“Live at peace and be happy.ˮ Finding the Way to Happiness in Maria Edgeworth’s Moral Tales and Sarah Fielding’s The Governess.

Abstract

Abstract

What is happiness or better, what is it consist of? For centuries various intellectuals tried to answer this question. If before Enlightenment happiness was promised only in Heaven, with the Age of Reason, fostered by Scientific Revolution, which focused on the method of observation and experimentation in esploring nature, shifted human’s belief in happiness as a Divine gift that could be secured afterlife. The people became aware that the pursuit of happiness was real, consisting of pleasurable and good things and could be obtained in this life, on Earth. Happiness was something that everyone had the right to seek. Thus enlightened thinkers were engaged in finding out the answers to the questions of how can one be happy and how to make it easy and possible the pursuit of happiness. Although the happiness became accessible to every human being, the discussions about the happy life and happiness greatly varied. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the meaning of happiness according to some prominent thinkers of the English Enlightenment such as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Francis Hutcheson and explore the ways of pursuing happiness through reading The Governess by Sarah Fielding and Moral Tales by Maria Edgeworth. If Sarah Fielding pioneered in writing a novel dedicated especially to girls and their education, Maria Edgeworth became the first woman author who not only wrote a treatise on education but also developed children’s literature by writing for children and young adults. This thesis also aims to find the link between philosophical ideas of happiness and the works of Sarah Fielding and Maria Edgeworth.