Introduction
Maria Edgeworth confounds all of our neat categories. Politically, she is elusive – just when you pin her down as a progressive fighter for the rights of the average Irish tenant against the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy (of which she was a part), you run smack into her support of Union and British Empire. Just when you can get comfortable with her sympathetic portrayals of “simple” (that is, unsophisticated, “honest”) characters from other classes you find her saying this: “at present, it is necessary that the education of the different ranks should, in some respects, be different.” (The Parent’s Assistant vii) That phrase “at present” may provide a clue for us to understand her. Edgeworth was raised by a moderate progressive who was first and foremost a son of the Enlightenment, a scientist. She was trained to be observant, sympathetic and responsible for and to, the tenants around her. Above all, she was raised to be scientific, to be a realist. It was that realism and that responsibility she had both to the estate and to the people around it that can inform our understanding of her work. Her observational skills helped her to create characters that accurately represented the voices of those around her. Edgeworth allowed those voices to express their own truths. It was the sympathetic expression of those truths more than an overriding political or economic theory that informed her writing. In her books for children, in particular, Edgeworth portrayed the varied classes and types of people she’d encountered, and attempted to help them understand each other.
Real voices
Edgeworth’s realism, her attempts to portray real situations and characters was unusual for children’s literature at the time, enough so that she felt the need to justify it. In the Preface to the first volume of The Parent’s Assistant (1800), she makes her argument on the use of dialect, stating that “almost all language is metaphoric.” She even equates the slang of the maid with “the most refined language” as it “contains as much and as abstract metaphor.” (viii) For Edgeworth, language is language and writing requires as accurate a representation as possible. Authors writing for children were supposed to model "proper language". Edgeworth accomplished that through middle class adult characters such as the mother in the Rosamond tales. She settled on representing the real language of children (whatever their class) for her child characters. It is, however, a representation. She has often been criticized for essentially “typecasting” her characters, for presenting a characterization. Characters like Lawrence, Jem, Susan and Rosamond may have indeed been drawn to showcase certain values or represent their class but Edgeworth’s talent allowed them to become bigger than that, with voices that resonate throughout the years. Jem’s distress over his mother’s need to sell their horse is palpable as he exclaims in shock that “Must, who says you must? Why must you mother?” (Parent's Assistant vol 1, 7) Susan’s similar cries at the imminent loss of her Guinea hen (Parent’s Assistant vol 2, 60) echoes more than her shock and panic at the casual cruelty of the wealthier child (Barbara) threatening to keep her hen. The hen lays eggs, part of Susan and her father’s supper, and so is a resource, not a pet. Barbara has asked Susan to pay to get her own property back after it flies into her family’s garden. (61) This small incident encapsulates the predicament that Susan, her father, and others faced when asked to pay landlords rent for land they worked themselves, or for land which had formerly been a part of the commons which anyone could use. Characters like Susan and Jem allow the middle class child reader, whose family would have been well off enough to purchase books, to identify with others whose families were less fortunate.
Rosamond
Rosamond, her most famous child character is equally a representative of the middle class and the real voice of a child. It was, in fact, Maria Edgeworth’s voice; she had the rare ability to remember what she had been like as a child. She had the even more rare ability to recreate the experience in stories which also taught a lesson. We may cringe although I would posit that most modern children's stories do the same. As Myers, notes, Edgeworth knew that "Youngsters can't learn from stories if they can't relate to them and don't enjoy them" and "they do so best by offering juvenile readers a recognizable child protagonist to identify with." (Socializing Rosamond, 54) Rosamond is just such a child. She embodies lessons Edgeworth sees necessary for the middle class child, lessons in rational decision making, a lesson girls were still thought to have little possibility of mastering. This rational decision making ability included navigating the new landscape of consumerism. This was, as Norcia points out, a landscape which incorporated a new, uniquely middle class type of ethic and character evaluation based on "economic responsibility." (42) "The Purple Jar" is the most famous of the Rosamond stories to deal with these issues. It was first published in 1796 in The Parent's Assistant, but later moved to Early Lessons in 1801 and republished many times in other collections. In it, Rosamond learns how to evaluate needs and wants and to purchase accordingly. She learns how to behave properly within a market (in this case, the London shops). This is accomplished through experience and natural consequences, the favored pedagogical method Edgeworth uses in her stories. Though advising Rosamond to purchase the new shoes she needs rather than the pretty purple jar she wants, her mother allows her to make her own choice. Of course she chooses the jar, only to discover that it is not actually purple once she throws out the liquid within it, and that she will now have to wear painful shoes, as her mother models economy by waiting rather than buying on credit. As Myers points out, this is more radical than it might appear as it "rewrites cultural stereotypes of females as passive victims." (Socializing Rosamond, 55) It is her own decisions are what lead to her problem, and she is allowed to learn from them.
