I liked the stories in Tales and Novels, vol. II better; I wonder if these were written earlier or for younger children.
The introduction might be the most interesting part, because it's a defense of her theories of what stories will make children good. If I recall correctly this was a radical idea in her day, that children were not born good or bad, that reason could lead to virtue in all the classes. The Edgeworths were early in the attempts to make childrearing a science:
Indeed, in all sciences the grand difficulty has been to ascertain facts--a difficulty which, in the science of education, peculiar circumstances conspire to increase. Here the objects of every experiment are so interesting that we cannot hold our minds indifferent to the result. Nor is it to be expected that many registers of experiments, successful and unsuccessful, should be kept, much less should be published, when we consider that the combined powers of affection and vanity, of partiality to his child and to his theory, will act upon the mind of a parent, in opposition to the abstract love of justice, and the general desire to increase the wisdom and happiness of mankind.
The idea of making childrearing a science sends my mind, at least, towards and social engineering and Brave New World. Maria Edgeworth had to appeal to comfortable English phlegm in the face of the then-recent experiments of the French Revolution, but I suspect her of sympathy with, at least, greater social mobility than her society had:
The question, whether society could exist without the distinction of ranks, is a question involving a variety of complicated discussions, which we leave to the politician and the legislator. At present it is necessary that the education of different ranks should, in some respects, be different. They have few ideas, few habits in common; their peculiar vices and virtues do not arise from the same causes, and their ambition is to be directed to different objects. But justice, truth, and humanity are confined to no particular rank, and should be enforced with equal care and energy upon the minds of young people of every station[...] In a commercial nation it is especially necessary to separate, as much as possible, the spirit of industry and avarice; and to beware lest we introduce Vice under the form of Virtue.
And finally she deals with some questions still current in arguments over suitable children's entertainment; should we scare them with evil, tempt them with unreasonably happy endings, what?
Were young people, either in public schools, or in private families, absolutely free from bad examples, it would not be advisable to introduce despicable and vicious characters in books intended for their improvement. But in real life they MUST see vice, and it is best that they should be early shocked with the representation of what they are to avoid. There is a great deal of difference between innocence and ignorance.
To prevent the precepts of morality from tiring the ear and the mind, it was necessary to make the stories in which they are introduced in some measure dramatic; to keep alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy. At the same time, care has been taken to avoid inflaming the imagination, or exciting a restless spirit of adventure, by exhibiting false views of life, and creating hopes which, in the ordinary course of things, cannot be realized.
None of the actual stories are as lively as "Lame Jervas" and his continent-crossing, social-justice engineering career. There are a couple of school stories, including one about the foolish introduction of party or faction spirit into a private school; not Slytherin vs. etc., but maybe a faint forerunner. My favorite was "The Little Merchants", which is about the commercial ventures of Neapolitan children; Edgeworth makes survival by scrap-picking seem rather cheerful, and her hero finally makes good by asking to have a carpenter's rule explained to him and eventually becoming an architectural illustrator hired by the rich English who come to see the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Project Gutenberg etext #3655
So wrote clew in Fiction (19th c.). | TrackBack