The Irish Historical Background - Essay Example

Maria Edgeworth had her own weaknesses and opportunities as a person but she overrode her weaknesses and did not flatter herself in her opportunities but looked to herself and what she could make of herself as a person and succeeded in that quest.One of the weaknesses Maria had to deal with was her stature and appearance. ‘Small in stature she was never short on grace and wit’ (Merriman, 2005). Maria Edgeworth did not allow low self-esteem take the better part of her for how she appeared or looked.

She believed her true personality was in her abilities and what she could do and not how she looked. Maria Edgeworth was also not lucky with parenting as she had to go through the hands of four mothers in her short youthful days. Her own mother was not loved and was neglect. ‘It was in their house that her neglected and unloved mother—always a kind and excellent, though a very sad woman—died’ (Edgeworth, WikiSource, 2008). Maria, however, loved all her stepmothers and treated them nothing less than her biological mother.

‘Kept by Mrs. Lataffiere, to whom she always felt much indebted, though her stepmother,’ (Edgeworth, WikiSource, 2008). Another weakness Maria Edgeworth had to battle was an eye problem she had. ‘Her eyes became so painfully inflamed that she was unable to use them’ (Merriman, 2005). This problem was with her in her childhood but little Maria did not let that stop her from pursuing her academic dreams. Records from Edgeworth’s unpublished family memoir has it that when she came to do the exercises set to her class at Mrs.

Daviss, she found them so easy that she wrote out the whole quarters exercises at once, "keeping them strung together in her desk, and, while the other girls were labouring at their tasks, she had all that time for reading what she pleased to herself, and, when the French master came round for the exercises, had only to unstring hers, and present it." (Lawless, 1905)