Hannah More and the Equalizing Force of Storytelling

By Katelyn Northcott

Hannah More played two roles in her early life: teacher and playwright. Her students remembered how she taught them through stories. Her audiences remembered how her plays taught them virtue. Her imagination proved too vivacious for a humble role as teacher, and her didacticism seemed too pronounced for a career as playwright.

Her didactic and dramatic talents converged into her role as storyteller for the abolition movement in England. More sought to bring out others’ humanity through her writing. Teaching and drama were her training grounds for the work she would do to humanize Africans in the eyes of her countrymen. Journalists today should learn from More the culture-changing power of stories and the faith to love God above all else.

More’s teaching emphasized substance. She thought soft minds should be hardened by reading authors such as John Locke. Through hardened minds, students developed a deeper character. Deeper character gave deeper meaning to life. Because she loved her students, she wanted them to live lives of deep meaning.

More began her career as a teacher at 16 years old. She incorporated stories from the Bible, fairytales, and nursery rhymes into her lessons. Her students felt the stories come to life thanks to her emphasis on the imagination. She livened the stories because she wanted her students to remember them. She believed the stories had the power to change her students’ lives.

The Sunday schools More helped establish for the poor illustrated her conviction that education made for a more satisfactory life. Many opposed More’s work, concerned about destabilization of the social order if the poor learned to read and write. More, however, continued her work, more concerned with the humanity of the people she educated than a stable social order. Just as human as the rich, the poor deserved to live a full life like the rich.

More found it impossible to hide her bent toward encouraging the principled life in her dramatic works. She couldn’t help herself because she knew the Christian principles she espoused in her plays would improve her audiences’ lives. More’s play Percy met great success.

Though she loved the theater, she gave it up soon after she wrote Percy. According to historian Karen Swallow Prior, this was likely because More, a devout Anglican, felt she loved theater too much.

“Her struggle suggests that of one for whom theater had been a religious love, that of one who, in not knowing how to love it in proper proportion, felt it best not to love it at all,” Prior said.

Two years after she gave up her pursuits in theater, More met William Wilberforce and joined the abolition movement, where More truly thrived. Wilberforce took on the political aspects of the movement while More spearheaded the cultural side of the movement.

More’s time as a Sunday school teacher allowed her to relate to the poor, and her time as a playwright in London helped her to understand the rich. Her unique ability to appeal to both audiences equipped her perfectly to change the culture.

During More’s time as a teacher, she taught through stories because she knew these would be most memorable to her students. She employed the same tactic during her time in the abolition movement, simply retelling the horrifying true stories of slaves. It worked.

“[More’s] role in the war against slavery can hardly be overstated,” Prior said. “She helped the average Briton see the humanity of the African slaves for the first time—as mothers, fathers, and children little different from their white, British counterparts.”

[This essay by Katelyn Northcott won an honorable mention in the WJI Essay Competition hosted by WJI Network.]