In other stories which follow this character, we see her further development. In Rosamond's "Day of Misfortunes" (Early Lessons, vol 2) we see her learn to take correct action in spite of her desire, and to begin to control her attitudes and emotions. In amusing and realistically drawn scenes, we watch as Rosamond fails to get out of her warm bed early enough for the days activities with her father. This sets off a cascade of "misfortunes" (as she characterizes it) which ends with a tearful and petulant child. Through the example of her older sister Laura's calm and her mother's help, she learns how to analyze her experience. Her mother leads her through each excuse she offers for her pique until she can state that her "misfortunes...were my own fault." (Frank pt. 2, Rosamond, pts. 1 and 2, 1835) A child, furthermore, a little girl has been taught here to analyze her own attitudes, emotions and actions. This was radical thinking about the capabilities of little girls for rational behavior. Rosamond is a typical seven year old girl, with all the resulting charm and foibles. Edgeworth teaches her rational thinking and proper behavior. The Rosamonds of the world, like Edgeworth herself, grew up to manage households, and often, estates of considerable size. She gives Rosamond agency within this world and then teaches her how to use it properly.
The disenfranchised
Edgeworth did not limit her stories to the Rosamond's world, however. As instructive and interesting as it can be, Edgeworth moved beyond to realistically portray "simple" villagers, the working class and the poor, for the first time in children's literature. In "Lazy Lawrence" she describes the "small neat cottage" of "an elderly woman of the name of Preston." (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 1, a2) This widow is in danger of losing her cottage due to an illness during which "everything went wrong." (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 1, 4) The tale goes on to tell of her and her son Jem's efforts to save their home without having to sell their horse Lightfoot (beloved of Jem). The industry of Jem, who saves the day, is contrasted to the lack of industry embodied by Lawrence. This was part a radical shift for children's literature. Jem and his mother are clearly not part of the the upper or middle class. They rent a cottage in a country village and live off the nosegays she makes and sells from her garden, and off the tourist trade who "Come from Clifton, in the summertime, to eat strawberries and cream in the gardens at Ashton." (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 1, a2) Edgeworth gave her middle and upper class child readers their first look at the lives of those who supplied them with the niceties of nosegays and strawberries. It might also have been the first opportunity those little readers (and their parents) had to emphaise with the precariousness of the lives of these people. Edgeworth was known for her efforts to assist the Irish poor, writing Orlandino in 1848 for their benefit during the famine. (McCormack). Edgeworth portrayed those disenfranchised by the system of land ownership she benefitted from, attempting to engender the sympathy and social responsibility she exhibited so strongly herself.
