Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction: Ireland Then and Now [1st ed.] 9789813343153, 9789813343160

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The Humanities in Asia 8

Tsung Chi (Hawk) Chang

Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction Ireland Then and Now

The Humanities in Asia Volume 8

Editor-in-Chief Chu-Ren Huang, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

This book series publishes original monographs and edited volumes in the humanities on issues specific to Asia, as well as general issues in the humanities within the context of Asia, or issues which were shaped by or can be enlightened by Asian perspectives. The emphasis is on excellence and originality in scholarship as well as synergetic interdisciplinary approaches and multicultural perspectives. Books exploring the role of the humanities in our highly connected society will be especially welcomed. The series publishes books that deal with emerging issues as well as those that offer an in-depth examination of underlying issues. The target audience of this series include both scholars and professionals who are interested in issues related to Asia, including its people, its history, its society and environment, as well as the global impact of its development and interaction with the rest of the world. The Humanities in Asia book series is published in conjunction with Springer under the auspices of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities (HKAH). The editorial board of The Humanities in Asia consists of HKAH fellows as well as leading humanities scholars who are affiliated or associated with leading learned societies for the humanities in the world.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13566

Tsung Chi (Hawk) Chang

Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction Ireland Then and Now

123

Tsung Chi (Hawk) Chang Department of Literature and Cultural Studies The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, Hong Kong

ISSN 2363-6890 ISSN 2363-6904 (electronic) The Humanities in Asia ISBN 978-981-33-4315-3 ISBN 978-981-33-4316-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4316-0 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Introduction

Traditionally, the Irish people have been troubled by identity problems. Twentieth-century Irish literature was beset by antitheses such as English/Gaelic, Protestant/Catholic, man/woman, and unionist/nationalist. Self-conflicted in one way or another, Irish literature has been compelled to make compromises. Research on Irishness used to be dominated by essentialist approaches. Therefore, scholars often investigated identity issues from one-dimensional perspectives, such as history, economy, religion, and literature. However, in line with contemporary cultural theories which emerged around the 1980s, Irish studies have been substantially reconfigured. According to Sabina Sharkey, traditional Irish studies were limited to a few perspectives on both sides of the Irish Sea and beyond. However, modern Irish studies are characterized by “a degree of border traffic between disciplines and [by] acknowledging a plurality of Irelands” (118). By the same token, as Moynagh Sullivan asserts, postmodern theories have changed the critical paradigm of Irish studies, rendering this academic discipline much more diversified and multidisciplined (243). This transformation is also echoed by Declan Kiberd, who testifies to the evolving nature of Ireland and Irishness in the contemporary world: “If the notion of Ireland seemed to some to have become problematic, that was only because the seamless garment once wrapped like a green flag around Cathleen Ni Houlihan had given way to a quilt of many colors” (653). In the past few decades, Ireland has undergone tremendous changes. According to Mary McAuliffe, in the 1970s, Irish society moved toward rapid social and economic changes, which were evidenced by the growing number of women entering the workforce, fewer religious restrictions on women by the Catholic Church, and women’s easy access to radio and television information (209). Today, increasing numbers of people are interested in knowing about the changing nature of Ireland, a country once dominated and feminized by British colonialism. In the Ireland of today, the traditional notions of nation and national identity, and of gender and sexual identity, are no longer applicable. As Kiberd contends, the European elements, which emerged in Irish society over the last few decades greatly challenged the grass-roots political identity and sexual identity of the Irish people (“Modern Ireland” 97). For Kiberd, Irish literature and identity issues were v

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primarily limited to three categories, religion, language, and nationalism. However, Kiberd points to a very different scenario in contemporary Ireland (The Irish Writer and the World 282). Dichotomies such as male/female and Irish/non-Irish are no longer feasible in this increasingly hybrid twenty-first-century world, where sub-cultures such as bi-sexual, metro-sexual, multi-sexual, or androgynous are becoming more and more popular. Patrick McCabe’s novel Breakfast on Pluto may potentially indicate a new cultural-gender-sexual model, one in which gay and lesbian theories better explain the changing face of contemporary Ireland. Additionally, the complexity of contemporary Irish society is echoed by Irial Glynn, who alerts readers to the fact that, in the past few years, immigrants have played an important role in different aspects of Irish society (584). The political, cultural, and gender issues at stake here, which already pose difficulties, will become increasingly complicated in the coming decades of the twenty-first century. Examining contemporary Irish short fiction, from writers like Maeve Binchy, Colm Tóibín, Edna O’Brien to Emma Donoghue, Gish Jen, and Donal Ryan, this book investigates how tenacious traditions have impacted the Irish people and how these traditions are challenged and reconfigured by Irish writers in the twenty-first century. A brief summary of individual chapters is provided below. Notably, the word Irish might be a misnomer because Gish Jen is not an Irish but a Chinese American writer of contemporary literature. Her short fiction “Who’s Irish” is selected because the story significantly contributes to our understanding of the multicultural quality of Irish-ness in this increasingly hybrid and global world. Traditionally, Irish women were marginalized; however, sexual politics in Ireland has undergone impressive changes since the 1970s. Chapter 1 focuses on Maeve Binchy’s short story “All That Matters” to explore the image it presents of Irish women. This short story is from New Dubliners, a collection of eleven stories by acclaimed contemporary Irish writers who present modern-day Irish scenarios in honor of James Joyce’s depiction in Dubliners around a century ago. This chapter argues that although the phantom of patriarchy still haunts women’s lives in different ways, Irish women in contemporary society are more eager to challenge social taboos and strive for self-fulfillment. Lady Gregory was a prolific writer and famous translator in modern Irish literature. Her commitment to promoting Irishness and reviving the lost traditions of Ireland is well known; however, George Bernard Shaw nicknamed her the “charwoman of the Abbey Theatre.” (Gilbert and Gubar 1115). Examining Gregory by reading Tóibín’s short story “Silence” in conjunction with examples from her plays, Chap. 2 investigates Gregory’s position as a woman, a wife, a lover, and a writer. My argument is that despite the docility typically imposed on Irish women, Gregory was not just a helper in the background; she was a proto-feminist in twentieth-century Irish literature. Nostalgia has been a popular topic in Irish literature because retrieving personal, as well as collective memories of a glorious past, meets the needs of Irish nationalists in their confrontation with the colonizers. These nostalgic attempts, coupled with the imaginary homeland their memories may help construct, provide

Introduction

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Irish people with a panacea for the suffering brought about by colonization. The nostalgic recollections of Irish people come in different forms, including the revival of antiquated Celtic glories, the celebration of the beautiful Irish landscape, and constant reference to particular symbols such as the shamrock and the harp, as exemplified in nineteenth-century Irish poet Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. Additionally, cultural revivalists such as W. B. Yeats and Gregory constantly resorted to Irish myths and legends for inspiration. Since the 1990s, along with the prosperity brought by the Celtic Tiger, people in Ireland seem to move ahead toward a promising future, transcending a traumatic past characterized by poverty and inferiority. However, the phantom of the past still loomed, and it re-appeared during the economic recession in the twenty-first century. In Edna O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings,” a story in her collection Saints and Sinners, nostalgia permeates the protagonist’s life. While nostalgia typically engenders a sense of glory and optimism it normally engenders, it is made dysfunctional in the story. Chapter 3 reads this fiction in its socio-historical and cultural contexts to investigate how the main character’s nostalgic experiences in contemporary Ireland both continue and depart from Irish traditions and examine the implications of this trend. Traditionally, fairy tales are packed with fantastic characters such as spirits, talking animals, and supernatural deities. In addition to creating entertainment for children, these tales are often used to reflect certain social customs and cultural values and, wittingly or unwittingly, express a particular ideology and value judgment by their implied moral teaching. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales are an example. In his story “Thumbelina,” a stereotypical gender construction is evident. While most male characters, such as the mouse and the mole, are wealthy, forceful, and authoritative, Thumbelina is depicted as a tiny, impoverished, dependent, and incompetent female. In other words, a prejudiced gender relationship is constructed in Andersen’s tale. Discontented with this asymmetrical relationship between men and women, Emma Donoghue, a critically acclaimed Irish writer of contemporary literature, commits herself to the deconstruction of gender stereotypes by rewriting the conventionally gender-biased tales. Her commitment is exemplified in her collection of revised fairy tales, Kissing the Witch. In Chap. 4, in my reading of Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Bird,” a story based on a rewriting of Andersen’s “Thumbelina,” I argue that by subverting as well as imitating Andersen’s traditional tale, Donoghue unveils tenacious gender stereotypes and presents an unconventional and unsettling feminist fairy tale. In addition to textual analysis and interpretation, feminist theories on women, sexual oppression, and female sexuality are incorporated in my discussion to help investigate problems relevant to gender construction and the implications and contribution of Donoghue’s deconstructive endeavors. In the past few centuries, due to their colonial history and its aftermath, the Irish people have been troubled by fundamental problems about their own identity. As a consequence, questions about Irishness have long been discussed, but not much consensus has been reached. Modern and contemporary Irish literature has been beset by ambiguities arising from polarities such as British/Irish and Protestant/Catholic. Accordingly, the notion of Irishness has remained

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controversial. Reading Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish?,” a short story in the eponymous collection Who’s Irish (1999), Chap. 5 discusses the tradition of Irish identity and how the convention of a robust Irish identity, in conjunction with a stereotypical sexual identity, is questioned, contested, re-conceptualized, and reconfigured in the multicultural American context in the contemporary world. I argue that Irishness, which used to be homogeneous and therefore helped reinforce the Irish people’s patriotism in the colonial context, is problematic in the ever-evolving twenty-first-century world, which features qualities such as heterogeneity, diversity, and multiplicity. Historically, Ireland was characterized by the mass emigration of the famine years in the nineteenth century. This pivotal event in Irish society has been widely discussed in Irish history and literature ever since. In recent times, the boom years of the 1990s led to significant changes in the economy, society, and culture. The growing number of immigrants to Ireland is evidence of this transformation. Notably, whereas this flow of immigration to Ireland was not problematic in the economic prosperity of the 1990s, the decline of the Celtic Tiger in the subsequent years made immigrants easy victims of the unemployment crisis. This kind of antipathy, along with slight racist tendencies racism, resulted in an element of xenophobia in Irish society. Reading Donal Ryan’s short story “Eveline,” a rewriting of James Joyce’s story of the same name which hinges on the male protagonist’s unrequited love for an African immigrant, Chap. 6 investigates how the main characters’ diasporic experiences in the twenty-first-century dovetail and deviate from Irish traditions. In addition, via a contrastive reading of Joyce’s and Ryan’s texts, I seek to understand how traditional gender relations are challenged and deconstructed along with the transfigured conception of immigration in contemporary Ireland. All in all, notwithstanding their different foci, the short fictions discussed in this book share one thing in common—they showcase the fast-evolving faces of Irish society in the past few decades. These changes demarcate a brand-new twenty-first-century Ireland, one which is no longer bound by traditions but seeks metamorphosis and difference.

Contents

1 What Matters for Women: Discovering Irish Women through Maeve Binchy’s “All That Matters” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Haunted by Patriarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Irish Women and Change in Contemporary Ireland . . . . . . . 1.4 Unbearable Sweet Burden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1 1 2 5 8 10 11

2 Sense and Sexuality: Revisiting Lady Gregory via Colm Tóibín . 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Lady Gregory, Irish Women, and Conventional Boundaries . . 2.3 Lady Gregory’s Intellectual and Sexual Transgressions . . . . . . 2.4 Lady Gregory (Re-)Writing Her Own Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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13 13 14 18 21 26 27

3 Repetition with Difference: Nostalgia in Edna O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 I Recall, Therefor I Am: Nostalgia for the Recreation of Home . 3.3 Exile, Nostalgia, and Change in the Twenty-First Century . . . . 3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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31 31 32 35 39 40

4 “A Mute Clamor for Release”: Rewriting Andersen in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Bird” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Traditional Gender Construction in “Thumbelina” versus Donoghue’s Deconstructive Re-Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43 43 44

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4.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49 50

5 Re-configuring Irishness: Tradition and Multicultural Identity Politics in Gish Jen’s “Who Is Irish?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Tradition and Irish Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Multicultural Identity Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Irish Identity Re-configured . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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51 51 52 54 57 60 60

6 “Do You Think I’m Your Slave?”: Gender and Immigration in Donal Ryan’s “Eveline” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Gender in Ryan’s “Eveline” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Immigration in Ryan’s “Eveline” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Dreams Come True: Challenges Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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63 63 64 66 69 72 72

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Works Cited

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, eds. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1996. Print. Glynn, Irial. “Migration and Integration since 1991.” The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. Eds. Eugenio F. Biagini and Mary E. Daly. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. 566–85. Print. Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage, 1996. Print. Kiberd, Declan. The Irish Writer and the World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print. Kiberd, Declan. “Modern Ireland: Postcolonial or European?” Not on Army Map: Essays on Postcoloniality and Cultural Nationalism. Ed. Stuart Murray. Exeter: U of Exeter P, 1987. 81– 100. Print. McAuliffe, Mary. “Irish Histories: Gender, Women and Sexualities.” Palgrave Advances in Irish History. Ed. Mary Mcauliffe, Katherine O’Donnell, and Leeann Lane. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 191–221. Print. Sharkey, Sabina. “A View of the Present State of Irish Studies.” Studying British Cultures: An Introduction. Ed. Susan Bassnett. London: Routledge, 2003. 117–38. Print. Sullivan, Moynagh. “Feminism, Postmodernism and the Subjects of Irish and Women’s Studies.” New Voices in Irish Criticism. P. J. Matthews. Ed. Portland: Four Courts Press, 2000. 243– 51. Print.

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Chapter 1

What Matters for Women: Discovering Irish Women through Maeve Binchy’s “All That Matters”

1.1 Introduction Because of the influence of nationalism and the Catholic religion, Ireland has traditionally been fantasized as a feminine entity. As a consequence, a femininity-oriented Ireland came to symbolize the nation. According to Claire Connolly, “Ireland has long been imagined in terms of female images: Mother Ireland, wild Irish girl, gentle colleen, old hag” (3). The term “Mother Ireland” has been frequently used in the construction of a particular kind of feminine cultural trope. For Catherine Nash, Irish women, who are depicted in terms of the idealization of motherhood, are invariably yoked together with home and tradition (47). Ironically, this feminized Ireland cannot improve women’s underprivileged status; instead, it underpins female invisibility in the wake of nationalist endeavors. In Mother Ireland, a semi-autobiographical work, Edna O’Brien comments acerbically on this feminized land. According to her, Ireland is absolutely a woman: “Ireland has always been a woman, a womb, a cave, a cow, a Rosaleen, a sow, a bride, a harlot, and of course, the gaunt Hag of Beare” (12). This observation is echoed in a range of female characters, such as Cathleen Ni Houlihan in W. B. Yeats’s play, Maurya in J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea, the mother in Lady Gregory’s The Travelling Man, and so on. Although taking different forms, these women share one thing in common: as symbols of Ireland, they are required to sacrifice for the family and the country. Confronted by this pre-determined restriction, in twentieth-century Irish fiction most Irish women are afflicted by pain and suffering. In tune with the subordinated female figures portrayed in the works of Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Synge, Mother Ireland testifies to the fact that Ireland is a woman and that, while their male counterparts are engrossed in drinking, women suffer. Another of O’Brien’s observations in Mother Ireland epitomizes the contrasting lives of men and women in Ireland: “The martyred Irish mother and the raving rollicking Irish father is not peculiar to the works of exorcized writers but common to families throughout the land” (19). Similar reflections on Irish women’s problems permeate This chapter first appears as a journal paper in Neohelicon 44.1 (2017): 245–56. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 T. C. (Hawk). Chang, Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction, The Humanities in Asia 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4316-0_1

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1 What Matters for Women: Discovering Irish …

O’Brien’s writings on Irish women. For example, The Country Girls Trilogy uncovers the crushing pressure imposed upon modern Irish women, be it from family, church, or nation. However, despite the difficulties and hindrances that impede female selfactualization in traditional Irish society, feminist movements have made significant progress in the past three decades. This paper focuses on Maeve Binchy’s short story “All That Matters” in the hope of exploring the depiction of Irish women. This short story is collected in New Dubliners edited by Oona Frawley (2004), which includes eleven stories by distinguished contemporary Irish writers that present modern-day Irish scenarios in honor of James Joyce’s writings about Dubliners a century ago. The study reveals that although the phantom of patriarchy still haunts women’s lives in different forms, women in contemporary Ireland are more eager to challenge social taboos and work for their self-actualization.

1.2 Haunted by Patriarchy Irish women have been constrained by a range of male-centered hegemonies. Besides nationalism and Catholicism, they are also restricted by the Irish Constitution. Notoriously, the dismissal of women’s rights and their self-identity is conspicuous in the 1937 Constitution, written under the patriarchal leadership of Éamon de Valera. Regarding the role of women, the Constitution specifies that “the State recognizes that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” In addition, “The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” (Article 41. 2.1–2.2)1 Prior to these statements, the Constitution declares that the State is liable for the protection of the family because the family, as a moral institution, is endowed with “inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.” Ostensibly, women seem to be cherished as the mainstay of “sanctified” domestic business. However, women are de facto canonized and circumscribed within the niche of the family, for women first and foremost should care for and sacrifice for the family. Under the circumstances, women are petrified by the “idealized passivity and symbolic status” (Meaney 126). Yoked by this family-centered ideology, many women in twentieth-century Ireland were forced to abandon themselves to their holy mission—the support of the family—to the neglect of the development and actualization of the self. Because of this constitutional canonization of the mother, the idea that motherhood is the lifelong goal of every woman is rationalized in twentieth-century Ireland (Weekes 100).

1 For

further information about the Irish Constitution, please consult http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/ upload/static/256.pdf. The preceding reference to the constitutional text here is recited from this source.

1.2 Haunted by Patriarchy

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Constrained by the Constitution’s golden rule, “her life within the home,” Irish women were hardly able to step out of that holy place, their lifelong abode. Employment bars against married women in teaching were introduced in 1928 and were not lifted until 1958. Nonetheless, the statement that the State would “endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour” proved to be insubstantial, merely concocted by the strong-headed, chauvinism-penchant nationalists such as de Valera.2 This high-pitched idealism reinforces the dogma that “women’s place was in the home” but fails to provide any authentic (material or legal) support for women. Irish women’s lower status, coupled with the economic necessities of the 1930s and 1940s, urged women to find a solution to improving their condition. For many women, the social and economic opportunities they had anticipated for so long were ultimately satisfied through emigration.3 Rather than stay in their motherland, Irish women looked forward to permanent homes abroad, indubitably better places than they could find in patriarchy-ridden Ireland. However, this antagonistic reaction to their patriarchal society, along with its stifling regulations regarding women, failed to change women’s position: “Individual feminist voices persisted in Ireland throughout the middle years of the century, but they were on the whole isolated” (McCormack 617). According to McCormack, Irish women’s problems in the middle decades of the twentieth century arose not because only a few women managed to change the status quo but because those who attempted were wanting in unity and force, a dilemma exacerbated by the exodus of more independent and “liberated” women. Actually, some women had already defied the patriarchal view of their status in earlier, more politically chaotic decades. Prominent figures like Constance Markievicz, Helena Molony, and Maud Gonne, to name but a few, had been active in such feminist organizations as Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) and the Cumann na mBan (Society of Women). An increasing number of feminist movements were launched in this period, according to Mary E. Daly, primarily because “Irish nationalism and unionism dwarfed all other political, social, and cultural movements” (Daly 108). Likewise, the restrictions written into the Irish Constitution concerning the role of women hardly went without opposition. The National University Women Graduates’ Association, for example, was well known for its fierce opposition to some of these chauvinistic views that had been inscribed in the supreme law of the nation. Unfortunately, the efforts made for feminism were either diluted by political concerns or dissipated with the deteriorating economy. Irish women were not granted more room for self-development until the 1970s, when they started to become more conscious

2 As Declan Kiberd explicates in Inventing Ireland, in the 1930s, for de Valera and other politicians as well, “the problem of legitimating the uncertain state structures overrode the concerns of women” (Kiberd, Inventing Ireland 404). 3 While emigration was a common phenomenon in many modern European countries, it was a special case in Ireland. It is estimated that in the mid-twentieth century, Ireland saw more women than men move out of the country (McCormack 616; Murphy 85–101; Paseta 37–40). Perchance influenced by the language factor, most of the female emigrants chose Britain or America as their “promised land.”

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of their own rights and less submissive to convention, striving instead for more selfrepresentation and better job opportunities (McCormack 617). However, as Breda Gray argues, feminism in Ireland has been marked by “a history of trans-border negotiations across conflicting political and emotional commitments” (Gray 74) due to the disconnection between women in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. This lack of solidarity among contemporary Irish feminists renders their voices less influential. In Binchy’s “All That Matters,” the structure and components of Nessa’s family remind people of the sexual stereotype of Irish society—the drunken father in contrast to the laboring mother. At the start of the story, Nessa’s father’s lack of work is justified by him having “a bad back” (80); instead, Nessa’s mother works laboriously in a supermarket to support the family financially, “without any help from her husband” (80). Nessa’s father is rarely mentioned without certain caricatures. Once, when referring to Nessa’s father, Aunt Elizabeth blatantly criticizes him for lavishing his money on drink and horses, “sitting all day long in front of a television” (82). This lazy and drunken father image echoes that of many father figures in Irish literature— the adolescent’s uncle in Joyce’s “Araby,” Michael and Old Mahon in J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, and Caithleen’s father in Edna O’Brien’s Country Girl’s Trilogy, to name but a few. It is noteworthy that even after cataclysmic developments in twentieth-century Ireland, this stereotype of the indolent and irresponsible paterfamilias remains a staple in Irish writing. In striking contrast to the father, Nessa’s mother, characterized by perseverance and sacrifice, smacks of the traditional female characters of modern Ireland. Nessa’s mother differs from traditional Irish women in that she works outside the family, yet the familial duties saddled upon her are as burdensome as those imposed on her predecessors are. The top priority for Nessa’s mother is the maintenance and sustainability of the whole family, even though she has to work long hours “worn out slaving in the supermarkets” (82). When the supermarket where she works threatens to curtail her working hours, what comes to her mind is the financial difficulty it could create for the household (85). When Nessa informs her mother that she wants to change her name to Vanessa to make it sound more elegant, her mother replies, “I don’t care if you call yourself Bambi or The Hag of Beara, Vanessa, I have far too much on my mind” (85). The two characters referred to here are noteworthy, because Bambi stands for an innocent roe deer roaming and learning in wild nature, while The Hag of Beara is closely associated with the legendary crone, a symbol of both mother and Mother Ireland. In a way, in such an off-the-cuff remark, Nessa’s mother unwittingly unveils the image of Irish women ingrained in her mind—they are either too innocent and vulnerable like Bambi or too senile and haggard like The Hag of Beara. Neither character is meant to be commanding. Instead, they are invariably rendered as junior or weaker characters in their everyday lives. The remarkable juxtaposition of Nessa’s father and mother aside, sexual difference in the story is further evidenced in the Mother/Aunt dichotomy. If Nessa’s mother represents the docile mother figure prevalent in Irish culture, changes for women in contemporary Ireland are conspicuous in Nessa’s aunt. Unlike Nessa’s mother, who has to work laboriously in a supermarket, her aunt is an immigrant to America who works as a paralegal. Ostensibly highly cultured and well educated, Nessa’s aunt is

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stylish and confident, always talking about art, visiting museums, and caring about her hair and clothes (88). The disparity between these two women characters is so strong that Nessa is at once torn between the two extremities around her—the plain Ma and the posh Aunt (83). Nevertheless, the conflict does not last long. Instead of being drawn into the massive burden of family responsibilities as the female protagonist does in Joyce’s “Eveline,” Nessa identifies with Aunt Elizabeth, opts for the refined life led by her aunt, and reaches out for her aunt’s help in “re-inventing” herself (83).

