Harriet Martineau was born June 12, 1802 in Norfolk, England to Thomas and Elizabeth Martineau. Thomas was a textile manufacturer, and Elizabeth’s family worked in the business of sugar refinery. Her parents were Unitarians – believers in God as one holy being, rather than the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and held relatively progressive beliefs about the education of girls; all four daughters received an education, alongside the four sons. Despite these progressive beliefs, the expectations laid upon the girls of the family still encouraged them to stay home and become housewives. Growing up, Martineau spent time in the care of different relatives for her health, with digestive problems and partial deafness starting at age twelve. She describes in her autobiography how deaf children were not adequately cared for, and that she was grateful she was able to progress in her education before the onset of her disability. Martineau largely recounts an unhappy childhood and deprivation of her mother’s care. Despite that, though, Matineau had a deep, maternal care for her younger brother James.
James introduced Martineau to a man named John Hugh Worthington, who Martineau would later become engaged to. However, Worthington died from a serious illness before they were able to get married. Although Martineau was saddened by his death, she felt relief to be free from marriage and to live her own life. In 1826, Martineau’s father died. His death forced her to find some way to support herself, since she was considered unfit to marry at that pointdue to her disabilities. As a result, Martineau began selling her articles and skilled needlepoint to earn money. One of her first entrances into the writing world was in 1923, when she wrote an anonymous article critiquing her parents unwillingness to let their daughters pursue higher education. It was titled “On Female Education,” and was published in a Unitarian journal called the Monthly Repository. “On Female Education” was an early primer to the large amounts of writing Martineau would dedicate to the improvement of female education. Martineau was mildly successful in keeping her family afloat on needlepoint and writing, but it was with the first publishing of Illustrations of Political Economy that she gained widespread attention. The launch of Martineau’s series, Illustrations of Political Economy (1833-4), established her as a writer. Furthermore, the series gained enough popularity that she moved to London to become a writer full-time. The collection of short stories mediated and reflected on the new science of political economy and was written with the ordinary reader in mind. The series revealed strong influences on her intellectual thinking – such as Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and Thomas Malthus. By 1834, ten thousand copies of the book were selling every month. She followed this series with two other series: Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated (1833-4) and Illustrations of Taxation (1834). Overall, Martineau’s newfound success brought financial security and stability to her life.
Her curious and adventurous spirit prompted her to pursue a two year tour of North America starting in 1834 because she was interested in observing how the new democratic principles of America were working. Immediately, she joined the abolitionist movement and wrote against slavery, as well as about society and culture broadly in America. While in America, she wrote How to Observe, which is widely considered the first formal written work on the practice of ethnography: the scientific description of customs of cultures and people. Upon Martineau’s return to Europe, she authored Society in America (1837). This work was mainly a critique of America, especially the way it treated women. One chapter was titled “The Political Non-Existence of Women,” in which she writes, “The intellect of women is confined by an unjustifiable restriction of... education... As women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given... The choice is to either be 'ill-educated, passive, and subservient, or well-educated, vigorous, and free only upon sufferance.”
In 1839, at the age of thirty-seven, Martineau was diagnosed with “a retroverted uterus” and “polypus tumors” – a diagnosis that would most likely be different today, but modern doctors lack enough historical information to accurately pinpoint what this condition truly was. As a result of this diagnosis, she became confined to her house during her nearly five-year battle with illness. Fortunately, Martineau had enough social and economic sway to take control of her medical care and body, a decision highly unusual for women during a time where they were seen as weak both physically and mentally. In fact, she was able to write a children’s book, Life in the Sickroom, that was both an introspective and widely applicable examination into the long-term effects of illness and the interpersonal relations experiences during illness, specifically the emotional labor performed by the sick patient. Illness and time spent in a sickroom was a common experience during the Victorian era, and the book soon became a bestseller. Martineau was unique in the fact that she didn’t shy away from or try to obscure her illness and disability; instead, she discussed it openly and used it to push back against the stigma surrounding health and gender in Victorian society. She garnered criticism from the medical community for her outspoken nature, but it did not discourage her. In the fall of 1844, Martineau claimed to have been cured by “Mesmerism”, the practice of healing a person by “readjusting the flow of an invisible internal flow”. Following this, she published Letters On the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development (1851), a compilement of letters between her and her “mesmeric advisor” which contained some of her most blatant rejections of religion. This drastically upset her relationship with her brother, who was a theologist and devout member of the Unitarian church. As well, she garnered criticism from the medical community, who considered this cure as delusional and irresponsibly discussed by Martineau. In her normal fashion, however, she stood steadfast in her beliefs.
