ABSTRACT
Maria Edgeworth does challenge the negative images of nationality in Castle Rackrent and gender clichès in Belinda, yet she is careful not to revise the two versions of the rhetorical stereotype in the same work. Since stereotypes are the central form of imperialist discourse, as Homi Bhabha observes in 'The Other Question', stripping away so much of the imperialist fabrication is something that a writer in a culturally inferior position can seldom afford to do. This facet of imperial control suggests why Edgeworth cannot write Castle Belinda. Edgeworth published her two most popular novels, Castle Rackrent and Belinda, in successive years, during a tumultuous period of Irish history. Edgeworth wrote about her experiences of living through the turmoil in her letters as well as in the volume of her father's Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth that she assembled after his death in 1817.
