SOURCE: Postlethwaite, Diana. “Mothering and Mesmerism in the Life of Harriet Martineau.” Signs 14, no. 3 (spring 1989): 583-609.

In the following essay, Postlethwaite considers the impact Martineau's illness and her relationship with her mother had on her writing.

On the surface, Harriet Martineau's life (1802-76) offers a radical challenge to the stereotype of the Victorian woman writer as a subjective, emotive novelist or poet, a Lady of Shalott weaving her web of words in isolation from the larger concerns of the masculine world. In a career that spanned fifty-five years, Martineau produced thirty-five books and scores of periodical essays. Well respected, earning her living by her pen, she moved freely and independently between London literary circles and global travels. Martineau first achieved wide recognition with the multivolume Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-34), which employed fictional story-telling to educate the general public in the principles of political economists like Malthus, Ricardo...