Austen answers the Irish question: satire, anxiety, and Emma's, allusory Ireland

Emma critically engages with Ireland on two distinct levels, both of which were symptomatic of the English public response to Ireland following a concentrated series of events, including the Rebellion of 1798, the Act of Union in 1801, and the rise of the Irish national tale beginning in 1806. Taken together, these Irish evocations disclose the Achilles heel of British imperialism: confusion around the Irish Question. Since the mid-twentieth century, critics have canonized and re-canonized the nationalistic, "little England" reading of Emma. The novel's idyllic reflection on Donwell Abbey, the famous passage on "English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive," marks the centerpiece of this nationalist, ideological reading (360). Perhaps the evasion of Ireland in Austen studies operates according to a similar worldview: focusing on Ireland seems illogical in a study of an author as English and as resolutely provincial as Austen, who lived her whole life in England and wrote strictly about "3 or 4 Families in a Country Village" (9-18 September 1814). The national tale genre responded to the Act of Union, serving the dual function of redefining Irishness for its native population and educating England on its newly adopted sister nation (12).3 The national tale also initiated a consumerist desire for Irish materials. Robert Tracy has coined the term "The Glorvina Solution," in reference to the marriage of Glorvina and Horatio at the end of The Wild Irish Girl, which unites legal and ancestral rights to Irish land ownership. Claire...