Vocational Philanthropy and British Women's Writing, 1790�1810

Wollstonecraft, More, Edgeworth, Wordsworth

Patricia Comitini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315317724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

Patricia Comitini's study compels serious rethinking of how literature by women in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries should be read. Beginning with a description of the ways in which evolving conceptions of philanthropy were foundational to constructions of class and gender roles, Comitini argues that these changes enabled a particular kind of feminine benevolence that was linked to women's work as writers. The term 'vocational philanthropy' is suggestive of the ways that women used their status as professional writers to instruct men and women in changing gender relations, and to educate the middling and laboring classes in their new roles during a socially and economically turbulent era. Examining works by Hannah More, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, and Dorothy Wordsworth, whose writing crosses generic, political, and social boundaries, Comitini shows how women from diverse backgrounds shared a commitment to philanthropy - fostering the love of mankind - and an interest in the social nature of literacy. Their writing fosters sentiments that they hoped would be shared between the sexes and among the classes in English society, forging new reading audiences among women and the lower classes. These writers and their writing exemplify the paradigm of vocational philanthropy, which gives people not money, but texts to read, in order to imagine societal improvement. The effect was to permit the emergence of middle-class values linking private notions of morality, family, and love to the public needs for good citizens, industrious laborers, and class consolidation.

Chapter 1

History, Philanthropy and Benevolent Femininity

There is a legend that Charity was born of the marriage of Poverty with Abundance, and certainly it cannot come into existence without the presence of these two side by side […]. Charity, called into action by the privations of the poor, even if it cannot yield any solution for the problem of poverty, does reveal the views of society on this problem. The history of charity is the history of the changes which have occurred in the attitude of the rich towards the poor. Betsy Rogers, Cloak of Charity, 1949

Instead of providing employment for increasing population charitable opinion turned to the improvement of public morale […]. What was needed was further discrimination: charity must be given, even to the deserving, only in the manner most conducive to the improvement of manners and morals.
Donna Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, 1989

Charity as a social practice, and its broader philosophical dimension, philanthropy, are gauges with which to measure the changes of ‘attitude’ between two levels of societies, the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor,’ as the first epigram points out. The study of the ‘attitude’ of the privileged towards the poor cannot simply, or unproblematically, be reflected in the history of particular philanthropists or in the societal ‘movements’ of philanthropy. In general, philanthropy throughout the eighteenth century had been looked upon as a solution to England’s social ills—depopulation, economic privation, disease, criminality. The term ‘solution’ is problematic; philanthropy intervened in poverty as if it were one, but actually had little power to change the social and economic conditions which create the need for its existence. However, increasingly towards the end of the eighteenth century, as Donna Andrew points out, philanthropy became less a material solution to the problems of economic deprivation and more of an ideological one which is predicated on ‘private’ notions of morality, family and benevolence rather than on public structures such as economic support from the parish system, charitable institutions, or stable employment. In effect, philanthropy functions to engender new and different kinds of relations of power between the privileged and the poor by the end of the eighteenth century. The belief was that philanthropy could improve the human condition by linking these private notions of morality, family and benevolence to the public needs of good citizens, industrious laborers and inter-class harmony. What are the conditions that make this connection possible?

History and Philanthropy

Poverty and privation had always existed, but the discrepancy between the privileged and poor became a particular late eighteenth-century concern. As Gertrude Himmelfarb points out in The Idea of Poverty, poverty was redefined as a problem for which a solution needed to be found during the eighteenth century, rather than a naturally occurring phenomenon within society (7–8). Twentieth-century scholars of philanthropy have tended to view the eighteenth century as an age of benevolence. Betsy Rogers’ Cloak of Charity and David Owen’s compendium English Philanthropy 1660–1960 describe some of the societal transformations that charitable actions engendered. Charity and philanthropy, as they are commonly understood by these studies, exist exclusively for the betterment of poor people and the legitimation of the benevolence of the middling classes. Cloak of Charity focuses on eminent eighteenth-century philanthropists, from Jonas Hanway to William Wilberforce, and describes their achievements from the founding of charitable Societies to building hospitals for various segments of the population to establishing schools. English Philanthropy details various ‘movements’ within the branches of philanthropy from the charity school movement in the eighteenth century to the welfare movement in the twentieth. These texts sever charity and philanthropy from historical determinants that make these ‘movements’ or benevolent human acts possible. Both of these studies cite the eighteenth century as the ‘golden age’ of societal improvement, but do not specify the social and economic conditions which make philanthropy necessary to this segment of history. To counterbalance both these histories, in this abbreviated version of the history of eighteenth-century philanthropy, I will sketch out some of the conditions of possibility for the concern for the laboring classes and the poor (terms often used interchangeably) and some of the reasons for the emergence of philanthropy in the eighteenth century.

