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Unit 21: Harriet Martineau-On Marriage: Introduction and Detailed Study
family was of French Huguenot ancestry and professed Unitarian views. She was closest to Notes
her brother, James, who became a clergyman in the tradition of the English Dissenters.
• Martineau wrote at least three books during her illness, and a historical plaque marks this
house. In 1844 she published both Crofton Boys, the children’s novel, and Life in the Sickroom:
Essays by an Invalid, an autobiographical reflection on invalidism. She wrote Household Education
(1848), the handbook on the ‘proper’ way to raise and educate children. Lastly, she began
working on her autobiography. Completed much later, it included some hundred pages to
this period. Notable visitors included Richard Cobden and Thomas Carlyle and his wife.
• The Marriage compact is the most important feature of the domestic state on which the
observer can fix his attention. If he be a thinker, he will not be surprised at finding much
imperfection in the marriage state wherever he goes. By no arrangements yet attempted have
purity of morals, constancy of affection, and domestic peace been secured to any extensive
degree in society. Almost every variety of method is still in use, in one part of the world or
another. The primitive custom of brothers marrying sisters still subsists in some Eastern
regions. Polygamy is very common there, as every one knows. In countries which are too far
advanced for this, every restraint of law, all sanction of opinion, has been tried to render that
natural method,—the restriction of one husband to one wife,—successful, and therefore
universal and permanent. Law and opinion have, however, never availed to anything like
complete success. Even in thriving young countries, where no considerations of want, and
few of ambition, can interfere with domestic peace,—where the numbers are equal, where
love has the promise of a free and even course, and where religious sentiment is directed full
upon the sanctity of the marriage state,—it is found to be far from pure. In almost all countries,
the corruption of society in this department is so deep and wide-spreading, as to vitiate both
moral sentiment and practice in an almost hopeless degree. It neutralizes almost all attempts
to ameliorate and elevate the condition of the race.—There must be something fearfully
wrong where the general result is so unfortunate as this. As in most other cases of social
suffering, the wrong will be found to lie less in the methods ordained and put in practice,
than in the prevalent sentiment of society, out of which all methods arise.
21.6 Key-Words
1. Abolitionist : A person who favors the abolition of a practice or institution, especially
capital punishment or formerly slavery.
2. Importunities : A set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something.
21.7 Review Questions
1. Write a short note on Harriet’s Life and Works.
2. Briefly describe the essay “ On Marriage”.
Answers: Self-Assessment
1. (i) 1837 (ii) inferior party
(iii) factories (iv) sociology
(iv) March 1851 (vi) nine pence
21.8 Further Readings
1. Martineau, Harriet, ‘On Marriage’ 1838. Quotidian. Ed. Patrick Madden. 12th
Feb., 2007.
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