Charlotte Haldane

Charlotte Haldane (; 27 April 1894 – 16 March 1969) was a British feminist writer. Her second husband was the biologist J.B.S. Haldane.

Biography Charlotte Franken was born in Sydenham, London. Her parents were Jewish immigrants, her father, Joseph, a German fur trader. In 1906 the family moved to Antwerp. She enrolled on a typing course in London. Charlotte later described herself as a "feminist and suffragette" from the age of sixteen.

Her 1927 book Motherhood and Its Enemies drew some criticism for its attacks on spinsters and suffragettes for "devaluing motherhood" and causing male-female "sex antagonism." Despite Charlotte Haldane's feminism, Sheila Jeffreys has called Motherhood and its Enemies "an antifeminist classic".

In 1937 Charlotte joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. Later she acted as a guide and interpreter to Paul Robeson when he toured the country during the war. Her son, Ronny, also joined the International Brigades and was wounded in the arm, returning to Britain in the autumn of 1937.

Charlotte Haldane was sent to the Moscow by the Daily Sketch to report on the Soviets' progress in defending themselves against the German invasion of 1941 (called Operation Barbarossa). She witnessed peasant protests against collectivisation and became disillusioned with the monolithic defence of Soviet communism, which J.B.S. still believed in, writing about it in Russian Newsreel.

She spent her last years writing biographies of several historical figures. She died in 1969 from pneumonia.