Style and purpose Maria Edgeworth

maria edgeworth

having come literary maturity @ time when ubiquitous , unvarying stated defence of novel educative power, maria edgeworth among few authors espoused educator s role. novels morally , socially didactic in extreme. close analysis of alterations edgeworth s style underwent when pressed service of overt didacticism should serve illuminate relationship between prose technique , didactic purpose in work. convention maria edgeworth has adopted , worked death basic eighteenth-century novel, roots lie in drama, tracing @ least renaissance separation of high , low characters forms of speech. throughout eighteenth-century drama, , noticeably in sentimental comedy, separation becomes more , more means of moral judgment social identification. coherent reason edgeworth s acceptance appeal of didactic moralism. in first place, willing suspend judgment wherever service of moral result. else may go, long lesson enforced. lesson might warning against moral impropriety, in miss milner s story, or against social injustice, in absentee. furthermore, whole reliance on positive exemplars had been justified long before steele, argued stage must supply perfect heroes since examples imitated , since simple natures incapable of making necessary deductions negative exemplars of satire.

the characteristic of edgeworth connect identifiable strain of formal realism, both philosophical , rhetorical, , therefore display objective interest in human nature , way manifests in social custom. 1 expect edgeworth, author didacticism has struck modern readers either gendered liability, technical regression, or familial obligation. critics have responded edgeworth s eccentricities attributing them more deep-seated, temperamental, , psychological. in various, insightful representation, edgeworth s fondness real, strange, , pedagogically useful verges on relentless, obsessive, , instinctive. there alternative literary answer explain edgeworth s cultural roots , ideological aims shifts focus away edgeworth s familial, psychological, , cultural predicaments formal paradigms work has been judged. rather locating edgeworth s romances of real life exclusively within traditions of eighteenth-century children s literature or domestic realism, can read responses late eighteenth-century debates on relation between history , romance, because genre attempts mediate between 2 differentiating other kinds of factual fiction. edgeworth s romances of real life operate in same discursive field not attempt traverse between self-denied antinomies. in fact, make opposite claim.

edgeworth s repeated self-effacement needs seen in context of times, learning in women disapproved of , ridiculed, such satirical poem of rev. richard polwhele, unsex d females (1798).