Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers as a philosophical text

ABSTRACT

Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) has not so far been considered a philosopher, probably because she wrote novels and tracts on education rather than philosophical treatises. This paper argues that Hamilton’s novel Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) should be read as a philosophical text, both for its close engagement with William Godwin’s moral theory and for what it suggests about Hamilton’s own moral theory and moral psychology. Studies of Memoirs have so far either characterized it as merely satire of Godwin, or, if they have read it as containing arguments against Godwin’s views, have described those arguments in very broad strokes, without looking closely at the text to see if the descriptions are warranted. A careful examination of Memoirs shows that Hamilton objected primarily to one key aspect of Godwin’s moral theory, namely, his insistence that actions affecting others must be based on an impartial, disinterested assessment of a person’s contribution to general utility rather than on their particular relationship to the agent. Memoirs also points towards Hamilton’s own moral theory, as exemplified in her Series of Popular Essays (1813), with its emphasis on ‘benevolent affections’ that are directed towards family members and people in the agent’s social circle.

KEYWORDS:

• Hamilton
• Godwin
• moral theory
• utilitarianism
• genre

Notes

1 Hamilton published three novels: Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1796), Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800), and The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808). Her other works were Letters on Education (1801; a second edition later in 1801 appeared under the title Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education), Memoirs of the Life of Agrippina, the Wife of Germanicus (1804), Letters Addressed to the Daughter of a Nobleman (1806), Exercises in Religious Knowledge (1809), Hints Addressed to the Patrons and Directors of Schools (1815), and A Series of Popular Essays, Illustrative of Principles Essentially Connected with the Improvement of the Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart (1813).

2 Early modern male philosophers often published in a range of genres, too, as has been noted by Hutton, “Persona”, and Shapiro, “Revisiting”.

3 If Hamilton did not aspire to be known as a philosopher, it may be because the word ‘philosopher’ had recently become “a term of abuse in popular fiction, drama, and journalism, connoting atheist, seducer, plotter and revolutionary” (Butler, Romantics, 55; qtd. in Grogan, Politics and Genre, 61).

4 On Hamilton, Scottish common sense philosophy (loosely understood), and associationism, see Russell, “Elizabeth Hamilton”; Price, “Democratizing Taste” and “Elizabeth Hamilton’s Letters”; de Ritter, “Female Philosophers”; Rendall, “‘Elementary Principles’”; and Gokcekus, “Elizabeth Hamilton’s Scottish Associationism”.

5 Godwin published three editions of Political Justice. It appears from Hamilton’s footnotes that she had both the first (1793) and second (1796) editions at hand. The page numbers given at Memoirs 279n4 and 294n16 correspond to pages in the 1796 edition. The page number at Memoirs 160n13 does not seem to correspond to pages in any of the three editions then in print, but the passage quoted there is in only the first edition (book 2, chapter 3). All quotations to Godwin in this paper are to the second edition, citing volume, book, and chapter numbers, followed by page number.

6 Memoirs also criticizes Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Hays, but this paper focuses on its engagement with Godwin.

7 Mark Philp quotes William Hazlitt’s 1825 assessment that Godwin “blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after” (Godwin’s Political Justice, 6).

8 In Memoirs, the ideas being satirized are said to come from “several valuable treatises on philosophy and atheism” imported from France, and an opponent calls them “vile French principles” (Hamilton, Memoirs, 306–7). Matthew Grenby suggests that the “new philosophy” was actually the creation of its opponents, and that there were as many understandings of what exactly the new philosophy comprised as there were opponents of it (Anti-Jacobin Novel, 68–9).

9 On Memoirs as an anti-Jacobin novel, see Kelly, “Elizabeth Hamilton”, 146–61 and Grenby, Anti-Jacobin Novel, 26–7. Grogan argues that the Jacobin/anti-Jacobin framework is too restrictive for understanding Hamilton’s thought, and that she is better understood as taking a middle position (Politics and Genre, 3–8; see also chapters 2 and 3).

10 Miriam Wallace notes that “Modern Philosophers identifies Godwin’s Political Justice and Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman as serious philosophy with which to grapple textually” (“Anti-Jacobin Parody”, 225), but she does not explore whether or how the novel grapples with them. Similarly, Jane Rendall claims that “a close reading reveals a commitment to religious toleration, an ideal of educated female agency, and an endorsement of a progressively improving society” (“‘Elementary Principles of Education’”, 616), but the article in which that claim is made does not actually include a close reading of Memoirs.

