Castle Rackrent E-Book

Maria Edgeworth

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Women Writers of the World
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 181

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Castle Rackrent is a sharp critique of class dynamics, the moral ambiguities of loyalty, and the intricate nature of landlord-tenant relationships in Ireland. Edgeworth delves into the flaws and excesses of the Anglo-Irish gentry, depicting a society where privilege and neglect coexist, often to the detriment of the lower classes. Through the narrative of Thady Quirk, the novel exposes the economic and social consequences of mismanagement and exploitation, shedding light on the decay of traditional landowning systems. Since its publication, Castle Rackrent has been celebrated for its innovative use of the unreliable narrator and its incisive social commentary. The novel's portrayal of historical and cultural tensions in Ireland has made it a foundational work in Anglo-Irish literature. Its exploration of themes such as greed, loyalty, and the erosion of social structures continues to resonate with readers and scholars alike. The novel remains relevant for its unflinching examination of power dynamics and its nuanced critique of colonial and feudal systems. By scrutinizing the consequences of economic and moral decay, Castle Rackrent invites reflections on enduring issues of inequality and social responsibility that still echo in contemporary society.

Leseprobe

Maria Edgeworth

CASTLE RACKRENT

Contents

INTRODUCTION

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

CASTLE RACKRENT

INTRODUCTION

Maria Edgeworth

1768 - 1849

Maria Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish novelist and a pioneering figure in 19th-century literature, renowned for her sharp social commentary and early contributions to the realist novel. Born in Oxfordshire, England, and raised primarily in Ireland, Edgeworth is celebrated for her works that delve into themes of education, class, and Anglo-Irish relations. Her writing played a pivotal role in shaping the emerging genre of the novel, particularly through her depictions of Irish life and society.

Early Life and Education

Maria Edgeworth was born into a large and intellectual family, the second of Richard Lovell Edgeworth’s 22 children. Her father, an influential inventor and educational theorist, had a profound impact on her upbringing and literary career. Edgeworth was educated at home, where she developed a keen interest in literature, science, and education. Her family’s relocation to their estate in Edgeworthstown, Ireland, brought her into close contact with Irish tenants and rural life, experiences that would deeply inform her writing.

Career and Contributions

Edgeworth’s literary career began with the publication of Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), but she gained widespread recognition with Castle Rackrent (1800), a groundbreaking work often regarded as the first regional novel in English literature. Written in the form of a satirical narrative by a servant, the novel critiques Anglo-Irish landowners and provides a vivid depiction of Irish social customs.

Edgeworth’s novels, such as Belinda (1801) and The Absentee (1812), highlight issues such as the roles of women, moral education, and social reform. Her use of humor and irony, coupled with detailed character studies, brought realism to her storytelling. Additionally, her children’s literature, including Practical Education (1798), co-written with her father, revolutionized ideas about childhood learning and morality.

Impact and Legacy

Maria Edgeworth was a trailblazer in depicting Irish life and challenging prevailing stereotypes of her time. She balanced entertainment with moral instruction, creating a bridge between the Romantic and Victorian novel traditions. Her works influenced later authors, including Sir Walter Scott, who acknowledged her as a source of inspiration for his historical novels.

Edgeworth’s focus on education and her nuanced portrayal of class and gender continue to be studied in literary and feminist scholarship. While some critics have noted the limitations of her perspective as an Anglo-Irish landowner, her contributions to the portrayal of Irish identity and her exploration of social issues remain significant.

Maria Edgeworth passed away in 1849 at the age of 81, leaving behind a body of work that had a lasting impact on literature and education. Despite being less widely read today, her novels are recognized as essential precursors to modern social realism. Edgeworth’s ability to weave compelling narratives with sharp observations of human behavior ensures her place among the literary pioneers of her era.

About the Work

Castle Rackrent is a sharp critique of class dynamics, the moral ambiguities of loyalty, and the intricate nature of landlord-tenant relationships in Ireland. Edgeworth delves into the flaws and excesses of the Anglo-Irish gentry, depicting a society where privilege and neglect coexist, often to the detriment of the lower classes. Through the narrative of Thady Quirk, the novel exposes the economic and social consequences of mismanagement and exploitation, shedding light on the decay of traditional landowning systems.

