For a story so crowded with incident, “Castle Rackrent” is surprisingly short. This works largely because the first-person narrator, although he lives and works in the castle of the title, does not own the place. His name is Thady Quirk and he has been the castle's steward for some decades. A native of Ireland (the castle's location), he is typically addressed as “Honest Thady”. The obvious differences between “Honest Thady” and the castle's owners, not to mention the man's own son Jason, provides the novel with a good bit of its humor, in that the Rackrent family and Jason Quirk are anything but honest, and in a lot of cases “Honest Thady” barely notices this.
That seems to be partly because Honest Thady has been the steward of Castle Rackrent for a very long time, and partly because, like a lot of servants of that age (certainly servants in fiction), Honest Thady is at least as loyal to the Rackrent family as he is to the house itself. Through the story, we learn about four successive heads of the family and inhabitants of the castle, starting with Patrick O'Shaughlin. Thady doesn't have a tremendous amount to say about Patrick except that he was a very popular man – responsible, generous, kind to the locals. If his heirs were like that, we wouldn't have much of a story, though, so you can guess what's going to happen next.
Sure enough, Patrick's successor, Sir Murtagh, is nowhere near as great or good a man. Most obviously, whereas Patrick was more than happy to allow his tenants up to six months to pay their rent if they had financial trouble, Sir Murtagh actually goes so far as to sue them if they're late. The fact that Sir Murtagh is a lawyer, and accustomed to suing anyone and everyone, is no excuse.
His successor, Sir Kit, spends much of his time away from the castle gambling. When he comes back he has a wife, described by Thady as “a Jewish” for some reason. No one has much opportunity to learn what that might mean, since Sir Kit keeps her locked up in her room for years until he's killed in a duel and she goes home, wherever that is.
Next comes Sir Condy, who seems a lot more popular and generous than either of his predecessors. Unfortunately, this is due to his spendthrift ways, which (spoiler alert0 loses him the castle altogether. And who obtains the castle? Thady's son Jason, who has been managing the property for quite a while. Turns out that he's been doing that with the idea in mind of obtaining the property all along. Thady finds this utterly disgusting, but there's not much he can do about it.
I might have given the impression by this description that “Castle Rackrent” is a tragic story, and it certainly is that to Thady himself, but the novel has enough lightness of touch and humor of language and description to make it a pleasant read. Author Maria Edgeworth herself lived in a similar setting in Ireland, although her family was a good bit more responsible than the family she describes here, so she knew whereof she spoke. If nothing else, “Castle Rackrent” gives us a pretty realistic idea of life in Ireland in the late 18th century. Accurate setting is one of the important elements of a good novel. Add to that the involving characters like Honest Thady and the family he serves, and you've got a short novel that definitely deserved its popularity.
Benshlomo says, Combine setting, character, and theme, and you've really got something.
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