It is true that charitable organizations mitigated some of the social and economic problems caused by a societal structure in transition from aristocratic paternalism to incipient agricultural and industrial capitalism. In the seventeenth century, when peasant agriculture dominated rural society, the more or less economically independent peasantry, regardless of the size of the landholding, was able to subsist on the cultivation of its own crops (Hobsbawm 33). Except for a minority of commercial farmers who sold a permanent surplus crop to the urban market, and of peasants whose holdings were so small that they were obliged to take wage work in agriculture or industry, the agrarian system was largely, though certainly not absolutely, self-sufficient in its ability to support its population (Hobsbawm 32–33).

But during the course of the eighteenth century, several legal and economic changes dramatically stratified social and economic relations. The first was that land was turned into a commodity that was purchasable and saleable (Hobsbawm 181). To this end the Enclosure Acts, particularly of 1760 and 1770, effectively swept away the ‘ancient collective economy of the village’ (Hobsbawm 49). Even though enclosures had been occurring since the sixteenth century, amounting to twenty-four percent of England’s total land area, eighteen percent of it was enclosed by Parliament in two short phases of activity in the 1760s and 1770s (Turner 25). In addition, the lands enclosed during these years were located in the south and east Midlands area; these lands consisted of densely arable soils which were converted after enclosures to grassland farming, and lighter soils found in the commons extended the arable land into marginal areas used for pastoral farming (Turner 26). Because of enclosure, ‘use rights’ to common land, which provided pastureland, firewood, game-hunting and gleaning after harvest, as had been the custom for centuries, were criminalized (Valenze 30–31). M.E. Turner points out some of the effects of this twenty-year span of enclosure: the conversion of arable land to pasture (26); the concurrent relationship between enclosure and population growth (28); the loss of local rights to commons for general village use to depasture animals, gather wood for fuel, and for recreation (32); the transformation of land into ‘real’ property and its consolidation by a minority of landowners who could afford the costs of enclosure, crop production and taxes (Turner 32–33; Wells ‘Development’ 31).

The agricultural depression of 1730–1750, as Roger Wells suggests, resulted in many bankruptcies, especially among less substantial tenant farmers (‘Development’ 31). This depression may have stimulated the consolidation of lands into larger farms and signaled a new pattern in tenantry which reduced the number of farmers. Rising prices for their crops in the latter half of the eighteenth century accelerated the accumulation of capital in the agricultural sector, which was invested in further enclosure, drainage, farm buildings, etc. (Wells ‘Development’ 31; Valenze 33). The capital thus required to compete in agricultural production prohibited the survival of small landed proprietors (Wells ‘Development’ 32). In turn, landowners sold food for ‘profit,’ forcing the poor to buy food they previously could have grown, hunted or gleaned (Valenze 33, 41). Coupled with the failure of industries to develop in the south and east of England, partially because of the consolidation of enclosure lands, few alternatives to agricultural employment existed.

As a result, the effects of enclosure on the standard of living and the level of employment for a previously ‘self-sufficient’ agricultural laborer were enormous. Standards of living in the countryside were higher before 1750 than after (Wells ‘Development’ 32). Wells points out that this may have been partially responsible for triggering the population upsurge through the latter half of the eighteenth century (‘Development’ 32).¹ But whatever the case, since population outstripped the demand for labor, there was a growing supply of unemployed and underemployed laborers. A study by N.F.R. Crafts shows that throughout the second half of the eighteenth century employment was slow in all sectors, and in agriculture it had become increasingly seasonal and part time (71–72). Women in particular had benefited from the ‘open village system’ and customary ‘use rights’; after 1750, though, women’s employment narrowed even more than men’s (Valenze 32–33, 40–43). Because of the large amount of surplus labor available, independent farmers responded by reducing their permanent workforce (Wells ‘Development’ 33). Crafts suggests this signaled a change in the structure of employment; the proportion of the labor force employed in agriculture decreased rapidly while the proportion employed in industry increased, even though much of the employment in industry continued to be in small-scale, handicraft activities (Crafts 71).² The consequence was greater dependence on large landholders for occasional agricultural work and on industry for wage-labor. Crafts suggests that the low productivity growth in both agricultural and industrial sectors inflated prices toward the last quarter of the eighteenth century and had the effect of producing a slow growth of real wages for workers (74). Therefore, by the late eighteenth century the standard of living for workers decreased as employment became casual and prices inflated.

These economic conditions exacerbated the strain on the existing system of statutory poor relief, which had existed since the sixteenth century. In the south and east especially, periodic and permanent unemployment assumed serious proportions in the late 1760s and 1770s (Wells ‘Development’ 33). The rising cost to the parish in order to maintain—in or out of workhouses—all those who were unable to maintain themselves under the old Poor Law was a serious point of concern to ratepayers (Wells ‘Development’ 32–33). To complicate matters, the Settlement Laws, which stated that the parish had to relieve only those who could prove residency and unemployment in their own parish, militated against migration to other regions where employment might be possible. As Wells states, ‘relief was certain for an individual in his home parish; he was less likely to receive assistance elsewhere’ (‘Development’ 32). Various systems were enforced to handle the problem of increasing claimants, such as the Roundsman System, Gilbert’s Act and the Speenhamland System.³ All of these were inadequate to handle the numbers of people now reliant on the parish or other means of private charity.