Since its publication, Castle Rackrent has been celebrated for its innovative use of the unreliable narrator and its incisive social commentary. The novel's portrayal of historical and cultural tensions in Ireland has made it a foundational work in Anglo-Irish literature. Its exploration of themes such as greed, loyalty, and the erosion of social structures continues to resonate with readers and scholars alike.

The novel remains relevant for its unflinching examination of power dynamics and its nuanced critique of colonial and feudal systems. By scrutinizing the consequences of economic and moral decay, Castle Rackrent invites reflections on enduring issues of inequality and social responsibility that still echo in contemporary society.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The Prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to sympathise in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes. We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters. The life of a great or of a little man written by himself, the familiar letters, the diary of any individual published by his friends or by his enemies, after his decease, are esteemed important literary curiosities. We are surely justified, in this eager desire, to collect the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives, not only of the great and good, but even of the worthless and insignificant, since it is only by a comparison of their actual happiness or misery in the privacy of domestic life that we can form a just estimate of the real reward of virtue, or the real punishment of vice. That the great are not as happy as they seem, that the external circumstances of fortune and rank do not constitute felicity, is asserted by every moralist: the historian can seldom, consistently with his dignity, pause to illustrate this truth; it is therefore to the biographer we must have recourse. After we have beheld splendid characters playing their parts on the great theatre of the world, with all the advantages of stage effect and decoration, we anxiously beg to be admitted behind the scenes, that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses.

Some may perhaps imagine that the value of biography depends upon the judgment and taste of the biographer; but on the contrary it may be maintained, that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the extent of his intellectual powers and of his literary talents. A plain unvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative. Where we see that a man has the power, we may naturally suspect that he has the will to deceive us; and those who are used to literary manufacture know how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of a period, or the pointing of an antithesis.

That the ignorant may have their prejudices as well as the learned cannot be disputed; but we see and despise vulgar errors: we never bow to the authority of him who has no great name to sanction his absurdities. The partiality which blinds a biographer to the defects of his hero, in proportion as it is gross, ceases to be dangerous; but if it be concealed by the appearance of candor, which men of great abilities best know how to assume, it endangers our judgment sometimes, and sometimes our morals. If her Grace the Duchess of Newcastle, instead of penning her lord's elaborate eulogium, had undertaken to write the life of Savage, we should not have been in any danger of mistaking an idle, ungrateful libertine for a man of genius and virtue.

The talents of a biographer are often fatal to his reader. For these reasons the public often judiciously countenance those who, without sagacity to discriminate character, without elegance of style to relieve the tediousness of narrative, without enlargement of mind to draw any conclusions from the facts they relate, simply pour forth anecdotes, and retail conversations, with all the minute prolixity of a gossip in a country town.

The author of the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claims to the public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward, whose partiality to the family, in which he was bred and born, must be obvious to the reader. He tells the history of the Rackrent family in his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence that Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrent's affairs will be as interesting to all the world as they were to himself.

Those who were acquainted with the manners of a certain class of the gentry of Ireland some years ago, will want no evidence of the truth of honest Thady's narrative; to those who are totally unacquainted with Ireland, the following Memoirs will perhaps be scarcely intelligible, or probably they may appear perfectly incredible. For the information of the ignorant English reader, a few notes have been subjoined by the editor, and he had it once in contemplation to translate the language of Thady into plain English; but Thady's idiom is incapable of translation, and, besides, the authenticity of his story would have been more exposed to doubt if it were not told in his own characteristic manner.

Several years ago he related to the editor the history of the Rackrent family, and it was with some difficulty that he was persuaded to have it committed to writing; however, his feelings for 'The Honour Of The Family,' as he expressed himself, prevailed over his habitual laziness, and he at length completed the narrative which is now laid before the public.

The editor hopes his readers will observe that these are 'tales of other times;' that the manners depicted in the following pages are not those of the present age; the race of the Rackrents has long since been extinct in Ireland; and the drunken Sir Patrick, the litigious Sir Murtagh, the fighting Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy, are characters which could no more be met with at present in Ireland, than Squire Western or Parson Trulliber in England.