1.3 Irish Women and Change in Contemporary Ireland In her analysis of twentieth-century Irish women, Catherine B. Shannon notes that Irish women’s position changed in the early 1970s, due to at least five factors. To begin with, easy access to feminist campaigns around the globe made Irish women unable to tolerate their subordination. Second, the 1972 reports of the first Commission on the Status of Women significantly promoted women’s self-awareness. Third, membership of the European Union in 1973, as well as closer contact with America and Europe, helped make clear the marginality of Irish women. Fourth, increasing industrialization and urbanization in the 1970s changed the role women played. Fifth, better educational opportunities gave Irish women greater political awareness (Shannon 263–66).4 Shannon notes the transformation in women’s awareness of their own identity began in the 1970s, considering it an important phase in modern Irish history.5 For one thing, the economic recoveries of the 1960s meant more jobs for women in the industry. Moreover, the introduction of free secondary education in 1966 gave new opportunities to a generation of Irish girls. Together with the opening up of the economy and education came increasingly widespread female participation in social affairs and political roles for women, not only in the women’s movement itself but also in the Irish government. The feminist movement of the early 1970s led to the establishment of the Council for the Status of Women in 1973. Furthermore, groups such as Irishwomen United, Cherish, and the Women’s Political Association substantially improved women’s economic, legal, social, and occupational positions. In the wake of some controversial events like the passing of the 1983 Referendum, which made all abortions illegal except that the fetus’ birth would endanger the mother’s life, Ireland in the 1980s saw more women engaged in 4 These

five points explicate succinctly the essential elements that gave Irish women the impetus to live better lives from the 1970s on. Shannon provides very detailed explanations and statistics to substantiate her arguments, which cannot be reproduced here due to the limitation of space. 5 Likewise, Mary McAuliffe considers 1960s and 1970s significant periods during which Irish society moves towards rapid social and economic change, with more women entering workforce, less Catholic Church rules tightening women’s lives, and more access to radio and television opening women’s minds (209). Moreover, Terence Brown testifies to these changes happening to Irish women in the 60s and 70s when referring to the social and cultural conditions of the twentieth century (Brown 248).

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the abortion debate (Franks 48). Moreover, the Kerry Babies case and the Ann Lovett death in 1984, in which unmarried mothers were demonized by the Catholic Church, spurred Irish people into scrutinizing the enduring hegemony of the Church. This awakening is important because it is the first time since the 1920s “a wide-scale challenge [emerged] to the long-held conviction that the Catholic Church alone should determine the social and moral values that informed Irish social policy, particularly in areas of sexuality, reproduction, and family life” (Maguire 358). The increasingly important political role of women reached its peak with the election in 1990 of Mary Robinson to the Irish presidency. Robinson was not merely Ireland’s first female president but also a distinguished lawyer and veteran campaigner for the rights of women. Although the Irish president was more or less a symbolic title and Robinson had little real power, her success inspired many women. As Siobhan Kilfeather asserts, Robinson “was effective in changing the tone of Irish public life and in suggesting that a distinctive Irish identity could be imagined in terms of diversity rather than homogeneity” (112). Many Irish people were taken aback by the fact of a woman president in this traditionally man-centered country, and Robinson’s victory changed the stereotype that women were not meant to be politicians. Irish women had been mythically fictionalized as caretakers of the family and subordinate caretakers of their country. However, Ireland since the 1970s has become more and more de-sexualized in the sense that it has become a contemporary nation, not Mother Ireland but just Ireland, a modernized country that allows for diverse voices, those of women as well as men. Robinson’s triumph in the presidential election undermined the belief held by many people that women cannot be political leaders (Coulter 1–4). In 1997, following the miracle created by Robinson, Mary McAleese was elected as the second female president. Owing to the efforts made by Robinson, McAleese, and many other women, more and more Irish women, conscious of their inborn faculties and anxious to put them to meaningful political use, have dedicated themselves to the expression of their own unique self-identities, thereby facilitating a real recognition of modern Irish female identity-as-difference. The success of Robinson and McAleese from 1997 to 2010, coupled with the approval of the right to divorce in 1995, signals a promising new age for contemporary Irish women. An increasing number of publishing houses, such as Attic Press in the 80s and 90s, which welcomed women’s writings, help disseminate women’s thoughts. Moreover, the compilation and publication of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions, vols. 4 and 5 in 2002 marks Irish people’s resistance to the omission of women’s voice (Franks 52). This is further evidenced by the publication of A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature in 2018, one which showcases “Irish women’s writing as a rich and diverse field” (Ingman and Gallchoir 17). Nonetheless, contemporary Irish women’s future is by no means smooth, because the legacy of patriarchy never vanishes overnight. For example, the high rate of domestic abuse, reportedly as high as 20–33% among Irish women in 2003 (Ryan 97), testifies to the fact that inequality between the sexes still exists. In addition, not a few scholars point out the low representation of women in Dáil Éireann in the 1990s and early twenty-first

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century, highlighting that Irish women’s experience and concern are to a significant extent silenced (Ferriter 203; Franks 51). Nessa’s story in Maeve Binchy’s “All That Matters” testifies to Irish women’s difference in an ever-changing contemporary Ireland. Unconstrained by political forces like nationalism or by religious hegemonies like Catholicism, Nessa aspires to break free of another constraint imposed on Irish women—family. Traditionally, Irish women are forced to fulfill the duty of motherhood and are therefore subordinated as helpmates of nationalism, confined within the family. To keep away from such familial manipulation, Nessa turns to her aunt for inspiration and emulation. Stimulated by her aunt’s marvelous outlook, Nessa regards her aunt as her only role model, from whom she learns how to turn herself into a woman of taste. “All that matters,” proposed her aunt, “is seeing places of elegance, places with high standards” (80). In a sense, the story is dominated by such “All That Matter” mottos stipulated by her aunt, urging Nessa to be “in the Right Place” (81), beware of “the image you create yourself” (82), “give a good image of yourself to others” (82–83), and “recognize good music” (86). All these suggestions, coupled with Nessa’s aspiration to be someone unique like Aunt Elizabeth, enable her to lead a brand-new lifestyle, though the transformation is not without some struggle at the beginning. Nessa’s refusal to eat the meat part of a pie and her acceptance to halve a potato with her aunt, for instance, at once makes her feel like a traitor who “had crossed a line, changed sides” (89). However, the sense of guilt caused by this betrayal on her part is short-lived, because before long, Nessa has dedicated herself to and relishes a cultural life modeled on her aunt—appreciating music, going to poetry readings, book launches, and cultural events (89). The transformation of Irish women in contemporary Ireland is made manifest in Nessa. To begin with, participation in cultural events demarcates Nessa’s distinction from most of her female precursors, who were strangled by the grand projects of nation and religion. Unlike her mother, Nessa is not compelled to spend all her life on the family; instead, she is left with sufficient room to have her own way. With short, blonde, shiny hair, Nessa appears slimmer and unique, so different that her mother thinks she has become “distant and secretive” (90). In this regard, unlike Joyce’s Eveline, who is saddled with the promise before her mother’s deathbed a century earlier to “keep the home together as long as she could” (Joyce 36), Nessa is free from family burden. Moreover, the fact that she changes her name from Nessa to Vanessa under her aunt’s advice symbolizes the reclamation of her right to naming, indicating that, to a certain extent, she has absolute authority over her own identity. Naming connotes certain power relationships, as it is always people in power (e.g. parents to children or teachers to students) that are endowed with the authority of naming. In other words, Nessa’s re-claiming the right of naming significantly alludes to her empowerment. Nessa’s change is also perceptible in her escape from Ireland to America in pursuit of her aunt’s advice when, troubled by her premarital pregnancy, she is at her wit’s end. Nessa’s departure from Ireland near the end, which is symbolic of female emigration, indicates the freedom contemporary Irish women have secured in their daily life. It is a very different landscape from that experienced by the responsibility-driven and guilt-ridden Eveline in Joyce’s Dubliners, in which

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the female character is so overwhelmed by fatigue and paralysis that she can hardly break free from her motherland to seek happiness with the sailor (Joyce 37).

1.4 Unbearable Sweet Burden Many of the changes exhibited by Nessa underline the great progress made in the lives of contemporary Irish women. However, the impact of these changes is subverted near the end of the story when Nessa’s pregnancy is disclosed. In contrast to the self-reliance and self-confidence demonstrated in her social life, Nessa’s inability and helplessness in dealing with her premarital pregnancy reveal an invariably tough challenge for Irish women—control over reproduction. The denial of information about abortion during pregnancy counseling and the banning of any published information on abortion services signify Irish women’s lack of reproductive rights. Principally as a result of the Catholic religion’s influence, contraception and abortion have been regarded as taboos in Irish society and have thus been targeted by Irish feminist movements. As Murphy-Lawless proclaims, “gaining control over their fertility has been a diffuse, often silent struggle” (Murphy-Lawless 53) for Irish women. Judith Taylor maintains that Catholic Church, the Irish government, and antiabortion activist coalitions comprise the most menacing obstacles to feminist movements in Ireland (Taylor 677). These comments are echoed by Sandra McAvory, who argues that in Ireland “abortion policy is determined by political and professional elites, while women seeking abortions have been criminalized and silenced and those arguing for abortion rights silenced and defined as a polarizing minority” (McAvoy 41). Irish feminists’ efforts were evident in their struggle over the 1983 Constitutional Amendment, as well as the X Case in 1992. While no impressive results were forthcoming from the 1993 Amendment, Irish feminists’ bid for reproductive rights made significant progress in the X Case. In the Amendment campaign, due to the fierce opposition of antiabortion groups, women’s access to abortion was denied in order, specifically, to guarantee “the equal right to life of the unborn.”6 However, debates over the legitimacy of women’s abortion contributed to the discussion and deliberation of related issues. The Supreme Court ruling in the X Case, in which a raped 14-year-old girl was allowed to have an abortion abroad, marked a milestone for the Irish feminist movement. Although the right of every pregnant woman to travel outside the country for a termination is still not a reality, a public referendum mandating women’s right of freedom to travel for an abortion in other countries was successful shortly after the X Case, as was another referendum in 1995, in which divorce in Ireland was legalized. Nessa’s dilemma near the end of the story reaffirms the plight Irish women are potentially plunged into. Despite her endeavors to climb up the social ladder by getting involved in a wide range of high-minded cultural events, the unexpected pregnancy pushes the half-fledged member of the cultural elite back to the status of 6 www.irlgov.ie.

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unsophisticated girl. Intimidated and incapable, Nessa has no alternative but to fly to America to secure her aunt’s advice. This trip to America, however, renders Nessa disenchanted when Aunt Elizabeth’s real identity is laid bare. For a long time, her aunt has been looked upon as the epitome of female autonomy, but the castle in the air constructed out of this impression is devastated when it brings home to Nessa that her aunt, the mythically fabricated role model, is nothing but a commoner who lives in a dilapidated house: “The big room had peeling walls. . . . Two faded armchairs and a single bed in the corner looked as if nobody had visited them” (93). This discovery of her aunt’s miserable life is followed by the further disheartening news that, just like her, pregnancy rather than expectations of a better tomorrow had driven her aunt out of her homeland decades before. The repetition of pregnancy, befalling both Aunt Elizabeth and Nessa, is no coincidence, pinpointing women’s disempowerment with regard to reproduction. As Shulamith Firestone argues, women are naturally and biologically disadvantaged in reproduction because they are invariably the bearers and caretakers of babies (12). Whereas men have more freedom to escape from the duties of childbirth, women are always burdened with the pressure to give birth to babies. This is aggravated when women are pregnant out of wedlock because the Church and the society are particularly harsh with them (Bacik 21). Aunt Elizabeth suggests to Nessa that under the circumstances, she can have a termination or have the baby adopted; otherwise, her life will be ruined (94). Either way, women rather than men are the victims of illegal pregnancy. With all the sadness arising from women’s incapacity in the face of premarital pregnancy, the amount of determination and courage demonstrated by Aunt Elizabeth showcases an exceptional characteristic when compared with most Irish women throughout the twentieth century. Her suggestions to Nessa smack of the toughness typical of modern feminists: “Just remember that whatever happens, you can’t be allowed to ruin your life staying at home wheeling a pram up and down Chestnut Street, marking yourself out as a loser before your life has properly begun” (95). Unlike many Irish women constrained by marriage and child-rearing, Aunt Elizabeth is able to escape any confinement that might have prevented her from moving forward. She chose to leave Ireland for America 29 years earlier, remarking that “If I had stayed living in my mother’s house in Chestnut Street there would have been nothing for me here, working at a checkout till somewhere, nothing better” (84). As she recounts later, she even refused to have anything to do with her son when he tried to reach her: “I wrote and said that all that mattered now was that he forged ahead with his own life” (96). Although it appears that she was asking her son to lead his own life, in reality she was calling for a life of her own without the intrusion of anyone else, her own son included. This craving for autonomy is noteworthy because it is not so common in early and mid-twentieth-century Irish literary and cultural texts. Nevertheless, the splendor of Aunt Elizabeth’s self-autonomy is fleeting. Before long, the ending is overshadowed by Nessa’s awareness of the harsh reality confronting her. However encouraging and alluring Aunt Elizabeth’s suggestions may appear, they suggest to Nessa nothing more than the cliché reiterated by her aunt—“all that matters”.

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Nessa realizes that everything she had learned from Aunt Elizabeth was illusory. From the trip to America, she comes to appreciate that her mother, rather than her aunt, was what really counted in her life. All that matters, as proposed by Aunt Elizabeth, is subsequently transformed into something closer to life—to be back in her hometown and back to normality. In this moment of illumination, Nessa’s original connections with Mother and Aunt are turned upside down, with traditional values, such as duty and responsibility, typical of her mother, towering over fashion and pomposity, as embodied in Aunt Elizabeth. Nessa comes to realize that the capitalistic modernity typical of New York is after all a dream. Her going back to Dublin and her mother heralds a promising re-alignment between mother and daughter. She is no longer the innocent woman who is intimidated at the thought of being pregnant out of wedlock, but a more sophisticated and independent woman that faces up to reality. Consequently, regardless of the society’s hostility to out-of-wedlock pregnancy, she is going to have the baby and is sure her mother will be delighted to welcome the baby, which is emblematic of women’s reclamation of and their attempts to have control over reproduction.

1.5 Conclusion Until the latter part of the twentieth century, Irish women’s rights were pushed to the background. What is becoming of the once-feminized Ireland amid the contemporary, irresistibly globalizing world, in which notions of “nationhood” and/or “national identity,” as well as gender and/or sexual identity, are being increasingly questioned, rethought, and reconfigured? The European element emerging in Irish society over the last few decades is challenging traditional Irish and female identity (Kiberd, Modern Ireland 97). According to Kiberd, Irish literature and Irish identity used to be limited to three categories—religion, language, and nationalism—whereas today it goes way beyond these dimensions (The Irish Writer and the World 282). In Binchy’s “All That Matters,” the male/female dichotomy is still tangible in an increasingly hybrid world, but Aunt Elizabeth’s self-assertive style, together with Nessa’s emulation and temporary transformation, heralds, to a certain extent, the coming of a new era for Irish women. This is in line with Rebecca Steinberger’s argument that Binchy’s success partly lies in her ability to “create realistic characters who do not fall prey to the sexual and social constraints that pervade our twentyfirst-century culture” (Steinberger 22). In other words, Nessa’s pregnancy seemingly reveals women’s underprivileged position in terms of reproduction, an ingrained

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biological/structural conflict notorious in Irish history, and seems to push female identity back to the past. However, simultaneously it highlights Nessa’s attempt to uncover the under-represented status women, her attempt to reclaim authority over reproduction, and her moving forward to a better understanding of women’s problems. Disappointed and dismayed at the beginning, Nessa is finally sadder yet wiser. Her disillusionment and hard-won experiences, which signal Irish women’s proactive efforts in their pursuit of equality and self-identity, are pivotal because they pave the way for more discussion and better exploration of Irish women in the twenty-first century.

References Bacik, Ivana. 2013. The politics of sexual difference: The enduring influence of the atholic church. In Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, eds. Noreen Giffney and Margrit Shildrick, 17–28. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Binchy, Maeve. 2004. All that matters. In New Dubliners, ed. Oona Frawley, 79–96. Dublin: New Island. Print. Brown, Terence. 2004. Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922–2002. London: Harper Perennial. Print. Connolly, Claire. 2003. Introduction: Ireland in theory. In Theorizing Ireland, ed. Claire Connolly, 1–13. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Coulter, Carol. 1993. The Hidden Tradition: Feminism, Women & Nationalism in Ireland. Cork: Cork UP. Print. Daly, Mary. E. 1997. ‘Oh, Kathleen Ni Houlihan: Your way’s a thorny way!’: The condition of women in twentieth-century Ireland. In Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland, eds. Anthony Bradley and Maryann Gialanella Vallulis, 102–119. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P. Print. Ferriter, Diarmaid. 2008. Women and political change in Ireland since 1960. Éire Ireland 43(1 & 2):179–204. Print. Firestone, Shulamith. 1979. The Dialectic of Sex. London: Women’s P. Print. Franks, Jill. 2013. Cherish all the children of the nation equally: The Irish women’s movement. In British and Irish Women Writers and the Women’s Movement: Six Literary Voices of Their Times, ed. Jill Franks, 19–52. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. Print. Gray, Breda. 2013. Affecting trans-feminist solidarity. In Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, eds. Noreen Giffney & Margrit Shildrick, 74–93. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Ingman, Heather and Clíona Ó Gallchoir, eds. 2018. A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Joyce, James. 1995. Dubliners. New York: Cambridge UP. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 1987. Modern Ireland: Postcolonial or European? In Not on Army Map: Essays on Postcoloniality and Cultural Nationalism, ed. Stuart Murray, 81–100. Exeter: U of Exeter P. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 1996. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 2005. The Irish Writer and the World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Kilfeather, Siobhan. 2005. Irish feminism. In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture, eds. Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly, 96–116. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Maguire, Moira J. 2001. The changing face of catholic Ireland: Conservatism and liberalism in the Ann Lovelett and Kerry Babies Scandals. Feminist Studies 27(2):335–358. Print.

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McAuliffe, Mary. 2009. Irish histories: Gender, women and sexualities. In Palgrave Advances in Irish History, eds. Mary McAuliffe, Katherine O’Donnell, and Leeann Lane, 191–221. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. McAvoy, Sandra. 2013. Vindicating women’s rights in a fetocentric state: the longest Irish journey. In Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, eds. Noreen Giffney and Margrit Shildrick, 39–60. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. McCormack, W.J., ed. 1999. The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture. Malden: Blackwell. Print. Meaney, Gerardine. 2013. Race, sex and nation: Virgin mother Ireland. In Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, eds. Noreen Giffney and Margrit Shildrick, 125–144. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Murphy, Maureen O’Rourke. 1997. The Fionnuala factor: Irish sibling emigration at the turn of the century. In Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland, eds. Anthony Bradley and Maryann Gialanella Vallulis, 85–101. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P. Print. Murphy-Lawless, Jo. 1993. Fertility, bodies and politics: The Irish case. Reproductive Health Matters 1(2):53–64. Print. Nash, Catherine. 1993. Remapping and renaming: New cartographies of identity, gender and landscape in Ireland. Feminist Review 44:39–57. Print. O’Brien, Edna. 1978. Mother Ireland, Rev. ed. New York: Penguin. Print. Paseta, Senia. 2003. Modern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP. Print. Ryan, Mary. 2010. A feminism of their own! Irish women’s history and contemporary Irish women’s writing. Estudios Irlandeses 5:92–101. Print. Shannon, Catherine B. 1997. The changing face of Cathleen ni Houlihan: Women and politics in Ireland, 1960–1966. In Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland, ed. Anthony Bradley and Maryann Gialanella Vallulis, 257–274. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P. Print. Steinberger, Rebecca. 2006. Maeve Binchy. In Irish Women Writers: An A-to-Z Guide, ed. Alexander G. Gonzalez, 20–23. Westport: Greenwood P. Print. Taylor, Judith. 1998. Feminist tactics and friendly fire in the Irish women’s movement. Gender and Society 12(6):674–691. Print. Weekes, Ann Owens. 2000. Figuring the mother in contemporary Irish fiction. In Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories, eds. Liam Harte and Michael Parker, 100–125. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Print.

Chapter 2

Sense and Sexuality: Revisiting Lady Gregory via Colm Tóibín

2.1 Introduction Augusta Gregory was a prolific writer and a famous translator in modern Irish literature, but her position as a woman has not been adequately researched. According to Sandra M. Gilbert, Lady Gregory, just like George Moore and W.B. Yeats, was committed to promoting a native Irish identity and reviving the lost traditions of Ireland. However, she was ridiculed as the “charwoman of the Abbey Theatre” by George Bernard Shaw (Gilbert 1115). But, without Lady Gregory’s undivided devotion, the establishment and maintenance of the Abbey Theater in the first decades of the twentieth century would not have been successful. Her support also helped Yeats devote himself to his literary career. Consequently, Yeats wrote appreciatively about her companionship and spiritual guidance several times in his poems. In “Coole Park, 1929,” Lady Gregory’s “powerful character” puts everything in order (243). Additionally, “The Municipal Gallery Revisited” highlights the grandeur of Lady Gregory’s house: “But in that woman, in that household where/Honour had lived so long, all lacking found” (320). Lady Gregory made a significant impact on modern Irish literature not only because she helped nurture some aspects of Yeats’s literary career but also because she committed herself to fostering and promoting the Irish people’s indigenous cultural identity in works such as The Rising of the Moon and Spreading the News. Nonetheless, Lady Gregory’s identity as an intelligent woman is not given adequate credit. Overshadowed by other famous writers of the early twentieth century such as Yeats and J.M. Synge, Lady Gregory is unfairly labeled a second-class writer of the second sex. As some scholars argue, Lady Gregory’s works have been unduly ignored. According to Elizabeth Coxhead, a biographer, Lady Gregory has been remembered after her death mostly as Yeats’s close friend and patron (vi). Additionally, as James Pethica argues, in comparison with Yeats’s critically acclaimed poetry and drama, Lady Gregory’s plays have been unfairly downgraded by many researchers as light and piddling (“Lady Gregory’s Abbey Theater Drama” 70). This is partly because many of her works are conditioned by the politically correct patriarchal culture of © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 T. C. (Hawk). Chang, Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction, The Humanities in Asia 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4316-0_2

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nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inasmuch as women in her works appear disempowered, working merely for their male counterparts or their nation. Gregory’s position as a woman and her talent for writing and creation are often neglected. This slighting of Lady Gregory and her writing is endorsed recently by Paige Reynolds, who argues that “the continued neglect of her work exposes not only intransigent gender biases but also scholarly biases that fail to regard editing, translation and journalism. . . as the serious work of creative genius” (145–46). For Reynolds, part of this disregard results from Lady Gregory’s “willingness to efface her own abilities” amid the patriarchal milieu of her times (145). Colm Tóibín is one of the few contemporary writers who express interest in Lady Gregory. In writing about her, Tóibín draws readers’ attention to an intelligent, sexual, and autonomous female figure quite unlike the women in many of her plays, who are mostly passive and subordinated. This interest is foreshadowed in Tóibín’s essay collection Love in a Dark Time (2001), in which he explicates his obsession with “tracing the tension between the fearless imagination and the fearful self” (8). Tóibín’s story, mostly based on her research on Lady Gregory, is conducive to our rediscovery of this influential woman in twentieth-century Irish literature (Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush 123–25). Examining Lady Gregory by reading Tóibín’s “Silence,” a short story collected in The Empty Family (2010), in conjunction with examples from her plays, Tóibín’s other writings and feminist theories relevant to this study, this paper focuses on some less discussed aspects of Gregory. My argument is that, despite the docility typically associated with Lady Gregory and women in her plays, she is not only a helping maid but a proto-feminist who in her own ways challenged the social and sexual boundaries of Irish society.

