The Purple Jar
Encyclopedia
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...
(1768-1849), an Anglo-Irish writer of novels and stories. "The Purple Jar" first appeared in The Parent's Assistant
The Parent's Assistant
The Parent's Assistant is the first collection of children's stories by Maria Edgeworth, published by Joseph Johnson in 1796. The first edition had six stories: Lazy Lawrence, Tarlton, The Little Dog Trusty, The Orange Man, The False Key, and the Barring Out...
(1796) and reappeared in Rosamond (1801). Of the dozens of stories Edgeworth wrote in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this parable of desire and disappointment retains an extraordinary hold on the public and literary imagination. The story is about a young girl, Rosamund, who needs new pair of shoes but is attracted to a purple jar that she sees displayed in a shop window. Her mother gives her the choice of spending her money on shoes or the jar and she chooses the purple jar. “You might be disappointed,” her mother cautions, adding that she will not be able to buy new shoes until the next month. However, when she gets home she discovers that the jar was not purple but filled with dark liquid. “I didn’t want this black stuff!” she cries. Adding to her disappointment her father refuses to take her out in public because she does looks slovenly without good shoes.
Scholars have read this story as a parable of Consumer capitalism
Consumer capitalism
Consumer capitalism is a theoretical economic and political condition in which consumer demand is manipulated, in a deliberate and coordinated way, on a very large scale, through mass-marketing techniques, to the advantage of sellers....
. It has also been discussed as dramatizing a girl's sad awareness of menstruation
Menstruation
Menstruation is the shedding of the uterine lining . It occurs on a regular basis in sexually reproductive-age females of certain mammal species. This article focuses on human menstruation.-Overview:...
in the context of an unsympathetic mother and a disgusted father
Cultural references
Elizabeth GaskellElizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson , often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era...
’s Mary Barton
Mary Barton
Mary Barton is the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester during the 1830s and 1840s and deals heavily with the difficulties faced by the Victorian lower class.-Plot summary:...
(1849) alludes to Edgeworth’s story. The character Rose Campbell in Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
's "Eight Cousins
Eight Cousins
"Eight Cousins, or The Aunt-Hill" was published in 1875 by American novelist Louisa May Alcott. It is the story of Rose Campbell, a lonely and sickly girl who has been recently orphaned and must now reside with her maiden aunts, the matriarchs of her wealthy Boston family. When Rose's guardian,...
" (1875) refers to the story: "I always thought it very unfair in her mother not to warn the poor thing a little bit; and she was regularly mean when Rosamond asked for a bowl to put the purple stuff in, and she said, in such a provoking way, 'I did not agree to lend you a bowl, but I will, my dear.' Ugh! I always want to shake that hateful woman, though she was a moral mamma." A character in E. Nesbit
E. Nesbit
Edith Nesbit was an English author and poet whose children's works were published under the name of E. Nesbit. She wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television...
’s 1913 “Wet Magic,” alludes to the “icy voice” of Rosamond’s mother, “the one who was so hateful about the purple jar.”
"The Purple Jar" was also read by Princess Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
, Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
(who admired it), Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
(who did not), and the actress Fanny Kemble
Fanny Kemble
Frances Anne Kemble , was a famous British actress and author in the early and mid nineteenth century.-Youth and acting career:...