Castle Rackrent: Analysis of Setting
"Castle Rackrent," recognized as one of the first regional novels in English, is set against the backdrop of Rackrent Castle, the ancestral home of the Anglo-Irish Rackrent family. The castle serves as a powerful symbol of the Anglo-Irish class's exploitative relationship with Ireland during a time of intense political tension surrounding the proposed union of Ireland and Great Britain. The narrative spans four generations of the Rackrents, illustrating the decay of both the family and the estate as they embody the corrupt practices of absentee landlords who profited from their Irish lands while neglecting their responsibilities.
The novel highlights the suffering of the Irish peasant class due to the greed of the emerging middle class and the mismanagement of their lands. It utilizes gothic elements to explore themes of imprisonment, particularly concerning women, as seen in the plight of Sir Kit Rackrent's nameless wife, who is confined for her refusal to surrender her wealth. Similarly, the Moneygawl estate emphasizes the repetitive cycle of entrapment faced by women like Isabella Moneygawl, who find themselves constrained by their familial and marital obligations. Through its rich setting and character dynamics, "Castle Rackrent" critiques the socio-political landscape of its time, revealing the complexities of identity, class, and the consequences of systemic corruption.
Castle Rackrent: Analysis of Setting
First published: 1800
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Regional
Time of work: Eighteenth century
Places Discussed
Castle Rackrent
Castle Rackrent. Irish home of the Rackrent family, the novel’s primary setting. The castle symbolizes the relationship of England and Ireland during a historical period when a harsh debate over union of Ireland with Great Britain creates a split among the Irish upper classes.
Regarded as the first regional novel in English, Castle Rackrent spans four generations of the Rackrents, an Anglo-Irish landed gentry family. Although the class of people known as the Anglo-Irish, the wealthy protestant landowners, had ruled Ireland for generations, many spent their lives in England and on the European continent living in luxury while reaping profits from their agricultural lands in Ireland. They often left the management of their estates in the hands of corrupt overseers who failed to keep up the property. This absentee landlord system, coupled with a greedy emerging Irish middle class exploited the disenfranchised and aggravated the impoverishment of Ireland’s peasant class.
Rackrent Castle’s very name emulates the sound of disintegration: The rack was a medieval instrument of torture on which victims were physically stretched past the limits of their endurance; rent is a word for splitting apart. Indeed, the castle literally disintegrates as the novel develops. At the same time, the Rackrent family, a picture of four generations of the absentee landlord system, sinks into decay as each generation uses dishonesty and trickery (directed particularly toward victimized women) to acquire more money. Intent on realism, Edgeworth spares nothing in utilizing Castle Rackrent as a symbol to reveal the corruption inherent in the Anglo-Irish social system and to call for the overthrow of Ireland’s absentee landlord system.
Many late-eighteenth and early nineteenth century gothic novels feature castles, or castlelike houses, to characterize people who are locked within or without. The suggestive atmosphere of Rackrent Castle emphasizes the era’s popular gothic principle of imprisonment and the terrifying aspects of women’s place in society at the end of the eighteenth century. Sir Kit Rackrent’s wife—who, significantly, does not have a first name—is locked within the castle’s walls because she refuses to surrender her jewels, particularly a diamond cross, to the estate after she marries into the family. Ultimately, after being imprisoned in a room for seven years, she escapes only because Sir Kit dies. The theme of imprisonment, all-pervasive in nineteenth century literature, is spoken of as ordinary by the novel’s unreliable and irrationally loyal narrator, Thady Quirk. After Sir Kit dies, he blames all the trouble on Lady Rackrent’s refusal to do her duty, especially when her husband made no secret of the fact that he married her for her money. After the Rackrents go bankrupt, Thady’s son Jason, a sharp attorney, exploits the family’s weaknesses and winds up with their land.
Moneygawl estate
Moneygawl estate. Home of Isabella Moneygawl, whose father locks her in her chamber when she disobeys him. The novel’s second estate, Moneygawl re-emphasizes Edgeworth’s political view of the decaying Anglo-Irish social order and her pervasive gothic theme of incarceration. Although Isabella is freed after Sir Condy Rackrent marries her, her marriage only traps her once again—this time at Castle Rackrent, which has become a tumbledown eyesore.
Bibliography
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. London: Oxford University Press, 1972. The standard biography, eloquent and reflecting scrupulous research in Edgeworth family papers and correspondence. Includes information on the Edgeworth family’s relationship with their retainers and tenants, and on the reception of the novel.
Flanagan, Thomas. The Irish Novelists: 1800-1850. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. An elegant and witty discussion of Maria Edgeworth that places her in the context of her Irish contemporaries. The analysis of regional and native elements set the standard for much subsequent discussion of Castle Rackrent.
Harden, Elizabeth. Maria Edgeworth. Boston: Twayne, 1984. A fine survey of Edgeworth’s life and work that stresses her theme of “the education of the heart” through the various phases of her development. Close analysis of the narrative strategies of Castle Rackrent. Includes a useful annotated bibliography.
Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. Their Fathers’ Daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Patriarchal Complicity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Contains a substantial discussion of Edgeworth’s life and works and her place in literary history, considered from the perspective of her place in the history of women’s writing.
McCormack, W. J. Ascendancy and Tradition in Anglo-Irish Literary History from 1789 to 1939. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1985. Contains a consideration of Castle Rackrent in the light of the ideological implications of its treatment of social class. A sophisticated contribution to the sociology of the Irish novel.
Owens, Coílín, ed. Family Chronicles: Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent. Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1987. A compilation of previously published critical views of Castle Rackrent, covering the work’s genesis, its contexts, and some of its critical dimensions. Contains a full bibliography of other sources on the novel.