2.2 Lady Gregory, Irish Women, and Conventional Boundaries Lady Gregory is traditionally portrayed as a good caretaker both externally and domestically. Externally, she is one of the leading founders of the Abbey Theater. In the domestic sphere, she gives emotional support to her son, Robert, and her husband, Sir William Gregory. In “Silence,” a semi-biographical work based on Tóibín’s research about Lady Gregory, the narrator illuminates her efforts to serve as a good wife and to sexually gratify her husband, although she is not equally gratified from these endeavors: In the night, in those early months, as she tried to move towards him to embrace him fully, to offer herself to his dried-up spirit, she found that he was happier obsessively fondling certain parts of her body in the dark as though he was trying to find something he had mislaid. And thus as she attempted to please him, she also tried to make sure that, when he was finished, she would be able gently to turn away from him and face the dark alone as he slept. (6)

Evidently, Lady Gregory makes great efforts to please her husband. She manages to make him happy by moving herself automatically and embracing him to relieve his

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loneliness. Nonetheless, these endeavors normally end up with her husband snoring, sound asleep, while she has to bear her solitude alone in the dark. Aware of the expected relationship between men and women within the conventions of marriage, Lady Gregoryis taciturn about the nighttime encounters with her husband. As the narrator remarks, “There were times when the grim, dull truth of it made her smile” (6). Lady Gregory’s submission in sex in this episode is in keeping with some feminists’ contention that traditional societies tend to naturalize men’s uncontrollable sexual desire and as a consequence, women are expected to cater to men’s sexual needs (Richardson 162). Lady Gregory’s submission to her husband reflects feminists’ argument that traditionally men dominate inside and outside the family, while women are excluded, subordinated, and consequently disempowered in patriarchal societies. According to Simone de Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex inspired many second-wave feminists to unsettle the ideological construction of women, women are considered a second sex. In the wake of patriarchal dominance, they unreservedly accept their status as “the Other” (254). In addition, theories by radical feminists such as Shulamith Firestone and Andrea Dworkin help illustrate the interplay between male domination and women’s subordination in misogynistic cultures. In her book The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Firestone contends that women, along with children and men of color, are subjugated and victimized in traditional nuclear families (122–23). Additionally, Andrea Dworkin argues in Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (1983) that although many women are relegated to a secondary sexual class, they accept that role; they are forced to be passive and subordinate because they need to secure “protection from male violence” (14). In other words, women acquiesce to the stereotypes, show unwavering loyalty to men, and submit to male control mainly out of their fear of the ever-present threat of male violence. For Dworkin, the violence comes in different forms in the lives of individual women, such as rape, wife-beating, forced childbearing, sadistic psychological abuse, banishment, confinement in mental institutions, and so forth (20).1 In “Silence,” the threat is isolation, which Lady Gregory fears will result if her husband discovers her love affair with poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. She dreams about being sent back to her parents’ home at Roxborough and wandering like a ghost in the house, with “no chair for her at the dinner table and no place for her to sit in the drawing room” (11). Being neglected or invisible was a theme in these recurring dreams, even when the details were different: The dream changed sometimes. She was in her house in London or in Coole with her husband and with Robert and their servants but no one saw her, they let her come in and out of rooms, forlorn, silent, desperate. Her son appeared blind to her as he came towards her. Her husband undressed in their room at night as though she were not there and turned out the lamp in their room while she was still standing at the foot of the bed fully dressed. No one seemed to mind 1 According to feminist Kate Millet, women succumb to stereotypical patriarchal ideology due to the

influence of socialization. Sexual politics, Millet argues, “obtains consent through the ‘socialisation’ of both sexes to basic patriarchal polities with regard to temperament, role and status” (26). In these three aspects, generally men are imagined as aggressive, intelligent, and forceful, while women are regarded as passive, ignorant, and docile (26).

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2 Sense and Sexuality: Revisiting Lady Gregory … that she haunted the spaces they inhabited because no one noticed her. She had become, in these dreams, invisible to the world. (11)

In other words, Lady Gregory becomes a total stranger to the world she is familiar with. Her anxiety over the disclosure of the love affair makes her intimidated and marginalized. This perspective aligns with many feminists’ claim that women are generally subordinate in the male-centered world. This forced subordination is especially meaningful for Lady Gregory when she is excluded from her family, a realm in which men traditionally dictate and women listen and follow. It also testifies to Dworkin’s theory of male violence imposed on women, which more often than not compels women to be passive, reticent, and subordinate in the presence of men. In Foucauldian terms, Sir William Gregory’s surveillance over his wife is successful, inasmuch as Lady Gregory constantly examines herself via internalized creeds, such as purity, chastity, loyalty, and obedience. As Michel Foucault argues in Discipline and Punish (1977), placing people under scrutiny is much more effective than subjecting them to carnal punishment. Therefore, in the modern penal system, new mechanisms of surveillance in prisons, barracks, schools, and hospitals have replaced traditional approaches to punishment based on physical torture. According to Foucault, punishment based on surveillance is more effective because people who are in custody are plunged into a state of self-imprisonment and self-surveillance; their punishment is internalized (104–12). The fact that Lady Gregory is constantly aware of the problem her adultery causes indicates that her husband’s authority—and her self-imposed inspection—are well established. Both help underline the plight of women as members of the second sex. Crucially, women’s subordination not only happens in Lady Gregory’s everyday life but is evidenced in many of her plays. According to Cathy Leeney, women’s attempt to realize “the ideal of national autonomy” is manifest in the works of many Irish female writers, including early twentieth-century writers such as Mary Colum, Lady Gregory, and Alice Milligan (270). Additionally, as Ann Saddlemyer contends, Lady Gregory was so dedicated to writing for her country that nationalism dominates many of her plays. According to Saddlemyer, “[i]nvolvement in the idea of national theatre. . . increased her nationalism still more, and where Yeats subordinated his ideals of art to no country, she avowed her determination to work principally for ‘the dignity of Ireland’” (451). For example, in Lady Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon (1907), patriotism is prioritized, and women and their problems are all but invisible (54–55).2 Lady Gregory’s other plays feature women who are not just invisible, but also unpleasant: she created garrulous and helpless woman characters in The Gaol Gate, and the women in three of Lady Gregory’s other plays, Spreading the News (1904), The Travelling Man (1910), and The Workhouse Ward (1908), are either marginal or noxious. In Spreading the News, the few women generally serve as chorus-like minor characters who are ill-informed, loquacious, and gossipy (41–45). Even when they have speaking roles, they are negatively portrayed and are 2 John

P. Harrington, ed. Modern Irish Drama. 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2009). Citations of The Rising of the Moon and Spreading the News are based on this edition.

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therefore unfairly represented. The Travelling Man is a miracle play which focuses on the stupidity and irrationality of undiscerning women (Seven Short Plays 177– 78). In The Workhouse Ward, Lady Gregory portrays another wicked woman who is materialistic, egotistical, and snobbish (Seven Short Plays 158–59). These portrayals of women make good sense from the perspective of Irish nationalism. In the nationalist rhetoric, men are entitled to fighting for their country, whereas women are often imagined to be fragile and thus unable to have an impressive achievement (Young 360). Furthermore, as The Workhouse Ward displays, women are considered more likely to be emotionally driven in catering for their self-interests, so they have greater potential for wrong-doing. In this play, a long-established fraternity exists between the two male protagonists, Mike McInerney and Michael Miskell, both of whom are imprisoned for life in a ward. Mrs. Donohoe, Mike McInerney’s sister, attempts to mercilessly separate the two males. This attempt is in vain, however, because her brother chooses to stay with his friend in prison despite the alluring wealth and freedom offered by Mrs. Donohoe. Overall, we perceive a male-dominated world. Therefore, as critic Paige Reynolds argues, “Gregory’s insistent foregrounding of men and male achievement reflects gendered mores” (145). Taken together, these belittling presentations of women contribute to the impression that Lady Gregory was so engrossed in Irish cultural nationalism that she dismissed her own experience as a woman. They belie the fact that Lady Gregory was actually a woman of great sense who transgressed the societal boundaries of sexuality. Some traces of her concern for women are evident in her history plays. In Dervorgilla (1907), for example, Lady Gregory re-directs readers’ attention to a controversial woman in Irish history. Traditionally, Dervorgilla has been vilified as a femme fatal; she betrays her husband, O’Rourke, to be together with Diarmaid MacMorrough, a traitor who brought the Normans into Ireland. Her actions bring great suffering to her countrymen. However, in spite of the long-standing notoriety inflicted on Dervorgilla, Lady Gregory appears to highlight this infamous woman’s strength and fortitude rather than her infidelity and frailty. This is evidenced by Dervorgilla’s reply to Owen, a young man: “For though I am an old woman given to praying, I can take pride in strength of body and readiness of hand” (Selected Plays of Lady Gregory 155). Instead of a disempowered woman, we witness one who is proud and self-confident despite her physical decrepitude. This self-confidence, in conjunction with self-awareness, is also obvious in her conversation with an old servant called Flann. Although Flann manages to relieve her of “the weight of bringing in of the English,” Dervorgilla resolutely denies: “No, no. It was I brought them in for good or for evil, by my own and the wars that were stirred up for my sake” (156). Dervorgilla’s audacity culminates in the following confession near the end of the play. Dervorgilla: O’Rourke was a good man, and a brave man, and a kinder man than Diarmuid, but it was with Diarmuid my heart was . . . . It is to him I promised before ever I saw O’Rourke, and I loved him better than my own lord, and he me also, and this was long! I loved him. I loved him! . . . . Oh, Diarmuid, I did not dread you. It was I myself led you astray! Let the curse and the vengeance fall upon me and me only, for the great wrong and the treachery done by both of us to Ireland! (166)

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This excerpt showcases Dervorgilla’s daring expression of her emotions and her persistent pursuit of true love, despite the public’s condemnation of her betrayal. The courage to shoulder her responsibility, as well as the audacious adherence to her ideal love, makes clear Dervorgilla’s uniqueness as an independent female, a characteristic rarely found in traditional literature. Crucially, Dervorgilla’s insistence on love and her courage to be responsible for her own choice are echoed by Lady Gregory’s own story, which will be discussed in the next section. However, whereas both choose to adhere to their ideal love regardless of social taboos on adultery, Dervorgilla stands ahead in pursuing love, making her inner feelings public, and taking all the responsibility. In contrast, limited by her social status, Lady Gregory chooses to express her love and emotions in more implicit ways. Notably, Lady Gregory herself underestimates the great potential of women’s sexual desires, which is manifest in her comment on Dervorgilla: “As to Dervorgilla, she was not brought away by force, she went to MacMurrough herself. For there are men in the world that have a coaxing way, and sometimes women are weak” (Selected Plays of Lady Gregory 360). While pointing out Dervorgilla’s free will in the love affair, this historically infamous woman’s autonomy and perseverance are not duly credited. However, Dervorgilla’s choice is to a certain extent justified, as men rather than women are to blame for the deviation. In other words, while Dervorgilla has been the subject of criticism in legends, Lady Gregory appears to have sympathy for her, shifting the duty from women to men. This serves as an intriguing analogy between Dervorgilla and Lady Gregory because both of them are victimized in their love affairs, though they deal with social pressure in different ways. Dervorgilla faces up to criticism unswervingly, whereas Lady Gregory keeps her emotions secret, resorting to literary writing for revelation and consolation, as will be discussed in the following sections.

2.3 Lady Gregory’s Intellectual and Sexual Transgressions Unlike the traditional women commonly depicted in Irish literature, Lady Gregory in Tóibín’s “Silence” is a woman of intellect and wisdom. Her “listening skills” and “keen intelligence” are accentuated many times by the third-person narrator (5). She is such a good communicator that she “made sure that her companion knew, from the sympathy and sharp light in her eyes, how intelligent she was, and how quietly powerful and deep” (4). Lady Gregory’s intelligence is best evidenced in the following lines: She had read all the latest books and she chose her words slowly when she came to discuss them. She did not want to appear clever. She made sure that she was silent without seeming shy, polite and reserved without seeming intimidated. She had no natural grace and she made up for this by having no empty opinion. (5)

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Lady Gregory is not only knowledgeable but sensible. She learns about a wide range of subjects through extensive reading and knows when and how to articulate her opinions. Crucially, she has a knack for maintaining reticence and politeness and expressing meaningful ideas to compensate for her lack of physical attraction. These descriptions present a very different female figure from those described earlier. Instead of being a submissive woman, she is strategically adept and flexible in putting her ideas to good use. Lady Gregory’s intellectual sensibility is also supported by her artistic taste, which is endorsed by scholar Eglantina Remport (40–42). According to Remport, in the 1880s, Lady Gregory and her husband traveled widely around the world, visiting historical and cultural sites in Turkey, India, Egypt, England, and Ireland. These experiences sharpened her knowledge of history and art, making her “familiarize herself with the many contesting views regarding the value of art, the function of art in society and the role of the artist in social formation” (41). Traditionally, this unusual intellectual quality is attributed to men rather than women. As Andrea Dworkin maintains, women have been denied three important qualities that are essential to leading better lives: literacy, intellect, and creative intelligence. The intelligence of women is so obnoxious in male-centered cultures that women must try to either conceal it or exercise it ingenuously (105). This feminine prudence about exercising intelligence is evidenced in the previous quotation describing Lady Gregory as wellread and brilliant but reserved in expressing her personal views. Such an attempt to conceal her intellect showcases the general public’s expectation of women—that they are not meant to be intelligent. As Tóibín recounts in Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, a book which features Tóibín’s research on Lady Gregory, in her early childhood, Lady Gregory was not expected to be intelligent either; she was regarded as a plain child, “destined to be the carer, the spinster” of her family (14). Nevertheless, in her later life, she proved to be a woman of great talent who “was skilled in the politics of compromise and was a superb tactician” (122). In addition to her unusual intelligence, Lady Gregory’s peculiarity is evidenced in her love affair with Blunt, a poet, during her stay in Egypt. Unlike most traditional women, who are conditioned by male-dominated bodily discourses, Lady Gregory dares to challenge and transgress social restrictions on female bodily activities by having sex out of wedlock. Early in “Silence,” she is described as someone with passion who etches Blunt’s name on her heart (7). Moreover, a range of sensual images are used to accentuate her distinction in perceiving her lover; she is like a connoisseur who can appreciate and evaluate her love object. As the narrator remarks, “She liked looking at him as she liked looking at a Bronzino or a Titian” (7). This visual imagery aside, the story invokes the sense of taste in likening Blunt to “lamb cooked slowly for hours with garlic and thyme, or goose stuffed at Christmas” (7). The scene in which Lady Gregory gazed at Blunt and “ate him up with her eyes” while gathering with Blunt and his wife further demonstrates Lady Gregory’s vivid sexual desires (8). Lady Gregory’s sensual perceptions and sexual responses signify this female character’s attempt to overthrow the tenacious conventions of the Irish Catholic society in which she lived. As discussed in the second section, Lady Gregory, like Irish

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women in general, was surrounded by overwhelming patriarchal power, so much so that she was, wittingly or unwittingly, in the habit of retrospection and selfinspection. Her reflection on marriage and her submission to the harsh reality of life is an illustration. As the narrator remarks, “This was marriage, she thought, and it was her job to be calm about it (6)”. However, the enforcement of power is by no means stable and only one-dimensional. In this regard, Foucault’s theory of power facilitates our understanding of the capriciousness of power relations. According to Foucault, power produces not only subjugation but also creation. It is used not only as a means of control but also as a strategy through which the underprivileged fight back and secure control for themselves. In other words, unlike many theorists who highlight the deterministic nature of power relations, Foucault attends to the potential re-production of power mechanisms. This sort of counter-discourse is possible primarily because, as Foucault argues, the centers of power relations are always being challenged, debated, and even replaced (Power/Knowledge 119). In reference to the interplay between power and discourse, Foucault argues, “We must make allowance for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy” (The History of Sexuality, Volume I 100–01). This dynamic notion of power and resistance accounts for the mixture of submission and defiance exemplified in Lady Gregory, who demonstrates her ability to move beyond the repression and confining systems of her patriarchal society, first by employing her intelligence skillfully, and second by transgressing accepted sexual norms. Her affair with Blunt is never easy because both during and after their adultery, Lady Gregory needs to cope with both her sense of loss, which is triggered by the secrecy of the affair and her sense of guilt, which derives from her fear of Sir William Gregory. This fear does not come only from her husband, but also from the male-dominated Irish society. Saddled with the limitations placed on women, she seizes different opportunities to avoid these restrictions. From this perspective, women are not inevitably victimized and do not necessarily fall prey to male oppression without any means of resistance. On the contrary, females are able to both re-evaluate male discourse and eventually gain their own speaking position. Foucault’s notion of reproductive power helps explicate Lady Gregory’s predicament as a woman and the possibility for women to claim their own voice, subjectivity, and identity instead of being silenced. This positive depiction of women is illustrated in Lady Gregory’s history play Grania as well as Dervorgilla. Instead of the image of scandalous women typically associated with Grania due to her illicit love affair, Lady Gregory pays special attention to this legendary woman’s will power. As she comments on her own play, “I turned to Grania because so many have written about sad, lovely Deirdre. . . . Grania had more power of will, and for good or evil twice took the shaping of her life into her own hands” (Selected Plays of Lady Gregory 358). In other words, as displayed in the female protagonist in Dervorgilla, Grania’s uniqueness as a strongwilled woman is highlighted in Grania. According to Lady Gregory, Grania has been downsized and demonized because of her “breach of faith” (Selected Plays of Lady Gregory 364). However, while refashioning robust female characters such as

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Dervorgilla and Grania, Lady Gregory succeeds in simultaneously undoing sexual stereotypes inherent in male-centered myth and endowing women with certain heroic qualities. Notably, this endeavor provides an illustration of Lady Gregory herself as a woman who commits adultery with Blunt in spite of social taboos on women’s sexuality and infidelity.

2.4 Lady Gregory (Re-)Writing Her Own Stories Not only does Lady Gregory demonstrate her uniquely defiant female identity through sexuality, she also reasserts her individuality via writing. Crucially, women’s exclusion from writing is implied in Freud’s theory of their lack of a penis, metaphorically pen and writing (125). This exclusion is echoed by Virginia Woolf, who argues that conditioned by “law,” “customs,” and “manners,” women were relentlessly excluded from writing and consequently kept silent most of the time before the nineteenth century (“Women and Fiction” 44–45). According to Woolf, women were not encouraged to write their stories, such that even great writers like Jane Austen and Emily Bronte had to confront scorn and censure in traditional societies (“Women and Fiction” 47). To highlight the plight of women in male-dominated societies, Woolf argues in “Professions for Women” women in every household are haunted by “the Angel in the House” (57–58). Overshadowed by the Angel in the House, signifying an idealized image of being charming, unselfish, and sacrificial, women have been required to relinquish their own needs for the benefits of others (58–59). In addition, Woolf notes that female writers are forbidden from discovering “something about the body, about the passions which it was unfitting for her as a woman to say” (61). By the same token, in her book Object Lessons, Irish poet Eavan Boland specifies the challenge of being both a woman and a poet in the Irish context (65–67). According to Boland, male-centered conventions exclude women from the mainstream in Irish literature. As a consequence, for Boland “the true voice and vision of women are routinely excluded” (A Kind of Scar 19). Distressed by the fact that she cannot make public her love and her sexual desire, Lady Gregory resorts to writing sonnets to relieve her sense of solitude. In one sonnet, she writes: Bowing my head to kiss the very ground On which the feet of him I love have trod, Controlled and guided by that voice whose sound Is dearer to me than the voice of God. (13)

The intense love the speaker has for her lover is perceptible. Immersed in the feeling of love, she prioritizes anything associated with her lover. Yet despite her passion and her sense of “emptiness and absence” because her affection must be secret, she is not overwhelmed by emotion in a way that causes her to lose her head (13). Instead, she writes sonnets to alleviate her sense of loneliness and to immortalize

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her fleeting love affair with Blunt. Notably, unlike the traditional poetry of male writers such as Shakespeare or Yeats, in which women are the objects of love under the control of male writers, in this sonnet, it is a man who serves as the muse, delineated by the divinely inspired female bard. This scenario unsettles traditional hierarchical and gendered oppositions such as writer/love object, center/margin, creation/acceptance, and active/passive. The poem is even more subversive when considering Blunt’s occupation as a poet. Creative and authoritative attributes typically associated with males are given to a woman, who is conversant with “rhyme schemes and poetic forms” (13). As Lady Gregory watches Blunt read her sonnets, she plays an active role as the watcher and the speaker, while Blunt passively listens to her speech and is gazed upon by the female authority (13). This subversion of traditional gender stereotypes culminates in a meeting a few months after their love affair ends. Instead of asking to resume their liaison, as Blunt wistfully surmises Lady Gregory will do, Lady Gregory gives him a sheaf of her sonnets and asks him to publish them, saying, “You shall publish them in your next book as though they were written by you” (14). Apparently, making the sonnets public helps liberate Lady Gregory from her long-suppressed emotions. Simultaneously, it deconstructs the notion that men are more likely to be creators, while women are more suitably the objects of poetic creation. In addition to her creative ability in writing poetry, Lady Gregory had a talent for re-writing her own stories. This gift for creation is evidenced in her meetings with Henry James, after the death of her husband. Knowing that James often jotted down anecdotes he had learned from friends and kept them to use as inspiration for his stories, Lady Gregory was tempted to reveal her own love story to this literary genius. She even wanted to ask James if he had read Blunt’s poetry and what he thought of the poems, though she was afraid James was so intelligent that he might see through her story if it were not carefully re-told. Eventually, she succeeded in re-telling an altered version of the love story: There was an eminent London man, she began, a clergyman known to dine at the best tables, a man of great experience who had many friends, friends who were both surprised and delighted when this man finally married. The lady in question was known to be highly respectable. But on the day of their wedding as they crossed to France from Dover to Calais, he found a note addressed to her from a man who had clearly been her lover and now felt free, despite her new circumstances, to address her ardently and intimately. (18–19)

In this revised version of the love story, the identity of the main characters is modified. Sir William Gregory has been changed to a reputable clergyman in London and Lady Gregory to an admirable woman who received a note from her former lover. In addition, the venue has been converted from Egypt to a boat on the way to Paris. As the story later goes, the astonished and irritated clergyman first determined to cast out his wife by sending her back to her parents when they arrived in Paris, making her “his wife merely in name” (19). However, he later changed his mind, informing his wife that “he would keep her, but he would not touch her” (19). These episodes generally

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follow the story between Lady Gregory and Blunt, but some significant details are either restructured or distorted so that the true identities of the main characters are camouflaged. When compared with the original story, the concocted version demonstrates the power of Lady Gregory and all literary writers to control reality. As the narrator of “Silence” observes, the love story could be quite different if retold in different ways. Lady Gregory says she almost wished she had added more detail, had told James that the letter came from a poet, perhaps, or that it contained a set of sonnets whose subject was unmistakable, or that the wife of the clergyman was more than thirty years his junior, or that he was not a clergyman at all, but a former member of Parliament and someone who had once held high office. Or perhaps she should have said that the woman had never, in fact, been caught, but had been careful and had outlived her husband to whom she had been unfaithful—that she had merely dreamed of and feared being sent home or kept apart and never touched (20). Changing certain details creates a totally different scenario, and this alternative version of the same story lays bare the fact that no absolute reality is obtainable, as no universal truth exists. This postmodern writing philosophy endows writers with the privilege of (re-)creating and (re-)interpreting their own stories, creating a world which can “purposely ignore frameworks and distinctions agreed upon by conventions” (Ibsch 265). Therefore, writers can always restructure different textual elements and manipulate the plot to generate new meanings. The authority to invent textual meanings and interpretations is especially important in “Silence” because this license is given to a woman writer. Lady Gregory’s anxiety over her unfaithfulness and its consequence drives her to intermix reality with fantasy in the story she tells to Henry James. Taking control of how the story is perceived by the listener, Lady Gregory deconstructs the events that happened in the real world, a world that is generally patriarchal in nature and was dominated, in her own life, by the desires and needs of Sir William Gregory. In a nutshell, by narrating and constructing the plot of her love story, Lady Gregory can take control over her life experiences and tell them from her own perspective. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, the revised story challenges the myth of male dominance in the original story. Crucially, men do not play an important role in telling the love story. Blunt, whom Lady Gregory tells to publish her sonnets as his own, is denied the right to tell his story. In a sense, even Henry James is deprived of the right to construct a unified story, as the raw materials are provided and manipulated by Lady Gregory: As Henry James stood up from the table, it gave her a strange sense of satisfaction that she had lodged her secret with him, a secret over-wrapped perhaps, but at least the rudiments of its shape apparent, if not to him then to her, for whom these matters were pressing, urgent, and gave meaning to her life. (20)

In stark contrast to the active storyteller, who was relieved of her worry and melancholy after sharing her “over-wrapped” secret, Henry James is a silent listener and passive receiver of the message from Lady Gregory. In this sense, Lady Gregory lays claim to the telling and interpretation of the love story because she is the one who can