Simple country folk
Like Jem and Mrs. Preston, "Simple Susan" (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 2) gave Edgeworth's readers a respectful look at a country life rooted in older traditions. . Susan and her friends' May day celebration was a look back for those middle class readers in the cities who had lost touch with these folk rituals. It was also a look at the current conditions of those "simple" country folk who still kept those traditions alive. "Simple" in this context means unspoiled, direct, honest. Susan, her friends, and her family provide a contrast to the manipulative opportunist Attorney Case and his grasping daughter Barbara. Susan is honest and direct while Case and Barbara are under-handed. Their atttempts to take control of "little green nook" (58) next to their garden also connects with arguments around land use and property rights. Edgeworth has created a tale reaching across country/city, class and cultural divides. Susan is, appropriately, the May Queen, signifying new life and beginnings in the old traditions. As such, she provides an image of a new way forward which respects and incorporates the old. Attoney Case attempts to usurp control of the land she would be crowned in, making it part of his own garden. He is the villain of the piece, and Edgeworth is arguing here for the maintenance of common use lands - for communal law and "common rights of access" (Manly, 317) to balance the laws of private ownership. This is a suprising stance for a member of the landowning Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, but understandable when one recognizes her negotiations between the varied aspects of her life contained in her work. As Susan Manly puts it, Edgeworth is "in favor of a more accountable, open and negotiable form of authority - one that recognizes folk culture ." (320) Edgeworth's intent to create understanding across class and culture is threaded through these children's stories. Through her depiction of characters like Susan and her family, Edgeworth allows her middle class readers an opportunity to see and emphasize with their culture.
Conclusion: understanding your neighbors
Edgeworth was in favor of people, both the English and the Irish, country and city, the poor and the middle class. She was in favor of them meeting and understanding each other. She worked to make that understanding possible both in her novels and in her work for children. Even though she supported what we may now cast as a conservative or even imperialist agenda politically, she was at heart a daughter of the Englightnment, and a daughter of all of England and all of Ireland. Her children's books embody a rational education for girls who are presented in ways that highlight their agency. She showcases their responsibility even within the very public, often deceptive and sometimes dangerous space of the shops of London. The first realist English children's author, she presents characters from across the spectrum, crossing boundaries of class and culture. Her narrative "voice is the one of the translator." (Mazurek, 284) Edgeworth introduces her readers to their neighbors, hoping for understanding and the sympathy, justice and peace that understanding can create.
Maria Edgeworth confounds all of our neat categories. Politically, she is elusive – just when you pin her down as a progressive fighter for the rights of the average Irish tenant against the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy (of which she was a part), you run smack into her support of Union and British Empire. Just when you can get comfortable with her sympathetic portrayals of “simple” (that is, unsophisticated, “honest”) characters from other classes you find her saying this: “at present, it is necessary that the education of the different ranks should, in some respects, be different.” (The Parent’s Assistant vii) That phrase “at present” may provide a clue for us to understand her. Edgeworth was raised by a moderate progressive who was first and foremost a son of the Enlightenment, a scientist. She was trained to be observant, sympathetic and responsible for and to, the tenants around her. Above all, she was raised to be scientific, to be a realist. It was that realism and that responsibility she had both to the estate and to the people around it that can inform our understanding of her work. Her observational skills helped her to create characters that accurately represented the voices of those around her. Edgeworth allowed those voices to express their own truths. It was the sympathetic expression of those truths more than an overriding political or economic theory that informed her writing. In her books for children, in particular, Edgeworth portrayed the varied classes and types of people she’d encountered, and attempted to help them understand each other.