There is a time when individuals can bear to be rallied for their past follies and absurdities, after they have acquired new habits and a new consciousness. Nations, as well as individuals, gradually lose attachment to their identity, and the present generation is amused, rather than offended, by the ridicule that is thrown upon its ancestors.

Probably we shall soon have it in our power, in a hundred instances, to verify the truth of these observations.

When Ireland loses her identity by an union with Great Britain, she will look back, with a smile of good-humoured complacency, on the Sir Kits and Sir Condys of her former existence.

CASTLE RACKRENT

1. Monday Morning

Thady begins his memoirs of the Rackrent Family by dating MONDAY MORNING, because no great undertaking can be auspiciously commenced in Ireland on any morning but MONDAY MORNING. 'Oh, please God we live till Monday morning, we'll set the slater to mend the roof of the house. On Monday morning we'll fall to and cut the turf. On Monday morning we'll see and begin mowing. On Monday morning, please your honor, we'll begin and dig the potatoes,' etc.

All the intermediate days, between the making of such speeches and the ensuing Monday, are wasted: and when Monday morning comes, it is ten to one that the business is deferred to THE NEXT Monday morning. The Editor knew a gentleman, who, to counteract this prejudice, made his workmen and laborers begin all new pieces of work upon a Saturday.

Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose estate, praised be Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free time out of mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the MEMOIRS OF THE RACKRENT FAMILY, I think it my duty to say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have always been known by no other than 'Honest Thady,' afterward, in the time of Sir Murtagh, deceased, I remember to hear them calling me 'Old Thady,' and now I've come to 'Poor Thady'; for I wear a long greatcoat winter and summer, which is very handy, as I never put my arms into the sleeves; they are as good as new, though come Holantide next I've had it these seven years: it holds on by a single button round my neck, cloak fashion.

[The cloak, or mantle, as described by Thady, is of high antiquity. Spenser, in his View Of The State Of Ireland, proves that it is not, as some have imagined, peculiarly derived from the Scythians, but that 'most nations of the world anciently used the mantle; for the Jews used it, as you may read of Elias's mantle, etc.; the Chaldees also used it, as you may read in Diodorus; the Egyptians likewise used it, as you may read in Herodotus, and may be gathered by the description of Berenice in the Greek Commentary upon Callimachus; the Greeks also used it anciently, as appeared by Venus's mantle lined with stars, though afterward they changed the form thereof into their cloaks, called Pallai, as some of the Irish also use; and the ancient

Latins and Romans used it, as you may read in Virgil, who was a great antiquary, that Evander, when AEneas came to him at his feast, did entertain and feast him sitting on the ground, and lying on mantles: insomuch that he useth the very word mantile for a mantle —

"Humi mantilia sternunt:"

so that it seemeth that the mantle was a general habit to most nations, and not proper to the Scythians only.

Spenser knew the convenience of the said mantle, as housing, bedding, and clothing: 'IREN. Because the commodity doth not countervail the discommodity; for the inconveniences which thereby do arise are much more many; for it is a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloak for a thief. First, the outlaw being, for his many crimes and villanies, banished from the towns and houses of honest men, and wandering in waste places, far from danger of law, maketh his mantle his house, and under it covereth himself from the wrath of Heaven, from the offence of the earth, and from the sight of men. When it raineth, it is his penthouse; when it bloweth, it is his tent; when it freezeth, it is his tabernacle. In summer he can wear it loose; in winter he can wrap it close; at all times he can use it; never heavy, never cumbersome. Likewise for a rebel it is as serviceable; for in this war that he maketh (if at least it deserves the name of war), when he still flieth from his foe, and lurketh in the THICK WOODS (this should be BLACK BOGS) and straight passages, waiting for advantages, it is his bed, yea, and almost his household stuff.']

