ABSTRACT
Thackeray's response to increased violence and political agitation in part is expressed, in Pendennis, through an imagined Great Britain in which the ethnic Gaelic Irish largely define otherness. An Eye for an Eye, like The Macdermots, is an allegorical account of the seduction of an Irish girl through promises of marriage which are neither kept, nor even seriously entertained by the hero. Perhaps most significantly, radical nationalist rhetoric had become much more violent since the publication of The Macdermots, and one of the chief contributing factors was the decline of Daniel O'Connell's influence. However, An Eye for an Eye is not an attack upon Irish nationalism, nor does it, like The Macdermots, explore the causes which produce it; rather, it concentrates all of its rhetorical energy on the condemnation of a corrupt British colonial enterprise. The allegorical references to the British colonial project are continued in descriptions of Scroope Manor's library and grounds.
