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Castle Rackrent

COLIN GRAHAM (ESSAY DATE SPRING 1996)

SOURCE: Graham, Colin. “History, Gender and the Colonial Moment: Castle Rackrent.” Irish Studies Review, no. 14 (spring 1996): 21-24.

In the following essay, Graham examines Edgeworth’s treatment of the concept of union—between male and female and between England and Ireland—in Castle Rackrent.

For Irish literary and cultural criticism, Castle Rackrent (1800) is placed almost irresistibly at the moment of the Act of Union; it sets a narrative which faces back to a pre-Union ‘chaos’ against an authorising ‘Preface’ which looks with anticipation to the new post-Union century. I want to examine how the squeezed historical moment of Union, balanced precariously on the thinnest definition of fins de siècle and the gender issues inherent in the text, can be made vital...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Maria Edgeworth (Essay Date 1799)
4. General Commentary
   1. Marilyn Butler (Essay Date Spring 2001)
5. Title Commentary
   1. Castle Rackrent
   2. Belinda
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. Feminism