WHY YOU SHOULD READ
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
This one is tricky, it’s not so much that the content is absolutely fantabulous, it’s that you should at least read one book by Maria Edgeworth in your life, you know personal culture and all. And this book is a pretty short read, so that’s always good. Also, this book set the standards for Irish “Big House” novels, since it was the first one and I think was like in the first few to use glossary notes and all the footnotes, which kind of bring humour or at least irony to what the character just said. This author inspired Sir Walter Scott, was a favourite of Jane Austen and might have actually also inspired Turgenev. So yes, I do think you need to know her. Plus, hey! A broad that published a book in 1800. You gotta love that, right?
Now, about the actual story. In all honesty, after my first reading, I was like ‘meh, Thady’s like the quintessential servant, loyal and pretty much a freaking lap dog with no spine’ but then my teacher who’s like an expert in British and Irish literature made me and the rest of my class re-think the whole ‘oh, he’s just a clueless good guy’. If you read carefully, you realize that Thaly is probably in fact, a deceitful manipulator. He praises that he’s called by everyone honest Thady—does Honest Iago ring a bell, anyone?—and that because he is honest, his accounts of the events are therefore accurate and true and reliable. But then, he’s always just telling the good of everyone, even when they’re in debt drunks that like to gamble a little too much. He conveniently hears many conversations he shouldn’t, after he has a talk with a guy that wants to prosecute Sir Condy and tells him of all of his masters’ debt his son ends up getting all of these debts to be a able to get the castle—funny thing also that he calls his son “my son Jason’ everywhere in the book, aside from when his son and Condy sign the papers so Jason can get the land, where he only calls him Jason, to like make the reader feel like he distance himself from him, especially when he starts wailing and stuff—can anyone say over-acting there, buddy? Oh and other funny thing, his son makes faces and winks at him while it happens. I mean, come on people. That old dude is just a parasite that feeds on his masters even though they are going through their ruin already by their own behaviour and benefits from their downfall. And I think he also takes on himself the pride of the family he works for, like, he’s vain about who his masters are, one of the oldest family in Ireland, and he boosts himself about it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so if his son got the whole ‘how to screw people properly’, shouldn’t he have gotten that from daddy dearest? So give this book a read. You can path yourself on the back after.
Quotes: “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.”
“A plain unvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative.”
(I took both of them from the preface)