Partium Christian University

Faculty: Human and Social Studies Specialization: English Language and Literature Course: Writing and composition Professor: drd. Borbly Julianna Student: Gl Tnde Year of study: 1st year English major, 2nd semester 15 June 2010

Representations of Irishness in Irish Fiction

The purpose of much Irish fiction, it seems, is to become involved in the Irish argument, and the purpose of much Irish criticism has been to relate fiction to the argument. (Toibin 9) The issues of reality and language have been problems is Ireland, Maria Edgeworth wrote: It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in the book of fiction-realities are too strong, party passions too violent, to bear to see, or care to look at their faces in a looking-glass. The people would only break the glass and curse the fool who held the mirror up to naturedistorted nature in a fever. Lady Morgan said about Irish fiction that we are living in an era of transition. Changes moral and political are in progress. The frame of the constitution, the frame of socitey itself, are sustaining a shock, which occupies all minds, to avert or modify, under such conditions there is no legitimate literature, as there is no legitimate drama. (Toibin 9) Thomas Flanagan wrote about the Irish novel that: The nineteenth-century Irish novel established no tradition. Between Carletons death in 1896 and the beginning of the new century Ireland produced no prose writer of real statureWhen a novelist of commanding talent did appear-the greatest perhaps of his age-he owned little to the work of his predecessors. Ireland was Joyces theme, as it had been theirs, and he shared their involvement in issues of race, culture and nationality. But in his work the theme finds its expression in irony, in a passion which mocks both itself and its object.It matters not at all that there were Irish novelists before Joyce, for their work was entirely useless to him. They had established no conventions by which the actualities of Irish life could be represented. (Toibin 10) When we speak about the Irish novel, it is important to mention the novelists before Joyce too. One of these novelists is George Moore, his best novels Esther Waters (1894) is set in 1

England. He has an earlier novel A Drama in Muslin (1886) that is set in Ireland. They are the first efforts to explore this hidden Ireland since William Carleton; also they stand in relation to the stories in Joyces Dubliners written in the same decade. Both writers, Moore and Joyce were concerned with the same ideas: how to find a formal structure and a tone in language which would not only reflect the Irish heritage-the mixture of poor realities and grand dreams-but to become the Irish heritage.(Toibin 13) Joyce realized that he had to bring something new, to develop a unique style, form and language. Joyces sense of Irish society, as we discover in his work Dubliners, was more vivid than that of contemporaries like Moore. Most of the Irish fiction before Joyce was written for an English audience, much of it described Irelands history and landscape and people as peculiar. Most of the talented writers such as Oliver Goldsmith and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, George Moore, had set their novels in England. Compared to these writers, Joyces set almost all of his work in Ireland. In Ulysses the city described is not the centre of paralysis, but rather the centre of the world. It is full of local references, names of peoples, streets, places. Joyce shifted the focus on Ireland in the sense that he handed Ireland back to Irish readers in his book, through the way he made Ireland the centre of the known world. (Toibin 15). In Irish literary history there is the tradition of Gothic fiction, which can be placed between Carleton and Joyce. This phenomenon includes Maturin, Le Fanu, Stoker, Yeats and some elements also appear in the work of Elizabeth Bowen. The importance of the Gothic tradition is that history is an unfinished business. Joep Leersen describes this as: recurrence of the dead past, bursting into the living present, the awareness of buried, unfinished business yet awaiting definitive settlement.the appeal of the Big House theme lay partly in the fact that the lively expectation of the young tended to be devoured by the guilt and errors of their elders. Concentrating on Irish history, mainly on the bloodiness of it, had the meaning that these problems will trouble the presents course to future. Writing about Ireland brings about the issue of insider and outsider, just as in social sciences we have these concepts, meaning that the researcher is a foreign person or he or she belongs to the researched community. When in Irish literature the focus began to be the country itself, the setting being Ireland (from Joyce), and then developing it by trying to discuss the problems, the concern with the nations past, history, writers face the same problems as sociologists. Jorge Louis Borges explored the Irish writers contribution to English literature. He 2

