Leonora: 'Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched''

by Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire on January 1st 1768. Her early years were with her mother's family in England. Sadly, her mother died when Maria was five. Maria was educated at Mrs Lattafière's school in Derby in 1775. There she studied dancing, French and other subjects. Maria transferred to Mrs Devis's school in Upper Wimpole Street, London. Her father began to focus more attention on Maria in 1781 when she nearly lost her sight to an eye infection. She returned home to Ireland at 14 and took charge of her younger siblings. She herself was home-tutored by her father in Irish economics and politics, science, literature and law. Despite her youth literature was in her blood. Maria also became her father's assistant in managing the family’s large Edgeworthstown estate. Maria first published 1795 with ‘Letters for Literary Ladies’. That same year ‘An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification’, written for a female audience, advised women on how to obtain better rights in general and specifically from their husbands. ‘Practical Education’ (1798) is a progressive work on education. Maria’s ambition was to create an independent thinker who understands the consequences of his or her actions. Her first novel, ‘Castle Rackrent’ was published anonymously in 1800 without her father's knowledge. It was an immediate success and firmly established Maria’s appeal to the public. Her father married four times and the last of these to Frances, a year younger and a confidante of Maria, who pushed them to travel more London, Britain and Europe were all now visited. The second series of ‘Tales of Fashionable Life’ (1812) did so well that she was now the most commercially successful novelist of her age. She particularly worked hard to improve the living standards of the poor in Edgeworthstown and to provide schools for the local children of all and any denomination. After a visit to see her relations Maria had severe chest pains and died suddenly of a heart attack in Edgeworthstown on 22nd May 1849. She was 81.

Genres: Classics, Romance, Fiction, Novels, British Literature, English Literature

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1806

About the author

Maria Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish gentry-woman, born in Oxfordshire and later resettling in County Longford. She eventually took over the management of her father's estate in Ireland and dedicated herself to writing novels that encouraged the kind treatment of Irish tenants and the poor by their landlords.

Reviews

[Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating for the plot, not for the writing, as Edgeworth is usually pretty solid on that front. Heavily didactic, and basically boils down to "beware of French ladies and their loose morals." And I'm not quite sure it's a happy ending with what a jackhole Leonora's husband turned out to be.

[samarina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Como já diria o pensador contemporâneo Rennan da Penha:

"Então para de falar que ele é seu
Marido dos outros não é presente de Deus
Talarica
'Tava sentando no macho da tua amiga
E tu vai tomar um pau."

Obviamente bem escrito, mas além da narrativa espistolar(que eu particularmente não curto tanto), teve como enredo principal assuntos que me irritam muito: cornas mansas e homens adúlteros.

**disclaimer: sei como eram as coisas naquela época e que mulher não podia fazer muita coisa a não ser aceitar mas!!não sou obrigada a gostar, chega a ser patético o jeito que a Leonora se humilha pelo marido, que tem tanta culpa de traí-la quanto a "amiga" dela.

[Mary Fagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable critique of the cult of sensibility and the sentimental novel.