Harriet Martineau (12 June 1802 – 27 June 1876) was an English social theorist.Hill, Michael R. (2002) Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives. Routledge. She wrote from a sociological, holistic, religious and feminine angle, translated works by Auguste Comte, and, rare for a woman writer at the time, earned enough to support herself.
Martineau advised a focus on all aspects of society, including the role of the home in domestic life as well as key political, religious, and social institutions. The young Princess Victoria enjoyed her work and invited her to her coronation in 1838. The novelist Margaret Oliphant called her "a born lecturer and politician... less distinctively affected by her sex than perhaps any other, male or female, of her generation."
Her commitment to abolitionism has seen Martineau's achievements studied world-wide, particularly at American institutions of higher education. When unveiling a statue of Martineau in December 1883 at the Old South Meeting House in Boston, Wendell Phillips referred to her as the "greatest American abolitionist".
Early life
Born in Norwich, England, Harriet Martineau was the sixth of the eight children of Thomas, a textile manufacturer. He served as deacon of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich from 1797. Her mother, Elizabeth (née Rankin), was the daughter of a sugar refiner and grocer. Harriet's five older siblings included two sisters and three brothers. In age order their names were, Elizabeth, Thomas, Henry, Robert and Rachel Ann. Harriet's two younger siblings were James and the youngest of the eight, Ellen. Martineau was closest to her brother James, who became a philosopher and clergyman in the tradition of the English Dissenters.
The Martineau family was of French Huguenot ancestry and professed Unitarian views. Harriet's family was financially comfortable and they were close friends with the Gurney family of Earlham Hall, Norfolk. Harriet's father, Thomas, owned the leasehold of the Gurney's home in Gurney Court, off Magdalen Street, Norwich, Harriet's birthplace. The family's wealth remained intact until after the panic of 1825, a stock market and banking crash.
According to the writer Diana Postlethwaite, Harriet's relationship with her mother was strained and lacking affection, which contributed to views expressed in her later writing. Martineau claimed her mother abandoned her to a wet nurse. It was a tradition for mothers to hire wet nurses for their children, especially if they could not nurse their child by themselves. However the nurse that Harriet's mother hired could not produce sufficient milk. This left Harriet starved for the first few weeks of her life, to which her mother attributed all of Harriet's future ailments.
Harriet's ideas on domesticity and the "natural faculty for housewifery", as described in her book Household Education (1848), stemmed from her lack of nurture growing up. It was found that affection shown toward Harriet by her mother was quite rare. There have been findings that suggested that Harriet had imagined angels coming to take her away, which was thought to symbolise her wish to find a way to escape her mother's reign through suicide.
Although their relationship was better in adulthood, Harriet saw her mother as the antithesis of the warm and nurturing qualities which she knew to be necessary for girls at an early age. Her mother urged all her children to be well read, but at the same time opposed female pedantics "with a sharp eye for feminine propriety and good manners. Her daughters could never be seen in public with a pen in their hand". Despite this conservative approach to raising girls, Harriet was not the only academically successful daughter in the family; her sister Rachel ran her own Unitarian academy with artist Hilary Bonham Carter as one of her students. Mrs Martineau strictly enforced proper feminine behaviour, pushing her daughter to "hold a sewing needle" as well as the (hidden) pen.
Her uncles included the surgeon Philip Meadows Martineau (1752–1829), whom she had enjoyed visiting at his nearby estate, Bracondale Lodge, and businessman and benefactor Peter Finch Martineau.
Education In the Martineau family, Harriet's mother Elizabeth made sure all her children received a proper education. With the Martineaus being Unitarian, both the boys and girls in the family were expected to receive a conventional education. Harriet was taught at home by several of her elder siblings in the beginning of her education. Harriet was taught French by her mother, which was the predominant language spoken by her father. He taught her Latin and her brother Thomas taught Harriet maths and writing. Being taught at home especially by all her siblings often led to mockery.
When she was nine years old Harriet transitioned to a small school run by a man named Perry. He was supposedly one of the first people to provide her with a positive and non-judgmental learning environment. Late in life, Harriet claimed that Perry's school was the catalyst for her intellectual development and interest in education. As her education progressed she grew fond of the subjects of Shakespeare, political economy, philosophy and history. Despite her love for these topics, her mind was often dominated by the three biggest insecurities in her life: her hearing disability, her poor handwriting, and the look of her hair.
