Castle Rackrent: A Servants view of the Relations Between the Tenants and the Landlords in Ireland

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Recommended: The economic and policy development of Ireland

There is a long and turbulent past between Ireland and England. Ireland due to the close proximity of the two countries, this closeness makes Ireland a rather strange part of the British Empire, and its history and relations to the British Empire is a rather unique situation. One of the most fascinating aspects beyond the longevity of the subjugation of the Irish under the English, is how the English ruled over their Irish subjects.
This ruling is perhaps best seen (at least in the early days) in the relationship between the Irish and the invading English, who as owners of property and the ability to hold seat of power, were a powerful force in the Irish citizens lives, and their sensibilities dictated much of what was considered right behaviour in Ireland at this time. This relationship is fascinating in part because it speaks of how the English viewed those who lived in their colonies, but also how those in the colonies reacted to the English. In this essay, this relationship will be looked at in depth, through the novel Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth, and through this look, it will be found that the tensions between the Irish and the English were symptoms of an attempt to coerce their Irish subjects to behave as they wished them to, and the Irish refused to do so and resented their English colonizers for their attempt to control and change them.
It is necessary to explain why the term English rather than another moniker has been used in this essay. While it is true that in today's understanding Great Britain is termed so because it is an assembly of England, North Ireland and Scotland, and that at the time of the period in which this essay focuses on Scotland was a part of England, it is simply that much of what takes pl...

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...ia Review. no. 4 (2001).
Edgeworth, Maria. Castle Rackrent. New York: The Century Co., 1903.
Egenolf, Susan B. "Maria Edgeworth in Blackface: Castle Rackrent and the Irish Rebellion of 1798." ELH. no. 4 (2005): 845-869.
Graham, Colin. "History, Gender and the Colonial Moment: Castle Rackrent." IRish Studies Review. (1996): 21-24.
Hack, Daniel. "Inter-Nationalism: "Castle Rackrent" and Anglo-Irish Union." Novel: A Forum in Fiction. no. 2 (1996): 145-164.
Jackson, Alvin. "The Irish Act of Union." History Today. no. 1 (2001).
Malcolm, Elizabeth. "A new age or just the same old cycle of extirpation? Massacre and the 1798 Irish rebellion." Journal of Genocide Research. no. 2 (2013): 151-166.
Neill, Michael. "Mantles, Quirks, and Irish Bulls Ironic Guise and Colonial Subjectivity in Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent." The Review of English Studies. no. 205 (2001).

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