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select which pivotal and meaningful incidents to share. Lady Gregory’s ingenious selection and re-arrangement of her love story testifies to her intelligence, while her ability to create her own love story empowers her as a woman who is independent in mind and actions. Lady Gregory’s re-telling and re-writing of the love story demonstrates women’s resistance to socially enforced reticence. The title of the story, “Silence,” may at first seem to have little connection with the story proper, but it carries significant connotations when interpreted from the perspective of gender politics. The word “silence” may refer to Lady Gregory’s secondary status before Sir William Gregory because she has to remain silent and obedient in the presence of her husband. It can also refer to the forced silence regarding her love affair with Blunt. Moreover, Lady Gregory is expected to be silent, or at least careful in giving comments, in her conversation. Different rationales for her reticence all stem from the idea that women should make every effort to appear ordinary and nonthreatening. Therefore, women are expected to be silent; they are not encouraged to write their own stories. According to critics Elaine Hedges and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, traditional restraints on women’s writing derive from “cultural pressures that dissuaded them from taking themselves seriously as artists, the fragmentation of their time amidst the duties and distractions of motherhood, or workings of a male literary establishment that excluded them” (5). Additionally, Andrea Dworkin’s critique of the systematic nature of patriarchy and its subsequent impact on the silence of women’s stories is illuminating. According to Dworkin, the stories of women’s suffering and the violence that they experience are often “ignored or ridiculed, threatened back into silence or destroyed, and the experience of female suffering is buried in cultural invisibility and contempt” (20; italics mine). This helps highlight the disempowered status of Irish women in the twentieth century. Traditionally, Irish women have been constrained by a range of male-centered hegemonies, including nationalism, the Catholic religion, and political and cultural traditions (Luddy 352; McKenna 80–85). Despite their ostensibly sanctified status of being protected by the nation as set out in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, women were virtually restricted to the realm of the family. As a consequence, they were conditioned by the “idealized passivity and symbolic status” allotted to women (Meaney 126). Many Irish women were educated to prioritize their duties as mothers and housewives, and due to the systematic canonization of the mother, the notion that motherhood is the lifelong goal of every woman was common in Ireland in the twentieth century (Weekes 100). By expressing her emotions through poetry and by narrating her own love story and having it re-told, Lady Gregory not only makes public her personal repression and the enforced invisibility and silence of women; her writing and re-writing endeavors help redress these conditions. Lady Gregory’s attempt to reclaim women’s autonomy through (re-)writing is meaningful when we take into consideration the hierarchical oppositions between speech and writing in traditional philosophy. According to Jacques Derrida, Western metaphysical tradition has been privileging speech overwriting. Derrida calls this phonocentrism in that the former is seemingly coupled with the presence of the speaking subject, one that is able to convey a definite and unified meaning. In contrast, writing has been subordinate due to its lack of a self-present quality

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like speech (34–38). Accordingly, whereas speech connotes presence, writing means absence. When aligned with some other hierarchical oppositions, such as father/mother, mind/heart, culture/nature, logos/pathos, and male/female, the interplay between speech and writing and subsequently between presence and absence constructs a formidable patriarchal system. As Tóibín’s story demonstrates, while speech is manipulated by men and the female protagonist is silenced, she resorts to writing to articulate her own voice, though implicitly via Henry James. Ironically, even writing has been a male-dominated activity in traditional societies. This echoes socialist feminist Cora Kaplan’s comment in her book Sea Changes that “the social sanction against women’s speech and writing” has been a major concern in feminist criticism (220). According to Kaplan, in the wake of mainstream societal expectations, acting, speaking, showing off, and touching the body are badly regarded for women. Based on her own experience, an ideal woman is expected to dismiss her sexuality, have purified desire, dress, and speak properly (221). The strategic re-writing in “Silence” is indicative of women’s subjugated status in the early decades of the twentieth century, but simultaneously it brings to light Lady Gregory’s creativity and ingenuity. Foucault’s theory of power, which attends to its productive potential as well as its repressive influence, is illuminating in our understanding of women’s silence (Power/Knowledge 119). Following Foucault’s way of thinking, silence does not only include repression and domination but is potentially indicative of their resistance. As Trinh T. Minh-ha argues in her book Woman, Native, Other, “silence as a refusal to partake in the story does sometimes provide us with a means to gain a hearing. It is a voice, a mode of uttering, and a response in its own right” (83). In other words, when used effectively, the sound of silence can be louder and mightier. This perspective is in keeping with Tóibín’s intention in unraveling the silence of Lady Gregory—while highlighting her imposed taciturnity, Lady Gregory’s distinguished position as a woman and writer and her endeavor to be heard are disseminated far and wide. The gap between conventional images of women in Lady Gregory’s plays, such as The Rising of the Moon and The Workhouse Ward, and some of her history plays, such as Dervorgilla and Grania brings to light the ambivalence of Lady Gregory as a woman. A similar struggle between extremities is also evident in the semiautobiographical accounts of Lady Gregory in Tóibín’s “Silence.” Ostensibly, Lady Gregory is subject to the stereotypical role of women on the one hand and on the other transgresses traditional sexual and social boundaries in her love affairs and the writings relevant to her turbulent emotions triggered by the romance. According to James Pethica, such ambivalence is evidenced by Lady Gregory’s commitment to editing tasks, which mirrors a conflict “between the need to assert herself creatively and the ingrained imperatives of her upbringing and culture, which held up womanly self-abnegation as the ideal” (Lady Gregory’s Diaries xix). Notably, Tóibín’s interest in investigating Lady Gregory’s personal life and the efforts made unraveling Gregory’s hidden sexual life resonate with his own experience of homosexuality. This attention to socially unacceptable sexuality is evidenced by his writing The Master, an author novel which explores some less well-known aspects of Henry James’s homoerotic love. As Tóibín implies in The Master, James

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“would devote himself. . . to the silent art of fiction” (65). Intriguingly, while uncovering James’s forbidden emotions, Tóibín is also committed to articulating the unspeakable, not merely for James but for himself. Sir William Gregory and Lady Gregory have been associated with famous writers such as Robert Browning and Henry James for years. However, when juxtaposed with the ineffable pain and pleasure of Lady Gregory and her attempt to relive her suffering through writing, as demonstrated in “Silence,” the rationale for Tóibín’s choosing Henry James to write her story becomes explicit. In other words, when aligned with the hidden homoerotic history of Henry James and Tóibín’s homosexuality, the mired sexuality of Lady Gregory is highlighted. In this sense, “Silence” is not so much a single work by a single writer as a collective output by Lady Gregory, Henry James, and Colm Tóibín, who collaborate in voicing the unutterable for those who deviate from the norm of (homo-)sexuality, chronicling and paying tribute to the audacious endeavors of those who are marginalized in mainstream cultures. Tóibín’s comments on gay writers such as Oscar Wilde, Thomas Mann, Elizabeth Bishop, and Mark Dorty are thought-provoking in our reading of Lady Gregory and her (re-)writing. As he remarks, The struggle for a gay sensibility began as an intensely private one, and slowly then, if the gay man or woman was a writer, it seeped into the work or was kept out of the work in ways that are strange and revelatory. Writing these pieces helped me come to terms with my own interest in secret, erotic energy. (Love in a Dark Time 7).

Although these lines are written in reference to Tóibín’s reflection on the plight of gay writers and the insights of their writing, they contribute to our evaluation of Lady Gregory and her writing at the same time. They help highlight the paradox of Lady Gregory’s writings on women’s emotions and sexuality—something both secretive and revealing, private and unrestricted, and silent and communicative. This is mainly because women as well as homosexuals are marginal in mainstream culture which is dominated by patriarchy and heterosexuality. Consequently, Tóibín’s sympathetic understanding of being gay is transported to his depiction of silence and sound of Lady Gregory.

2.5 Conclusion Lady Gregory is an influential woman in twentieth-century Irish history. However, she has been mentioned only in passing in many discussions. Lady Gregory is mostly referred to as Yeats’s close friend and patron who co-founded the Abbey Theater in 1904 to revive the ancient glory of Ireland through dramatic performance. Her dedication to the establishment and the management of the Abbey Theater and her plays, which often promote Irish nationalism, belie the fact that aside from being a qualified theater runner and supporter, she was also a talented and intelligent woman. Additionally, she was a woman who craved love and emotional and sexual gratification, as evidenced in her love affair with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. However, to a

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certain degree, Lady Gregory’s intelligence and her sexuality were ruthlessly stifled by her self-imposed monitoring as well as the hostile patriarchal culture of the early twentieth century. Tóibín’s research on Lady Gregory and his quasi-biographical and fictional sketches of this long-neglected woman via the story “Silence” help us revisit these lesser-known aspects of her personality. “Silence” is a semi-autobiographical story, a sub-genre which fittingly blurs the fine line between center and margin, speech and silence, and reality and fiction. This particular sub-genre helps the narrator oscillate between depicting truth and unraveling the unutterable in disguise, a strategy also employed by Lady Gregory in revealing her love story. In contrast to the perspective of Eibhear Walshe, a critic who pays more attention to some dark aspects of the story, such as “the transient nature of love and passion” and “the ultimate isolation of the self” (146), this paper proposes that Tóibín’s attempt to recreate Lady Gregory as both a rational and emotional, traditional, and rebellious female figure should be acknowledged. By composing poetry and re-telling her love story, Lady Gregory succeeds in giving herself a public voice despite societal expectations for the ‘appropriate role’ of women. In this sense, she is anything but only a charwoman of the Abbey Theater.

References Boland, Eavan. 1989. A Kind of Scar: The Woman Poet in a National Tradition. Dublin: Attic. Print. Boland, Eavan. 1995. Object lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time. New York: Norton. Print. Coxhead, Elizabeth. 1966. Lady Gregory: A Literary Portrait, Rev ed. London: Secker & Warburg. Print. De Beauvoir, Simone. 1972. The Second Sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Print. Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Print. Dworkin, Andrea. 1983. Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females. London: Women’s P. Print. Firestone, Shulamith. 1970. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. London: Jonathan Cape. Print. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon. Print. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972–1977. Trans. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon. Print. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin. Print. Freud, Sigmund. 1964. Femininity. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 22. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and Other Works, 112–135. London: Hogarth P. Print. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar (eds.). 1996. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, 2nd ed. New York: Norton. Print. Gregory, Lady. 1983. Selected Plays of Lady Gregory. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe. Print. Gregory, Lady. 1909. Seven Short Plays. New York: Putnam. Print.

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Gregory, Lady. 2009a. The Rising of the Moon. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama, 2nd ed., ed. John P. Harrington, 50–57. New York: Norton. Print. Gregory, Lady. 2009b. Spreading the News. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama, 2nd ed., ed. John P. Harrington, 36–49. New York: Norton. Print. Hedges, Elaine and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (eds.). 1994. Listening to Silence: New Essays in Feminist Criticism. New York: Oxford UP. Print. Ibsch, Elrud. 1996. The refutation of truth claims. In International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice, eds. Hans Bertens and Douwe W. Fokkema, 249–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins P. Print. Jeffares, Norman. 2014. A Short History of Ireland’s Writers, Updated ed. Dublin: O’Brien P. Print. Kaplan, Cora. 1986. Sea Changes: Culture and Feminism. London: Verso. Print. Leeney, Cathy. 2016. Women and Irish theatre before 1960. In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, eds. Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash, 269–285. Oxford: Oxford UP. Print. Luddy, Maria. 2017. Marriage, sexuality and the law in Ireland. In The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland, eds. Eugenio F. Biagini and Mary E. Daly, 344–362. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. McKenna, Yvonne. 2006. Made Holy: Irish Women Religious at Home and Abroad. Dublin: Irish Academic P. Print. Meaney, Geraldine. 2013. Race, sex and nation: Virgin mother Ireland. In Theory on the Edge: Irish Studies and the Politics of Sexual Difference, eds. Noreen Giffney and Margrit Shildrick, 125–144. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Millet, Kate. 2000. Sexual Politics. Urbana: U of Illinois P. Print. Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1989. Woman, Nature, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Print. Pethica, James (ed.). 1996. Lady Gregory’s Diaries: 1892–1902. New York: Oxford UP. Print. Pethica, James. 2004. Lady Gregory’s Abbey theater drama: Ireland real and ideal. In The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, ed. Shaun Richards, 62–78. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Richardson, Diane. 1997. Sexuality and feminism. In Introducing Women’s Studies: Feminist Theory and Practice, 2nd ed., eds. Victoria Robinson and Diane Richardson, 152–174. Basingstoke: Macmillan P. Print. Remport, Eglantina. 2018. Lady Gregory and Irish National Theatre: Art, Drama, Politics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Reynolds, Paige. 2018. Poetry, drama and prose, 1891–1920. In A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature, eds. Heather Ingman and Clíona Ó Gallchoir, 131–148. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Saddlemyer, Ann. 2009. Image-maker for Ireland: Augusta, Lady Gregory. In Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama, 2nd ed., ed. John P. Harrington, 449–452. New York: Norton. Print. Tóibín, Colm. 2001. Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature. New York: Scribner. Print. Tóibín, Colm. 2002. Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush. London: Picador. Print. Tóibín, Colm. 2004. The Master: A Novel. New York: Scribner. Print. Tóibín, Colm. 2011. Silence. In The Empty Family, 3–20. New York: Scribner. Print. Walshe, Eibhear. 2013. A Different Story: The Writings of Colm Tóibín. Dublin: Irish Academic P. Print. Weekes, Ann Owens. 2000. Figuring the mother in contemporary Irish fiction. In Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories, eds. Liam Harte and Michael Parker, 100–125. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Print. Woolf, Virginia. 1979a. Women and fiction. In Women and Writing, ed. Michele Barrett, 43–52. San Diego: Harcourt Brace. Print. Woolf, Virginia. 1979b. Professions for women. In Women and Writing, ed. Michele Barrett, 57–63. San Diego: Harcourt Brace. Print.

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Yeats, William Butler. 1996. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, Rev. 2nd ed., ed. Richard J. Finneran. New York: Simon & Schuster. Print. Young, Robert. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Malden: Blackwell. Print.

Chapter 3

Repetition with Difference: Nostalgia in Edna O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings”

3.1 Introduction Recollecting the past has been prevalent in Irish literature because retrieving one’s memory of a glorious past, personal, and collective as well, caters for the needs of Irish nationalists in their confrontation with their colonizers. In his study on postfamine Ireland, Kevin Whelan argues that resorting to the past in Ireland is often utilized for radical political purposes. For example, it is used to help “challenge the present and reshape the future, to restore into the possibility historical moments that had been blocked or unfulfilled earlier” (Whelan 151). These nostalgic attempts, coupled with the imaginary homeland the memories may help construct, provide the Irish with a panacea for the agony caused by colonization. The nostalgic recollections may come in a range of directions, including retrieval of antiquated Celtic glories, recalling of a beautiful Irish landscape, and constant reference to particular symbols such as the shamrock and the harp, as exemplified in Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. Additionally, cultural revivalists such as W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory keep resorting to Irish myths and legends for their creative inspiration because aside from producing certain aesthetic effects, recollections of these ancient legacies often facilitate the consolidation of their followers’ disintegrated cultural identity and mustering of their morale. Crucially, the strong sense of loss and disintegration troubles not merely the Irish who suffer from British colonization but also Irish migrants who are forced to leave their motherland for diverse reasons. In a sense, these expatriates who are troubled by spatial, religious, political, and cultural displacement are urgently in need of re-visiting the constructed memories of an idyllic, pristine homeland so that they can alleviate the pain derived from their disjointed identity in the host country. Rafferty in Edna O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings,” a short story collected in Saints and Sinners, is a case in point. As a matter of fact, migration is by no means unfamiliar to O’Brien’s readers because the main characters in her works, such as The Country Girls’ Trilogy, Casualties of Peace, Time and Tide, and Down by the River have journeyed through different cities, countries, or cultures (Murray 86). Nonetheless, © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 T. C. (Hawk). Chang, Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction, The Humanities in Asia 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4316-0_3

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most of them are women wandering and struggling in-between private and public spheres. As Elke D’hoker argues, readers and critics tend to be more impressed with “the problematic mother-daughter bond” in O’Brien’s works (147). She has been the focus of critical comments since the 1960s because of her creation of audacious woman characters who dare to challenge tenacious patriarchal taboos. Her fiction published before the 1980s feature women’s search for self-identity and selffulfillment. According to Heather Ingman, O’Brien’s short stories are characterized by “the theme of women routinely crushed and defeated, not only by their men folk, but also by the constraints of the patriarchal society in which they lived” (201). However, since the 1990s, O’Brien has been endeavoring to explore topics of political and social contentions, though these attempts are not appreciated by all academics (Greenwood 1–4; Mahony 213–14; Pelan 34–35). When commenting on her fiction House of Splendid Isolation (1990), Joan Smith argues that, while O’Brien excels in delineating women’s emotions and inner struggle, she fails in her attempts to tackle larger issues such as the IRA and terrorism (33). In this chapter, I argue that, as many other Irish people over the centuries have done, Rafferty and the Irish migrants in “Shovel Kings” resort to nostalgia as their means of survival, though the way they suffer and the outcomes of their recourse diverge due to the entirely different political, socio-historical, and cultural backdrops. Whereas nostalgia previously generated security and satisfaction in the Irish context, Rafferty’s nostalgia in the later years of the twentieth century is muffled with frustration and disillusionment, a phenomenon which reflects the changing face of Ireland in the (post-) Celtic Tiger Era.

3.2 I Recall, Therefor I Am: Nostalgia for the Recreation of Home O’Brien’s Saints and Sinners features a depiction of contemporary Irish people inside and outside Ireland who are perpetually obsessed with loss, failure, and frustration. In “Shovel Kings,” O’Brien delineates Irish migrants’ lives in Britain and the homelands they both leave behind and bring to their host country. Rafferty, the main character who works as a shovel-digger in London, leaves Ireland to help him forget about the unhappy memories of his hometown, only to find that this attempt is futile because wherever he goes, the obsession of his motherland never ceases. This haunting obsession of the homeland echoes O’Brien’s own diasporic experience as she reveals in a radio interview. I had left Ireland and had moved to England. I was married at that time and I never knew that I would feel such a loneliness for a country or a place that I had voluntarily left. This is one of the ironies of life. I didn’t want to be in Ireland, and yet I was wracked with pain, memory, and detail, of every aspect of it. (qtd. in McWilliams 167)

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In other words, as evidenced by O’Brien’s account, although migrants are physically and geographically distanced from their motherlands, they always harbor memories of their native lands wherever they go. In the beginning sentence of “Shovel Kings,” the way that the protagonist dresses betrays his attachment to his native country: “In one lapel was a small green and gold harp, and in the other a flying angel” (1). While “the harp” is emblematic of Ireland and indicative of Irish nationalism, the “angel” is associated with the Catholic religion. Both are pivotal symbols of Ireland and consequently allude to Rafferty’s preoccupation with his origin country. Despite working in North London, Rafferty and his fellowmen make every effort to recreate the atmosphere of being in Ireland. On Saint Patrick’s Day, these Irish expatriates drink Guinness in an Irish pub, with banners wishing a Happy St. Patrick Day hung on the wall. The television screens carry “pictures of the homeland, featuring hills, dales, lakes, tidy towns, and highlights of famed sporting moments down the years” (1). They eat traditional Irish dishes like Irish stew and apple cakes, and indulge in their nostalgia by playing Irish songs like “Galway Shawl” on the jukebox (2). Additionally, the other customers in the pub are engaged in recreating a fake sense of being in Ireland (3–4). They simulate the emblem of the shamrock in their pints of Guinness, decorate themselves with images of leprechauns, and pass around fresh shamrock that is still attached to earth to alert themselves that “the plant must not be detached from its soil” (4), signifying the migrants’ determination to be strongly aligned with their country of origin. These examples testify to Breda Gray’s theory that migrants’ connections with their homelands are often kept long after their departure and continue to influence their experiences after their arrival and settlement abroad (162). In stark contrast to the idyllic home concocted by the Irish migrants, the real world they are living in is far from satisfactory. The setting itself is meaningful because the area in which these Irish migrants live is, according to the narrator, a “less salubrious part of London” (3). In opposition to the uplifting warmth and excitement following the celebrations of St Patrick’s Day, the events happening around the world as reported in the newspaper are disillusioning: news of disasters, scandals, unrest in northern China, inebriation, and hostages (2). Moreover, Rafferty’s recollection testifies to the fact that life has been tough for the Irish migrants in Britain. The British cops are hostile to the Irish, insomuch that they do nothing when dealing with fighting cases at the pub. According to Rafferty, the cops just stood by “because they wanted to see the Irish slaughter one another. They hated the Paddies. . . . That’s what gave us a bad name, the name of hooligans” (12). By the same token, working in the host country has never been easy for migrants because they have to be ready for any contingency. Migrant workers, as Rafferty suggests, “had to be tough, on the job and off the job, even if you were dying inside” (12). As Rafferty recalls earlier in the story, his daily routine always ends with feeling exhausted: “By the time the whistle went in the evening, my hands were bloodied and my back was ready to break” (8). Compared with the other Irish that hope for but are still waiting for a job, Rafferty is fortunate to have been selected for trench-digging in northern London. But on the other hand, this seemingly fortunate life is studded with boredom and despair. According to the narrator,

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3 Repetition with Difference: Nostalgia … At his first sight of it, it was hard for him, as he said, not to imagine those men, young though they were, destined for all eternity to be kept digging some never-ending grave. He was handed a shovel and told to get to work. The handle of the shovel was short, shorter than the ones he had been used to at home when he dug potatoes or turnips, and the blade was square and squat. (7)

This description of the migrant digger’s job alludes to Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging,” and serves as an intriguing contrast between the two texts. Whereas Heaney, with the “squat pen” (3) in hand, recalls his father’s (as well grandfather’s) close connection with the land through digging, Rafferty and his Irish compatriots are compelled to keep digging “some never-ending grave” for the British. In other words, the act of digging and its memory helps Heaney to re-awaken and realign himself with his family, his country, Irish history and culture, while digging for Rafferty and his fellowmen is a source of traumatic experiences working in an alien country. In the story, Rafferty can only survive under the supervision of the ruthless Irish foreman with the help of Haulie, another digger who comes from Donegal (7–8). In addition to the comradeship offered by his Irish friends, what sustains Rafferty and the other migrants is the thought of home. As the narrator illustrates after listening to Rafferty’s story, these migrants enjoy talking and yarning to maintain their good spirits—“They would talk about everything and anything to do with home” (8). This echoes critic Fred Davis’s argument that “nostalgia thrives on transition, on the subjective discontinuities that engender our yearning for continuity” (49). In other words, amid the turbulent times before migrants can really settle in a host country, the thought of their motherland provides them with a quick solution to their sense of displacement. Consequently, the gap caused by their migration is often bridged by their strong urge for belonging by means of retrieving and re-embracing their homeland. According to Oona Frawley, when this theory of nostalgia is located in the Irish context, nature and place are constantly referred to, as they provide more stable and immutable settings in opposition to the unsettled life in the host country (Irish Pastoral 156). In the story, intrigued by the adventurous life depicted in Zane Grey’s book, Rafferty is often infatuated with the wild in his hometown, saying “I missed the outdoors, missed roaming in the fields around home and hunting on Sundays with a white ferret” (10). This longing for the wild mirrors his dissatisfaction with the status quo. The imaginary homeland, coupled with the ecstasy of immersing himself in nature, gives Rafferty a great sense of security when confronted with the inhuman, repetitive, and laborious work in London. In addition to hard work during the weekdays, he has nowhere to go except for pubs and a chapel. Therefore, as he recalls later, “I really knew nothing of London” (9). This echoes some scholars’ argument that the backward gaze to a Romantic Ireland helps alleviate migrants’ sense of displacement and anxiety during rapid transitions of their migration (Gibbons 85; Miller 517). Crucially, aside from the Irish migrants’ voluntary nostalgia, certain involuntary nostalgia is involved in reinforcing their connection with the motherland. For

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example, for fear that Rafferty will be too much influenced by the British culture, his mother writes him letters admonishing him from picking up an English accent because that will be regarded as a sign of faithlessness (9). This episode demonstrates a tenacious Irish identity closely bound up with the Catholic religion and the Irish language (or at least Irish English). Perchance influenced by his mother’s reminder, Rafferty keeps frequenting “the big white, wide chapel with three alters where the Irish priest gave thunderous sermons” on Sundays (9). What is more, the priest’s sermons always make him tearful and keep him afraid that everything is a sin (9). This internalized self-introspection by implanting a strong religious faith forcefully and successfully realigns Rafferty with Ireland and its customs. Therefore, as some critics argue in their discussion of Irish-American diasporic experiences, Catholicism proves to be a pivotal cornerstone in formulating many Irish migrants’ peculiar identity when they negotiate with the difference in the host country (Kenny 115; Corporaal 332–33). Language, together with Irish landscape and Celtic legends, has been widely used by Irish nationalists to muster their fellows’ patriotism. In reality, Irish English, a special variant of standard English combining both Gaelic and English, is widely used in Ireland. This type of English, also called Hiberno-English, or Gaelic English, which is greatly influenced by the traditional Irish language, features differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, or syntax (Todd 36–46). Similar to religion, this unique use of the English language demarcates an essentialist Irish identity. As a consequence, letters sent by Rafferty’s mother impose a compulsory yet involuntary nostalgia on the protagonist. So desperate is Rafferty’s mother to terminate her labor alone in Ireland that she writes at least twice a week asking her husband to go home once and for all. However, this is in vain because instead of returning to Ireland as requested, Rafferty’s father has sex with a British prostitute and brutalizes Rafferty (10–11). He is one of the few who is neither troubled by nostalgia nor has a longing for home, and is consequently the most obnoxious Irish migrant in the story, insomuch that he even hampers Rafferty’s willingness to return to Ireland.

