Reading Martineau’s piece almost immediately made me think of Carlyle’s piece we read previously. Both writers address government and how it could be improved. Carlyle thinks that government is too stagnant, and should evolve with the people it governs, and Martineau thinks that the way the government treats women in particular is unfair and outdated. They both approach it in a similar sense, but my question comes down to this: what was the difference in reception of the two pieces at the time? In Victorian England, woman writers were certainly not as well-respected or taken seriously, so what happened when a woman writer wrote about something serious? How did the double standard manifest in this situation? There are many ways to consider comparisons between the two texts, but I wonder about the differences. In two texts surrounding a similar attitude and position on government– somewhat radical and out of the norm,the audience would have reacted completely differently.