De-composing the Gothic Body in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent

Abstract

This article argues that the corpse seizure in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent epitomizes the fragmentation of Irish cultural identity, employing Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to reveal the gothic body as a site of indeterminacy. Narrative inconsistencies, or dislocutions, “de-compose” the text, registering both a distinctively gothic horror of loss and an obsessive need to record the abject state of the colonized. The dislocution of traumatic events signals a dissolving cultural distinctiveness that destabilizes time and meaning itself.