Why is harriet martineau famous

Society in America , like Alexis DeToqueville's better-known work, described and interpreted many features of North American behaviour, institutions, and daily life.

Anticipating Max Weber, Martineau argued that moral values undergird social institutions. In the United States, the institution of slavery made 'mockery' of American stated ideals of freedom In the chapter 'Morals of Slavery' she reiterated and destroyed, one by one, the pro-slavery arguments that were promoted in the United States, and questioned whether 'social virtues are possible in a society of which injustice is the primary characteristic.

On slaveholders, for example, she wrote: 'I could not but marvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to which they are liable in their homes: their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, their infants slighted, themselves deluded by artifices' Their single virtue was forbearance, for 'the inherent injustice of the system extinguishes all others, and nourishes a whole harvest of false morals toward the rest of society' In plain, harsh language that was extraordinary for her time, she described the sexual degradation of women, both slave and free, the damage to all children, the warping of conscience and behaviour, and a society running on hypocrisy, suspicion, and restriction of liberty Not even New England escaped her explosive critique as she described what free people of colour endured there In Martineau became chronically ill and, by , she was housebound.

British slavery and apprenticeship had ended, but Martineau did not allow invalidism to hinder her fight to end slavery in the United States. In , for example, she wrote that despite 'many bodily troubles, I earn lots of money for the American abolitionists by fancy-work' Sanders Her 'last piece of embroidery fetched dollars for 'the cause' in America' She continued her social and economic research, the basis for a continuous flow of anti-slavery articles.

As always, her moral principles infused her writing, which reveals an acute observer and critic of the politics of slavery and anti-slavery in the United States. Like her contemporary, Joseph Sturge, she saw the connections between slavery in the colonies and working-class oppression at home, even though she had objections against as well as agreements with the British Chartists Martineau , vol.

Martineau measured progress in society by three standards: the status of those who hold the least power in society, popular views of authority and autonomy, and access to resources that allow the realization of autonomy and moral action. She won numerous awards for her writing and though controversial, was a rare example of a successful and popular working woman writer of the Victorian era.

She published over 50 books and over 2, articles in her lifetime. Between and , Martineau became housebound due to a uterine tumor. She moved out of London to a more peaceful location for the duration of her illness. She continued to write extensively during this time but due to her recent experiences shifted her focus to medical topics.

In , her health restored, Martineau embarked on a tour of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. She focused her analytic lens on religious ideas and customs and observed that religious doctrine was increasingly vague as it evolved. This led her to conclude, in her written work based on this trip—Eastern Life, Present and Past — that humanity was evolving toward atheism, which she framed as rational, positivist progress.

The atheistic nature of her later writing, as well as her advocacy for mesmerism, which she believed cured her tumor and the other ailments she had suffered, caused deep divisions between her and some of her friends.

In her later years, Martineau contributed to the Daily News and the radical leftist Westminster Review. She died in near Ambleside, Westmorland, in England, and her autobiography was published posthumously in Much of her written work is in the public domain and available for free at the Online Library of Liberty , and many of her letters are available to the public via the British National Archives.

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Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Table of Contents Expand. Early Life. Self-Education, Intellectual Development, and Work. As a theorist, she believed that a thorough societal analysis was necessary to understand the status of women.

She is notable for her progressive politics. Martineau introduced feminist sociological perspectives in her writing and addressed overlooked issues such as marriage, children, domestic life, religious life, and race relations.

Her translation so dramatically improved the work that Comte himself suggested his students read her translations rather than his original work. Her goal was to popularize and illustrate the principles of laissez faire capitalism, though she made no claim to original theorizing. Her ideas in this field were set out in her book, How to Observe Morals and Manners.