SOURCE: Ford, Charles Howard. “The Ambivalent Moralist.” In Hannah More: A Critical Biography, pp. 1-43. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.

In the following excerpt, Ford surveys More's ambivalent attitude toward the aristocracy and male supremacy as revealed in her early essays and dramas.

Literary critics and historians usually dismiss the early works of Hannah More as conventional or as derivative. It is true that the early plays and poems of More reflect the general concern for moral regeneration and national identity in Georgian Britain. Hannah More, like most writers, celebrated the godly, self-disciplined layperson who looked out for the common good rather than private gain. She, like most writers, criticized the excesses of decadent court culture and expressed “the passionate feelings of frustrated men and women in an age of torn attachments and uncertain identity.”¹ The reputations and incomes of literati such as More primarily depended upon the fickle...