SOURCE: "Malthus and Famine Novel," in Writing The Irish Famine, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 30-51.

In the following essay, Morash analyzes three Famine novels in relation to the Malthusian principles of population—that an "unchecked" population will increase at a much higher rate than will the subsistence level, unless the population is "checked" by some type of disaster, such as famine, war, or disease. Morash argues that the Malthusian principles are present in the novels, suggesting that the Famine—the "check"—is the fault of the "extravagance" of both the aristocracy (for its lavish monetary expenditures) and the peasantry (for the size of their families). Morash maintains, however, that the social order which is created out of the chaos of the Famine—with the new prominence of the middle class—is dictated by the conventions of the novel, and that the authors' depictions of Famine victims...