Irish literary identity in the nineteenth-century British novel: Rereading Austen, Bronte, and Kipling

The importance of depictions and allusions to the Irish and to Ireland in nineteenth-century British canonical texts has been largely under-read and often misinterpreted. These manifestations are by no means unintentional, but are rather signifiers of colonial Ireland inscribed with political, cultural, and private significance to the authors who produced them. This dissertation examines these signifiers in conjunction with the social, political, and religious history of the period and the biographies of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Rudyard Kipling, all of who shared unique personal relationships with Ireland during their lifetimes. Articulations of colonial ideology specific to the "Irish Question" are recovered from Emma, Jane Eyre, and Kim. The specific signifiers they employ reveal their prejudices, opinions, and solutions regarding the administration of the problematic colony and the relationship between the colonized and colonizers. These signifiers are often shared with their Anglo-Irish artistic peers. These authors both oppose and collaborate with colonialism, but never propose radical alternatives to the hegemony in place. Rather, they encourage a reformation of the existing system, which strengthens the Union between England and Ireland and stabilizes the Empire.;Chapter One, "The English Maria Edgeworth -- Jane Austen's Emma," reads Anglo-Irish writer, Maria Edgeworth's short story "The Grateful Negro" (1804) and her novel The Absentee (1812) alongside Austen's Mansfield Park and Emma (1815). This chapter investigates the shared Irish signifiers in Edgeworth's and Austen's work, in particular, their common usage of marriage plots in order to examine the figurative marriage of Ireland and England. Chapter Two: Jane Eyre and An Gorta Mbr and Chapter Three: The Christianizing Impulse of Evangelical Anglicanism: Jane Eyre and the Irish Colonial Project, both consider Bronte's familial and artistic connections to Ireland and the signifiers of Ireland she employs in Jane Eyre, to critique the colonial administration of Ireland and the failure of Evangelical Anglican humanitarianism during the Famine. Lastly, Chapter Four, "Kipling's Kim O'Hara -- An Irish Hero for the Empress of India," considers Kipling's choice of an Irish hero, Kim, to enact his colonial fantasy of both Ireland and India rendered compliant and fully supportive of Imperial authority.