11 Hamilton’s first biographer, Elizabeth Benger, wrote that Memoirs was a “passport to fame and distinction” (Memoirs of the Late Elizabeth Hamilton, 132).

12 While this is not the place to analyse another of Hamilton’s novels, it should be noted that she also depicts Godwin’s views in Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (253–61).

13 It has been widely noted that Bridgetina is modelled on the English author Mary Hays (1759–1843), a close friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Hamilton had been on good terms with Hays until the publication of Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1796), when the two fell out, evidently over Hamilton’s portrayal of Godwin in that novel (Grogan, Politics and Genre, 60).

14 Richard de Ritter offers an interesting analysis of Hamilton’s description of Bridgetina as having a “squint” and, more broadly, of the role of visual metaphors in Hamilton’s work (“Female Philosophers”).

15 For an account of public interest in the Hottentots in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and of Hamilton’s handling of the topic, see Grogan, Politics and Genre, 63–72.

16 Sarah Hutton observes that Julia is modelled on Rousseau’s Julie (“Persona”, 411).

17 For example, see Weng, “‘She Had Recourse to Her Pen’”, 38. Wallace, “Anti-Jacobin Parody” and Rendall, “‘Elementary Principles of Education’”, are two exceptions who suggest that there is more to the book than just satire; see note 10.

18 Gardner says that Wollstonecraft’s works can be read as philosophical texts once we note Wollstonecraft’s belief that “the truly moral work is one that only comes from genuine feelings, but is simply and honestly expressed” (Women Philosophers, 83).

19 Thus Grogan suggests that “the work is meant to correct or modify the reader’s behavior” (“Introduction”, 16).

20 Hamilton suggests that she had already developed this theory before encountering it in the works of other philosophers, but she says that she “found a hint upon the subject” in Lord Kames’ Elements of Criticism (1762) and that she later read Locke and Hartley on the topic (Letters, 20).

21 When Hamilton refers to ‘infants’, she apparently means children up to the age of about seven (Letters, 156).

22 Vallaton scorns the notion of duty, “the bugbear of the ignorant” (Hamilton, Memoirs, 50), yet invokes a duty to yield to the person of greater worth (234). He suggests that actions should be judged according to their consequences, in the same breath saying to Julia that her actions should be “governed by proper motives” (Hamilton, Memoirs, 234). He praises Julia for her “real, intrinsic, and imperishable excellence”, but then moments later asks, “what is the worth of any being but as it tends to general utility?” (Hamilton, Memoirs, 235). Since these tensions do exist in Godwin’s own views (see note 25), Hamilton may be using Vallaton’s speech to draw attention to these inconsistencies.

23 Kelly asserts that the narrator has a “masculine identity” (“Elizabeth Hamilton”, 144) because the narrator comments drily on Mrs. Botherim’s cooking and expresses “manly indignation, not feminine sympathy” regarding war veterans (“Elizabeth Hamilton”, 158). These do not seem to be conclusive reasons for thinking the narrator must be male.

24 References to the Enquirer cite part and essay number, followed by page number.

25 Hamilton may be presenting a skewed version of Godwin’s views; the passages her characters quote make Godwin sound like a hard determinist who believes that there are causal powers in the world that necessitate their effects. To be sure, such passages exist in Political Justice. But some passages suggest a more skeptical, Humean account of necessity (Political Justice, 1.4.7, 366–7); indeed, Godwin uses the same examples as Hume, of billiard balls and of two pieces of marble (Political Justice, 1.4.7, 357 and 368–9; see Hume, Enquiry, 110 and 111), and he acknowledges his debt to Hume in a footnote (Political Justice, 1.4.7, 377n). Frank B. Evans, III argues that despite appealing to Hume, Godwin’s view was in fact that “the necessity of causation inheres in the structure of reality”, and that ultimately Godwin “completely reversed Hume’s fundamental point of view” (“Shelley, Godwin, Hume”, 639–40). It is these strongly necessitarian elements of Godwin’s view that Hamilton stresses.

