Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

While the trained diplomat murmurs as he takes his leave, "All's safe."

Native wit had got the better of artful cunning.

And when Sir Ulick dies in disgrace, how pithy is the remark of one of the men, as he is filling in the grave:

"There lies the making of an excellent gentleman—but the cunning of his head spoiled the goodness of his heart."

In the same book, how generous and how Irish is Moriarty, lying on the brink of death, as he thinks of Ormond, who had shot him in a fit of passion but bitterly repented his rash deed:

"I'd live through all, if possible, for his sake, let alone my mudther's, or shister's or my own—'t would be too bad, after all the trouble he got these two nights, to be dying at last, and hanting him, maybe, whether I would or no."

The quick kindness which so often twists an Irishman's tongue is humorously illustrated in the Essay on Irish Bulls, which Maria Edgeworth and her father wrote together. Mr. Phelim O'Mooney, disguised as Sir John Bull, accepts his brother's wager that he cannot remain four days in England without the country of his birth being discovered eight times. Whenever his speech betrays him, it is the result of his emotions. When he sees Bourke, a pugilist of his own country, overcome by an Englishman, he cries to him excitedly: "How are you, my gay fellow? Can you see at all with the eye that is knocked out?" A little later, in discussing a certain impost duty, he grows angry and exclaims: "If I had been the English minister, I would have laid the dog-tax upon cats." The humour of his situation increases to a climax, so that the fun never flags. Such stories as this in which the wit is simply sparkling good-nature, with no attempt to use it as a weapon against frail humanity as did Fielding and Thackeray, or to produce a smile by exaggeration as did Dickens, but simply bubbling fun, as free from guile as the sun's laughter on Killarney, show that Miss Edgeworth was a comedian of the first rank. Like all true comedians, she is also strong in the pathetic, but it is the Irish pathos, in which there is ever a smile amid the tears. This is found in the story of the return of Lady Clonbrony to her own country; the fall of Castle Rackrent; and the ruin by their sudden splendour of the family of Christy O'Donoghoe.

Whenever Miss Edgeworth writes of Ireland and its people, her pages glow with the inspiration of genius. There is no exaggeration, no caricature; all is told with simple truth. It has often been the fate of novelists whose aim has been to depict the manners and customs of a locality to win the ill-will of the obscure people they have brought into prominence. But not so with Maria Edgeworth. Her family, although originally English, had been settled for two hundred years in Ireland. She loved the country and always wrote of it with a loving pen. Before Castle Rackrent was written, Ireland had been for many centuries an outcast in literature, known only for her blunders and bulls. But, as one of her characters says, "An Irish bull is always of the head, never of the heart." Even though her characters are humorous, they are never clowns. All the men have dignity, and all the women grace. She gave them a respectable place in literature.

But her influence was felt outside of Ireland. Old Thady, in his garrulous description of the masters of Castle Rackrent, had introduced the first national novel, in which the avowed object is to represent traits of national character. Patriotic writers in other countries learned through her how to serve their own land, and she was one of the many influences which led to the writing of the Waverley novels. Scott says in the preface of these books:

"Without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact which pervade the work of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country, of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland—something which might introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favourable light than they had been placed hitherto, and tend to procure sympathy for their virtues and indulgence for their foibles."