3.3 Exile, Nostalgia, and Change in the Twenty-First Century The Irish migrants’ trouble moving back to their home is foreshadowed early in the story. The catastrophic accident at the workplace not only claims the life of a young man called J.J. but shatters his friend Oranmore Joe’s dream to go home with J.J.: “He is saying, ‘Come on J.J., we’re going home,’ and we knew that he’d lost it, and we wouldn’t be seeing him again. A goner” (13). This event, which highlights the hardship migrants encounter when working in another country, is so pathetic that it is ingrained in Rafferty’s memory even decades later. Notwithstanding the suffering such a traumatic experience or similar incidents may engender in one’s migration, most migrants manage to survive themselves through imagining or re-inventing their

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ideal homeland in a wide range of nostalgic attempts. In a sense, Rafferty’s overindulgence in drinking and visiting pubs becomes compulsive because they give him a sense of familiarity and create a feeling of home. At the party with Moleskin Muggavin and the other friends, some Irish tunes such as “I’m Burlington Bertie, I Rise At Ten Thirty” are chanted and boiled pigs’ feet and cabbage are eaten “in deference to Ireland” (15). In the words of Dudley, the son of Rafferty’s boss when he works for the renovation on a hotel in Kensington, London, his father is incurably attached to the homeland: “Daddy loved Ireland so much that he flew home every Thursday evening, so as to step on Irish soil and be reunited with wife and family” (15). Migrants’ over-reliance on nostalgia in constructing their imagined identity is understandable, especially given the fact that they have nowhere to go at the early stage of their migration. Nonetheless, when their imaginary homeland deviates from reality, problems will arise and more conflicts may come. This is true of Rafferty’s case when his homeland undergoes dramatic changes in the later years of the twentieth century. Ireland used to be characterized by its mass emigration, an important feature which has been widely discussed in Irish history and literature since the nineteenth century. Traditionally, the Irish have been moving to England, America, or other places in search of a better life. Nonetheless, the prosperity boom between 1995 and 2007, which saw Ireland nicknamed the Celtic Tiger, brought the Irish people massive economic, social, and cultural changes (Loyal 154–57). The increasing number of immigrants to Ireland is an illustration. Whereas the flow of immigration to Ireland was not so problematic amid the economic explosion in the 1990s and the early 2000s, the decline of the Celtic Tiger in 2008 made immigrants easy targets for perceived aggravations in unemployment. This hatred, in conjunction with racism, helps generate Irish people’s xenophobia. To a substantial extent, these problems manifested because the Irish were not ready to welcome the unexpected affluence and flow of immigrants. According to Terence Brown, emigration has been typical of Irish life, yet immigration since the 1990s is “a situation which it (Ireland) had scarcely prepared itself” (385). In the wake of these enormous changes during the Celtic Tiger, Ireland is no longer the feminized land which Matthew Arnold perceives in his study of the Celtic race (61–65). Nor is it just a rural farming country but an increasingly modernized world that is characterized by free markets, a global economy, and talent mobility (Fanning 155–62). Declan Kiberd’s argument that “the seamless garment once wrapped like a green flag around Cathleen Ni Houlihan had given way to a quilt of many colors” recapitulates this changing face of contemporary Ireland, specifying the multifarious characteristics of Irish culture in the twenty-first century (653). Traces of similar changes in the contemporary world are insinuated in the middle section of “Shovel Kings”; after working in Britain for decades, Rafferty still keeps some routines to remember his home. At the Christmas dinner at the pub in Burn Oak, members are comprised of not only his friends like Donal, Aisling, Clare Mick, and Whisky Tipp, but the lodgers upstairs, including three Irishmen, a Mongolian, and a black man (18). The composition of this dinner gathering showcases a much more multicultural element. But while the gathering is consistently fun and the food is delicious, the atmosphere is absolutely different.

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What with the roast goose, potato stuffing, sage and onion stuffing, roast spuds, the children larking about, crackers, paper hats, jokes, riddles, and gassing, these dinners were unadulterated happiness. This was how you imagine a home could be, Rafferty said, his voice surely belying the melancholy within it. (18)

After wandering in the host country for so many years, Rafferty has got used to the solitary life and has learned to overcome homesickness by resorting to a wide array of nostalgic coping mechanisms. However, although the food, the friends, and the gatherings temporarily help quench his thirst for the homeland, they at best help him construct a fake image of home that will always be an imitation of the real thing. As a result, Rafferty feels melancholy amid the jocund gathering. The great sense of loss will never be gone unless he can be re-embraced by his hometown. However, this home-coming wish has not been realized for a long time, not even after receiving the telegram from his hometown about the death of his mother, because somehow he decides not to go back to Ireland, a regretful decision for Rafferty as he later recalls (20). The tremendous changes in contemporary society are palpable in the latter part of the story when Rafferty and the narrator happen to meet an Irish young man near a Catholic Church. For centuries, the Catholic Church has been a sustaining establishment which dominates Irish people’s lives (Brown 16–20; Inglis 59–69). Along with nationalism and the Irish language, it is part of the triumvirate of Irish culture. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church near the pub is locked, empty, and deserted: “We looked through a long stained-glass window and saw an empty room with only a few pews. The altar, set back from the wall, had intricate sprays of gold leaf and was flanked with stout gold pillars” (26). The delicately decorated window and the elaborate altar, a priceless object brought to England centuries ago, are indicative of the boom of this religious sanctuary, but its popularity and prosperity have turned into things in the past as the words such as “locked” and “empty” suggest (25–26). The young Irishman who offers information on the Catholic Church and its neighborhood proves to be an agent-like businessman. He is totally different from Rafferty’s Irish friends who are willing to share for free, provide emotional support, and collaborate with him in constructing a common imaginary community. Anonymous all through the story, this Irish youth has no specific identity, thereby serving as one of the strangers for Rafferty. As he tells Rafferty, there are more than 20 languages spoken in the neighborhood at present, a fact that reveals the diversity of races and cultures in that community. Additionally, the young man remarks, “the Irish no longer in the majority, many having gone home and many others having become millionaires” (26). Taken together, these facts highlight an increasingly multicultural composition of the once-monotonous migrant community. To some extent, the adamant Irish identity typical of the Irish within and without Ireland in the old times has been replaced by a more diversified quality. In a similar fashion, the once highly valued camaraderie of the Irish gives way to an accumulation of wealth. This diversified, economy-oriented culture in contemporary Ireland is a far cry from the idyllic perception of home for Rafferty and his contemporaries.

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The thought of going back to Ireland hardly ever slips Rafferty’s mind, though he seldom takes any initiative in this regard. As William Safran argues, the return of many migrants is an “eschatological concept,” which is used “to make life more tolerable by holding out a utopia—or eutopia—that stands in contrast to the perceived dystopia in which actual life is lived” (94). Therefore, it is a self-sustaining means by which migrants find solace for their discomfort in the alien country (McWilliams 124). After the death of his father, Rafferty keeps moving around London for work and visiting Irish pubs for relieving his pressure and re-savoring the taste of home. However, his obsession with the invented homeland remains, manifesting in different forms. The three items Rafferty brought along to Britain 40 years ago, including a missal, a crucifix, and a striped pajama, have been treasured and well kept in a brown suitcase (31). In addition, preoccupied with the happy memories back in Ireland, over the years Rafferty has been contemplating “picking up a shovel again and getting a bit of garden going—cabbage, sprouts, shallots, lettuce” (31). He is so obsessed with visiting pubs that his connection with Grania, an Irish woman he knows, loves, and lives with in Britain, becomes irrevocably sour (27–29). Therefore, Rafferty’s visiting Irish pubs, which was once a form of his nostalgic endeavors and attachment to his origin country, is now deteriorating into alcoholism. Eventually, Rafferty is overjoyed because, with the help of a friend called Roisin, he is going home to help care for an old man living in a bungalow in Ireland: “The bungalow was not in his own part of the country, but still it was home and he asked out loud if it was likely that he would once again hear the cry of the corncrake, that distinctive call which had never faded from his memory” (31–32). Notably, not long before going back to Ireland, Rafferty looks forward to hearing the sweet sounds of corncrakes deep down in his memory because this is the means by which he can remember what a home is. However, the use of bungalows rather than thatch-roofed buildings prevalent in traditional Irish households somehow prefigures problems that may arise in his return. Rafferty works less than two weeks in Ireland because he feels out of sorts when encountering whole-new Ireland in the contemporary world. As relayed by Adrian, the landlord of a pub called The Aran and a close friend of Rafferty, the migrant’s discomfort partly derives from the fact that “the bungalow was new and clean, too new and too clean” (34). Being new is not necessarily bad, but when it is compared with something Rafferty is accustomed to and has been craving for, it will be downgraded or even repudiated. This failure of adjustment is even exacerbated in Rafferty’s encounter with his hometown. Even when he went to the pub, Rafferty didn’t feel at home. It was noisy and brash, young people coming and going, no quiet corner to brood in, and no one had any interest in his stories. As for the garden that he had intended to plant, the grounds around the house had been landscaped with bushes and yellow flowering shrubs. Nothing was wrong, as he told Adrian, but nothing was right, either. (34)

Ideally, the pub is a public venue where Rafferty can relieve his loneliness via drinking, chatting, and yarn-telling. It is one of the best symbols of home for many Irish. But this sense of security and belongingness provided by pubs tarnishes in contemporary Irish society. The once quiet social venue is now replete with the

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meddling crowd. In a similar vein, Rafferty is disillusioned because the garden where he plans to dig on his own has been developed in the commercialized and modernized world. Consequently, this is no longer the familiar homeland he has in mind. Rafferty does not feel at home during his stay in Ireland because the romantic, idyllic Ireland in his mind’s eye is dead and gone. The change of Ireland in the twenty-first century also finds evidence in the minicab driver, who “drove like a lunatic while also conducting a business transaction on a mobile phone” (34–35). He mistakenly considers Rafferty a sightseer visiting Ireland for a fortnight, which suggests that instead of serving as an everlasting shelter for the Irish at home and abroad, contemporary Ireland has become a sightseeing spot, particularly for visitors. Accordingly, for Rafferty and the other migrants like him, the proverb “there is no place like home” ironically turns out to be “there is no place that makes you feel at home.” The Irish migrants’ neurosis and homelessness in England are also echoed in the narrator’s being a patient who visits his/her psychiatrist for therapy and is constantly on the move with the doctor, from Primrose Hill in the past, to North London now, and to Bristol soon and God knows where in the near future (3, 35). As Oona Frawley contends, by “allowing the past to filter into the present through memory and longing,” nostalgia provides individuals as well as an entire culture to adjust to change (“Yeats, Synge, and the Inheritance of Nostalgia” 51). Nevertheless, Rafferty’s story suggests that this traditionally workable strategy widely adopted by migrants for adaptation has become dysfunctional in the fast-changing contemporary Ireland. This is in keeping with Anne Fogarty’s comment that in many contemporary Irish short stories, including Edna O’Brien’s “Shovel Kings,” Colm Toibin’s “The Street,”, and Mary Donnell’s “Little Africa,” the immigrant is often depicted as “a shadowy Other or a devastating void or absence” (121) fluctuating between different countries and “negotiating the challenges of a rootless migrant existence without any traditional nostalgia for home” (123). In fact, Rafferty used to be infatuated with everything Irish and reveal several times his longing for home, but his late return back to Ireland lays bare the reality that the fantasy of Romantic Ireland is after all merely a dream that belongs to the past.

3.4 Conclusion Just like their predecessors, Rafferty and the other Irish migrants turn to nostalgia for relieving their agony when laboring and roaming in the alien land. They manage to celebrate important holidays together, eat the food familiar to them before their migration, play or sing popular Irish tunes, and try to recollect or re-map impressive landscapes in their hometowns. These activities help them to keep in touch with their imaginary homeland. However, as Rafferty’s case demonstrates, these nostalgic attempts are very likely to fail, because Ireland in the twenty-first century has undergone tremendous transformations. The idyllic home common to most Irish people’s cultural imagination is not the traditional norm any longer. As a consequence, Rafferty’s story deviates from Tony Murray’s contention that “whilst escape

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and romance provided the emotional axis of her earlier work, return and reconciliation has provided it in later years” (Murray 90). To our disappointment, Rafferty’s return to Ireland is not coupled with reconciliation at home but ends up with another escape abroad. This failure to fit into a changed Ireland signifies Rafferty’s “double displacement” caused by the difficulties of living permanently between different cultures (Fogarty 124). Adrian’s comment on Rafferty’s dilemma near the end of the story captures the heart of the matter: “‘He doesn’t belong in England and ditto Ireland,’” Adrian said, and, tapping his temple to emphasize his meaning, added that exile is in the mind and there’s no cure for that” (35). In other words, although you are physically detached from your homeland, you are still bound to the land of your heart’s desire. However, this compulsive longing for home conflicts with the reality of the fast-changing Irish society in the Celtic Tiger era. Consequently, while the acts of nostalgia are repeated, Rafferty and the other Shovel Kings working in Britain will be always caught inbetween the land they call home and the ever-evolving land beyond their recognition. O’Brien’s sympathy for Rafferty and the other migrants is manifest in the long list of “shovel kings” at the end of the story, “Haulie, Murph, Moleskin, Muggavin, Turnip O’Mara, Whisky Tipp, Oranmore Joe, Teaboy Teddy, Paddy Pancake, Accordion Bill, Rafferty, and countless others, gone to dust,” a litany which pays homage to these Irish diggers in London and laments their being entangled in-between their longing for the homeland and their adaptation to the host land (36). Frank O’Connor’s assertion that the short story as a genre can best represent the story of “a submerged population group” (18) fittingly justifies O’Brien’s achievement in putting Irish migrant worker’s life into focus. By writing “Shovel Kings,” O’Brien demonstrates again that, although she is traditionally acclaimed for her depiction of Irish women’s problems, she is also adept at illustrating the world of men and their concerns.

References Arnold, Matthew. 1988. Matthew Arnold, from On the study of celtic literature, 1867. In Poetry and Ireland Since 1800: A Source Book, ed. Mark Story, 61–68. London: Routledge. Brown, Terence. 2004. Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922–2002. London: Harper Perennial. Print. Corporaal, Marguérite. 2010. From golden hills to sycamore trees: Pastoral homelands and ethnic identity in Irish Immigrant Fiction, 1860–75. Irish Studies Review 18(3):331–346. Print. Davis, Fred. 1979. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. New York: The Free P. Print. D’hoker, Elke. 2016. Irish Women Writers and the Modern Short Story. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Fogarty, Anne. 2014. ‘Many and terrible are the roads to home’: Representations of the immigrant in the contemporary Irish short story. In Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland: The Immigrant in Contemporary Irish Literature, ed. Pilar Villar-Argaiz, 120–132. Manchester: Manchester UP. Print. Frawley, Oona. 2002. Yeats, Synge, and the Inheritance of Nostalgia. New Voices in Irish Criticism 3, ed. Karen Vandevelde, 50–57. Dublin: Four Courts P. Print.

References

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Frawley, Oona. 2005. Irish Pastoral: Nostalgia and Twentieth-century Irish Literature. Dublin: Irish Academic P. Print. Gibbons, Luke. 1996. Transformations in Irish Culture. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P. Print. Gray, Breda. 2004. Women and the Irish Diaspora. London: Routledge. Print. Greenwood, Amanda. 2003. Edna O’Brien. Devon: Northcote House Publishers. Print. Heaney, Seamus. 1998. Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966–1996. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Print. Ingman, Heather. 2009. A History of the Irish Short Story. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Kenny, Kelvin. The American Irish: A History. New York: Pearson, 2000. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 1996. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. London: Vintage. Print. Mahony, Christina Hunt. 1998. Contemporary Irish Literature: Transforming Tradition. New York: St. Martin’s. Print. McWilliams, Ellen. 2013. Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print. Miller, Kerby. 1986. Emigration, ideology and identity in post-famine Ireland. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 75:515–527. Print. Murray, Tony. 2013. Edna O’Brien and narrative diaspora space. Irish Studies Review 21(1):85–98. Print. O’Brien, Edna. 2011. Shovel Kings. Saints and Sinners, 1–36. London: Faber and Faber. Print. O’Connor, Frank. 1963. The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story. London: Macmillan. Print. Pelan, Rebecca. 2006. Reflections on a Connemara Dietrich. In Edna O’Brien: New Critical Perspectives, eds. Kathryn Laing, Sinead Mooney and Maureen O’Connor. 12–37. Dublin: Carysfort P. Print. Safran, William. 1991. Diaspora in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1(1):83–99. Print. Smith, Joan. 1994. Tears and terrors in the wind. Independent 24, 33, April 1994. Print. Todd, Loreto. 1989. The Language of Irish Literature. Houndmills: Macmillan. Print. Whelan, Kevin. 2005. The cultural effects of the famine. In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture, eds. Joe Cleary and Clare Connolly, 137–154. Cambridge: Cambridge UP Print.

Chapter 4

“A Mute Clamor for Release”: Rewriting Andersen in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Bird”

4.1 Introduction Traditionally, fairy tales are packed with fantastic characters such as spirits, talking animals, and supernatural deities. In addition to creating entertainment for children in their everyday life, these tales are often used to reflect certain social customs and cultural values and, wittingly or unwittingly, articulate a particular ideology and value judgment via moral teaching. Andersen’s fairy tales are a case in point. For example, in the story “Thumbelina,” one of the 13 stories collected in Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins, a stereotypical gender identity is manifest. While most male characters, such as the mouse and the mole, are wealthy, forceful, and authoritative, a biased gender relationship is presented in Andersen’s tale. In contrast, Thumbelina is depicted as a tiny, impoverished, dependent, and incompetent figure. However, unsatisfied with this asymmetrical scenario of men and women, Emma Donoghue (1969–), a critically acclaimed Irish woman writer in contemporary literature, is committed to deconstructing such gender stereotypes by re-writing conventionally gender-biased tales, which is exemplified in her collection of revised fairy tales, Kissing the Witch. As some critics note, a significant aspect of Kissing the Witch is that “the main characters, all females, are permitted to tell their own stories” (Lesesne, Beers, and Buckman 81). Moreover, as critic Lewis C. Seifert argues, “feminist interpretations and adaptations” make pivotal contributions to “complicating the image of the fairy tale as a bastion of patriarchal gender roles” (18). In other words, for Seifert, feminist re-writing of classical fairy tales helps unveil sexual stereotypes inherent in our culture and “contest traditional masculine and feminine roles” (18). Additionally, as scholar Ann Martin contends, by resorting to “feminist revisionist strategies” and opening up new approaches to traditional fairy tales via the lens of gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender viewpoints, stories in Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch are meant to “deconstruct binary political positions and the hierarchies with which they are associated” (6). This debunking of sexual and gender conventions is in keeping with Donoghue’s other fiction, such as Stir-Fry (1994), © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 T. C. (Hawk). Chang, Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction, The Humanities in Asia 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4316-0_4

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Slammerkin (2000), Landing (2007), and The Sealed Letter (2008). Taken together, these comments correspond well with Karlyn Crowley and Pennington’s assertions that contemporary re-writing of fairy tales by Babara Walker, Emma Donoghue, and Francesca Lia Block “attempt to counteract the image of Cinderella as a beautiful fairy but passive, docile young woman that is often perpetuated in popular culture and ironically, in the classic versions of the fairy tales that have been handed down through the ages . . . . Walker, Donoghue, and Block suggest that Cinderella was not born a passive woman, but rather became one” (298). While this comment particularly refers to the changing face of Cinderella, it is all the more significant for the female narrator in Donoghue’s “A Tale of the Bird,” in which Thumbelina is transformed from a silenced woman into a self-dependent one. The first story in the collection, “A Tale of the Shoe,” is a re-writing of the classic story of Cinderella. It showcases Donoghue’s subversion of the fixed roles women play in heterosexual as well as patriarchal cultures by having Cinderella fall in love with another wise and senior woman. Accordingly, with this adaptation of the traditional fairy tale, Donoghue brings male- and hetero-dominated norms to the forefront by constructing a more “rebellious, nuanced and complex” Cinderella, one who is proficient in “enacting new forms of resistance and innovation, thus paving the pathway to their [women’s] emancipation” (Rio 245). Reading Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Bird,” a story that is based on a rewriting of Andersen’s “Thumbelina,” this paper argues that by subverting as well as imitating Andersen’s traditional tale, Donoghue lays bare tenacious gender stereotypes and puts forward an unconventional and unsettling feminist fairy tale. Aside from textual analysis and interpretation, relevant feminist theories of women, sexual oppression, and female sexuality are brought into the discussion to help elucidate the problems with gender construction and the implications and contribution of Donoghue’s deconstructive attempts.

