Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

The family business suffered from the mid-1820s, and failed completely in 1829. At which point, she wrote, she was free to live and not merely vegetate – thrown decisively on her own resources.

Many and many a time since have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing, and economizing, and growing narrower every year: whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead of vegetated.

Martineau decided to live by writing, dismissing the alternative occupations open to her. In this, she was not unlike Mary Wollstonecraft, whose own financial uncertainties had cemented her devotion to making a living by her pen. In 1832, Martineau moved to London, where she was quickly embraced by William Johnson Fox and the radical political, intellectual, and literary circles to which he introduced her.

In 1851, she published Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development: a collection of letters between Martineau and her ‘mesmeric advisor’ Henry George Atkinson. While containing some of her most resoundingly clear rejections of religion, the letters also stated her faith in mesmerism, a pseudoscientific system of healing which divided 19th century opinion. Her dismissal of theology in the Letters was unequivocal:

There is no theory of a God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties; which is not (to my feelings) so irreverent as to make me blush; so misleading as to make me mourn.

In the same year, Martineau was introduced to the positivist philosophies of Auguste Comte, who offered a secular ‘religion of humanity’ based on science and human achievement. In 1853, she published her attentively abridged translation of his writings as The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, which became hugely influential in introducing these ideas to the English-speaking world. The Victorian age had brought with it a significant shift in scientific understanding, pulling the rug out from under the religious convictions of many. Aware of this, Martineau acknowledged:

 We are living in a remarkable time, when the conflict of opinions renders a firm foundation of knowledge indispensable, not only to our intellectual, moral, and social progress, but to our holding such ground as we have gained from former ages.

Harriet Martineau, in her endless capacity for self-reflection, curiosity, observation, and inquiry, was a consummate humanist and a remarkable writer. In letting go of religion, she embraced an empowering sense of goodness for its own sake, and recognised that life was no less precious for being transient. Martineau placed her trust in what could be discovered through reason, and was fearless in openly expressing her unbelief. Of her early devoutness, she wrote:

I look back with a kind of horror, as well as deep pity, on myself, in the days when I thought it my duty to cultivate (against nature) an anxious solicitude about my own “salvation,” — my own future spiritual welfare. I should now think this as bad as engrossing myself with storing up means of prosperity while my brother had need. How sweet it is to be loose from all such solicitude, and to let one’s best nature have its free play from hour to hour!