Born: 12 June 1802, United Kingdom
Died: 27 June 1876
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
The following was written by Sienna Halstead for iFeminist and is republished with permission.
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.
The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.
Harriet Martineau, an English author. She was descended from the Huguenots, a party of whom, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled in Norwich, England, where Harriet was born. She received a liberal education, and at an early age, being afflicted with a constantly increasing deafness, found her chief recreation in literary composition.
When her father died in 1826 he left his family destitute, and Harriet was compelled to rely upon her pen for support. Another sorrow at this time was the death of a young minister to whom she was engaged to be married. During these days of poverty she worked all day long with her needle, and at night with her pen, earning very little in both ways. For two years she lived on fifty pounds a year. She offered her sketches to editors of magazines and publishers, and they were scarcely looked at. Under the guise of fiction, she wrote books on religion, political economy, property, taxes, wealth, labor, and subjects pertaining to good citizenship.
After five years of struggle, during which she was compelled to solicit subscriptions for her own books, her talents at last won pronounced recognition, and she was besought on every side to make up various subjects for treatment.
She was now thirty years of age, and moved to London, where a life of fame and honor in the great world began. She met and enjoyed the most noted people of her time, among them Southey, Coleridge, Florence Nightingale, Charlotte Brontë, Sydney Smith, Landseer, Browning and Carlyle. Her books were read and talked about everywhere.
In 1834 she visited the United States, and met socially the most distinguished persons, among them Webster, Clay, Chief Justice Marshall, Garrison and Emerson. “She is the most continual talker I ever heard,” said Hawthorne, “it is like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible too; and all the while she talks, she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself.”
She came to America for rest, and yet such a woman could not help studying our institutions and our people. On her return to England she wrote her work called Society in America, in which she showed a wonderful knowledge of our plan of government, our politics, our charities, indeed our whole country, with its unsolved problems. In this book, published in 1837, she advocated suffrage for women.
After a long illness, she bought, in 1845, two acres of land, and built her pretty graystone cottage, near Ambleside, on Lake Windermere, where she lived until her death. Here she met the aged poet Wordsworth, and here she wrote numerous books on many subjects, always with a clear head and a brave heart.
Her death caused mourning throughout England, and on this side of the ocean the sorrow was not less genuine and the honor not less universal.
A statue of her in white marble was unveiled in Boston in 1883, on which occasion in his last public speech, Wendell Phillips said: “In an epoch fertile of great genius among women, it may be said of Miss Martineau, that she was the peer of the noblest, and that her influence on the progress of the age was more than equal to that of all the others combined.”
The following is excerpted from Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.
Harriet L. Martineau, English Authoress, 1802 – 1876 A.D.
Her ancestors were French and moved to England upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Her education was thorough as the times afforded for women. Hers was a strong character. While she had earnestness, courage, and sincerity, she was self-willed, self-opinionated, and self-conscious. She says of herself in her autobiography, that she was possessed of a temper “downright devilish” and had a “capacity for jealousy which was something frightful,” at the age of four years.
She was the sixth child in a household of eight. It was a busy, hard-working family. She was early afflicted with deafness, which increased with years and her mind was much shut in.
She found it necessary to do something which could not be performed apart from others, and turned to study, which became a passion. Her father lost his property and all were obliged to do something, not merely for an occupation but for a livelihood.
1825-26 was a time of speculations, collapses, and crashes. The bitter experiences of her family influenced her literary career. In this school of experience she learned to write on the burning questions of State, and especially political economy. Her experiences and vehement disposition made these works mightily trenchant.
Eminent statesmen asked her to write on almost every conceivable topic connected with legislation. Lord Brougham offered to collect evidence for her series on the Poor Laws and place it at her disposal. The Series was successful beyond her dreams. She tells her experience of a visit into the outer air for the first thorough holiday taken for nearly three years.
So she came to the United States on her completion of her English Political Tales. Everywhere she was graciously received, though her strong anti-slavery utterances detracted from her popularity in some places. But this is to her honor.
She was impatient and cared only to speak the truth with the greatest possible force.
The following is excerpted from A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, written by John W. Cousins and published in 1929 by J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
MARTINEAU, HARRIET (1802-1876). —Novelist and economist, b. at Norwich, where her f., descended from a French family, was a manufacturer. From her earliest years she was delicate and very deaf, and took to literary pursuits as an amusement. Afterwards, when her f. had fallen into difficulties, they became her means of support. Her first publication was Devotional Exercises for Young Persons (1823). Becoming interested in political economy, she endeavoured to illustrate the subject by tales, of which two were The Rioters and The Turn-out. Later she pub. a more serious treatment of it in Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-4), Poor Law and Paupers (1833), and Illustrations of Taxation (1834). About this time she went to London, and was regarded as an authority on economic questions, being occasionally consulted by Cabinet Ministers. Among her books of travel are Society in America (1837), and Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), which she considered her best book: in it she declared herself no longer a believer in revelation. She also wrote two novels, Deerbrook (1839), and The Hour and the Man (1840), also a number of books for children. Perhaps her most important work is her History of England during the Thirty Years’ Peace, 1816-46, which appeared in 1849. She translated Comte’s Philosophy (1853), and pub. a collection of letters between herself and Mr. H.G. Atkinson On the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, which encountered severe criticism. In addition to her separate publications she wrote innumerable articles for newspapers, specially the Daily News, and for periodicals. In 1845 she settled in the Lake District, where she died.