ABSTRACT
No doubt, the 14-year-old Maria Edgeworth held her share of prejudices against the Irish people when she first arrived at her new home in Edgeworth town from England, prejudices she had acquired in England, and that she had every expectation of seeing confirmed by experience. Edgeworth's Irish novels contain a similar contradiction in which criticism of Ireland's 'faults' masks a clear admiration for Irish intelligence and resourcefulness. As a writer and an estate manager, Edgeworth worked to reform the exploitative landlord/tenant relationship that structured life in the Irish 'Big House'. For Maria Edgeworth, 'paternalism' had personal as well as political implications. Late eighteenth-century Ireland was plagued by conflict between the Irish Catholic natives and ruling English Protestants. According to Dumbleton, genuine honesty between landlords and peasants and between masters and servants is impossible in a paternalist system. The protagonist of Ennui, the rightful son of a servant, is both tormented by and saved by his English and Irish servants.