After successfully recovering, Martineau began writing regularly for the Daily News from 1852-1866, during which she would go on to write over 1,600 articles in total. Some of her most scholarly work was a freely translated and condensed version of Auguste Comte's Cours de Philosophie Positive in 1853. At the time, Auguste Comte was a leading French philosopher and is now considered a founding father of sociological theory. Through this translation, Martineau effectively brought the work of Comte to the English-speaking world. Comte’s ideas coincided with the wave of new understanding of science and scientific thinking, disturbing the religious convictions of many during the Victorian age. Comte presented a sort of “religion of humanity” based on science, which Martineau came to adopt.
Unfortunately, in the early part of 1855, Martineau fell ill again, with what was believed at the time to be heart disease. Believing she was going to die, she rapidly wrote and completed an autobiography but delayed its publication until after her death. Martineau would go on to live another two decades, continuing her work in writing in activism – including an 1866 project where she joined with a group of other feminists to present a petition to the British Parliament to grant women the right to vote.
Matineau died at the age of 74 on June 27, 1876 in Ambleside from bronchitis. She was one of the rare women of the Victorian Era to choose to never marry. Over her life, she published 35 books and countless essays and articles. Martineau was very aware death was approaching for her, but she wrote about how it felt calming and not scary at all – if anything, she felt a new relish for life. Her autobiography would be completed by Maria Weston Chapman, an American abolitionist friend, and published in 1877. At the time, it was rare for an autobiography to be published by a woman, and Matineau’s writing was characterized as “philosophic to the core”, exploring almost every aspect of her own life and society. Martineau’s name is now listed on the Reformer’s Memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
Why Did I Choose to Research Harriet Martineau?
I first came across her name in the sociology textbook I was reading for an online summer class, and learned she was one of the first female social theorists to highlight the experiences of women, marriage, and children in societies. I instantly became intrigued, because I had never heard her name before but she had contributed so largely to a field of study that is very pertinent to my life. Although Matineau is rarely mentioned, she was critical to the development of early sociology. I wanted to spread awareness of her ground-breaking life, to exemplify how women have always been ambitious and intelligent even in the face of adversity. For anyone who engages now in conversations about structural misogyny or feminism, it is important to acknowledge the pioneering work Martineau did in bringing women into sociology as a point of study.
Works Cited
1.2C: Early Social Research and Martineau. (2018, July 26). Retrieved August 18, 2024, from Social Sci LibreTexts website:https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Sociology_(Boundless)/01%3A_Sociology/1.02%3A_The_History_of_Sociology/1.2C%3A_Early_Social_Research_and_Martineau#:~:text=Martineau%20introduced%20feminist%20sociological%20perspectives
Harriet Martineau. (n.d.). Retrieved August 12, 2024, from More Than Our Childhoods website:https://www.morethanourchildhoods.org/stories/harriet-martineau/
Harriet Martineau (1802-76) – Martineau Society. (n.d.). Retrieved August 3, 2024, from The Martineau Society website:https://martineausociety.co.uk/the-martineaus/harriet-martineau/
Harriet Martineau | British Author | Britannica. (2019). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved fromhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Harriet-Martineau
Humanist Heritage: Harriet Martineau (1802-1876). (n.d.). Retrieved August 18, 2024, from Humanist Heritage website:https://heritage.humanists.uk/harriet-martineau/
Magazine, S., & Boissoneault, L. (2021, November 4). The Victorian Woman Writer Who Refused to Let Doctors Define Her. Retrieved August 12, 2024, from Smithsonian Magazine website:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-victorian-woman-writer-who-refused-to-let-doctors-define-her-180978988/#:~:text=As%20a%20child%2C%20she%20suffered
Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, April 23). Harriet Martineau. Retrieved August 18, 2024, from Wikipedia websitehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Martineau
This article was published on 11/3/2024