The Socio-Political Background as Manifested in the Novels of Edgeworth - Essay Example

Maria Edgeworth’s stories are generally based on her perspective of the socio-political background and events of her days as she grew up as a young girl in Ireland. To this effect, it is common to find and link each of her writings to specific events in the history of Ireland. In her own little way, this was one more way that Maria Edgeworth thought she could use to trumpet her concerns across to the world at large to be the good judges of the situation of her homeland.

While discussing Maria Edgeworth’s novels and other narrative works, literary critics are often eloquent about her close association as well as evident familiarity with the Irish historical events, and postcolonial and historical studies dealing with Ireland as a British dependency. Throughout her growing years, Edgeworth was a keen observer of and witness to all the major historical and political chronological events that changed Ireland. Due to her depiction of the injustices suffered by the native Irish people at the hands of imprudent Anglo-Irish landlords, Edgeworth was popularly known as the Ascendancy writer among literary circles.

In almost all the novels, Edgeworth’s narrative style features the simple lifestyle of the native Irish peasantry, the imprudent absenteeism of the Anglo-Irish rulers and landowners, Protestant domination on the native Catholics of Ireland, and all other characteristic features of eighteenth-century Ireland. Undoubtedly, the accolade, ‘Ascendancy writer’ accorded to Maria Edgeworth has its roots in Maria Edgeworth’s role played both as a writer and as a social figure in Ireland in the days of the Protestant Ascendancy.

The Protestant Ascendancy was a 25 year-long series of events that occurred in Ireland from 1775 to 1800. Though Maria was barely seven years at the time the Ascendancy started, she grew to gain a lot of insight into the whole issue because the Ascendancy lasted very long. What is more, Maria Edgeworth’s father was an influential Politian of the country at the time of the Protestant Ascendancy and so this offered Maria a lot of useful understanding of the wrongs and rights with the Ascendancy.

Starting as an observer at the tender age of seven, Maria Edgeworth grew up to play an active role in making her feelings and perspective of the Ascendancy known. For instance, through the “habit of hiding in her father's magistrates' room for the purpose of taking notes of the peculiar manners or expressions of the litigants” (Lawless, 1095), Maria Edgeworth was put in a better position to pass authentic and factual comments of the protestant Ascendancy in her writings. So as her views and perception of the Protestant Ascendancy became so great, Maria Edgeworth was associated with the title ‘Ascendancy Writer’.

Going back to give a brief account of the Protestant Ascendancy, as it has a great impact on the writings of Maria Edgeworth, it can be inferred that the expression ‘Protestant Ascendancy’ refers to the period in Ireland’s history when a minority of great landowners, protestant clergy and some professionals dominated the political, economic and social terrain of Ireland.