Real voices
Edgeworth’s realism, her attempts to portray real situations and characters was unusual for children’s literature at the time, enough so that she felt the need to justify it. In the Preface to the first volume of The Parent’s Assistant (1800), she makes her argument on the use of dialect, stating that “almost all language is metaphoric.” She even equates the slang of the maid with “the most refined language” as it “contains as much and as abstract metaphor.” (viii) For Edgeworth, language is language and writing requires as accurate a representation as possible. Authors writing for children were supposed to model "proper language". Edgeworth accomplished that through middle class adult characters such as the mother in the Rosamond tales. She settled on representing the real language of children (whatever their class) for her child characters. It is, however, a representation. She has often been criticized for essentially “typecasting” her characters, for presenting a characterization. Characters like Lawrence, Jem, Susan and Rosamond may have indeed been drawn to showcase certain values or represent their class but Edgeworth’s talent allowed them to become bigger than that, with voices that resonate throughout the years. Jem’s distress over his mother’s need to sell their horse is palpable as he exclaims in shock that “Must, who says you must? Why must you mother?” (Parent's Assistant vol 1, 7) Susan’s similar cries at the imminent loss of her Guinea hen (Parent’s Assistant vol 2, 60) echoes more than her shock and panic at the casual cruelty of the wealthier child (Barbara) threatening to keep her hen. The hen lays eggs, part of Susan and her father’s supper, and so is a resource, not a pet. Barbara has asked Susan to pay to get her own property back after it flies into her family’s garden. (61) This small incident encapsulates the predicament that Susan, her father, and others faced when asked to pay landlords rent for land they worked themselves, or for land which had formerly been a part of the commons which anyone could use. Characters like Susan and Jem allow the middle class child reader, whose family would have been well off enough to purchase books, to identify with others whose families were less fortunate.
Rosamond
Rosamond, her most famous child character is equally a representative of the middle class and the real voice of a child. It was, in fact, Maria Edgeworth’s voice; she had the rare ability to remember what she had been like as a child. She had the even more rare ability to recreate the experience in stories which also taught a lesson. We may cringe although I would posit that most modern children's stories do the same. As Myers, notes, Edgeworth knew that "Youngsters can't learn from stories if they can't relate to them and don't enjoy them" and "they do so best by offering juvenile readers a recognizable child protagonist to identify with." (Socializing Rosamond, 54) Rosamond is just such a child. She embodies lessons Edgeworth sees necessary for the middle class child, lessons in rational decision making, a lesson girls were still thought to have little possibility of mastering. This rational decision making ability included navigating the new landscape of consumerism. This was, as Norcia points out, a landscape which incorporated a new, uniquely middle class type of ethic and character evaluation based on "economic responsibility." (42) "The Purple Jar" is the most famous of the Rosamond stories to deal with these issues. It was first published in 1796 in The Parent's Assistant, but later moved to Early Lessons in 1801 and republished many times in other collections. In it, Rosamond learns how to evaluate needs and wants and to purchase accordingly. She learns how to behave properly within a market (in this case, the London shops). This is accomplished through experience and natural consequences, the favored pedagogical method Edgeworth uses in her stories. Though advising Rosamond to purchase the new shoes she needs rather than the pretty purple jar she wants, her mother allows her to make her own choice. Of course she chooses the jar, only to discover that it is not actually purple once she throws out the liquid within it, and that she will now have to wear painful shoes, as her mother models economy by waiting rather than buying on credit. As Myers points out, this is more radical than it might appear as it "rewrites cultural stereotypes of females as passive victims." (Socializing Rosamond, 55) It is her own decisions are what lead to her problem, and she is allowed to learn from them.
In other stories which follow this character, we see her further development. In Rosamond's "Day of Misfortunes" (Early Lessons, vol 2) we see her learn to take correct action in spite of her desire, and to begin to control her attitudes and emotions. In amusing and realistically drawn scenes, we watch as Rosamond fails to get out of her warm bed early enough for the days activities with her father. This sets off a cascade of "misfortunes" (as she characterizes it) which ends with a tearful and petulant child. Through the example of her older sister Laura's calm and her mother's help, she learns how to analyze her experience. Her mother leads her through each excuse she offers for her pique until she can state that her "misfortunes...were my own fault." (Frank pt. 2, Rosamond, pts. 1 and 2, 1835) A child, furthermore, a little girl has been taught here to analyze her own attitudes, emotions and actions. This was radical thinking about the capabilities of little girls for rational behavior. Rosamond is a typical seven year old girl, with all the resulting charm and foibles. Edgeworth teaches her rational thinking and proper behavior. The Rosamonds of the world, like Edgeworth herself, grew up to manage households, and often, estates of considerable size. She gives Rosamond agency within this world and then teaches her how to use it properly.
