Audience Engagement and Mode of Address in 'Castle Rackrent' Katherine Pass College

The mode of address is the relationship between the writer, the text and the audience and the way that this is communicated and controlled by stylistic features of narration. In the case of Castle Rackrent, Edgeworth has created a complex mode of address which she uses to communicate different aspects of her underlying message to different audiences. By adding editorial notes and a glossary to frame what would otherwise have been a humorous tale about Irish tenants and profligate landlords she sought to influence the textual interpretations of reviewers of books as well as the English and Irish reading publics.

Evidence suggests that Edgeworth began writing the main narrative text of Castle Rackrent in around 1793 (Belanger 131). Prior to publication in 1800 she made additions to the text which reframed the original story, purposely allowing different readings of the text to be made and protecting it from accusations of a less than favourable portrayal of Ireland at what was a politically sensitive time. As Hollingworth says, “To publish an Irish story in January 1800 was a political act” (126). This was because Ireland was on the verge of Union with Great Britain and in the Edgeworths’ view it was important that nothing...