To look at me, you would hardly think 'Poor Thady' was the father of Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what poor Thady says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year, landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady; but I wash my hands of his doings, and as I have lived so will I die, true and loyal to the family. The family of the Rackrents is, I am proud to say, one of the most ancient in the kingdom. Everybody knows this is not the old family name, which was O'Shaughlin, related to the kings of Ireland — but that was before my time. My grandfather was driver to the great Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, and I heard him, when I was a boy, telling how the Castle Rackrent estate came to Sir Patrick; Sir Tallyhoo Rackrent was cousin-german to him, and had a fine estate of his own, only never a gate upon it, it being his maxim that a car was the best gate. Poor gentleman! he lost a fine hunter and his life, at last, by it, all in one day's hunt. But I ought to bless that day, for the estate came straight into THE family, upon one condition, which Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin at the time took sadly to heart, they say, but thought better of it afterwards, seeing how large a stake depended upon it: that he should, by Act of Parliament, take and bear the surname and arms of Rackrent.

Now it was that the world was to see what was IN Sir Patrick. On coming into the estate he gave the finest entertainment ever was heard of in the country; not a man could stand after supper but Sir Patrick himself who could sit out the best man in Ireland, let alone the three kingdoms itself1. He had his house, from one year's end to another, as full of company as ever it could hold, and fuller; for rather than be left out of the parties at Castle Rackrent, many gentlemen, and those men of the first consequence and landed estates in the country — such as the O'Neills of Ballynagrotty, and the Moneygawls of Mount Juliet's Town, and O'Shannons of New Town Tullyhog — made it their choice, often and often, when there was no room to be had for love nor money, in long winter nights, to sleep in the chickenhouse, which Sir Patrick had fitted up for the purpose of accommodating his friends and the public in general, who honored him with their company unexpectedly at Castle Rackrent; and this went on I can't tell you how long. The whole country rang with his praises! — long life to him! I'm sure I love to look upon his picture, now opposite to me; though I never saw him, he must have been a portly gentleman — his neck something short, and remarkable for the largest pimple on his nose, which, by his particular desire, is still extant in his picture, said to be a striking likeness, though taken when young. He is said also to be the inventor of raspberry whisky, which is very likely, as nobody has ever appeared to dispute it with him, and as there still exists a broken punch-bowl at Castle Rackrent, in the garret, with an inscription to that effect — a great curiosity. A few days before his death he was very merry; it being his honor’s birthday, he called my grandfather in — God bless him! — to drink the company's health, and filled a bumper himself, but could not carry it to his head, on account of the great shake in his hand; on this he cast his joke, saying, 'What would my poor father say to me if he was to pop out of the grave, and see me now? I remember when I was a little boy, the first bumper of claret he gave me after dinner, how he praised me for carrying it so steady to my mouth. Here's my thanks to him — a bumper toast.' Then he fell to singing the favorite song he learned from his father — for the last time, poor gentleman — he sung it that night as loud and as hearty as ever, with a chorus:

He that goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,

Falls as the leaves do, falls as the leaves do, and dies in

October;

'But he that goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,

Lives as he ought to do, lives as he ought to do, and dies an

honest fellow.

Sir Patrick died that night: just as the company rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out, and were surprised, on inquiry in the morning, to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick. Never did any gentleman live and die more beloved in the country by rich and poor. His funeral was such a one as was never known before or since in the county! All the gentlemen in the three counties were at it; far and near, how they flocked! my great-grandfather said, that to see all the women, even in their red cloaks, you would have taken them for the army drawn out. Then such a fine whillaluh!2 you might have heard it to the farthest end of the county, and happy the man who could get but a sight of the hearse! But who'd have thought it? Just as all was going on right, through his own town they were passing, when the body was seized for debt — a rescue was apprehended from the mob; but the heir, who attended the funeral, was against that, for fear of consequences, seeing that those villains who came to serve acted under the disguise of the law: so, to be sure, the law must take its course, and little gain had the creditors for their pains. First and foremost, they had the curses of the country: and Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the new heir, in the next place, on account of this affront to the body, refused to pay a shilling of the debts, in which he was countenanced by all the best gentlemen of property, and others of his acquaintance; Sir Murtagh alleging in all companies that he all along meant to pay his father's debts of honor, but the moment the law was taken of him, there was an end of honor to be sure. It was whispered (but none but the enemies of the family believe it) that this was all a sham seizure to get quit of the debts which he had bound himself to pay in honor.