Maria Edgeworth
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Maria Edgeworth lived in more than one world. As part of an Anglo-Irish landowning family, she could have limited her vision to that privileged class, but she saw and wrote beyond it. Her liberal upbringing by her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth and her many stepmothers, allowed her to understand and sympathize with people less fortunate than herself. Her family was concerned not only with the well-being of their tenants but of the Irish poor in general. She wrote to further the cause of abolition, and she was uniquely progressive in her portrayals of the poor and the working class when works for children remained in solidly upper middle class settings. In many ways, her books were attempts to reconcile the disparate sides of her world –her privilege with the poor she tried to help, her belief in Union with her liberalism, Her English roots with her Irish heart.
Edgeworth’s novels embody these attempts at reconciliation. She portrayed the Irish respectfully and realistically in an attempt to reconcile Britain to its “poor relative” who they saw as “downtrodden by Roman Catholicism and its priests, full of drunken and belligerent inhabitants” (Lengel, qtd. in Mazurek, 284). Her use of regional dialect and sympathetic portrayal of customs and conditions was part of this effort. To know is, perhaps, to understand and accept. These efforts extended to the poor and working class as well, as is evident in children’s stories such as “Lazy Lawrence” or “Simple Susan”, both of which portray hardworking families in straightened circumstances and the heroic efforts of the children to save them. In all of her writings she portrayed a variety of life experiences in realistic ways, which often embedded political commentary or carried political ramifications. The Edgeworths were sympathetic to the French revolution yet remained in favor of English and Irish Union. It would be simple (and callous) to make the assumption that they only wanted to maintain their position as part of the Anglo-Irish Ascendency, but Maria’s novels, and her efforts on behalf of her tenants, and of the Irish poor during the Famine years tell a story of real affection. She also, however, embeds a large dose of English ideas about manifest destiny with her emphasis is on landowner's responsibility. This is particularly reflected in novels such as 1812’s The Absentee, about the problems caused by the common practice of landowners living in England and managing their Irish property from a distance. For Edgeworth, knowing and owning and being responsible were inseparable. Direct empirical knowledge informed her politics.
It also informed education, and her realistic portrayals of children. Edgeworth and her father collaborated on books of educational theory such as 1798's Practical Education and 1799's A Rational Primer, based on empirical data. They were working from their experience of teaching the very large brood of children in the family. The Edgeworths had experimented with principles of education proposed by both Locke and Rousseau, and others. They appear to have been the first to collect data on what worked. (Myers, Socializing Rosamond, 54) They were equally unusual in their habit of teaching “en famille”, exposing the children to adult activities, while giving them their own, and responding to their questions (Manly, Chawton House Library online). Her first stepmother, Honora also played an active role, keeping detailed records of the results of their efforts to teach the children. She had a further influence Maria’s writing in that she “impressed upon her husband – and hence upon her step-daughter-the importance of making children in books talk like children in real life” (Scott, 15). Edgeworth took this to heart, not only in the speech of her child characters, but also in her willingness to portray Irish dialect and the slang used by English servants. The observational skills she developed within her family in their approach to education formed a basis for her own finely drawn characters.
Edgeworth's publications of her father's memoirs after his death caused a hailstorm of criticism by those who objected to the Edgeworth’s secular basis for education. There is moral education in her works, and in his memoirs, but no mention of God. Their collaborations also led some early feminist critics to dismiss her as overshadowed by her father, and therefore not notable as an author. This notion of course privileges the Romantic ideal of the single, “original” author so important to the development of the (male) canon. It’s worth noting that the opposite reaction was true for critics of her era. Helen Zimmern, reviewing Practical Education in 1883 justified “Miss Edgeworth’s” writing on the basis that “she did not write from the inner prompting of genius, but rather because it was suggested by her father” (52). Most critics now would not agree with that assessment, but it does reflect a long-standing tradition of familial justification for female authorship, dating back to the Early Moderns. She had more than enough self-motivation and inner genius. The fact that she and her father shared educational ideas does not in the least diminish her work.
It is her realistic portrayal of children that sets Edgeworth apart. Even in her own time, when that realism was new and perhaps questionable, Zimmern said of her that “she not only wrote in the language of children, but, what is even rarer, from the child’s point of view” (57). Few authors have shown children in all their curiosity, obstinacy, charm, rambunctiousness, kindness - in short in all the varied sides of human nature revealed in childhood, with the kind of accuracy and love she employed. Her most famous character, seven year old “Rosamond” is a case in point. She is often willful, sometimes petulant, and infectious in her excitement at the world and in her curiosity. She is a loving realistic portrayal of a little girl with all her foibles and is an utterly, thoroughly endearing character. She was also Edgeworth’s alter-ego. Myers tells of Edgeworth “dramatizing herself as the vivacious and volatile Rosamond in just about the last letter she wrote in her eighties” (Portrait of the Female Artist, 237). She gave us stories drawn from all the children in her life, including herself.