stated that for Irish writers, it was enough the fact of feeling Irish, different, to become innovators within English culture, many of these Irish writers (Shaw, Berkley, Swift) were of English descent, they had no Celtic blood nevertheless, it was enough the fact of feeling Irish, different. In this case Ireland is seen as a state of mind, it is enough just to feel different, or it can be also a question of class and race. Connor Cruise OBrien tried to define Irishness: It is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language, it is a condition of being involved with the Irish situation, and usually being mauled by it. It is a matter of being involved with the Irish situation. Most of the British writers saw Ireland as outsiders; an exception is Anthony Trollope whose view was that of a participant. In the 19th century Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and it was possible for him to go from Britain to Ireland. He experienced both an Irish and a British identity. This dual identity existed among most of the writers (Swift, Frances Sheridan, Sterne, Goldsmith, George Moore, Elizabeth Bowen, William Trevor). Most of the writers who saw Ireland from the point of view of outsiders, wrote about Irish society as being closed. When talking about identity, having in view the definition of it which states that a nation defines itself in opposition to another nation, there are certain features that have made the Irish national being different from the English national being. Corkery identifies three major aspects: the Religious Consciousness of the people, Irish Nationalism and The Land. These three aspects become important in Irish fiction. The question is what makes Irish fiction Irish? There are certain themes and motives, by which the reader can tell that this is an Irish piece of writing. There are stereotypical elements that appear in most of the novels. The motif of the dance appears as a degree of misery for the individual, offers a microscope so we can see how harsh and vicious the society is, or how isolated the individual is (Joyce). Another important feature is that nobody writes about happiness. Even Mary Lavins story Happiness is about death. One of the major subjects is the burning down of houses or the sense of fire as the final part of the novels: Frances Sheridan Memoirs of miss Sidney Bidulph and The Vicar of Wakefield; Elizabeth Bowens The Last September. There was fear and decay around the Big House, which became a major subject in the 20th century which appears in the works of Bowen, Jennifer Johnston, William Trevor, John Banville. The killing of woman by men is also and important theme: John Banvilles The Book of Evidence, Patrick Mc Cabes The Butcher Boy.

Family and relations within family members, specially fathers and sons becomes an essential theme too, but it does not present family as being a harmonious entity but it is full of violence, hatred, battle between love and fear. For example Bernard Mac Lavertys Life Drawing. The motif of dance as terror and the themes used in the novels: the burning of houses, killings, violation, terror and fear, the unharmonious relations within families, death, illness, all belong to what we can call the Irish tradition. There are no happy endings, or novels which present a harmonious family or community, this leads to the idea which we find in many places, that Irish fiction is full of dislocation and displacement. (Toibin 13). The next phase is the emergence of a new accent that of dramatizing the life of the Irish middle classes, between the peasantry and the country gentlemen. Many writers in the 20th century engaged themselves to write about this class: Kate OBrien, Mary Lavin, John Broderick. Kate OBrien was interested in Catholicism, in many of her novels, this theme appears in the background. In most of the novels treating this subject appears as the idea of survival in the Catholic Ireland, where the prospect of ruin still haunts the people and religion governs their life and actions and also their relations. Writing about the issues of land, rural life in the sense of harshness, and loneliness becomes important too. Images of the Famine appear in Carletons The Black Prophet also in the works of Edna O Brien or John McGahern. Nationalism appears in Irish fiction from the argument about Parnell in Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to the presentation of political violence in the works of Liam OFlaherty, Frank OConnors Guests of the Nation, Seamus Deanes Reading in the Dark, Sebastian Barrys The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty. To all these representations Elizabeth Bowen added two other qualities, which make a novel Irish, these are: it is sexless, and it shows a sublimated infantilism. Homosexuality is a theme that attracted so many Irish writers, beginning with Joyce who deals with the themes in An Encounter, one of the stories in Dubliners. Other writers who choose this theme are: John Banville, Patrick Mc Cabe, Joseph OConnor, Emma Donoghue. An important shift is that the individual becomes important, and it represents the problems of society. Political and social problems are presented through the destines of characters. We have as an example Mary Lavin, who set her work among Catholic Business 4

