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Unit 21: Harriet Martineau-On Marriage: Introduction and Detailed Study

In Society in America, the scholar angrily criticized the state of women’s education. She wrote, “The Notes
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.” Her article “The Martyr Age of the United States”
(1839), in the Westminster Review, introduced English readers to the struggles of the abolitionists in
America several years after Britain had abolished slavery.
In October 1836, soon after returning from the voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin went to
London to stay with his brother Erasmus. He found him spending his days “driving out Miss
Martineau”, who had returned from her trip to the United States. Charles wrote to his sister, “Our
only protection from so admirable a sister-in-law is in her working him too hard.” He commented,
“She already takes him to task about his idleness— She is going some day to explain to him her
notions about marriage— Perfect equality of rights is part of her doctrine. I much doubt whether
it will be equality in practice.”
The Darwins shared Martineau’s Unitarian background and Whig politics, but their father Robert
was concerned that, as a potential daughter-in-law, the writer was too extreme in her politics.
Charles noted that his father was upset by a piece read in the Westminster Review calling for the
radicals to break with the Whigs and give working men the vote “before he knew it was not hers
[Martineau’s], and wasted a good deal of indignation, and even now can hardly believe it is not
hers.” In early December 1836 Charles Darwin called on Martineau and may have discussed the
social and natural worlds she was writing about in her book Society in America, including the
“grandeur and beauty” of the “process of world making” she had seen at Niagara Falls. He
remarked in a letter, “She was very agreeable and managed to talk on a most wonderful number
of subjects, considering the limited time. I was astonished to find how little ugly she is, but as it
appears to me, she is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and own abilities.
Erasmus palliated all this, by maintaining one ought not to look at her as a woman.”
In April 1838 Charles wrote to his older sister Susan that “Erasmus has been with her noon,
morning, and night: if her character was not as secure, as a mountain in the polar regions she
certainly would loose it. Lyell called there the other day and there was a beautiful rose on the
table,and she coolly showed it to him and said ‘Erasmus Darwin’ gave me that. How fortunate it
is, she is so very plain; otherwise I should be frightened: She is a wonderful woman”.
Martineau wrote Deer brook (1838), a three-volume novel published after her American books. She
portrayed a failed love affair between a physician and his sister-in-law. It was considered her
most successful novel. She also wrote The Hour and the Man: An Historical Romance (1839), a three-
volume novel about the Haitian slave leader Toussaint L’ Ouverture, who contributed to the
island nation’s gaining independence in 1804.
In 1839, during a visit to Continental Europe, Martineau was diagnosed with a uterine tumor. She
several times visited her brother-in-law, Thomas Michael Greenhow, who was a celebrated doctor
in Newcastle upon Tyne, to try to alleviate her symptoms. On the last occasion she stayed for six
months in the Greenhow family house at 28 Eldon Square. Immobile and confined to a couch, she
was cared for by her mother until purchasing a house and hiring a nurse to aid her.
She next moved downriver to Tynemouth, where she stayed at Mrs Halliday’s boarding-house, 57
Front Street, for nearly five years from 16 March 1840. The critic Diana Postlethwaite wrote of this
period for Martineau:
“Being homebound is a major part of the process of becoming feminine. In this interior setting she
(Martineau) is taught the home arts of working, serving, and cleaning, as well as the rehearsals for
the role of mothering. She sees her mother... doing these things. They define femininity for her.”
Her illness caused her to literally enact the social constraints of her gender during this time.

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