4.2 Traditional Gender Construction in “Thumbelina” versus Donoghue’s Deconstructive Re-Writing Set in the socio-cultural context of patriarchy, traditional fairy tales have been criticized for their involvement in the subordination of women. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales are illustrations. In “Thumbelina,” women’s secondary status is manifest in the female protagonist’s stature. She is first introduced to readers as “a tiny little girl, delicate and lovely; she was not above an inch tall, and so she was called Thumbelina” (31). Throughout the story, this submissive, impotent, tiny but beautiful female protagonist can only see what fate may bring to her. Like a fallen leaf that drifts on the wind, Thumbelina is imprisoned by a range of strangers such as the toad and the ugly mole, mostly males with wealth or power. She is generally characterized by her good nature and alluring appearance alongside the cozy and

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carefree surroundings that nurture her: “She was given a splendid lacquered walnutshell as her cradle, blue violet-petal her eiderdown . . . . during the day she played on the table where the woman had set a plate with a wreath of flowers” (31). These and many other attractions of Thumbelina are followed by the narrator’s eulogy, saying that “[s]he had two white horsehairs to row with. It looked very pretty indeed. She could sing, too—so daintily and charmingly that no one had ever heard the like” (31). Smitten by her beauty and loveliness, these male characters manage to marry and possess her once and for all. However, when she finds herself kidnapped by the toad, she can only “cry bitterly” all day long with the slightest idea of how to escape (32). She is referred to as either a lovely little girl or a “poor little thing” and a “wretched beggar-girl” (31–33, 36). Overall, Thumbelina is a stock character, a girl who never has any significant personality development. She is so innocent that she refuses to escape with the swallow when offered the opportunity to be liberated from the mole’s manipulation. In other words, Thumbelina is concocted as a docile and submissive female character widely accepted and promoted in a patriarchal society. In contrast with Andersen’s Thumbelina, Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Bird” presents a more aggressive woman who dares to query and challenge traditionally male-centered values. A tiny female protagonist like Andersen’s fairy-like character, the unidentified narrator gets to better understand her subjugated position as a woman in her interaction with the world. A miniature as she is, Donoghue’s narrator is selfaware and critical of the mistreatment imposed on her. As she declares to readers early in the story, You must understand, I was not ill-treated; no one wasted breath flinging insults at my head. I did not belong, that was all. Nor did anything belong to me; mine was a borrowed life. Considering myself as the louse in their bed, the cuckoo in their nest, I felt a certain reluctant gratitude for the food and shelter they allowed me . . . . My names were hand-me-downs too: girl, the creature, or, most often, you there. (13)

This reflection on her tenuous sense of belonging highlights the female narrator’s problem. Such a lack of a strong sense of belonging results in her failure to have someone to identify with. In addition, the naming itself showcases the narrator’s subordination. Crucially, naming not only involves one’s way of reference but connotes certain power relations because, in the act of naming, it is always people in power who have the authority to name others. Therefore, the tiny narrator’s being called “girl,” “the creature,” or “you there” signifies her negligence as a little being and her disempowered status as a female. In addition to being beaten by her parents when they deem it necessary (13), she is disciplined to aim low and achieve little: “Keep your horizons narrow, your expectations low, and you will never be unduly disappointed. Keep your heart infinitesimally small, and sorrow will never spy it” (14–15). Failing to get support from her family, she resorts to a romantic lover to seek comfort and security, though in the end, this effort proves to be in vain. Compared with the forced marriage inflicted on Thumbelina, the female protagonist’s life in Donoghue’s story is not that miserable; at least,

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she is allowed to choose her own true love. As she exultantly claims, “I, who had nothing and no right to anything, would have him for my very own” (16). However, this excitement does not last long in her marriage as more and more problems arise in her interaction with her husband. The problems derive mostly from her husband’s over-protection, or from another perspective, over-manipulation over her body and her choice. Bored of the same views and the invariable life within the house, the female protagonist is so anxious to go out for a change of atmosphere, saying “my feet itched for the stubble of the open fields, and my eyes strained for a far horizon” (19). However, dismissive of her craving for “a walk in the sunshine” (21), the narrator’s husband keeps reminding her of the dangers outside and mildly requesting her to stay indoors. Sadder but wiser at last, the narrator remarks, “But now I knew that what I wanted was not the same as what he wanted for me. What this good man had sworn to protect me from was not the same as what I feared. I trusted that he would never let anything hurt me, but he would never let anything touch me either” (21). In a nutshell, the frustrating experiences after marriage enable her to realize that her romantic vision to belong to her husband and vice versa is, after all, only a dream (18). Along with her husband’s love, care, and protection come restriction and control. In other words, although the female character is endowed with more freedom to select her lifelong partner, the nature of marriage and the pattern of male dominance hardly ever change. Nevertheless, unlike her predecessors in Andersen’s story who is less aware and incapable of changing her status quo, Donoghue’s heroine is sensitive to and critically reflects on her underprivileged position as a woman. She is a dynamic character, and her hard-won experiences have taught her to become more mature, reflective, and critical. Aside from the difference in characterization, Donoghue’s story features a more personalized critique of women’s problems through the narrative point of view. According to John Pizer, many traditional fairy tales tend to have straightforward structures, use plenty of stock phrases such as “once upon a time,” and focus on the action rather than character development (334). In other words, in traditional fairy tales, special attention is paid to external events delineating what happens in the story, insomuch that the character’s inner feelings and reflections are often dismissed. This over-emphasis on external events, mostly in third person, keeps readers from identifying with and sympathizing with the main characters (Doughty 359). Andersen’s “Thumbelina” is a case in point, in which the female character’s misery is presented dramatically via a series of incidents. “Once upon a time, there was a woman who longed for a little child of her own,” thus begins Andersen’s text. The lack of a detailed portrayal of Thumbelina’s inward feelings leads to our indifference to her suffering, though we feel sorry about her misfortune. However, in Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Bird,” a first-person narrative point of view is adopted to better mirror the female narrator’s inner struggle, her sense of frustration, and her reflection and new knowledge about life. This shift in point of view is evidenced early in the story: When I was as young as you are now I learned how to save my own life. You think I have saved you, but the truth is that your need has conjured me here. It was a bird that helped me, when I was young, but it could have been anything: a stick, a stone, whatever happened by. The thing is to take your own life in your hands. (11)

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As this passage demonstrates, the narrator is able to articulate her thoughts, address directly to the audience, and specify her new findings about the way of the world. This shift in point of view echoes Amie A. Doughty’s theory that “authors of revised folktales usually step away from the unintrusive third person narration, moving instead to either a third person limited narrative style or even into first person” (359), a change which allows readers to relate to and empathize with the impoverished characters. Accordingly, in Donoghue’s re-writing of Andersen’s “Thumbelina,” we witness a more reflective woman who is proficient in analyzing her problems and coming up with a solution to her troubles. Language features in Andersen’s story and Donoghue’s adaptation reveal a thematic difference in both texts. Andersen’s “Thumbelina” is narrated throughout using only the past tense, which makes readers feel they are outsiders witnessing past events. This language feature, in conjunction with the third-person narration used in the story, aggravates a sense of apathy for most readers. They are very likely to have the feeling that, after all, they are reading a story that happens to others. This language feature also indicates that the story is not meant for a critical reflection on the fate of the suffering protagonist. Instead, it is written mainly for entertainment, without any serious deliberation on the subjugation of Thumbelina and its sociocultural implications. Compared with Andersen’s story, Donoghue’s adaptation is obviously more critical, which is also evidenced by its use of language. Instead of using past tense all the time, Donoghue’s text heralds something that can be very different in the near future. Near the end of the story, the female narrator says Next time. Next year. I would get away somehow, sometime, with or without this child, heading somewhere I knew nothing about but that the sun would shine down on my naked head. I would be hurt and I would be fearful, but I would never be locked up again. (23–24)

By incorporating future tense in the end, Donoghue presents the transformations that will come soon, sketching a better tomorrow in which the narrator will no longer be restricted and manipulated by her husband and, despite the challenge ahead, she will meet it without fear. Unlike traditional women who are supposed to look after children, this female narrator will be liberated from that responsibility and pursue an ideal life of her own. This echoes Elizabeth Wanning’s proposition that in “A Tale of the Bird,” along with most of the other tales in Kissing the Witch, “the narrator chooses freedom instead of security, self-possession . . . instead of marriage” (131). A significant difference between Andersen’s and Donoghue’s texts manifests in the sub-plot related to a bird. In Andersen’s “Thumbelina,” the little fairy-like girl attends to the wounded swallow until it can “fly away into the green forest” (40). However, she gives up the bird’s invitation to leave together due to her good personality and not hurting the field-mouse. Naively good-natured, Thumbelina does not feel regretful until she is told by the field-mouse that the mole will propose to her and marry her before long. Only then does Thumbelina express her eagerness for “the warm sunshine,” the “pleasant and beautiful” outside world, and the “great great dense forest” (40–41). Although the swallow does come back and bring her to meet her Mr. Right near the end, Thumbelina in this sub-plot is simultaneously caring and lovely, but inactive and impotent. As a consequence, Thumbelina’s interaction with

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the bird highlights the theme underlying the fairy tale—notwithstanding the mishaps and frustration in the process of growing up, good-natured females like Thumbelina have to persevere and end up enjoying happy marriage with her Mr. Right. This scenario appears comforting, but a subdued image of women, urging them to be gentle, submissive, and optimistic, is promoted and consolidated. Therefore, Thumbelina can only wait and see what may happen to her with little thought of, or without the agency to change the status quo. Although following Andersen’s design of a bird in company with the female character, Donoghue’s re-writing departs from the tradition of a docile woman and creates a self-reflective female protagonist who is not only aware of her problems but, in pursuit of her own happiness and self-autonomy, dares to challenge the dominant patriarchy. In a sense, the appearance of the wounded bird in the house in Donoghue’s story showcases a difference between the narrator and her husband. While her husband belittles the meaning of the bird out of practical reasoning, saying “what is a bird to us, or we to a bird” (22), the female narrator keeps the dying bird, feeds it, and looks after it until its recovery. Notably, instead of imprisoning the bird forever, she lets go it go in due course. According to her, “I could have kept it beside me, a silk-tethered plaything, but what would have been the use of that?” (23). In a nutshell, the bird’s case reminds the narrator of her relationship with her husband. This analogy discourages her from keeping the bird in a cage and keeping it imprisoned. She is not only more self-aware of the plight of the underprivileged but always takes the initiative to act and change the status quo. Repudiating the partial-master/slave connection in her marriage, the female protagonist in Donoghue’s story prefers to let the bird go, a choice that signifies her own longing for freedom. Crucially, the release of the bird coincides with the birth of the narrator’s baby: “I stood, watching the bird weighed me down like a robe. The child within me was kicking, a mute clamor for release” (23). In brief, with the coming of a new life, together with the recuperated new life granted to the bird, the female narrator’s attempt for her own new life gets initiated. Consequently, unbound by the shackles of marriage, she braves the forthcoming challenge to be alone, independent, and free. As she claims at the end, “My life was in my hands, now, beating faintly, too small yet for anyone to notice. I cupped freedom to my breast. I would feed it, I would love it; it would grow big enough to carry me away” (24). This declaration echoes my previous argument that a variety of tenses are used effectively in Donoghue’s text to accentuate a pivotal difference made in the female protagonist’s life. Facilitated by her newly found inspiration from the bird, she is now a more skillful master of her own destiny. Therefore, by incorporating the bird plot in the story, ostensibly Donoghue follows salient conventions in age-old fairy tales. However, in fact, she challenges and deconstructs male-dominated morality widely dictated and disseminated in traditional fairy tales. Donoghue’s “A Tale of the Bird” succeeds in uncovering age-old sexual and gender conventions on one hand and mapping out alternative scenarios on the other hand. Therefore, as Christina Bacchilega contends in Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, postmodern feminist re-writings of traditional fairy tales, as evidenced by Donoghue’s re-writings, are supposed to include “substantive though

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diverse questioning of both narrative construction and assumptions about gender” (24). Additionally, according to Bacchilega, Postmodern revision is often two-fold, seeking to expose, make visible, the fairy tale’s complicity with ‘exhausted’ narrative and gender ideologies, and by working from the fairy tale’s multiple versions, seeking to expose, bring out, what the institutionalization of such tales for children has forgotten or left unexploited. (24)

Notably, these re-writings not only reveal prejudiced gender stereotypes embedded in traditional fairy tales but help criticize and subvert these inherent sexual and gender biases. As Donoghue’s “A Tale of the Bird” demonstrates, these received notions of sexual norms come from different directions, ranging from external forces from the female narrator’s parents and her husband to internal voices which instruct her to be submissive and rule-abiding. This transgression of traditional stories showcases “a constant undoing of the rootedness” typical of Donoghue’s life and her writing (399).

4.3 Conclusion Over the last few decades, an increasing number of contemporary writers have been committed to re-writing traditional fairy tales. While these writers appropriate certain elements from well-known tales, the original meanings and core messages embedded in these tales inevitably undergo changes because they are often re-written to better reflect completely different historical and socio-cultural contexts and their value systems. According to Martin Hennard Dutheil, in Kissing the Witch, Emma Donoghue “uncovers the underlying assumptions of classical versions as she explores ‘deviant’ or ‘perverse’ alternatives which challenge stereotypical representations of gender roles and sexual desire and derail the straight path of female destiny encoded in the tales” (14). Moreover, as Jennifer Orme argues when commenting on Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch, “In speaking their desires, these characters reveal the normative and therefore usually invisible, restrictive behavioural codes at the intersecting points of gender, sexuality, class and/or cognitive ability” (124). These comments are true of Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Bird,” in which the fixed image of women as exemplified in Andersen’s Thumbelina is followed and subverted at the same time. This contemporary heroine’s awakening and her subsequent clamoring for freedom demonstrate that unlike traditional women who naively follow the rules dictated in the patriarchal society, women in the contemporary world dare to say no and strive for their heartfelt happiness.

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References Andersen, Hans. 1998. Thumbelina. In Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales: A Selection. Trans. L.W. Kingsland. Oxford: Oxford UP. Print. Bacchilega, Cristina. 1999. Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Print. Crowley, Karlyn and John Pennington. 2010. Feminist frauds on the fairies? Didacticism and liberation in recent retellings of ‘Cinderella.’ Marvels & Tales 24(2):297–313. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/41388957. Donoghue, Emma. 1997. The tale of the bird. In Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins, 11–24. New York: Joanna Cotter Books. Print. Doughty, Amie A. 2002. ‘This is the real story . . . I was framed’: Point of view and modern revisions of folktales. Journal of American Comparative Cultures 25(314):357–362. Print. Fantaccini, Fiorenzo, and Samuele Grassi. 2011. Emma in Borderlands?: Q&A with Emma Donoghue. Studi Irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies 1(1):397–406. http://www.fupress.com/ bsfm-sijis. Harries, Elizabeth Wanning. 2001. Twice upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale. Princeton: Princeton UP. Print. Lesesne, Teri S., Kylene Beers, and Lois Buckman. 1997. Books for adolescents. Review of Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 41(1):80–83. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40026304. Martin, Ann. 2010. Generational collaboration in Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the W itch: Old tales in new skins. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 35(1):4–25. Print. Orme, Jennifer. 2010. Mouth to mouth: Queer desires in Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch. 24(1):116–130. Print. Pizer, John. 1990. The disenchantment of snow white: Robert Walser, Donald Barthelme, and the modern/postmodern anti-fairy tale. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 27:330–347. Print. Rio, Maria Amor Barros-del. 2018. Emma Donoghue’s and James Finn Garner’s Rebellious Cindellas: Feminism and satire for empowerment in contemporary fairy tales. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature 7(5):239–246. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/ aiac.ijalel.v.7n.5p.239. Rochere, Martine Hennard Dutheil De La. 2009. Queering the fairy canon: Emma Donoghue’s kissing the witch. In Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings, ed. Susan Redington Boddy, 13–30. Jefferson: McFarland. Print. Seifert, Lewis C. 2015. Introduction: queer(ing) fairy tales. Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies. 29(1):15–20. Print.

Chapter 5

Re-configuring Irishness: Tradition and Multicultural Identity Politics in Gish Jen’s “Who Is Irish?”

5.1 Introduction Due to colonization and its aftermath, the Irish people have been troubled by fundamental problems about their identity. Questions about Irishness are often asked, but so far no consensus has been reached by academics in this regard. Modern and contemporary Irish literature has been beset by ambiguities and antitheses such as Protestant and Catholic. Self-conflicted in one way or another, it has been forced to make compromises, and, as a consequence, the notion of Irishness has remained controversial. Notwithstanding the acclaim Jen has received over the years, most critics conducted their research on her longer fiction. For example, in his article titled “Beyond Multicultural: Cultural Hybridity in the Novels of Gish Jen” (2009), Jeffrey F. L. Partridge analyzes Jen’s first two novels, Typical American (1991) and Mona in the Promised Land (1996), to figure out how Jen’s “exploration of cultural hybridity refashions ethnicity as a dynamic field of intersections and permeations that serves to dissolve the literary Chinatown’s us/them dichotomy” (169). Additionally, in his book, Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity (2008), Jonathan Freedman focuses on the interlocking nexus between Chinese American and Jewish American identities in Mona in the Promised Land (292). By the same token, a number of academics study Jen’s longer fiction, especially Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land, from a range of perspectives such as interethnicity and Jewishness, immigration and transnationalism, migrating multiculturalism, and Americanness (Lee 78–123; Pirjo 161–67; Rody 89–110; Simal 157–65). As Schuchen Susan Huang argues, although Jen has been publishing short fiction since the early 1980s, unlike her longer works, her short stories have received little critical attention (106). Jen’s “Who Is Irish”, narrated by a 68-year-old Chinese grandmother, tells of multiple generational conflicts of the Shea family, composed of the Chinese grandmother, her daughter Natalie, her son-in-law John, and her 3-year-old granddaughter, Sophie. In an interview on her writing philosophy, Jen comments that “[t]he whole © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 T. C. (Hawk). Chang, Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction, The Humanities in Asia 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4316-0_5

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question of narration for me has been caught up in issues of identity” (Maran 84). In another interview, when asked about her position as a Chinese American writer depicting Chinese immigrants’ problems with homesickness, racism, and assimilation, Jen remarks: “The whole question of whether an Asian-American is an American or a foreigner has been with me my whole life, even after Who’s Irish? came out” (Johnson 91). As is typical in much of Jen’s fiction, identity and cultural heritage are the main focus of “Who Is Irish?” (Hsu 962). Reading Gish Jen’s “Who Is Irish?,” a short story collected in the same-named collection Who’s Irish?: Stories (1999), this paper discusses the tradition of Irish identity and how the convention of a tenacious Irish identity, in conjunction with stereotypical sexual identity, is questioned, challenged, re-conceptualized, and reconfigured in the multicultural American context in the contemporary world. I argue that Irishness, which was homogeneous and thus helped consolidate the Irish people’s patriotism and camaraderie in the colonial context, is now problematic amid the everevolving world in the twenty-first century that features heterogeneity, diversity, and multiplicity.

5.2 Tradition and Irish Identity Over the past few centuries, Irish culture and literature have been characterized by a unique ambivalence—on the one hand, Irish people manage to stick to a clear-cut Irish identity, but on the other hand, they long for connections with outsiders to facilitate change. Ireland’s special relations with England make Irish people constantly torn between antitheses such as English/Irish, Protestant/Catholic, nationalism/unionism, and colonialism/de-colonization (S. J. Connolly 44–58). As a concept or place, Ireland has been figured as a woman for some long time. According to Claire Connolly, “Ireland has long been imagined in terms of female images: Mother Ireland, wild Irish girl, gentle colleen, old hag” (3). “Mother Ireland” has been constantly used, suggesting a certain kind of feminine cultural construction is at work. Additionally, Catherine Nash comments that Irish women, who are often depicted in terms of the idealization of motherhood, are bound up with home and tradition (47). In a word, Irish women are often constructed as homely, lovely, and docile. They have been subordinated to and marginalized by the confrontation between colonialism and nationalism in the contentious history of modern and contemporary Ireland. This notion of Ireland as a Mother and the subsequent feminization of the land are not modern inventions. In the late nineteenth century, in his book On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867), English author Matthew Arnold unfairly regarded the Irish as sentimental, passionate, sensuous, sensual, feminine, undisciplined, and anarchic due to their Celtic connection (61–65). Notably, Arnold provided a rationale for the colonists’ disempowerment of the colonized by taking the Celtic race as inherently sentimental. As Luke Gibbons argues, “in the Celticism of Matthew Arnold . . . Irish identity was reduced to a cultural imaginary, in a restricted aesthetic sense, all the more to remove it from more quotidian matters of power and self-determination”

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(9). Therefore, Arnold maintained: “No doubt the sensibility of the Celtic nature, its nervous explanation, have something feminine in them, and the Celt is thus peculiarly disposed to feel the spell of the feminine idiosyncracy; he has an affinity to it; he is not far from its secret” (65). Drawing on post-colonial theories by Homi Bhabha and Ashis Nandy, David Cairns and Shaun Richards note that “colonial discourse establishes the colonized as the repressed and rejected ‘other’ against which the colonizer defines an ordered self”; consequently, the colonized are “constrained to assert a dignified self-identity in opposition to a discourse which defines them as, variously, barbarian, pagan, ape, female” (8). Arnold appeared to look back on a very old Irish bardic tradition which dated back to the ninth century, in which the land was a woman to be worshipped, wooed, and won. This notion of land-as-woman probably derives from an earlier conceit, where a male poet was often imagined as a female poet, was betrothed to her patron, and forced to share his bed. Consequently, in the hag of Beare poetry, starting to thrive in the ninth century, the speakers were often deserted harlots who were forced to return to their earlier lovers before retreating to monasteries or nunneries. The female poet figure is a transformation of the traditional wandering male poet who, after serving a range of chieftains, found nowhere to go but the monastery. This feminization of male bardic speakers was also popular in modern Irish poetry (Kiberd, “Irish Literature and Irish History” 283). As a result of the contentious political history, formulating a tenacious Irish identity which is distinct from non-Irish identity becomes inevitable. The Irish cultural Renaissance led by Yeats and Lady Gregory is an illustration. To revive Irish local culture, cultural nationalists are committed to channeling nationalism into their literary creations and rekindling the public’s strong sense of Irish-ness in opposition to the alien culture imposed by their British colonizers. As Edna O’Brien comments in her semi-autobiographical work, Mother Ireland (1978), characteristics such as “[l]oneliness, the longing for adventure, the Romantic Catholic Church, or the family tie” are the main features of Irish people (19). Whereas these characteristics serve as sources of a strong bond for Irish people, simultaneously they help consolidate a formidable wall of Irish identity for outsiders. Notably contrary to this adherence to a strong national identity, people in Ireland also have an imaginary attachment to foreigners. As the farthest part of Western Europe on the Atlantic Ocean, Irish culture features a penchant for getting connected with outsiders. For instance, in the Aisling writing tradition, Ireland is invariably envisaged as a beautiful woman awaiting rescue from foreigners.1 In addition, such a reliance on foreign aid is evidenced in the 1916 “Proclamation of the Irish Republic,” in which the nationalists habitually turn to Ireland-as-mother to arouse their countrymen’s commiseration and gain their support for a new revolutionary effort: “… supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first place on her own strength, she 1 Examples

are available in Aogan O Rathaille’s poem, “Brightness Most Bright,” in which a fair lady, who is deprived of her native land and enslaved by alien forces, is badly in need of help from outsiders (Murphy 45). Additionally, the misery of a dark lady in James Clarence Mangan’s “Dark Rosaleen” is temporary because the hope of regaining the usurped Irish throne comes along with rescue from far away as embodied by “the priest” and ‘the wine,” and ‘the Spanish ale” (Murphy 114).

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(Ireland) strikes in full confidence of victory” (Murphy 230–31). In other words, Irish expatriates in America and enthusiasts from Europe are needed to help make Irish liberation possible. Images of foreign aid are never foreign in modern Irish literature. It is the French forces that are supposed to rescue the distressed lady, the personification of Ireland, in Yeats’ Cathleen Ni Houlihan for the restoration of her green fields. In John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, what Shawn Keogh has been wistfully waiting for is “Father Reilly’s dispensation from the bishops, or the Court of Rome” so that he can consummate his marriage to Pegeen Mike (70). Taken together, the images of foreigners abound in Irish literature, yet the portrayal is dominated by people from Europe (e.g. Spain, Italy, and France) and America, with a cloak of invisibility thrown upon people from other countries and cultures. This makes sense when considered geographically and religiously; geographic proximity, emigration history, and the Catholic religion naturally bind the Irish, French, and Spanish together, but this Eurocentric mentality simultaneously renders Irish people less well-informed about people and culture from other parts of the world. In the wake of such ignorance and misunderstanding, conflict and confrontation are inevitable when Irish people are faced with the people and cultures of these non-European aliens.

