''A Knowledge of the Useful'': Economy in Mary Hays's Family Annals, or the Sisters

''A Knowledge of the Useful'': Economy in Mary Hays's Family Annals, or the Sisters

This article seeks to reassess Mary Hays's underappreciated last novel, Family Annals, or the Sisters (1817), to trace the novel's philosophical complexity and Hays's persisting and yet evolving radicalism in the later stage of her career. Through a close study of the novel, this article explores Hays's system of economic education and her utilization of the new type of novel as a means to promote it with a view to bringing about social reforms. It expounds on Hays's critical engagement with not only the educational theories delineated in John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and Claude Adrien Helvétius's A Treatise on Man, His Intellectual Faculties and His Education (1772), but also the notions of economy expressed in Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth's Practical Education (1798). It further demonstrates how Hays remained unswayed by custom and prejudice, which set her apart from Locke, Helvétius, and the Edgeworths. Finally, it contends that Hays's employment of the novel's instructive power worked in tandem with her egalitarian approach to economy intended to equip a much wider public, including those lower down the social ladder, with the useful knowledge and self-esteem that would enable them to live out the dignity of independence.