ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the manner in which Maria Edgeworth employed her position as a women writer of educational works, and thus a written maternal educator in the tradition of Sarah Fielding and Mary Wollstonecraft, to explore the role of women as female citizens. The role of the woman writer as educator by the late eighteenth century differs from the role of the female protagonist in the domestic novel, as an educator's authority is implicit and does not need to be proved. In terms of a female readership, Edgeworth's writing was intended to provide a basic, non- static model of mothering to be employed and interpreted by real mothers; she was not merely reiterating an established discourse of acceptable maternity. Mothering was constructed as a complex science in her writing. In forming a conception of mothering' that was empirical rather than prescribed, Edgeworth presented potential for empowerment in the performance of the maternal role.