5.3 Multicultural Identity Politics In the past, identity is thought of as something stable and timeless, a universal essence. Modern literary and cultural theories, however, especially those proposed by poststructuralists and postmodernists, have critiqued the viability of such essentialism. Instead of adhering to the assumption that identity is a fixed entity that people possess, theorists like Derrida have proclaimed identity contingent and changeable, and constantly in the process of becoming. Identity then becomes merely a process of discursive constructions within the network of power relations. The essential “identity” of the human subject, then, has been radically called into question, and we seem rather to be dealing with multiple identities, some more dominant than others, some even contradicting and dislocating others. The decoding of “Irishness,” whether in Ireland or Britain, was at one time dominated by the essentialist approach; that is, scholars usually dealt with it from a single perspective—history, economics, literature. With the coming of modern critical and cultural theories beginning in the 1970s, however, Irish studies have been largely rethought, even reconstituted. Sabina Sharkey claims that the “old” Irish studies had been dominated by insular perspectives from both sides of the Irish Sea, while modern Irish studies are characterized by “a degree of border traffic between disciplines and [by] acknowledging a plurality of Irelands” (118). Likewise, Moynagh Sullivan argues that postmodern theories have undoubtedly shifted the critical paradigm for Irish studies, making this field more diversified and multidisciplined (243). Declan Kiberd playfully describes the critical change in contemporary Irish studies:

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If the notion of Ireland seemed to some to have become problematic, that was only because the seamless garment once wrapped like a green flag around Cathleen Ni Houlihan had given way to a quilt of many colors, all distinct, yet all connected too. No one element should subordinate or assimilate the other: Irish or English, rural or urban, Gaelic or Anglo, each has its part in the pattern. (653)

Hence we now have a more postmodern, more “inter-textual” concept of Ireland and of the field of Irish Studies. The heirs of postmodern difference and hybridity will inevitably be dealing with a hybrid and inter-mixed, multi-layered conception of Ireland. Gish Jen’s short story “Who’s Irish?” showcases the problems with a tenacious Irish identity widely promoted in traditional Irish literature. The title itself is intriguing because it casts into doubt the validity of a solid Irish identity. This validity of an authentic Irishness is also challenged via its narrative point of view. Narrated from the grandmother’s perspective, the story is dominated by her Chinese way of thinking. In stark contrast to the fierce and domineering narrator (3), John appears speechless and powerless. Unhappy with John’s unemployment for some time, the narrator keeps articulating her grievance. But Sophie take after Natalie’s husband’s family, their name is Shea. Irish. I always thought Irish people are like Chinese people, work so hard on the railroad, but now I know why the Chinese beat the Irish. Of course, not all Irish are like the Shea family, of course not. My daughter tell me I should not say Irish this, Irish that. (3)

Although the narrator is evidently limited by her English and biased about Irish people, her domination in the story is unquestionable because her views strongly influence our understanding of the Shea family. The narrator is much more confounded because not only John but his brothers are unemployed. As she later remarks, “I just happen to mention about the Shea family, an interesting fact: four brothers in the family, and not one of them work” (4). Unlike these jobless males, Beth, John’s mother, is the only Irish in the story who works as an executive secretary for a big company, though her illness keeps her from working and forces her to stay at home as a housewife (4). In contrast, according to the narrator, “her boys, every one of them is on welfare, or so-called severance pay, or so-called disability pay” (4). For the narrator, even black people do a better job because they work much more diligently than John and his brothers. Reflecting on her own experience as an immigrant, the narrator even asserts that Chinese are better than the Irish. The narrator just cannot figure out why John and his brothers have no jobs. Her strong objection is evidenced by the following comment: “Why the Shea family have so much trouble? They are white people, they speak English” (4). As indicated by the narrator, the problem with John and his brothers lies in their failure to take action, though they have a range of interesting ideas about their careers on different occasions (4–5). John’s inertia discourages him from helping babysit his daughter at home, inasmuch as the narrator has to be burdened with the nursing

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duty because her daughter is always tied up with her job as a vice president in a bank. Irritated by John’s laziness, the narrator irrationally comments on his qualities, saying “[p]lain boiled food, plain boiled thinking. Even his name is plain boiled: John” (5). In addition to the examples of John and his brothers, a traditionally stable and unified Irish identity is questioned in the character Sophie. Instead of an unalloyed Irish identity, Sophie’s hybridity is not so highly regarded by her relatives. As the narrator says, Sophie is three years old American age, but already I see her nice Chinese side swallowed up by her wild Shea side. She looks like mostly Chinese. Beautiful black hair, beautiful black eyes . . . . Everything just right, only her skin is a brown surprise to John’s family. So brown, they say. Even John say it. She never goes in the sun, still she is that color, he say. Brown. They say, Nothing the matter with brown. They are just surprised. So brown . . . . It seems like Sophie should be a color in between Nattie and John. (6)

In other words, following the downgraded Irishness as exhibited in John and his brothers, Sophie’s mixture of blood signals another change of identity in the contemporary world. The complexion brown is not really peculiar, but it is reiterated and exaggerated to highlight its deviation from the norm. This in-between-ness echoes the cultural theories of Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha. This episode echoes Bhabha’s notion that “it is actually very difficult, even impossible and counterproductive, to try and fit together different forms of culture and to pretend that they can easily coexist” (Rutherford 1990, 209). For Bhabha, cultural diversity has been widely promoted and has become the basis of multicultural education policies in many parts of the world. But when it comes to cultural differences, the dominant culture (or host society) is inclined to be more reserved, saying “these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our own grid” (Rutherford 208). As a consequence, while cultural diversity has been widely promoted, respected, and even accepted, the true embracing of cultural differences has only been a dream to be realized in the future. However, multiculturalism is not only about cultural diversity but it is also about “culturally embedded differences” (Parekh 3). To a certain extent, the previous example demonstrates that no matter how multicultural contemporary society appears, it is far from easy to make a compromise between traditional culture and other immigrant cultures. According to Bhabha, a certain discrepancy does exist between “cultural diversity” and “cultural difference” in the apparently multicultural world. This incongruity mostly comes from the host society’s cultural chauvinism, regarding its own culture as supreme and universal. But the reluctance to face up to change and difference is doomed to fail, for one’s cultural identity is never constant but always becoming. As Stuart Hall proposes, “difference and rupture” as well as “similarity and continuity” make up the driving force of one’s culture (226). In other words, according to Hall, while people from different cultures hold on to their history, tradition, and culture, they must be open to other new elements, no matter how, different or alien they may be.

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5.4 Irish Identity Re-configured Although the Irish previously adhered to a fixed Irish identity due to their contentious history, it is naive to think of this identity as stubbornly immobile even in the late twentieth or early twenty-first centuries. As S. J. Connolly argues, “[n]or should we surrender to the facile cliché that the modern Irish are prisoners of an inflexible past” (61). The notion of Irishness blurs as Sophie’s in-between-ness and subsequent bizarreness recur in the latter section of the story. From the narrator’s limited point of view, Sophie’s good-natured Chinese character seems to be obliterated due to her Irish inheritance from John. Therefore, she keeps stressing Sophie’s deviation from typical Chinese, saying “if Sophie was not wild inside, she would not take off her shoes and cloth” (8), “I never saw one of them [some other Chinese babies the narrator knows] act wild like that” (9), and “You never saw a child stubborn like that” (10). A conversation between John and Natalie after his finding a new job is illustrating. It’s good to see you in the saddle again, my daughter say. Some of your family patterns are scary. At least I don’t drink, he say. He say, And I’m not the only one with scary family patterns. That’s for sure, say my daughter. (10)

The scary family patterns may allude to heavy drinking and unemployment, salient features widely depicted in Irish literature. John’s response insinuates the prevalence of both phenomena, though he manages to demonstrate his difference in terms of drinking habits. However, this denial cannot change Sophie’s unruliness and misbehavior. Apparently, Sophie’s misconduct comes from the influence of Sinbad, a friend at the playground. It is implied that certain element, personal and racial, lurks behind and causes troubles. For example, she likes to hit and kick the mommies of her friends (11). In addition, she hides in a foxhole and throws a shovel of sand at her grandmother (12). Vexed at Sophie’s behavior, the narrator cannot help expressing her anger, saying “Did you ever see a Chinese girl act this way?” and “millions of children in China, not one act like this” (12). What is becoming of Ireland in contemporary, increasingly global world, a place in which notions of “nationhood” and/or “national identity,” as well as gender and/or sexual identity are constantly reconfigured and redefined? The European influence surging in Irish society in the last few decades has challenged the grass-roots Irish identity and inevitably female identity as well (Kiberd, “Modern Ireland” 97). As Kiberd contends, Irish identity used to be limited to three elements, including language, religion, and nationalism. However, in the twenty-first century, it is no longer bound up within these traditional dimensions (The Irish Writer and the World 282). Whereas certain identity is still perceptible in contemporary Ireland, one’s difference in diverse aspects is becoming more and more acceptable. Take gender identity as an example: although the traditional male/female dichotomy is still the norm, we are now witnessing an increasingly hybrid Irish society, including variants such as bi-sexual, metro-sexual, multi-sexual, and androgynous sub-cultures in the twenty-first century.

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This growing acceptance of multiplicity and difference of the Irish identity is best exemplified in the ending of Jen’s story. Since Sophie takes shelter in the foxhole for fear that her grandmother may penalize her for her mischief and disobedience, the narrator shouts at Sophie and waves her stick frantically to drive her out of the foxhole, but in vain. Eventually, when Natalie and John come and find bruises all over Sophie’s body and a swollen-up eye on her face, they are infuriated. To ensure the narrator cannot spank Sophie any more, John and Natalie hire a babysitter and asks the narrator to move to another apartment alone. The story culminates in the ending when, to most readers’ surprise, the narrator moves to live with Bess and the Shea sons (14). One day, in response to her son’s question about the narrator’s whereabouts, Bess’s reply that “[s]he’s a permanent resident” and that “[s]he isn’t going anywhere” (15) is notable because the words “permanent resident” are allusive of the narrator’s long-lasting status as a member of the Irish family as well as her legal status as a permanent citizen of America. In other words, she is not only a permanent American citizen but, metaphorically, someone with an Irish identity. The story ends in the narrator’s reflection on her new identity. Of course, I shouldn’t say Irish this, Irish that, especially now I am become honorary Irish myself, according to Bess. Me! Who’s Irish? I say, and she laugh. All the same, if I could mention one thing about some of the Irish, not all of them of course, I like to mention this: Their talk just stick. I don’t know how Bess Shea learn to use her words, but sometimes I hear what she say a long time later. Permanent resident. Not going anywhere. Over and over I hear it, the voice of Bess. (15–16).

Therefore, the narrator is not only someone with an Irish identity but, to be more precise, an “honorary Irish.” Crucially, although the grandma seems to be suspicious of John and his Irishness, she is finally acculturated as a member of the Irish family. This assimilation implies that Irishness in the contemporary world is no longer the privilege of a few but an encompassing identity which can be shared by people of different races and ethnicities. As critic Kasia Boddy well puts it, this story “enacts a ‘boundary-crossing’ in which the question of who’s Irish or Chinese collapses in the face of the shared general identity of grandmothers” (146). A retrospect on the story suggests that the notion of identity is never natural or neutral but arbitrary and constructed. As the title queries, “Who Is Irish?” seems to be the top priority for Gish Jen. At first glance, most readers may assume that, undoubtedly, Bess, John, and his brothers are the real Irish. But as the story goes, the real identity of the Irish is challenged again and again, as evidenced in John and Sophie. Ironically, the story is voiced by a Chinese grandmother in pidgin English. This lowly educated narrator not only questions the Irish identity but is later given the opportunity to be Irish. This particular narrative point of view allows an outsider to re-examine the very nature of Irishness. In addition to its narrative point of view, the setting itself is conducive to people’s reflection on Irishness. Unlike most literary works set in Ireland, this story with its American context deprives the Irish characters of their essential qualities, such as the Catholic religion and the Irish language. Removed from their native land and their indigenous characteristics, they are forced to undergo a re-examination of their identity.

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Suggestions of racism arise several times in the story; however, it would be naïve to regard Jen as a racist simply because of the insular ideology exemplified in the old narrator’s words. For example, when reflecting on John’s unemployment, the narrator’s comparison between the Chinese and the Irish ostensibly indicates a certain degree of racial discrimination. Therefore, after some reasoning, the narrator comes to the conclusion that John’s unemployment mainly owes to his ethnicity: “I always thought the Irish people are like Chinese people, work so hard on the railroad, but now I know why the Chinese beat the Irish” (4). In addition, the narrator’s bigotry is alluded to in the following. Why the Shea family have so much trouble? They are white people, they speak English . . . . Of course, I understand I am just lucky, come from a country where the food is popular all over the world. I understand it is not the Shea family’s fault they come from a country where everything is boiled. Still, I say. (4)

Evidently, these perceptions of Chinese and Irish identities are based on stereotypes, though the comical tone adopted by the narrator makes them less critical than recreational. Notably, although amiable most of the time, Bess’s (or the white’s) prejudice is also obvious when she tells the narrator about John’s marrying Natalie: “I was never against the marriage, you know . . . I never thought John was marrying down. I always thought Nattie was just as good as white” (7). These traces of racism are mitigated by humor and wit between the lines. They are further subdued or even forgotten near the end when the narrator is given the honorary status in the Irish family. As Shameem Black puts it, Throughout her fiction, characters who seem different on the surface turn out to share much in common, often much more than characters of the same ethnicity or religion . . . Jen suggests that the strongest fissures frequently develop within, not across, social categories of identity. A relationship between a parent and a child, therefore, is far more fraught with alterity than a relationship across ethnic borders . . . . The familiar turns out to be foreign, while the foreign is after all familiar. (123–24)

In other words, this ending showcases Jen’s attempt to unsettle stereotypical concepts of one’s identity. This thinking out of the box regarding race and identity is typical of Jen’s fiction. As the narrator’s case demonstrates, “it is possible for people to switch and to find new homes where they least expect them” (Ho 62). According to Caroline Rody, this story, along with many other stories collected in Who Is Irish? Stories, “expand[s] and deepen[s] Jen’s examination of lived interethnicity among contemporary characters and families” (110–11). Jen’s notions of immigration, identity, and intercultural communication are exemplified in her comment in response to an interviewer’s question about the ending of “Who Is Irish?.” As she remarks, “I think it is one of the greatest gifts of America that a lot of the old attitudes are remade . . . . Immigrants bring their ethnic grudges with them, but a lot of that stuff tends to lose its force” (Johnson 95).

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5.5 Conclusion Despite the tenacity of an Irish identity formulated centuries ago and prevalent until the 1980s, the world has undergone many changes over the past few decades. Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish?” alerts us to these changes, as evidenced by the blurring of traditional Irishness in an increasingly multicultural context. Simultaneously, it alludes to the foolishness of sticking to one’s identity to the neglect of other people’s right to be a new member of a community.

References Arnold, Matthew. 1988. Matthew Arnold, from on the study of celtic literature, 1867. In Poetry and Ireland Since 1800: A Source Book, ed. Mark Story, 61–68. London: Routledge. Print. Black, Shameem. Fiction across Borders: Imagining the Lives of Others in Late Twentieth-century Novels. New York: Columbia UP, 2010. Print. Boddy, Kasia. 2010. The American Short Story since 1950. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Print. Cairns, David and Shaun Richards. 1988. Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP. Print. Connolly, S.J. 1998. Culture, identity and tradition: Changing definitions of Irishness. In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography, ed. Brian Graham, 43–63. London: Routledge. Print. Connolly, Claire. 2003. Introduction: Ireland in theory. In Theorizing Ireland, ed. Claire Connolly, 1–13. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Freedman, Jonathan. 2014. Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity. New York: Columbia UP. Print. Gibbons, Luke. 1996. Transformations in Irish Culture. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P. Print. Hall, Stuart. 1990. Cultural identity and diaspora. In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford, 207–221. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Print. Ho, Jennifer Ann. 2015. Understanding Gish Jen. Columbia: U of South Carolina P. Print. Huang, Shuchen Susan. 2003. Gish Jen. In Asian American Short Story Writers: An A-to-Z Guide, ed. Huang Guiyou, 101–108. Westport: Greenwood P. Print. Hsu, Hua. 2009. The first asian Americans. In A New Literary History of America, eds. Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors, 958–962. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Print. Jen, Gish. 1999. Who’s Irish? In Who’s Irish?: Stories, 3–16. New York: Alfree A. Knopf. Print. Johnson, Sarah Anne. 2004. Conversations with American Women Writers. Hanover: UP of New England. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 1987. Modern Ireland: Postcolonial or European? In Not on Army Map: Essays on Postcoloniality and Cultural Nationalism, ed. Stuart Murray, 81–100. Exeter: U of Exeter P. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 1989. Irish literature and Irish history. In The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland, ed. Roy. F. Foster, 275–338. Oxford: Oxford UP. Kiberd, Declan. 1996. Inventing Ireland. London: Vintage. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 2005. The Irish Writer and the World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Lee, Rachel C. 1995. The Americas of Asian-American Literature: Nationalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart, Jen’s Typical American, and Hagedorn’s Dogeaters. Ph.D. Dissertation. U of California, Los Angles. Maran, Meredith. (ed.). 2013. Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do. New York: Plume. Print. Murphy, Maureen O’Rourke. 1987. Irish Literature: A Reader. New York: Syracuse UP. Print.

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Nash, Catherine. 1993. Remapping and renaming: New cartographies of identity, gender and landscape in Ireland. Feminist Review 44:39–57. Print. O’Brien, Edna. 1978. Mother Ireland, Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books. Print. Parekh, Bhikhu. 2000. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Print. Patridge, Jeffrey F. L. 2009. Beyond multicultural: Cultural hybridity in the novels of Gish Jen. In Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Asian-American Writers, ed. Harold Bloom, 169–192. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism. Print. Pirjo, Ahokas. 2010. Migrating multiculturalisms in Zadie Smith’s on beauty and Gish Jen’s Mona in the promised land. In Moving Migration: Narrative Transformations in Asian American Literature, eds. Johanna C. Kardux and Doris Einsiedel, 161–177. New Brunswick: Transaction P. Print. Rachel, C. Lee. 1995. The Americans of Asian-American Literature: Nationalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart, Jen’s Typical American, and Hagedorn’s Dogeaters. Dissertation. Los Angles: U of California. Los Angles, Print. Rody, Caroline. 2009. Letters from Camp Gugelstein: Interethnicity and jewishness in Gish Jen’s Mona in the promised land. In The Interethnic Imagination: Roots and Passages in Contemporary Asian American Fiction, 89–111. Oxford: Oxford UP. Print. Rutherford, Jonathan. 1990. The third space: Interview with Homi Bhabha. In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford, 207–221. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Print. Sharkey, Sabina. 2003. A view of the present state of Irish studies. In Studying British Cultures: An Introduction, ed. Susan Bassnett, 117–138. London: Routledge. Print. Simal, Begoña. 2004. ‘Moving Selves’: Immigration and transnationalism in Gish Jen and Chitra Divakaruni. In Transnational, National and Personal Voices: New Perspectives on Asian American and Asian Diasporic Women Writers, eds. Begoña Simal and Elisabetta Marino, 151–173. Piscataway: Transaction P. Print. Sullivan, Moynagh. 2000. Feminism, postmodernism and the subjects of Irish and women’s studies. In New Voices in Irish Criticism ed. P. J. Matthews, 243–250. Portland: Four Courts Press. Print. Synge, John M. 1998. The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford UP. Print.

Chapter 6

“Do You Think I’m Your Slave?”: Gender and Immigration in Donal Ryan’s “Eveline”

6.1 Introduction In the past few centuries, Ireland was characterized by its mass emigration, an important phenomenon that has been widely discussed in Irish history and literature since the nineteenth century. Traditionally, the Irish people have moved to England, America, or other places in search of a better life. The prosperity boom between 1995 and 2007, which resulted in Ireland being nicknamed “The Celtic Tiger,” brought significant economic, social, and cultural changes for the Irish people (Fanning 155– 56). One such change is increasing numbers of immigrants. Whereas the flow of immigration to Ireland was not problematic in the economic explosion of the 1990s and 2000s, the decline of the Celtic Tiger in 2008 made immigrants easy scapegoats for growing unemployment (O’Sullivan 212–19). This kind of hatred, together with certain types of racism, spurs xenophobia in Irish people. These problems may suggest that the Irish were not ready to welcome the unexpected affluence and flow of immigrants. Just as Terence Brown argues, emigration has been typical of Irish life, but immigration since the 1990s is “a situation which it (Ireland) had scarcely prepared itself” (385). Joyce’s Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen stories, serves as an epitome of Ireland in the early twentieth century. In the fourth story called “Eveline,” Irish women’s burden and responsibility, together with their anticipation to terminate suffering through emigration, are depicted. In order to pay tribute to Joyce’s contribution a century ago and to better represent Ireland in the twenty-first century, a new collection of 15 short stories written by 15 contemporary writers was published in 2014. Donal Ryan’s “Eveline” is a re-writing of Joyce’s story of the same name, which tells of the male (playfully called Evelyn) protagonist’s decision to help an African immigrant, Hope, due to his unrequited love. This chapter discusses how the main characters’ diasporic experiences in the twenty-first century both continue and depart from the Irish tradition. Additionally, via a contrastive reading of Joyce’s and Ryan’s

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texts, it investigates how traditional gender relations are challenged and deconstructed along with the transformed conception of immigration in contemporary Ireland.

6.2 Gender in Ryan’s “Eveline” The identity of Irish women has been misrepresented by a series of male-centered networks. For instance, the bardic tradition of Irish writing, which dates back to at least the nineth century, has been concerned with the notion that the land is a woman to be worshipped, wooed, and won (Kiberd 283). In addition to the Hag of Beare poetry, the aisling literary tradition, which began in the eighteenth century, also testifies to this “Mother Ireland” image and to the notion of one’s rescuers coming from abroad. The word “aisling” in Gaelic means “dream” or “vision.” In this form of Gaelic writing, which was established in Munster by Aogan Ó Rathaille, Ireland was often envisaged as a beautiful woman awaiting rescue from invaders, in which the female body was sanctified and restricted simultaneously. In contrast to the subdued image of the Irish “lady” in the aisling tradition, many other Irish women are traditionally described as Madonna figures. This undoubtedly has much to do with the predominance of Catholicism among the Irish people. In most Catholic countries, people often idealize women, especially young maidens, by identifying them with the Virgin Mary (Brown 289). For Catholics, Mary is an extremely sacred figure, second in importance only to her son Jesus Christ, who was delivered after an immaculate conception. Mary embodies qualities such as absolute chastity, unwavering virginity, and selfless devotion. This Madonna image often appears in Irish texts and more generally in Irish culture. Nonetheless, gender politics in Ireland has undergone significant changes since the 1970s. This is partly due to the influence of feminist activities in other Western countries and partly due to the economic development in contemporary Ireland. This transformation of gender relationships is manifest in a range of aspects in Donald Ryan’s “Eveline.” First, the title of the story demonstrates a significant change in traditional man/woman hierarchal binary oppositions. In stark contrast to the submissive girl in Joyce’s story from the early twentieth century, the protagonist in Ryan’s version, while he looks similar, has a name that is dictated and determined by his mother. Crucially, naming connotes certain power relationships, as it is always people in power (e.g., parents to children or teachers to students) who are endowed with the authority of naming. In other words, the authority of Eveline’s mother’s over name-giving strongly alludes to her empowerment. In addition to the politics of name-giving, women’s changing status in contemporary Ireland manifests itself in the story’s characterization. Intriguingly, in this story, we can perceive disempowered male figures. Eveline’s father, who has died long before the story begins, is a silent man whose presence can only be perceived as a portrait that “hangs apologetically above the living room fireplace” (41). This father figure is only mentioned twice, indirectly, by the narrator and his mother. Unlike most male characters in traditional Irish literature, this father figure is deprived of his right of speech and is

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thereby unable to articulate and represent himself. In a similar vein, Eveline, the male protagonist, is depicted as someone who is always submissive and incapable. He is helplessly caricatured by friends for his feminized name, but he dare not complain to his mother about the unusual naming when she suggests that he shut up (43). In contrast to the passive, flat male characters, the female characters in the story are much more robust, dominant, and influential. Although only indicated implicitly, Eveline’s mother appears to be a career woman who organizes charity activities for immigrants. Unlike the passive mother figure in Joyce’s “Eveline,” she is said to be “ecstatic,” “replete,” and “energized” on her drive home (42). In addition, unlike the suffering maid in Joyce’s “Eveline,” who is torn between staying in Ireland to fulfill her promise to her mother and leaving Ireland with Frank for a promising future, Hope in Ryan’s story is masculine and robust, inasmuch as she courageously fights with her enemies to defend herself when necessary. Because she is maltreated by the trafficker from Africa to Ireland, she kicks him forcefully in the testicles, forcing the trafficker to lie on the pavement and plead for her mercy (42–43). Unlike Eveline in Ryan’s version, who is “rigid” and “priapic,” Hope is comparatively more confident when mocking and laughing at her problem with the application for asylum (43). When introduced to the dark cottage for her temporary stay, Hope expresses her irritation audaciously in the presence of the timid Eveline: “What is this? A hut. She turned and pierced me with her eyes and I felt my desert-dry mouth open and close again soundlessly” (44). The contrast between Hope’s piercing eyes and Eveline’s soundless mouth demonstrates an atypical relationship between women and men. Hope’s self-autonomy as a woman is further evidenced in her interrogation of Eveline when they escape to Galway: “Do you think I will let you touch me, because you have brought me here, hidden me away? Do you think I’m your slave?” (44). Evidently, Hope as a unique female character is physically robust and mentally strong. Compared with Eveline, who stays put rather than venturing into the unfamiliar and the unknown with his dream lover, Hope is highly daring and adventurous. As a consequence, she leaves her homeland far behind in the hope of securing a more decent life in Ireland through migration. Aside from characterization, narrative point of view is used effectively by Ryan to highlight the changing fate of Irish women in the twenty-first century. In Joyce’s “Eveline,” readers can perceive the female protagonist’s paralysis and incapacity because the story is generally presented from the third-person narrative viewpoint. For example, the opening paragraph states “She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired.” (29). Eveline’s sense of helplessness persists until the end of the story, where she fails to leave with the sailor: “She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition” (34). In a sense, Eveline is deprived of her speech because everything about her is recounted through the omniscient narrator. This narrative style embodies the subordinated status of Irish women in the early twentieth century. In contrast to Joyce’s Eveline, Ryan’s “Eveline” is generally dominated by Eveline as the first-person narrator. Nonetheless, this does not mean that female characters are deprived of their speech because their voices are skillfully

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inserted in the story and easily perceived by readers. In fact, presenting Hope from the perspective of Eveline is a better approach, as it helps to dramatically highlight her atypical qualities as a woman. This is evidenced by Eveline’s recounting of Hope’s retaliation against the abusive trafficker: “When her trafficker slid the panel door back she kicked him in the testicles with all the force she could muster in her halfstarved, dehydrated state. Force enough to dump him on the pavement, moaning” (43). All in all, the narrative point of view adopted by Ryan allows more latitude for the protagonists, male and female alike, to tell their own stories. This marks a significant difference when we discuss the two Evelines created by Joyce and Ryan, respectively—an incompetent girl in the former compared to a vigorous one in the latter.

