Castle Rackrent, the first of four novels she would write concerning the Anglo-Irish in Ireland (including Ennui, The Absentee, and Ormond), instructs through counterexample, showing quite clearly how not to run an estate. But the novel can also be read as a nuanced commentary on relations between Irish and Anglo-Irish, Catholic and Protestant, tenant and landlord, servant and master, wife and husband.
Irish and English. Castle Rackrent is set in an Ireland under English rule. Before English rule, Ireland was a country of competing minor kings frequently engaged in warfare with one another; the “High King” of Ireland was so in name only. Internal strife and lack of central political authority made Ireland vulnerable to unified England. This chaos was, moreover, reflected in the structure of the Irish Church. The Irish Church was founded in the fifth century by the most famous of Irish missionaries, St. Patrick. Because of Ireland’s lack of central political authority, the Church in Ireland developed along lines different from those that delineated the Church in the rest of Europe; Irish ecclesiastic authority was divided between the abbots of Ireland’s many monasteries rather than being concentrated in a hierarchy of bishops as it was elsewhere.
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