26 Kelly suggests that the loose structuring of Memoirs contrasts with the “‘necessitarian’ form” of English Jacobin novels, and says that “anti-Jacobin novelists, most of whom were associated with the Established Church, assume Anglican and Arminian doctrines of free will and providentially assisted ethical action” (“Elizabeth Hamilton”, 149). If Hamilton did believe in free will, she does not say so explicitly in Memoirs, and it seems unlikely that we can make inferences about this merely because the novel is loosely organized; such a structure is not inconsistent with necessitarianism.

27 Grogan offers an insightful analysis of how Hamilton uses Memoirs “to provide alternative life choices for her female reader that fit loosely within the dominant paradigm but also test and push it” (Politics and Genre, 79; see chapter 3).

28 For an insightful analysis of Mrs. Fielding as a single woman, and comparisons to Elizabeth Hamilton herself (who also never married and was involved in establishing a home for indigent women in Edinburgh), see Bild, “Mrs. Fielding”.

29 Miriam Wallace writes that Julia’s “moral fall” is due to “the ideas used by Vallaton to convince Julia that running away with him without marriage is a high and useful purpose, and that filial duty is not so conducive to the general good as personal sexual fulfillment” (“Anti-Jacobin Parody”, 227).

30 Scholars have debated whether Godwin should be characterized as a utilitarian (a term which neither he nor Hamilton uses, of course, since it was coined later). For interpretations that read Godwin’s position as ‘perfectionism’ rather than utilitarianism, see Philp, Godwin’s Political Justice, and “William Godwin”. For a survey of the debate and a defense of reading Godwin as a utilitarian (as well as a perfectionist), see Lamb, “Was William Godwin A Utilitarian?”. I do not think my comparison of Hamilton’s views to Godwin’s is affected by this debate, so I use ‘utilitarianism’ as a convenient label for Godwin’s views. A further debate exists over whether Godwin’s impartialism is justified on utilitarian (teleological) grounds or on the basis of a separate commitment to equality; see Lamb, “Foundations of Godwinian Impartiality”, for an argument that both play a role. Again, I do not think my interpretation of Memoirs is affected by how one answers this question; the more important issue is how Hamilton seems to have read Godwin.

31 See Lamb, “Was William Godwin A Utilitarian?”, 126–9.

32 Whether or not Godwin’s utilitarianism is compatible with his claim that actions must be performed from a virtuous motive is debatable (see Thompson and Lamb, “Disinterestedness and Virtue”, 814–19; Philp, “William Godwin”) but need not be settled here. Perhaps Hamilton is pointing out the apparent consistencies when she has Vallaton express both views in his confused exposition to Julia (Hamilton, Memoirs, 234).

33 Though she does not elaborate on the suggestion, Price suggests that Hamilton “argues for a kind of theological utilitarianism” (“Elizabeth Hamilton’s Letters”, 104).

34 Theoretically, of course, we might be faced with choosing between people of exactly the same worth, but Godwin thinks this is unlikely (Political Justice, 1.2.2, 127 and 137).

35 Godwin in fact changed the details of the case between editions; in the first and third editions, the choice is between Fénelon and his chamber-maid. On the possible significance of the alterations, see Singer, Cannold, and Kuhse, “William Godwin”, 71. They argue that after Wollstonecraft’s death in 1797 and in response to a searing criticism by Samuel Parr, Godwin rethought his views on the ‘partial affections’, giving them a greater role in his moral theory (73, 79–82; see also Philp, “William Godwin”).

36 Important letters in the novel are those from Martha Goodwin to Harriet (Hamilton, Memoirs, 187–92), from Mr. Sydney to his son Henry (241–53 and 311–16), from Maria to Henry (264–71 and 291–4), and from Bridgetina to Henry (272–3). Others are from Myope to “the enlightened” (Hamilton, Memoirs, 16–17), Mrs. Delmond to Julia (180–1), and the minor character Carradine to Henry (355–6).

37 Godwin does concede that in the present imperfect state of humanity, repentance and guilt might serve a purpose, that of helping us remember where we have erred in the past so we do not repeat the behavior (Political Justice, 1.4.8, 396); under certain situations, then, there is a utilitarian justification for feeling these emotions.

38 Hamilton dedicated Popular Essays to Rev. Archibald Alison (1757–1839), “as a tribute of gratitude and affection” (vol. 1, title page). Alison was a friend of Hamilton, and author of Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790).