The next step in Harriet Martineau's education came when she received an invitation from the girls' boarding school that her Aunt and Uncle Kentish ran in Bristol. Besides the standard course she took at the school, Harriet began her lifelong self-directed research here. She studied on her own Latin, Greek, Italian, and took a deeper interest in the Bible. Until her brother James, who was born when she was 3 years old, went off to Manchester New College of York in 1821, she did not write often. James and Harriet had a great relationship, so James had suggested that Harriet begin writing as a way to cope with their separation.
Writing career
Martineau began losing her senses of taste and smell at a young age. She was deaf and having to use an ear trumpet at the age of 12. However, it was said that Harriet did not utilise the ear trumpet until her late twenties as she was trying to avoid harassment from others by doing so. It was the beginning of many health problems in her life. With such an early onset of illness, and the death of her father, requiring her to make a living for herself, she became an avid writer. In 1821, she began to write anonymously for the Monthly Repository, a Unitarian periodical. Her first contribution was "Female Writers of Practical Divinity", and in 1823 she published Devotional Exercises and Addresses, Prayers and Hymns.
In 1823 Harriet's brother James introduced her to a friend from school, John Hugh Worthington. The two were engaged but did not marry as Worthington fell ill and died. Martineau reveals in her autobiography that she was in a strange sense relieved in the long run that marriage was not an option, as their relationship was filled with stress and disagreements. Martineau remained unmarried.
Her earliest novels were also published during these years, beginning with Principle and Practice in 1827 and Five Years of Youth: or, Sense and Sentiment in 1829.
Her father died in 1826 and in 1829, the family's textile business failed. Martineau, then 27 years old, stepped out of the traditional roles of feminine propriety to earn a living for her family. Along with her needlework, she began selling her articles to the Monthly Repository, earning accolades, including three essay prizes from the Unitarian Association. Her regular work with the Repository helped establish her as a reliable and popular freelance writer.
In Martineau's Autobiography, she reflects on her success as a writer and her father's business failure, which she describes as "one of the best things that ever happened to us". She described how she could then "truly live instead of vegetate".Harriet Martineau from her "Autobiography", The Norton Anthology of English Literature Eighth Edition Volume E: The Victorian Age, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2006, pp. 1589–1592. Her reflection emphasises her experience with financial responsibility in her life while she writes "[her] fusion of literary and economic narratives".
Harriet's first commissioned book, Illustrations of Political Economy,Full text at The Online Library of Liberty was a fictional tutorial intended to help the general public understand the ideas of Adam Smith. Illustrations was published in February 1832 in an edition of just 1500 copies, since the publisher assumed it would not sell well. Yet it quickly became highly successful and would steadily out-sell the work of Charles Dickens. Illustrations was her first work to receive widespread acclaim, and its success served to spread the free-market ideas of Adam Smith and others throughout the British Empire. Martineau then agreed to compose a series of similar monthly stories over a period of two years, the work being hastened by having her brother James also work on the series with her.
The subsequent works offered fictional tutorials on a range of political economists such as James Mill, Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo, the latter especially forming her view of rent law. Martineau relied on Malthus to form her view of the tendency of human population to exceed its means of subsistence. However, in stories such as "Weal and Woe in Garvelock", she promoted the idea of population control through what Malthus referred to as "voluntary checks" such as voluntary chastity and delayed marriages.
Martineau was invited to the coronation of Queen Victoria by the Queen herself. She recorded a sceptical view of the day.. Martineau recorded some favourable comments, but on the whole thought that the ceremony was "highly barbaric", "worthy only of the old Pharaonic times in Egypt", and "offensive ... to the God of the nineteenth century in the Western world".
One of Martineau's most popular works of fiction was Deerbrook (1839). The book drew attention because it focused on the idea of domestic realism – often referred to as "sentimental" or "woman's" fiction. As the genre suggests, Martineau explores themes of marriage, wealth distribution, female friendship beyond the "domestic" nature that one might expect from a Victorian novel. Martineau's ideas in the novel were inspired by the works of David Hartley. This novel was different from her other works as her development was evident. Her development included both her improvement of fictional writing but also showed mastery of the theories she wrote about.
London and the United States In the early 19th century, most social institutions and norms were shaped by gender, or the perception of what was appropriate for men versus for women. Writing was no exception; non-fiction works about social, economic and political issues were dominated by men, while limited areas, such as romance fiction, and topics dealing with domesticity were considered to be appropriate for women authors. Despite these gendered expectations in the literary world, Martineau strongly expressed her opinions on a variety of topics.
Martineau's frequent publication in the Monthly Repository acquainted her with editor Rev. William Johnson Fox. First coming to London around 1830, Martineau joined Fox's social circle of prominent thinkers, which also introduced her to Erasmus Alvey Darwin, older brother to Charles Darwin.