By the 1790s, economic conditions had worsened for the growing population of the laboring class. The scarcity of food (particularly grains—the ‘bread and butter’ of the laboring class) together with inflated food prices, which served to reduce the real wages of workers to the lowest level in three centuries, produced ‘famine’ conditions throughout the nation (Wells Wretched 1). Roger Wells argues that the use of the term ‘famine’ to describe the periods of 1794–1796 and 1799–1801 was avoided by both eighteenth-century political economists and contemporary agrarian and social historians (Wretched 2–11). Nonetheless, Wells argues that the conditions of famine existed, exacerbated by war, and analyzes the responses to them, such as food riots and rural arson by laborers and the growth of trade unions (Wretched 161–174); profit making by millers, prosperous farmers, and dealers (Wretched 22–32); the growth of the ‘shopocracy’ in urban centers hoping to capitalize on sale of their wares in the time of scarcity (Wretched 31); and government funding and stocking of imported grain (Wretched 184–195). For the poor living during this period, the lack of food and the decline of wages, if employed at all, created a particularly pitiable existence. Wells describes the conditions of the typical worker:

All bar a tiny elite of workers were forced to economise, and ecomomise drastically whatever aid derived from self-help organisations, the poor law and charities […]. Many were forced with varying rapidity, to reserve all funds for food alone; replacement clothes and footwear, adequate heating and light, were also fairly immediate objects of economy for many too. Rents were partly or unpaid; arrears mounted. Market prices dictated dietary economies, though options varied with individuals’ circumstances, regionally, and from time to time. (Wretched 318)

Even though the ‘famine’ conditions of 1794–6 and 1799–1801, escalating political tension in the forms of crime and food riots, and the subsequent strain on the Poor Law, merited concern on the part of the employing and affluent classes, little was done on an economic level to improve the situation. Roger Wells advances two reasons for this. First, the crises were expected to be temporary, so any strain on the relief fund in the short term was preferable to increased wage costs in the long run.⁴ This view seems to be confirmed by the late eighteenth-century political economist Frederic Eden’s belief that wages were adequate.⁵ Second, the Poor Law placed the burden of relief on the community and the parish and not on the employer (Wells ‘Development’ 36). In other words, the paternalistic responsibility for the poor which was prevalent in a more or less feudal system properly belonged to entities outside the direct labor/capital split in an increasingly capitalist agricultural and industrial society:

Employer reticence was at its most pronounced in agrarian communities, but many industrial and urban workers also experienced the direct relationship between their master’s attitude and the degree of dependency on poor-law and charitable agencies. Many workers received limited charitable donations from their employers who used this manoeuver to stave-off permanent wage rises and derive kudos from their commonly much-publicised benevolence. (Wells Wretched 332)

Supplemental relief, in the form of charities and philanthropic endeavors, came to play a significant role in the alleviation of material suffering and the improvement of the individual. By making the social conditions necessary for laborers to be dependent on capital, laborers and the poor were also made more dependent on the parish system of poor relief and more private forms of philanthropy. Philanthropy and individual ‘benevolence’ began to play an important role in the maintenance of the social order.

Philanthropic Feeling and the Solution of Charity

The role that poor relief and charity played changed dramatically from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, and changed again during the course of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century. This changing role parallels the altered pattern of economic and social relations. The stakes—in terms of supplying a labor force, mitigating starvation, and producing a new, viable rationale for mass-scale material inequity—became much higher given the economic and social changes taking place. Despite debates surrounding the efficacy of poor relief, Roger Wells claims that no one disputed ‘its role as the fundamental progenitor of order’ (Wretched 288). Philanthropy and charity became united and increasingly important as the ‘solution’ to the problem of poverty as the eighteenth century progressed.

As W.K. Jordan’s Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660 makes clear, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries charity primarily took the form of monetary donations by private benefactors for direct poor relief, which were then transferred to the poor by the use of charitable trusts (40–41). The income from these trusts, whether the funds were constituted as doles or more regulated stipends, was dedicated to four areas of charity (Jordan 41–42). The first consisted of ‘outright’ relief: ‘the relief of existing poverty, to the prevention of vagabondage and social ruin, and to maintaining poor families at least at the level of subsistence in their own homes’ (Jordan 41). The second is the endowment of Almshouses to encourage ‘competence’ in the laborer. The third is ‘charity general’ to be given for broad uses at the discretion of the feoffees, parishes and municipal officers. The fourth is charity specifically given to the aged poor who are unable to work. Legitimacy and in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 History, Philanthropy and Benevolent Femininity
• 2 The Benevolent Woman: Rereading Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• 3 Beyond the Polite: Philanthropy and the Politics of ‘Popular’ Tales
• 4 Reforming Fiction and the Middling Classes: Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda
• 5 ‘More Than Half a Poet’: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index