classes, but she mainly focused on her characters, on the human heart, rather than on Irish society. As an answer to our questions what makes a piece of writing Irish, and what constitutes the Irish tradition we may say that the common subjects which most of the authors treat and are representative are: Ireland the country (as setting), land, history, religion and its implications, nationalism, The Big House, family relations (violence), class distinction, and recently the themes exploring sexuality, homosexuality. In the 1960s Ireland evolved into a modern nation, North and South of the border, traditionally minded politicians were replaced by cautious reformers and modernizers. Insularity yielded to increasingly European perspectives, poverty slowly yielded to modest prosperity. The sexual revolution and the new feminism in England and in the United states eventually had an impact in Ireland. The new themes that emerged, which for example, deal with homosexuality, or abuse, are part of the themes that contemporary Irish writers deal with. They are still occupied with Irish themes but they assumed a more Eurocentric perspective, they look towards European and world literature to provide images and analogues and a broader outlook on those themes. The Contemporary Irish novel has a strong sense of both continuity and disruption. Interrupting the continuum of the past and the present involves reclaiming and revisioning rather than rejecting tradition. In contemporary novels, identity for the central protagonist is a matter of fantasy arising from their sense of dispossession. (Peach 11). Homi Bhabha, a postcolonial critic uses the phrase in-between space or timelag which means that those who have been previously marginalized or silenced enter before they find their new identities, which is marked by uncertainty. It is an interrogative space, allowing for a process of exploration, experiment and re-vision. (Peach 20) It is an aspect of the novel in which writers explore the nature of nationhood and national identity. Nationalism, initially finding expression in covert communities, organizations and activities, became a homogenizing discourse to which other subject identities based on class, gender, sexuality or race were subordinate. Identity is a construct, on the one hand based on differences and on the other it is a narrative, represents memories, how does a community represents itself, how do they tell their own story. A nation is a product of and dependent upon a historical narrative which reflects the voice of the dominant group. Nationalism can be seen as an idealized view of the past, stemming from the legacy of the 5

Easter Rising in 1916 and the war of Independence (1919-1921). In the late 20th century novels characters are not defined in relation to themselves and their own bodies but to images generated by the consumer-oriented mass media society. For example Patrick Mc Cabe in his work the Dead School (1995) contrasts the radio with its conventional fare. Jennifer Johnston tends to approach the contemporary troubles through the period just after the First World War. Themes appear like the sense of Irish history as trauma, a need to recreate a history in which an overwhelming event could not be fully assimilated at the time of its occurrence and which and which must therefore belatedly de compulsively repossessed. (Peach 17) In this sense the present may be seen as a disarming of the past rather than influenced by it. Contemporary writers explore not just the past or present, but they tend to present a view concerning to future too. In John McGaherns work the fate of the Irishman becomes the fate of all mankind: alone, lost, in search of some whole, unbroken place which may have existed in the past, but which may be possible in the future in a personal and intimate way. Despite the conservative squeamishness, which caused John McGahern to lose his job as a teacher after the publication of his second novel The Dark (1965) a disturbing account of the difficult coming of age of a motherless boy in a dysfunctional family, a new frankness in sexual matters became acceptable. In Amongst Women (1990) he signals the coming of age of Irish society and the eclipse of the old-fashioned patriarchy as the energies of the father, an IRA leader pass to his daughters. Intertextuality plays a particularly significant role within contemporary Irish writing, much of which reflects the struggle by both individuals and collectives to come to terms with history which once appeared to offer a secure source of cultural definition, but which is now open to radical contestation. 30 years of intercommunal violence in Northern Ireland, paralleled by a period of rapid social and cultural change in the Republic, has deeply marked Irelands literary texts and compelled writers from all traditions not only to question inherited pieties, but also the authority of art itself. There is much uncertainty about how to respond to these disruptive socio-political narratives. There are traces of allegory embedded in the fabric of recent Irish fiction; the private individual experience often becomes a metaphor of the public and national destiny. The contemporary Irish novel confronts and contradicts the discourses defining Irishness, nation, home, belonging, exile, sexuality, desire, religion and spirituality. From contemporary 6

Irish writers I choose two writers: John McGahern and Jennifer Johnston and through their work I would like to look closer and explore the issue of Irishness. Works Cited Colm Toibin, The penguin Book of Irish Fiction. Penguin Books. London, England. 2003. Print Linden Peach, Secret Hauntings: Seamus Deanes reading in the Dark (1996) Joseph OConnors The Salesman (1998), Jennifer Johnstons Fools Sanctuary (1987), Mary Lelands The Killeen (1985) and Linda Andersons To Stay Alive (1984). In: Linden Peach: The Contemporary Irish Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. 2001. 38-68. Print Mimicry, Authority and Subversion: Brian Moores the Magicians Wife (1997), Emma Donoghues Slammerskin (2000) and John McGaherns Amongst Women (1990). In: Linden Peach: The Contemporary Irish Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. 2005. 68-97. Print Linden Peach, Unspoken Desires: Jennifer Johnstons Later Novels, Emma Donoghues Stir-fry (1994) and Kathleen Fergusons The Maids Tale (1994). In: Linden Peach: The Contemporary Irish Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. 2005. 97-126. Print