The novel Castle Rackrent unconsciously expresses Irish history such as poverty and land, and provides reasons why Ireland is brought into the United Kingdom, for Rackrent's, a landed family with supposed responsibilities as leaders of society, are wastrels and drunkards.
In Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, her 'Editor' identifies the defining characteristics of the Irish people for the benefit of the 'English reader' as 'quickness, simplicity, cunning, carelessness, dissipation, disinterestedness, shrewdness and blunder,' in one of the final paragraphs of the novel.
The very spirit of romantic Irish fidelity is incarnate in Thady. Jason Quirk represents the feline element, which also belongs to our extraordinary Celtic race. The novel contains the history of a nation.
Castle Rackrent was published in 1800 at the moment of political union between Ireland and Great Britain. Maria Edgeworth's novel was set before 1782, in a momentous period for the Independence of Dublin parliament. A servant of the 'Big House' Thady Quirk tells us of four generations of the Rackrent family. Thady is a Irish Catholic and as the narrator recounts the decline of this Protestant landowning family. This novel describes to the reader how the Irish middle class rose because of mismanagement by the Protestant elite. Castle Rackrent indicates Edgeworth's hybridity in regards her "Anglo-Irishness" and heralds the beginnings of a reflection on nationhood and the salient function of women in the story.
Both the women and the servants are represented as victims in the novel, however they are oppressed in many ways and this is expressed through Thady's male voice as a narrator. Personal finance and legitimation in regards to ownership are key issues throughout Castle Rackrent. For example, Sir Kit keeps his rich wife cooped up while he tries to steal her money for his personal business.