Edgeworth was an influential educator and author, who cared enough about all the varied people in her world to portray them with accuracy and with love. She included everyone in her attempt to help us all understand and appreciate each other. She was a realist in her writing, the first in children’s literature, who felt there was no need for fantasy or fairy tale – real children were more than interesting enough.
Edgeworth’s novels embody these attempts at reconciliation. She portrayed the Irish respectfully and realistically in an attempt to reconcile Britain to its “poor relative” who they saw as “downtrodden by Roman Catholicism and its priests, full of drunken and belligerent inhabitants” (Lengel, qtd. in Mazurek, 284). Her use of regional dialect and sympathetic portrayal of customs and conditions was part of this effort. To know is, perhaps, to understand and accept. These efforts extended to the poor and working class as well, as is evident in children’s stories such as “Lazy Lawrence” or “Simple Susan”, both of which portray hardworking families in straightened circumstances and the heroic efforts of the children to save them. In all of her writings she portrayed a variety of life experiences in realistic ways, which often embedded political commentary or carried political ramifications. The Edgeworths were sympathetic to the French revolution yet remained in favor of English and Irish Union. It would be simple (and callous) to make the assumption that they only wanted to maintain their position as part of the Anglo-Irish Ascendency, but Maria’s novels, and her efforts on behalf of her tenants, and of the Irish poor during the Famine years tell a story of real affection. She also, however, embeds a large dose of English ideas about manifest destiny with her emphasis is on landowner's responsibility. This is particularly reflected in novels such as 1812’s The Absentee, about the problems caused by the common practice of landowners living in England and managing their Irish property from a distance. For Edgeworth, knowing and owning and being responsible were inseparable. Direct empirical knowledge informed her politics.
It also informed education, and her realistic portrayals of children. Edgeworth and her father collaborated on books of educational theory such as 1798's Practical Education and 1799's A Rational Primer, based on empirical data. They were working from their experience of teaching the very large brood of children in the family. The Edgeworths had experimented with principles of education proposed by both Locke and Rousseau, and others. They appear to have been the first to collect data on what worked. (Myers, Socializing Rosamond, 54) They were equally unusual in their habit of teaching “en famille”, exposing the children to adult activities, while giving them their own, and responding to their questions (Manly, Chawton House Library online). Her first stepmother, Honora also played an active role, keeping detailed records of the results of their efforts to teach the children. She had a further influence Maria’s writing in that she “impressed upon her husband – and hence upon her step-daughter-the importance of making children in books talk like children in real life” (Scott, 15). Edgeworth took this to heart, not only in the speech of her child characters, but also in her willingness to portray Irish dialect and the slang used by English servants. The observational skills she developed within her family in their approach to education formed a basis for her own finely drawn characters.
Edgeworth's publications of her father's memoirs after his death caused a hailstorm of criticism by those who objected to the Edgeworth’s secular basis for education. There is moral education in her works, and in his memoirs, but no mention of God. Their collaborations also led some early feminist critics to dismiss her as overshadowed by her father, and therefore not notable as an author. This notion of course privileges the Romantic ideal of the single, “original” author so important to the development of the (male) canon. It’s worth noting that the opposite reaction was true for critics of her era. Helen Zimmern, reviewing Practical Education in 1883 justified “Miss Edgeworth’s” writing on the basis that “she did not write from the inner prompting of genius, but rather because it was suggested by her father” (52). Most critics now would not agree with that assessment, but it does reflect a long-standing tradition of familial justification for female authorship, dating back to the Early Moderns. She had more than enough self-motivation and inner genius. The fact that she and her father shared educational ideas does not in the least diminish her work.
It is her realistic portrayal of children that sets Edgeworth apart. Even in her own time, when that realism was new and perhaps questionable, Zimmern said of her that “she not only wrote in the language of children, but, what is even rarer, from the child’s point of view” (57). Few authors have shown children in all their curiosity, obstinacy, charm, rambunctiousness, kindness - in short in all the varied sides of human nature revealed in childhood, with the kind of accuracy and love she employed. Her most famous character, seven year old “Rosamond” is a case in point. She is often willful, sometimes petulant, and infectious in her excitement at the world and in her curiosity. She is a loving realistic portrayal of a little girl with all her foibles and is an utterly, thoroughly endearing character. She was also Edgeworth’s alter-ego. Myers tells of Edgeworth “dramatizing herself as the vivacious and volatile Rosamond in just about the last letter she wrote in her eighties” (Portrait of the Female Artist, 237). She gave us stories drawn from all the children in her life, including herself.
Edgeworth was an influential educator and author, who cared enough about all the varied people in her world to portray them with accuracy and with love. She included everyone in her attempt to help us all understand and appreciate each other. She was a realist in her writing, the first in children’s literature, who felt there was no need for fantasy or fairy tale – real children were more than interesting enough.