Representing Illness: Competing Religious and Scientific Discourses in Harriet Martineau’s Life in the Sick-Room and Autobiography

Harriet Martineau wrote about her ill health in Life in the Sick-Room (1844) and Autobiography (1877)—two representations that differ greatly. Because the Autobiography verbalizes her intellectual shift toward a positivistic belief in science and materialism, Martineau distances herself from the Christian religious ideology that informed the earlier book. This article explores how Martineau’s re-evaluation reveals the interweaving of religious and scientific discourses in these texts, which, while understood as competing discourses, were also used to reinforce each other. This discourse analysis reflects not only Martineau’s personal evolution in terms of beliefs but also mirrors the larger cultural and historical shift toward secularization.