- Katharine Kittredge
Why is the Jar Purple?
There are stories that you love to read, and then there are stories that you love to teach. I love teaching Maria Edgeworth’s “The Purple Jar.” It’s the story of seven-year-old Rosamond, who is taken to the big city by her mother so that she can get new shoes. Rosamond, being seven, is in awe of everything she sees, and wants to own most of it: toys, flowers, jewelry, and even the big purple jar that is displayed in the pharmacist’s window. Her mother tells her that she can only afford one item this month, and Rosamond chooses the purple jar over her much-needed new shoes. When the jar arrives at the house, she learns that it is actually a plain glass jar with nasty purple liquid inside—very disappointing. Then, we see how she suffers from her falling-apart shoes; she can’t take walks, she misses out on adventures with her siblings, and her father calls her slip-shod!
At this point, my students have things to say. Generally, there will be one vocal student leading an outcry for Rosamond’s parents to be charged with child abuse and neglect. These students point out various less extreme measures that could be taken to teach the same lesson. Another group (often including the student athletes in the room) see the story as an illustration of good and effective parenting, and a number tell similar stories of being allowed to suffer the consequences of their own youthful poor choices; some of these stories involve copious amounts of ice cream. Discussion is heated, and I am happy. Any day you can get your students passionately involved with an Irish children’s story published in 1796 is a good day.
The part of the story that has always bothered me is the emphasis on the jar’s color; once the liquid is emptied “[I]t was no longer a purple vase. It was a plain white glass jar, which had appeared to have that beautiful color merely from the liquor with which it had been filled” (13). Why is Edgeworth making such a big deal about this? This is still a beautiful, hand-blown glass jar that today could be sold on eBay for massive sums of money.
Here is where a bit of time-travel becomes necessary. The rise in manufacturing as well as an increased emphasis on the importance of play to the development of children had made toys—now much more complex and highly ornamental—available to children in ways that were wholly new. In her pedagogical writing, Edgeworth championed simple toys for children—blocks, soap bubbles, self-designed paper kites, and working wagons that could be used for hauling weeds, earth, and rocks. She had nothing but scorn for “frail and useless” ornamental toys that collapsed when a child attempted to play with them, such as the gilded coach whose wheels would not turn, and which would be irreparably damaged if the child tried to “unharness horses which were never meant to be unharnessed; or to comb their woolen manes and tails, which usually come off during the operation” (Practical 3). In another Rosamond story, “The Two Plums,” Rosamond is offered the choice between a stone cunningly painted to resemble a plum and a new case for her sewing needles. Made wiser by the purple jar incident, Rosamond rejects the false plum. Edgworth’s opinion of “deceptive toys” is scathing: “[toys that] give pleasure merely by exciting surprise, and of course give children’s minds such a tone, that they are afterwards too fond of similar useless baubles. This species of delight is soon over and is succeeded by a desire to triumph in the ignorance, the credulity, or the cowardice, of their companions” (Practical 26).
The concern for children being able to see beyond cunning manufactory and to distinguish truth from reality may have come to the fore at this time for a variety of reasons. The late eighteenth century saw a craze for automata including natural-appearing birds, animals, and even the Automaton Chess Player. The challenge was to determine natural from human creation. This challenge extended to children, especially in the realm of dolls, which were becoming complex enough to open and close their eyes and to make small utterances. Educators feared that children might be unable to tell the difference between actually living beings and toys which resembled them. In The History of Little Mary and her Doll Jane (1808), Mary, who is only three years old, tries to teach her doll how to read, and punishes her when she will not learn. Her mother corrects her “in accents true and mild”: “Your Doll . . .has done no wrong/She’s made of wood, and got no tongue/She’s very pretty for your play, /And you must nurse her every day./Be very careful of her clothes,/And mind she does not break her nose” (25). Other books about dolls published during this time carefully depict children voicing their doll’s responses. It is emphasized that children must use their imagination to pretend that their dolls are small people with human abilities and personalities.
These discussions seem a bit bizarre today, but they are not so dissimilar from our own concerns and fear when our children are exposed to new media. Did the lavender Teletubby turn our children gay? Will the little girl who spends too much time in Barbie’s world become anorexic? We continue to fear that playing first-person shooter video games normalizes violence for our children. For Maria Edgeworth, the fears were around tinted glass and painted plums, but at the end of the day the central question is whether children will be able to navigate situations which are as new to us as they are to them.
WORKS CITED
Anon. A History of Little Mary and her Doll Jane. London, J Bailey, 1808.
https://digitalarchive.tpl.ca/internal/media/dispatcher/2178948/full, Accessed 10 June
2024.
Edgeworth, Maria. Early Lessons, Boston: R. Hunter, 1824.
Early Lessons : Maria Edgeworth : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. accessed 29 July, 2024.
Edgeworth, Maria and Richard Edgeworth. Practical Education. J. Johnson, 1801.
www.google.com/books/edition/Practical_Education/3TQ_diVc5lcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=practical+education+edgeworth&printsec=frontcover. Accessed 28 July, 2024
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Katharine Kittredge is Professor of English at Ithaca College where she teaches courses in children's literature, women's and gender studies, comics, and science fiction. Two of her passions are cooking spicy food and playing ice hockey.
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