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The Novels of Charlotte Smith and the Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Education Debates

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The Novels of Charlotte Smith and the Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Education Debates View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Northumbria Research Link Northumbria Research Link Citation: Cane, Leanne M. (2019) ‘As to the education of youth’: the novels of Charlotte Smith and the Eighteenth-century and romantic education debates. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University. This version was downloaded from Northumbria Research Link: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/42765/ Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. 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The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/pol i cies.html ‘AS TO THE EDUCATION OF YOUTH’: THE NOVELS OF CHARLOTTE SMITH AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AND ROMANTIC EDUCATION DEBATES Leanne M Cane PhD 2019 ‘AS TO THE EDUCATION OF YOUTH’: THE NOVELS OF CHARLOTTE SMITH AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY AND ROMANTIC EDUCATION DEBATES Leanne M Cane A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Research Undertaken in the Faculty of Arts, Design & Social Sciences April 2019 1 Abstract This work examines Charlotte Smith’s novels through the lens of her engagement with the eighteenth-century education debates. Despite the burgeoning scholarship on Smith’s works and her evident interest in education, as demonstrated in her didactic works for children, this is an area as yet unexplored in Smith scholarship. It highlights the significance of Smith’s voice in the education debates as she provides a different perspective on education, upbringing, and their outcomes: the product of childhood, or the adult. Not only this, but, as a single mother of twelve children, whom she strived to raise, educate, and find places in the world for throughout her career, Smith offers a unique perspective on late-eighteenth-century education not offered by other, more prominent, female voices such as Maria Edgeworth, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Priscilla Wakefield. By examining Smith’s views on education in her novels, it also offers another perspective on Smith’s interest in education as it focuses on her novels rather than the didactic fiction she produced for children. This work has found that Smith was concerned with the outcomes of both male and female education. She explores theories for both throughout her novels and examines in detail what she perceives to be the outcomes of popular educational theories. She is critical of certain educational philosophies and demonstrates herself to be a staunch advocate of others – though often with additional caveats. Smith’s unique perspective on education and upbringing offers significant food for thought for both scholars of Smith’s works and scholars of eighteenth- century education. 2 Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Author’s Declaration Introduction: ‘The slight skirmishings of a novel-writer’ Chapter One: The Wars of Idea(l)s in the 1790s: Print culture, Revolution and the dissemination of ideas in the eighteenth-century education debates Chapter Two: ‘The grounds of that elegant and useful knowledge’: the store of knowledge concept and balanced reading Chapter Three: ‘“I know of no book that can escape their censure”’: Surveillance, Censorship and Education Chapter Four: ‘Dear objects of my tender care!’: Paratext, intertextuality and the presence of other tales in Charlotte Smith’s novels Chapter Five: A Philosopher and a Gentleman: Masculinity, the Professional Man and the Problems of Parents Chapter Six: Acting up and playing the part: Performance, Gender and the Expense of Education Conclusion Bibliography 3 List of Figures Figure 1. ‘The Female Philosopher, smelling out the Comet,’ http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?obje ctId=1538328&partId=1 4 Acknowledgements I am grateful for the time I was able to spend exploring and examining Charlotte Smith’s works and her engagement with the eighteenth-century education debates. This work would have been impossible without the Emerging Eighteenth Century Studentship awarded to me by Northumbria University and the Long Eighteenth Century Research Group. Thank you to my wonderful husband, Luke – without your support, patience, and endless cups of tea, this thesis would not exist. Huge thanks to my supervisory team – Professor Clark Lawlor and Dr David Stewart – for your unfailing support and advice, and for helping me work out what I was trying to say. Thank you to the many brilliant people who make up the English Department at Northumbria University for your encouragement, camaraderie, and conversation. I would particularly like to thank Dr Helen Williams, Professor Richard Terry, Professor Emeritus Allan Ingram, Dr Leigh Wetherall-Dickson, and Dr Ashleigh Blackwood. Finally, thank you to everyone involved in the Chawton House Visiting Fellowships, especially Dr Gillian Dow and Sandy White, and Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland and Emma Brodey: the time I was able to spend in the library was invaluable; the time spent with colleagues – unforgettable. 5 I declare that the work contained in this thesis has not been submitted for any other award and that it is all my own work. I also confirm that this work fully acknowledges opinions, ideas and contributions from the work of others. Any ethical clearance for the research presented in this thesis has been approved. Approval has been sought and granted by the Faculty Ethics Committee on 10th May 2016. I declare that the Word Count of this Thesis is 81571 words. Name: Signature: Date: 6 Introduction: ‘The slight skirmishings of a novel-writer’ During the past two decades, Smith scholarship has undergone a significant transformation. In October 2006, Jacqueline Labbe organised the first Smith conference, memorialising the bicentenary of Smith’s death, with such key speakers as Stuart Curran, editor of The Poems of Charlotte Smith (1993) and Chatto and Pickering’s The Works of Charlotte Smith (2005-7), and Judith Stanton, The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith (2003). Ten years later, in October 2016, a second conference was organised by Labbe and Elizabeth Dolan. Again, Stuart Curran was present, as was Lorraine Fletcher, author of Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography (1998). In her introduction to the second Smith conference, Labbe noted that the number of references relating to Charlotte Smith had increased exponentially since the bicentenary conference – there were now more than double the number of articles, books and book chapters with content on Smith than there were in 2006. Despite this increased interest in Smith as a writer, however, there is still very little scholarship which addresses her engagement with the topic of education. This current work is an attempt to begin to address this gap in Smith scholarship. It focuses on Smith’s engagement with debates on education via her novels, rather than her works for children which are more explicitly didactic and were published later in her writing career, supported by the sales of her novels. I do, however, refer to these later texts as her novels and works for children are linked to each other through reviews and Smith’s own purposes in publishing the latter. When first starting out on this research project, the focus was to elucidate Charlotte Smith’s thoughts on female education in the 1790s. As I explored her novels, however, I realised that it was not just the outcomes of female education she was concerned about but also those of male education. My research expanded to include Smith’s explorations of education for men and women. I should stress, too, that, while this work is interested in Smith’s thoughts on education, 7 it is not an examination of early or childhood education practices in the late eighteenth century. Smith’s exploration of education is preoccupied with the men and women, the adults, that early education and upbringing produced, and also their continuing education via experience and life- long learning. The opinions and advice on education throughout the novels are directed at adults, educating them, while also exploring the numerous outcomes of different educational philosophies. It is likely for this reason that scholarship on Smith rarely engages with her interest in education, and why Smith and her novels are rarely mentioned in scholarship on eighteenth- century education. Her interest in the outcomes of early education and upbringing, combined with her desire to help her readers to self-improve, means that her novels are not an obvious source for the scholar of eighteenth-century education: she focuses on adults, rather than children – though she draws upon their early experiences on occasion to focus the reader’s attention on the significance of the outcomes of their education and upbringing. The first part of the title of this work, ‘as to the education of youth,’ is taken from Smith’s fourth novel, Desmond (1792), and is stated in a debate by a ‘young abbé’ in defence of monks in his argument against the Revolution. Desmond’s friend, a supporter of the Revolution, responds with his own argument, also using the phrase ‘the education of youth.’ For both men, the topic of the education of young people is significant and inextricably wrapped up in discussions and debates of the politics and culture of France.
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