Thady begins his Memoirs of the Rackrent Family by dating MONDAY MORNING, because no great undertaking can be auspiciously commenced in Ireland on any morning but Monday morning. "Oh, please God, we live till Monday morning, we'll set the slater to mend the roof of the house. On Monday morning we'll fall to, and cut the turf. On Monday morning we'll see and begin mowing. On Monday morning, please, your honour, we'll begin and dig the potatoes," etc.
This is less of an observation about Thady's organizational skills or character and more about the fact that he is Irish. The author is observing that, to the Irish, a Monday morning is the Holy Grail of productivity. Important tasks, much like modern-day diets, cannot begin part of the way through the week but must instead be treated with the utmost of importance and begin quite officially on a Monday morning.
Ironically, the rush towards seeming productivity is also a study in procrastination. If the Monday morning startline is missed then it is an entire week before any major tasks are attempted again the following Monday. This passage is an example of the author's own viewpoint about Irish life and the nature of the Irish people; she was aware when writing the novel that this might be seen in a controversial light because of its implications that as a nation, Ireland was not very good at getting things done.
We cannot judge either the feelings or the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public. It is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.
This is an extremely astute observation and still remains true today. When in public, a man is aware that he is on view. He has an audience. His words are listened to, considered, studied and analyzed in a way that might make the listener feel that they are a representation of the man himself. All behaviors in a public forum are for show, more than as an example of the real person.
What a man is like behind closed doors is far more indicative of his character than his public actions or words. The things that he starts to say before checking himself and stopping his conversation mid-sentence; the little asides to a confidante, the notes scribbled onto the side of a notepad or the casual throwaway remark - these are the things that go to inform us as to the essence of a man, and show us the person he really is rather than the person he wants us to believe that he is. If this novel were written today, this quote might well apply to the difference between a person's life as portrayed on social media and their life in actuality, which are very often quite markedly different.
