The Image of the Big House as a Central Motif in The Real Charlotte Ess

The Image of the Big dramatic art as a Central Motif in The Real CharlotteThe chain of mountains of the big house has long been a central motif inAnglo-Irish literature. From Maria Edgeworths Castle Rackrent (1800),it has been a source of inspiration to many writers. One of the reasons for the gag in castle rackrents (a generic term employed byCharles Maturin) through the 19th and early 20th century, is that manywriters who used the big house as a backdrop to their work wereresidents of such houses themselves - writers such as Sommerville andRoss, George Moore and Elizabeth Bowen, were born into the ascendancyand wrote about an era and society with which they were familiar.However modern writers, such as Molly Keane and posterior Banville, havealso found the romantic qualities of the big house alluring andtherefore have continued to use the era and influenceting as a backdrop intheir works.The big house genre has resulted in such an outpouring of works ofthis type of fiction, t hat one critic remarkedseems to have flourished in direct proportion to the historicaldemise of the socialisation it seeks to display. 1The Real Charlotte is set in a period, which can be described as theIndian Summer of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. An Indian Summer is aperiod of relative calm before the on set of winter in this case itis a metaphor describing the life of leisure the Anglo-IrishAscendancy lived with their grand tea parties, hunting, theatricalperformances etc, pursuits and interests which W.B. Yeats associatedwith big house life in general bearing which overflows without ambitious pains. 2However, this period of calm is followed by the onslaught of winter,with the Great Famine and the r... ...l Charlotte. Somerville and Ross were daughters ofthe Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, and as they wrote their novel based ontheir experiences, perhaps it was only natural that rough aspects ofThe Real Charlotte depict the decay of Big Houses and the Ascendancyclass. It is through the development of characterisation and setting,that Somerville and Ross artfully portray the demise of the Big Houseand its inhabitants at the knock over of ambitious middle classes, and as aresult of political evolution. For this reason the novel ishistorically accurate in showing the decline of the Big House. onlydespite their historic downfall, the Big Houses of the Anglo-IrishAscendancy have found a new lease of life in literature as the BigHouse genre, making reality what W.B Yeats once saidWhatever flourish and decline These stones remain their monument and mine. 31