The Neapolitan gouache of a strong-minded English Lady : "The Little Merchants" by Maria Edgeworth

The essay illuminates key issues in the politics of representation of foreign locales through the analysis of Maria Edgeworth's "The Little Merchants". This short story, set in Naples, and first published as a pedagogic text in the collection "The Parent's Assistant" (1800), enforces the idea of a common humanity by foregrounding universalized codes of moral behavior in the tale's plot, but eroticizes the Italian landscape and offers an education in the habits, trades, and customs of a foreign culture. Edgeworth's text offers up Italy as a site of pleasurable exploration, at the same time as using it to encode moral and practical lessons for English children.