"The Grateful Negro" (1804, 18 pages)
Irish Short Story Month Year 3
March 1 to March 31
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Event Resources-links to lots of Irish short stories-from all periods
1796 in Ireland-two convict ships leave Cork for Australia. The French try to invade Ireland but bad weather prevents them from landing. The population of the country is estimated to be 4.5 million with about 250,000 in Dublin. Virtually anything of value is owned by Anglo-Irish.
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Marie Edgeworth (1768 to 1849) was a very prolific Irish writer in various forms, among them the short story and the novel. She was Anglo-Irish (I wonder who was the first important Irish writer of whom that cannot be said). I am not sure how much she is read now but she is considered an important figure in the development of stories about women and children, especially young women and girls. Her novel Castle Rackrent is considered the first historical novel, the first Anglo-Irish novel (I wonder how Gulliver's Travels is classified by those who state this) and the first of a long tradition of Big House novels. Set in 1782 in Ireland it is a satire and expose of the cruelty of Landlords. I really enjoyed reading it and I think it is probably required reading for those into the Irish novel. During ISSW2 I posted on her most famous short story "The Purple Jar" which is about a girl's first period. It is interesting for nothing else as to see how vague Edgeworth felt she had to be in writing this story. It is considered a classic story as it is probably the first reference to this in literature. I concede it is partially in the category of "historically important" read. I also read her short story, included by William Trevor in his great anthology, The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories, "Limerick Gloves" which is a very funny satire of English prejudice against the Irish. It is a delightful story.
Edgeworth began her short story career with children's stories, all with a heavily didactic tone. "The Basket-Woman" (and also "The Purple Jar") were in her first collection of children's stories, The Parent's Assistant (1796). There are three central characters in "The Basket-Woman", a boy and his sister orphaned at an early age and an old woman who adopted them, they call her grandmother. Times are hard and they live very simply but from the hard work and the sacrifices of the grandmother they do not go hungry. She has two sources of income. One is from weaving on her spinning wheel. Their home is right in front of a very steep hill. Carriages often stop to rest their horses at the top of the hill and the grandmother goes up the steep hill, getting harder and harder for her, and puts rocks behind the wheels of the carriages so they will not role down hill. People normally give her either a penny or a half-penny. One day her children tell her from now on they will be the ones to do this. The grandmother goes with them the first couple of days but soon they are on their own and they always come home with some money for grandmother. One day a man tosses them several coins, mostly half-pennies but mixed in is a gold coin, about the size of a half-penny but worth a 1000 times more. At first the children do not really know what this coin they have never before seen can be but once they do they conclude it may have been given to them by mistake and they set out to find the man who tossed it to them to return it even though they longed to buy their grandmother a much needed blanket.
The story is short and I do not want to spoil the ending (OK it is not real hard to see it coming) but honesty is wonderfully rewarded, the wicked are thwarted and lives are changed as a result of the code of total honesty that the children had been brought up in by their grandmother.
"The Grateful Negro" is interesting for the view it gives us of how a highly educated woman of strong moral principals like Maria Edgeworth viewed the institution of slavery. The story is set in Jamaica in the 1760s. Slavery is legal there and is seen as needed to run the sugar plantations. Ms. Edgeworth took her facts from contemporary accounts of life on slave plantation in Jamaica written by English absolutionists so she did her research. There are two slave masters in the story, one is very good and benevolent and treats his slaves well. The kind master does not free them as he thinks, as did many well meaning people at the time, that it would lead to chaos in which the slaves, with no way to get home (many in fact were born in the islands) would starve and some saw the needed production of sugar and rum as justifying slavery. The harsh master is not really deliberately cruel he just turned the slaves and the plantation to the control of an overseer and he told him make money and he ignored the plantations. There is some interesting plot action involving a slave revolt and the gratitude of a "Good Negro" to his master. This story is interesting as a historical document. It is interesting to see how a citizen of Ireland, a colonized state with much of its population in near slavery (in fact many were taken as slaves to work the sugar plantations) viewed plantation slavery.
You can read the stories online here along with lots more of her stories.
Mel u
1796 in Ireland-two convict ships leave Cork for Australia. The French try to invade Ireland but bad weather prevents them from landing. The population of the country is estimated to be 4.5 million with about 250,000 in Dublin. Virtually anything of value is owned by Anglo-Irish.
Marie Edgeworth (1768 to 1849) was a very prolific Irish writer in various forms, among them the short story and the novel. She was Anglo-Irish (I wonder who was the first important Irish writer of whom that cannot be said). I am not sure how much she is read now but she is considered an important figure in the development of stories about women and children, especially young women and girls. Her novel Castle Rackrent is considered the first historical novel, the first Anglo-Irish novel (I wonder how Gulliver's Travels is classified by those who state this) and the first of a long tradition of Big House novels. Set in 1782 in Ireland it is a satire and expose of the cruelty of Landlords. I really enjoyed reading it and I think it is probably required reading for those into the Irish novel. During ISSW2 I posted on her most famous short story "The Purple Jar" which is about a girl's first period. It is interesting for nothing else as to see how vague Edgeworth felt she had to be in writing this story. It is considered a classic story as it is probably the first reference to this in literature. I concede it is partially in the category of "historically important" read. I also read her short story, included by William Trevor in his great anthology, The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories, "Limerick Gloves" which is a very funny satire of English prejudice against the Irish. It is a delightful story.
The story is short and I do not want to spoil the ending (OK it is not real hard to see it coming) but honesty is wonderfully rewarded, the wicked are thwarted and lives are changed as a result of the code of total honesty that the children had been brought up in by their grandmother.
"The Grateful Negro" is interesting for the view it gives us of how a highly educated woman of strong moral principals like Maria Edgeworth viewed the institution of slavery. The story is set in Jamaica in the 1760s. Slavery is legal there and is seen as needed to run the sugar plantations. Ms. Edgeworth took her facts from contemporary accounts of life on slave plantation in Jamaica written by English absolutionists so she did her research. There are two slave masters in the story, one is very good and benevolent and treats his slaves well. The kind master does not free them as he thinks, as did many well meaning people at the time, that it would lead to chaos in which the slaves, with no way to get home (many in fact were born in the islands) would starve and some saw the needed production of sugar and rum as justifying slavery. The harsh master is not really deliberately cruel he just turned the slaves and the plantation to the control of an overseer and he told him make money and he ignored the plantations. There is some interesting plot action involving a slave revolt and the gratitude of a "Good Negro" to his master. This story is interesting as a historical document. It is interesting to see how a citizen of Ireland, a colonized state with much of its population in near slavery (in fact many were taken as slaves to work the sugar plantations) viewed plantation slavery.
You can read the stories online here along with lots more of her stories.
Mel u
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| "Maria, cute hat" Carmilla |
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