ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to counter the assertion that Ireland was devoid of 'progressive' or 'philosophical' historiographies by reading Maria Edgeworth's The Absentee as a historical novel in the Lukacsian sense of the term. It explores to blend Janelle Reinelt's feminism with W. J. McCormack's historical materialism and his emphasis on totality in its reading of The Absentee. The Absentee discloses how liberal notions of subjectivity are guaranteed only by way of the designation of citizen—a privilege denied both to Catholics and to women. The concepts of justice and citizenship, recurring motifs in Edgeworth's text, Georg Lukacs sees as produced out of what he calls the 'contemplative nature of man', a condition which is itself born out of man's fragmented state under capitalism. The Absentee revises and feminizes Jean Jacques Rousseau's views on education while the novel simultaneously reveals what happens when sexual and political virtue are conflated.
