husband-trailer-biography-quotes-a8433531.html [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Hughes, K. (2014). Gender roles in the 19th century. [online] Available at: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
The British Library. (2019). Mary Shelley – author of Frankenstein. [online] Available at: https://www.bl.uk/people/mary-shelley [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Thefamouspeople.com. (2017). Who was Mary Shelley? Everything You Need to Know. [online] Available at: https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/mary-shelley-2302.php [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Lovejoy, B. (2018). Mary Shelley’s Obsession with the Cemetery. [online] Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/mary-shelleys-obsession-with-the-cemetery/ [Accessed 5 Dic. 2019]
Wolfe G.K. (2017). Mary Shelley and the Birth of Science Fiction. [online] Available at: https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/mary-shelley-science-fiction/ [Accessed 5 Dic. 2019]

Social Influence

Psychologist World. (2019). Social Influence: Why We Conform in Groups. [online] Available at: https://www.psychologistworld.com/influence/social-influence [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Cherry, K. (2019). Biography of Psychologist Solomon Asch. [online] Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/solomon-asch-biography-2795519 [Accessed 5 Dic. 2019].

Figures

Figure 1 – ASCD Framework. (2005). [image] Available at: http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/images/publications/books/patterson2005_fig1.1.gif [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Figure 2 – Daphne Oram at BBC Studios picture. (n.d.). [image] Available at: http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/24984/daphne_oram_1531747309_crop_550x275.jpg [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].
Figure 3 – Mary Shelley portrait by Richard Rothwell. (n.d.). [image] Available at: https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/dl%20romantics%20and%20victorians/portraits/dl-portrait-npg-mary-wollstonecraft-shelley.jpg?crop=1&cropX=10&cropY=89&cropW=1627&cropH=915&w=608&h=342&dispW=608&dispH=342 [Accessed 20 Nov. 2019].

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