Greetings, my fellow online classmates! I hope all of you are well.
Susan Egenolf's attempt to connect the portrayal of Thady to the black face and minstrel movement was very provocative and intriguing. After a little thought, it makes sense. As I understand it, black face and minstrelsy were about presenting a “different” people as especially different, and usually with a focused lampooning of those traits and qualities which were seen worthy of mocking. In the case of Thady, this same spirit does seem to be alive in the manner in which he’s presented. His dialect, coupled with his unusually long-winded and multi-tangential approach to conveying ideas and observations, provide an extreme and somewhat comical portrayal of the Irish. Thady’s ill-advised and at times pathetic loyalty to his series of masters can be seen as critical of the intelligence of the Irish landowners of the time.
The comparisons between Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent and the work of other authors makes sense. I especially can see where the Jonathon Swift comparison fits, as both authors used their prose as a tool of social critique and parody. Both authors couched their insights and criticisms within deceptively comical and witty narratives.
The episode in Castle Rackrent in which Thady conducts a living wake for Sir Condy was, to me, primarily an example of the ridiculousness of the heads of the Rackrent estate. My interpretation of that event was that it indicated the pettiness and shallow nature of Sir Condy, who for all intents and purposes was the most noble of the heads of estate; at least he seemed to be motivated by good, and kindness and generosity for those around him. The fact that he desired a living wake – in order to hear what people thought of him, as far as I could tell – does not speak highly of Sir Condy’s true character. By extension, this does not speak well of Irish landowners in general. However, any sense of the supernatural within this narrative was lost on me.
Please allow me at this time to say that I think reading Egenolf’s Maria Edgeworth in Blackface before Castle Rackrent would have been very helpful, and much preferred to reading it afterwards. Having found the original reading so difficult, I feel I would have benefited from reading some insights and critiques of Rackrent beforehand, to guide and focus my understanding of the text. I think that my ability to understand and appreciate the nuances of Edgeworth’s novel would have been greatly enhanced if I had known going into the novel what its acknowledged intentions were. Instead, I found the book itself to be a long and rambling and oftentimes seemingly pointless series of words and observations. Apparently, there was much between the lines that I was missing. Having struggled through the book regardless, I’m a little sad to know that I absorbed so little of what was intended to be conveyed.
Well that’s it for now. I’m excited to read Carmella … a vampire novella should be much more readily accessible and exciting than the mundane goings-on of Castle Rackrent. Be well everybody.
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Hi Ann,
ReplyDeleteBe careful about bemoaning the difficulties of these novels too much. While a little is okay, doing so excessively is not productive to our class discussion. Many of these novels are a struggle, but that's what makes them so fun! (haha!). I think a lot of our difficulties stem from us taking the novels way too seriously. On the very first night I visited Ireland, I was in the town of Killarney, and I ended up walking back to my hostel with two young men from Cork. We had a good 30 minute walk to the far edge of town, and to pass the time one of these gentlemen told me the most convoluted, most labyrinthine joke that involved a duck, a clothes hanger, and the legendary figure of Cuchulain. Don't even ask me to repeat it! I think what I learned that night, and what I carry with me now when I open up a lot of these Irish novels, is that Irish narrative, rather than using language as a *vehicle* to tell a story, tends to play with the very idea of language. In other words, the joke the young man told was more about "playing around" with words and narrative structure than about the delivery of an actual punchline. Even though Carmilla will be at first glance a fairly straight-forward narrative, look closely at the way in which La Fanu tells this story and what sort of narrative structure he's playing with to tell the tale. There's much more than meets the eye, I would say.
I much appreciated your ability to articulate how you understand blackface minstrelsy and wish I read read your blog first. I tried to convey the same idea on someone else's blog and I fell flat. :/ Reading through your blog, and several others has me feeling like maybe I've missed something again. I finished the novel feeling perhaps Edgeworth had fun knowing she was wealthy and had a publisher at her disposal and wrote a mess of words, just to write them. Being forced to re-read the text after reading "Maria Edgeworth in Blackface" helped me to go back and read through the lines. While I still believe she was a classist and a snob, I am beginning to understand some of the political significance of the novel. Amazing how we read the same novel and arrive at different conclusions! Do you think that maybe if we had read the literary critique beforehand it would have completely changed the novel for us, thereby changing the meaning?
ReplyDeleteWhen discussing the staged Irish wake you said, "The episode in Castle Rackrent in which Thady conducts a living wake for Sir Condy was, to me, primarily an example of the ridiculousness of the heads of the Rackrent estate. My interpretation of that event was that it indicated the pettiness and shallow nature of Sir Condy..... The fact that he desired a living wake – in order to hear what people thought of him, as far as I could tell – does not speak highly of Sir Condy’s true character. By extension, this does not speak well of Irish landowners in general." Where did you read it was staged? That part of the readings is escaping me...Knowing now the connection between Edgeworth's writing and blackface do you still believe Sir Condy's character to be so out of line? The Editor in "Rackrent" warns us time and time again that certain parts of the novel are less than credible. Is it possible that no parts can be credible?
I too, failed to grasp the significance of supernatural rituals and folklore! If you figure it out, let me know!
Ann,
ReplyDeleteI want to thank you right off the bat for addressing one of the key problems between the essay and Castle Rackrent. I absolutely agree with you and the placement of these two readings in the curriculum. You stated that " I think that my ability to understand and appreciate the nuances of Edgeworth’s novel would have been greatly enhanced if I had known going into the novel what its acknowledged intentions were. Instead, I found the book itself to be a long and rambling and oftentimes seemingly pointless series of words and observations. Apparently, there was much between the lines that I was missing," and I believe that this was an issue that many of us had in the class. Although we can never fully understand what Edgeworth meant at the point she actually wrote Castle Rackrent, we can get a stronger understanding of her implications through pieces like Egenolf's.
However I have to disagree with your comments about Sir Condy and his wake. It was a fairly common event to hold wakes for individuals who were not yet dead, especially when they knew for a fact that they were going to be passing on. It was an opportunity to celebrate and to say goodbye to the actual person and not just a corpse. Now the secretive manner in which he went about it, that doesn't speak too highly of him, or it belies a comical tendency that we were previously unaware of.
However those are just my two cents. Here's to a good base of reference and hopefully a more interesting tale of vampires.
WS
I also think that reading “Maria Edgeworth in Blackface” before Castle Rackrent would have been helpful, but I’m glad I read it after, too. It helped me understand what other artists saw through Maria’s story, and their opinions on it. But, like you said, I would have been much more obliged to read Castle Rackrent with more enjoyment if I knew what to expect from it. At least, that’s how I feel with almost any story—like a book, I’m more likely to enjoy it if I read the back cover first. I mean, that’s what it’s there for, right? To draw the reader in…Frankly I wasn’t exactly drawn in when I read the opening of Castle Rackrent. Though I did like Thady’s character right off the bat, I wasn’t particularly interested in his recollection of his “masters” and their lives. But, that’s just me.
ReplyDeleteI struggled through the book as well and am also disappointed that I didn’t absorb what everyone else did, because only after reading everyone’s opinions on this piece did I wish that I had understood everything from the first time through.
I think that Maria used Thady to speak her opinion on the Irish people and defitnitly used blackface minstrelsy to exaggerate the happenings that went on during the Irish Rebellion. She used it also to describe the treatment of women during that time, and using satire to make light of such a horrible situation. I may be wrong, but that’s what I got from the reading.