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Prose

Notes popular English mind by wrapping social scientific instruction in a series of widely read novels.
In her maturity she was an astute sociological theorist, methodologist, and analyst of the first
order. To the extent that any complex institutional phenomenon such as sociology can have
identifiable founders, Alice Rossi (1973, 118-124) justly celebrates Harriet Martineau as ‘the first
woman sociologist.’”

23.1 Martineau’s Childhood

Harriet Martineau was born in 1802, the sixth of eight children in an upper middle class English
family. Her parents were Thomas and Elizabeth (Rankin) Martineau. Thomas was a manufacturer
of textiles and an importer of wine in the old cathedral city of Norwich. Norwich was once a
distinguished cultural and manufacturing center, but became a casualty of the industrial revolution
later in Harriet’s life. Thomas’s family was considered one of the first families of Norwich, he
belonged to an elite literary circle that included Mrs. Barbauld and Amelia Opie. Thomas was a
devout Unitarian, a trait that he passed onto his daughter Harriet.
Harriet’s mother, Elizabeth was a literate and intelligent woman but had little formal education,
making her feel out of place among the cultural elite of Norwich. Harriet described her mother as
a domestic tyrant and believed that her tyrannies stemmed from her perceived social inadequacies.
But at the same time, it is true that the frugal efficiency and impersonal nature with which she ran
her house was characteristic of the 19th century matriarch. Elizabeth enforced in Harriet a fearfulness
and feelings of self doubt that would take her years to work out.

Harriet described childhood overall as a “burdensome experience” written in
Household Education (1849)

No creature is so intensely reserved as a proud and timid child: and the cases are few in which the
parents know anything of the agonies of its little heart...It hides its miseries under an appearance
of indifference or obstinacy, till its habitual terror impairs its health, or drives it into a temper of
defiance or recklessness. I can speak with some certainty of this, from my own experience. I was
as timid a child as ever was born.
And though Harriet became deaf later in her life she claimed she had no sense of smell or taste,
which some have linked to a traumatic event that blocked it out psychologically. Harriet’s mother
had turned her over to a wet nurse soon after she was born, which was custom at the time. “The
wet nurse hired to suckle the child had concealed from Mrs. Martineau that she had all but ceased
lactation”. To make up for this neglect, Elizabeth made milk the staple of Harriet’s diet, and
though she hated it, could not bring herself to complain, ....and so went for years having the
feeling of a heavy lump in her throat for the whole of every morning - sometimes choking with it,
and sometimes stealing out into the yard to vomit; and worse than the lump in her throat she had
depression of the spirits for the first half of every day, which much injured the action of her mind
at lessons and was too much for her temper (Martineau in Household Education p.185)
Though most of her childhood was miserable, Harriet’s two sources of joy came from her maternal
instinct for her younger brother James and her youngest sister, Ellen. When Ellen was born, Harriet
said she would “ like to observe the growth of a human mind from the very beginning”. Harriet’s
education was largely at home through self study. She had early exposure to subjects routinely
taught only to males. University study was barred to women at the time, but Harriet maintained a
regime of intense, self directed investigation throughout her life. When Harriet was about 15 years
of age, and her deafness worsening, she was sent by her parents to stay with her aunt and uncle. It
was through her uncle that she was introduced to the writings of Locke, Hartley and the principle
of sensation. Her uncle was also a minister and reinforced her religious views as a devout Unitarian.

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