Premium
Maria Edgeworth's Infant Economics: Capitalist Culture, Good‐Will Networks and ‘Lazy Lawrence’
Author(s) -
WEISS DEBORAH
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/1754-0208.12129
Subject(s) - flourishing , sophistication , character (mathematics) , capitalism , value (mathematics) , sociology , neoclassical economics , narrative , history , economics , social science , literature , law , political science , art , psychology , computer science , mathematics , social psychology , geometry , machine learning , politics
This article argues that in ‘Lazy Lawrence’, the lead story in The Parent's Assistant (1796; 1800), Maria Edgeworth used juvenile fiction to present an alternative to what she saw as the harmful values of Britain's flourishing late eighteenth‐century capitalist economy. Edgeworth's innovative, realistic story about two children, one hard‐working and one lazy, teaches young readers to value good economic character and communal well‐being above individual self‐ interest. The article seeks to reveal the sophistication of economic thought in Edgeworth's juvenile fiction and to demonstrate that women authors of children's literature contributed to the debate over capitalism in early nineteenth‐century Britain.