The disenfranchised
Edgeworth did not limit her stories to the Rosamond's world, however. As instructive and interesting as it can be, Edgeworth moved beyond to realistically portray "simple" villagers, the working class and the poor, for the first time in children's literature. In "Lazy Lawrence" she describes the "small neat cottage" of "an elderly woman of the name of Preston." (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 1, a2) This widow is in danger of losing her cottage due to an illness during which "everything went wrong." (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 1, 4) The tale goes on to tell of her and her son Jem's efforts to save their home without having to sell their horse Lightfoot (beloved of Jem). The industry of Jem, who saves the day, is contrasted to the lack of industry embodied by Lawrence. This was part a radical shift for children's literature. Jem and his mother are clearly not part of the the upper or middle class. They rent a cottage in a country village and live off the nosegays she makes and sells from her garden, and off the tourist trade who "Come from Clifton, in the summertime, to eat strawberries and cream in the gardens at Ashton." (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 1, a2) Edgeworth gave her middle and upper class child readers their first look at the lives of those who supplied them with the niceties of nosegays and strawberries. It might also have been the first opportunity those little readers (and their parents) had to emphaise with the precariousness of the lives of these people. Edgeworth was known for her efforts to assist the Irish poor, writing Orlandino in 1848 for their benefit during the famine. (McCormack). Edgeworth portrayed those disenfranchised by the system of land ownership she benefitted from, attempting to engender the sympathy and social responsibility she exhibited so strongly herself.
Simple country folk
Like Jem and Mrs. Preston, "Simple Susan" (The Parent's Assistant, vol. 2) gave Edgeworth's readers a respectful look at a country life rooted in older traditions. . Susan and her friends' May day celebration was a look back for those middle class readers in the cities who had lost touch with these folk rituals. It was also a look at the current conditions of those "simple" country folk who still kept those traditions alive. "Simple" in this context means unspoiled, direct, honest. Susan, her friends, and her family provide a contrast to the manipulative opportunist Attorney Case and his grasping daughter Barbara. Susan is honest and direct while Case and Barbara are under-handed. Their atttempts to take control of "little green nook" (58) next to their garden also connects with arguments around land use and property rights. Edgeworth has created a tale reaching across country/city, class and cultural divides. Susan is, appropriately, the May Queen, signifying new life and beginnings in the old traditions. As such, she provides an image of a new way forward which respects and incorporates the old. Attoney Case attempts to usurp control of the land she would be crowned in, making it part of his own garden. He is the villain of the piece, and Edgeworth is arguing here for the maintenance of common use lands - for communal law and "common rights of access" (Manly, 317) to balance the laws of private ownership. This is a suprising stance for a member of the landowning Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, but understandable when one recognizes her negotiations between the varied aspects of her life contained in her work. As Susan Manly puts it, Edgeworth is "in favor of a more accountable, open and negotiable form of authority - one that recognizes folk culture ." (320) Edgeworth's intent to create understanding across class and culture is threaded through these children's stories. Through her depiction of characters like Susan and her family, Edgeworth allows her middle class readers an opportunity to see and emphasize with their culture.
Conclusion: understanding your neighbors
Edgeworth was in favor of people, both the English and the Irish, country and city, the poor and the middle class. She was in favor of them meeting and understanding each other. She worked to make that understanding possible both in her novels and in her work for children. Even though she supported what we may now cast as a conservative or even imperialist agenda politically, she was at heart a daughter of the Englightnment, and a daughter of all of England and all of Ireland. Her children's books embody a rational education for girls who are presented in ways that highlight their agency. She showcases their responsibility even within the very public, often deceptive and sometimes dangerous space of the shops of London. The first realist English children's author, she presents characters from across the spectrum, crossing boundaries of class and culture. Her narrative "voice is the one of the translator." (Mazurek, 284) Edgeworth introduces her readers to their neighbors, hoping for understanding and the sympathy, justice and peace that understanding can create.