6.3 Immigration in Ryan’s “Eveline” Living in the most remote part of Western Europe on the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish people have been actively attempting to connect with the outside world. In reality, calling for rescue from other countries is a recurring theme in Irish history and literature, as embodied in the traditional aisling writing, the 1916 “Proclamation of the Irish Republic,” the Hag of Beare writing, plays written by W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge, and Edna’ O’Brien fiction, to name only a few.1 Overall, images 1 In the aisling writing tradition, Ireland is always envisaged as a beautiful woman awaiting rescue from foreigners. In Aogan Ó Rathaille’s “Brightness Most Bright,” for example, the fair lady, deprived of her native land and enslaved by alien forces, is desperately in need of help from outsiders. For the subordinated lady, “no relief can reach her until the heroes come/back across the main” (Murphy, Irish Literature: A Reader, 45). Likewise, the dark lady’s misery in James Clarence Mangan’s “Dark Rosaleen” will never last long, for along with rescue from afar as embodied by “the priest” and ‘the wine,” and ‘the Spanish ale” comes hope of regaining the usurped Irish throne (Murphy, Irish Literature: A Reader 114). In addition, such a reliance on foreign aid is evidenced in the 1916 “Proclamation of the Irish Republic,” a joint announcement by Thomas J. Clarke, Patrick H. Pearse and others, in which the nationalists habitually turn to Ireland-as-mother to arouse their countrymen’s commiseration and gain their support for a new revolutionary effort: “supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first place on her own strength, she (Ireland) strikes in full confidence of victory” (Murphy, Irish Literature: A Reader 230–31). Although Ireland’s domestic forces like the Irish Republican Brotherhood undoubtedly are vital to the emancipation of the symbolic motherland, nothing great can be achieved without sponsorship and support, spiritual as well as material, from abroad. As stated in the proclamation, Irish expatriates in America and enthusiasts from Europe are needed to help make Irish liberation possible. This smacks of the spirit latent in the Hag of Beare writing tradition prevalent in Irish literature, in which the hag desperately awaits the coming of outsiders to rescue her from the control of her lord and master. Therefore, the Irish mother keeps summoning rescuers from abroad as well as from home for the benefit of the nation. Images of foreign aid are never absent in modern Irish literature. It is the French forces that are supposed to rescue the distressed lady, the personification of Ireland, in Yeats’ Cathleen Ni Houlihan for the restoration of her green fields. In John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, what Shawn Keogh has been wistfully waiting for is “Father Reilly’s dispensation from the bishops, or the Court of Rome” so that he can consummate his marriage to Pegeen Mike

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of foreigners abound in Irish literature, but they are generally dominated by people from Europe (e.g. Spain, Italy, and France) and America, while people from other countries are less well-known. This makes good sense when considered geographically and religiously; geographical proximity, emigration history, and the Catholic religion naturally bind the Irish, French, and Spanish people together. However, simultaneously this Eurocentric mentality renders Irish people less well-informed of people and cultures from the rest of the world. In the wake of this ignorance, conflict is inevitable when the Irish are faced with people from non-European countries. Ryan’s “Eveline” is teeming with vestiges of the immigration that has been popular in Ireland since the last decade of the twentieth century. Eveline’s mother is responsible for organizing two Welcome Nights for immigrants to Ireland. However, these foreigners are not so well depicted, as indicated in his mother’s complaint about the African immigrants’ absence during the first Welcome Night: “The. Whole. Thing. Disastrous! No one foreigner! How would they even have gotten out there from the city?” (42). On the second Welcome Night, the incongruous relationship between the Irish and the African immigrants is further accentuated. This time some newcomers from Africa participate in the activity, but the Welcome Night is characterized by misunderstandings between people from different cultural backgrounds. On one hand, the conventional white/black binary opposition is reversed, as the organizer of the party, Eveline’s mother is “curtseying to the more regal Africans” (42). In addition, her limited understanding of the African immigrants’ cultural background makes Eveline’s mother appear stupid and embarrassed most of the time. For example, she unknowingly reverses some immigrants’ first and family names and has to be instructed by Reeney, her African assistant, about ways of redressing these ridiculous misnomers (42). The lack of understanding between characters of diverse backgrounds culminates when Eveline’s mother reveals her lack of knowledge of the immigrants’ religious culture, asking whether they were Christian or otherwise: What is otherwise? A man asked. Oh, you know, Islamic or some such, Mother replied. What is sumsuch? The man asked. I think he was ribbing her, in a playful way, but it was hard to read his face, the stony blackness of it. He reached out a massive hand for mother’s proffered tea, to stop the terrible rattling of cup against saucer, I think. He sang a keening song of long, unwavering syllables at the end of that night, and clapped and hooted wildly at our Irish dancers, and Mother declared herself his friend, and declared her night a victory. There was people there, at least. Real live refugees. (42)

(70). Moreover, in The Country Girls’ Trilogy written by Edna O’Brien, the female protagonist, Cathleen, endeavors to shy away from her suffering by engaging in a series of jail-break love affairs with foreigners, especially middle-aged men from France. Mr. Gentleman, for instance, is said to be an elegant, French-speaking solicitor. He is somewhat mysterious and unapproachable for the provincials in the country. “He was French, and his real name was Mr. de Maurier, but no one could pronounce it properly, and anyhow, he was such a distinguished man with his gray hair and his satin waistcoats that the local people christened him Mr. Gentleman” (12). Moreover, her next lover Eugene Gaillard, a half-French documentary film maker, is a god-like figure with “his strength, his pride, his self-assurance” (335).

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The aforementioned misnaming aside, Eveline’s mother demonstrates an insular understanding of the immigrants’ religion, disregarding the fact that a wide range of non-Christian religious beliefs exist in the world. However, the authority of Eveline’s mother is challenged by a male African, who interrogates her about the religion she refers to and reaches out his hand to fetch the tea-cup from her trembling hand. The superiority of Eveline’s mother is also destabilized when the African screams wildly at the Irish dancers near the end of the Welcome Night. The italicized word “people” is emblematic of the narrator’s (as well as the other Irish people’s) denial of the African immigrants’ role as real human beings. At best, they are nothing but “real live refugees” that make the Welcome Night a success. Economic prosperity since the 1990s has helped to improve the living standards of the Irish people, but along with the increasing number of immigrants, especially those from non-EU countries, comes the Irish’s limited knowledge of these alien cultures and their willingness to accommodate immigrants. Infatuated with Hope at first sight, Eveline promises to help her with her application for asylum. However, Hope is aware that Eveline’s dedication will likely be in vain because of the unfriendly environment for immigrants throughout Europe. As the narrator shows, “She (Hope) knew the system, it was almost the same in every European country: form-filling, refusal, appeal, refusal, deportation. Except here there is more welcome nights, yay!” (43). The italicized word “welcome” is noteworthy because it ironically alludes to the lukewarm and even hostile attitude of some Irish people about immigrants. Indeed, some welcome nights are organized to “welcome” the immigrants, only to see them deported before long after undergoing a range of tedious procedures for their asylum application. This ambivalent attitude toward welcoming immigrants is echoed in a scholar’s comment that “despite Ireland’s image as a welcoming, hospitable nation and its unparalleled economic boom, many numbers of black and ethnic minority groups have experienced racism since arriving in Ireland” (Loyal, “Welcome to the Celtic Tiger” 125). According to Loyal, the strong sense of Irish identity, characterized by Catholicism and whiteness, has been popular since the 1920s, and despite its dwindling trend since the 1990s amid the flows of foreign immigrants, its influence persists in Ireland. As a consequence, racism and exclusion are rampant because immigrants, particularly non-white immigrants, will on one hand jeopardize their indigenous culture and, on the other hand, compete for employment (Loyal, “Welcome to the Celtic Tiger” 122–23). Irish people’s ambivalence toward welcoming and deporting immigrants is further echoed in the protagonist’s sense of displacement and his attempt to return to a familiar locality. The Ireland that the main characters are situated in is no longer the traditional country exclusive to the Irish but a much more diverse country with multiple cultural elements. The aforementioned examples of immigration and the relevant activities organized for the immigrants are cases in point. Moreover, the increasingly multicultural aspects of contemporary Ireland are mirrored in the Irish people’s choice of cars: “Hope didn’t like the car I had hired. Why not a Mercedes? Everyone drives a Nissan” (44). The shift from Mercedes to Nissan insinuates the

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transformation of Irish culture from a Europe-centered focus to a more diverse one. However, the italicized word “Everyone” has a negative connotation, suggesting that the narrator (Eveline) casts doubt on the legitimacy of driving a Nissan rather than a traditional well-acclaimed European car such as a Mercedes. Additionally, Eveline’s choice of an Irish-speaking cottage in Galway as a hiding place for him and Hope (43–44) symbolizes his penchant for the primitive and unpolluted countryside typical of the idealized Ireland that is popular in traditional Irish literature. This preference for the primitive and the local may occasionally be so strong that it excludes outsiders to the point of xenophobia. Consequently, when Hope and Eveline stop at Spiddal for food and petrol, she is regarded “darkly” by the rude counterman: “You see, she (Hope) said as we drove away, everywhere I am watched, suspected, hated” (44). Obviously, Hope must have been troubled by racism and discrimination for some time. This is confusing and ironic since, based on common sense, Ireland’s colonial history and traumatic experiences of emigration would seem to make it “impossible for the liberated Irish Republic to be racist” (Lentin 102).

6.4 Dreams Come True: Challenges Ahead Vestiges of immigrant cultures can be found in Ryan’s “Eveline”; however, conflicts abound in the communication between the Irish and these newcomers. The fact that no immigrants attend the first Welcome Night is indicative of the communication problem between people from different cultures. This is indicated in the narrator’s reflection that “there had obviously been some misunderstanding” (42). Moreover, the Irish people’s lack of understanding of immigrants is suggested in the episode when Eveline’s mother fails to identify the African immigrants’ religion. Both cases demonstrate that non-EU cultures or immigrants exist in contemporary Ireland. However, they are more often than not caricatured or downgraded because they are considered either inferior or useless. This phenomenon contradicts the essence of multiculturalism, which promotes the concept of “recognizing and accommodating different cultural beliefs, practices, traditions, languages or lifestyles” (Murphy, Multiculturalism 14). When Eveline tells Hope to stay in Galway and maintain a low profile to “meld with the background” (44), he is challenged by Hope, who says, “Meld! She spat, Ha!” (44). In other words, Hope disagrees with Eveline because it is terribly difficult for immigrants (especially African immigrants like her) to meld with the host country. Hope’s complaint that she is always “watched, suspected, hated” (44) indicates that racial discrimination exists in Irish society. As a result, certain cultural essentialism, coupled with racial discrimination, stops some Irish people from identifying with alien cultures. This echoes Homi Bhabha’s idea that “it is actually very difficult, even impossible and counterproductive, to try and fit together different forms of culture and to pretend that they can easily coexist” (Rutherford 209). For Bhabha, cultural diversity has been widely promoted and has become the basis of multicultural education

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policies in many parts of the world. However, when it comes to cultural differences, the dominant culture (or host society) is inclined to be more reserved: “these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our own grid” (Rutherford 208). Accordingly, while cultural diversity has been widely promoted, respected, and even accepted, the true embracing of cultural differences remains a dream. However, multiculturalism is not only about cultural diversity; it is also about “culturally embedded differences” (Parekh 3). To a certain extent, Ryan’s story demonstrates that no matter how multicultural contemporary Ireland appears, it is far from easy to make a compromise between traditional Irish culture and other immigrant cultures. According to Bhabha, a discrepancy does exist between “cultural diversity” and “cultural difference” in the apparently multicultural world. This incongruity mostly comes from the host society’s cultural chauvinism, whereby it views its own culture as supreme and universal. Nevertheless, a reluctance to face up to change and difference is doomed to fail, for one’s cultural identity is never constant but is always becoming. As Stuart Hall proposes, “difference and rupture” as well as “similarity and continuity” make up the driving force of one’s culture (226). In other words, according to Hall, while people from different cultures stick to their histories, traditions, and cultures, they must be open to other new elements, however different or alien they may be. Declan Kiberd observes that in Ireland, “many politicians seem to fear ‘flood,’ ‘invasions,’ ‘swamps’ of immigrants (the language always suggests a loss of control)” (The Irish Writer and the World 311). Additionally, according to Tom Inglis, many Irish people look upon immigrants as a threat and dismiss the possibility that these aliens can become truly Irish (110). However, as some academics suggest, immigrants normally contribute to rather than endanger public well-being. Unfortunately, some Irish people dismiss the “unseen benefits” (e.g. new kinds of medical therapies) brought by immigrants (Fanning, Immigration and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland 63–83; Kiberd, The Irish Writer and the World 311). In reality, in a study conducted by Alan Barrett and Adele Bergin, they found that contrary to common sense perceptions, immigration to Ireland is generally beneficial for the Irish people because it helps to increase the GDP and reduce income inequality (82). This is echoed by Steven Loyal, arguing that migrants seldom displace local workers. Instead, during the economic boom, they are inclined to “take up occupations that an increasingly qualified Irish workforce were no longer willing to do—such as cleaning, domestic work, or waiting tables, or jobs that Irish workers could not do—doctors, working in information technology, or as engineers” (Understanding Immigration in Ireland 97). Many episodes in the story reinforce the tenacity of the Irish identity and the difficulty of enacting multiculturalism in contemporary Ireland. This echoes Gary Younge’s observation that the Irish, who used to take pride in their heart-warming welcome to outsiders, are treating people of color very differently in contemporary Ireland (127). This is evidenced by a 2002 Irish government report, which demonstrated that pregnant black women were targets of abuse in the streets and hospitals

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because supposedly they were having babies to secure Irish citizenship (127). Additionally, a referendum held in 2004 nullified the automatic right to Irish citizenship for anyone born in Ireland, as the Irish people wanted to stop black people from settling or having the rights of Irish citizens (Fanning, “Racism, Rules, and Rights” 21). The story of Hope and how she finds it difficult to meld with the Irish society highlights the challenge of immigration and the difficulty of realizing multiculturalism in contemporary Ireland. In the past, Ireland was dominated by male-centered, nationalistic, and Catholic traditions. Women in Ireland were generally excluded from matters of great importance. In addition, the Irish have long resorted to emigration as a solution to their problems, both politically and economically. Even so, most Irish people were not prepared for the coming of waves of immigrants, especially those from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. In Hope, however, we have a unique female immigrant who showcases a very different scenario of twenty-first century Ireland. What Hope tells Eveline during their stay in Galway is quite telling: “Do you think I will let you touch me, because you have brought me here, hidden me away? Do you think I am your slave? No, no, I whispered” (44). This passage demonstrates that the traditional conceptions of gender and migration have undergone dramatic changes in the twenty-first-century Irish society. First, women in contemporary Irish society are no longer submissive and subordinate to their male counterparts but resistant to male dominance. This subversion of gender stereotypes aside, Hope’s refusal to be Eveline’s slave also signals the African immigrant’s confrontation of the white/black racial hierarchy which is prevalent in the white-dominated Irish society. The Irish have been confronted with defining Irish-ness for centuries. Irish literature, especially in the twentieth century, has been beset by ambiguity, by the antitheses of Protestant and Catholic, English and Irish, and so on. These ambivalences echo the duality of Irish-ness suggested by Seamus Heaney, who argues that the either/or mentality is far from common in Ireland, while the both/and logic permeates in the everyday lives of the Irish people (21–23). In a word, self-conflicted in one way or another, the Irish people have been forced to make compromises in the continuously contradictory systems and hybrid cultures they have encountered. Crucially, contemporary Ireland is set in an increasingly globalizing world, a world in which notions like nation and gender are being reconsidered and redefined. For instance, the European element that has been growing in Irish society in the last few decades is challenging grass-roots Irish identity (Kiberd, “Modern Ireland” 97). Recently, this “increasingly Europeanized republic” faces still another challenge— the rise of immigration (Eagleton131). The duality of Irishness emphasizes the Irish ability to thrive during incessant conflicts and compromises. This capacity can potentially help create what Bhabha calls “the third space,” a hybrid culture that allows people from different cultures to emerge, coexist, and prosper along with each other (Rutherford 207–21).

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6 “Do You Think I’m Your Slave?”: Gender …

6.5 Conclusion Donal Ryan’s “Eveline” presents a very interesting picture of contemporary Ireland, where conceptions of gender and migration have been greatly challenged and reconfigured. As depicted in Joyce’s “Eveline,” Irish women used to be overburdened with responsibilities, to the point that they aspired to escape familial and social constraints through emigration. However, although emigration has been a prevalent phenomenon in Irish society for centuries, it is immigration (especially immigrants from non-EU countries) that has been troubling for Ireland during and after the Celtic Tiger boom. As Ryan’s story demonstrates, typical Irish images of women, such as Catherine ni Houlihan and the Madonna have given way to the empowered African asylum seeker, who can ideally bring “hope” to women and to the host country. It is expected that an increasing number of similar transformations will be seen in the ever-changing Irish society of the twenty-first century.

References Barret, Alan, and Adele Bergin. 2007. The economic contribution of immigrants in Ireland. In Immigration and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland, ed. Bryan Fanning, 63–83. Manchester: Manchester UP. Print. Brown, Terence. 2004. Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922–2002. London: Harper Perennial. Print. Eagleton, Terry. 1998. Postcolonialism: The case of Ireland. In Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity, ed. David Bennett, 125–134. London: Routledge. Print. Fanning, Bryan. 2007. Racism, rules, and rights. In Immigration and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland, ed. Bryan Fanning, 6–26. Manchester: Manchester UP. Print. Fanning, Bryan. 2011. Immigration and Social Cohesion in the Republic of Ireland. Manchester: Manchester UP. Print. Fanning, Bryan. 2012. Developmental immigration in the Republic of Ireland and Taiwan. Taiwan in Comparative Perspective 4:154–175. Print. Hall, Stuart. 1990. Cultural identity and diaspora. In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford, 207–221. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Print. Heaney, Seamus. 1990. Correspondences: Emigrants & inner exiles. In Migrations: The Irish at Home and Abroad, ed. Richard Kearney. Dublin: Wolfhound P. Print. Inglis, Tom. 2008. Global Ireland: Same Difference. New York: Routledge. Print. Joyce, James. 2000. Dubliners. London: Penguin. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 1987. Modern Ireland: Postcolonial or European? In Not on Army Map: Essays on Postcoloniality and Cultural Nationalism, ed. Stuart Murray, 81–100. Exeter: U of Exeter P. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 1989. Irish literature and Irish history. In The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland, ed. Roy F. Foster, 275–338. Oxford: Oxford UP. Print. Kiberd, Declan. 2005. The Irish Writer and the World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Lentin, Alana. 2008. Racism, anti-racism and the western state. In Identity, Belonging and Migration, eds. Gerard Delanty, Ruth Wodak and Paul Jones, 101–119. Liverpool: Liverpool UP. Print. Loyal, Steven. 2003. Welcome to the celtic tiger: Racism, immigration and the state. In The End of Irish History?, eds. C. Coulter and S. Coleman, 112–136. Manchester: Manchester UP. Print.

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Loyal, Steven. 2011. Understanding Immigration in Ireland: State, Capital and Labour in a Global Age. Manchester: Manchester UP. Print. Murphy, Maureen O’Rourke. 1987. Irish Literature: A Reader. New York: Syracuse UP. Print. Murphy, Michael. 2012. Multiculturalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. Print. O’Brien, Edna. 1987. The Country Girls Trilogy. New York: Penguin, Print. O’Sullivan, Niamh. 2013. From boom to bust to flight. Survival 55(2):211–220. Print. Parekh, Bhikhu. 2000. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Print. Paseta, Senia. 2003. Modern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford UP. Print. Rutherford, Jonathan. 1990. The third space: Interview with Homi Bhabha. In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford, 207–221. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Print. Ryan, Donal. 2014. Eveline. In Dubliners 100, ed. Thomas Morris, 38–45. Dublin: Tramp P. Print. Synge, John M. 1998. The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays. Oxford: Oxford UP. Print. Younge, Gary. 2010. Who Are We?— And Should it Matter in the 21st Century?. London: Penguin. Print.

Conclusion

Ireland is a country with a unique social, religious, historical, and colonial history. The secondary status of Ireland as a British colony had a significant impact on Irish identity politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a result of Irish nationalist campaigns, the Catholic Church and its influence, and Celtic myths and legends, Ireland was idealized as a woman, and Irish women were taught to be docile and submissive. Regretfully, Irish women, who have long been fictionalized as caretakers of their families, served merely as subordinate citizens of their country even in the later decades of the twentieth century. The mythical image of a feminized Ireland, in conjunction with the conventional image of Virgin Mary, inspired many Irish nationalists to commit to armed struggle and revolutions. These revolutionaries, mostly males, saw themselves as sacrificing their lives for their female compatriots’ freedom and chastity because, while dying for their feminized country, simultaneously they were fighting for their motherland. Accordingly, Irish women were traditionally subject to men’s protection and their manipulation. However, the last decade of the twentieth century saw Irish women change from idealized conceptions into lawyers and presidents. This transformation of women showcases a very different image of Ireland. Ireland in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has become increasingly desexualized. It is moving toward a contemporary culture that is neither feminized nor exclusive. As a nation, it accommodates a broader range of political, religious, sexual, and ethnic voices. Transformations in gender and sexuality were evidenced by the victories of Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese in their presidential elections in 1990 and 1997, respectively, and in the Irish people’s support for women’s right to abortion in the 2018 referendum (Coulter 1–2; Cahill 427–28). It is also evidenced by the growing popularity of Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, who led the oncemarginalized party to its all-time zenith by attaining 24.5% of the first preference votes in the 2020 Irish general election. In addition to gender and sexual differences, contemporary Ireland is also characterized by diversity in other aspects, such as national identity and migration. These changes do not necessarily imply a better scenario. However, as the preceding chapters demonstrate, they present a very different Ireland in the contemporary world, © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 T. C. (Hawk). Chang, Traditions and Difference in Contemporary Irish Short Fiction, The Humanities in Asia 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4316-0

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one which is no longer stagnant, stereotyped, and exclusive but vibrant, flexible, and accommodating in keeping with the ever-evolving trends of the twenty-first century. This trend away from traditions toward change and difference has momentum, and it shows no signs of ending.

References

Cahill, Susan. 2018. Celtic tiger fiction. In A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature, eds. Heather Ingman and Clíona Ó Gallchoir, 131–148. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print. Coulter, Carol. 1993. The Hidden Tradition: Feminism, Women & Nationalism in Ireland. Cork: Cork UP. Print.

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Index

A Abbey Theater, The, 13, 14, 26, 27 Abortion, 8 Adaptation, 47 African immigrants, 68 Aisling writing, 53, 66 Aisling, The, 64 Alice Milligan, 16 All That Matters, v, 2, 4, 6, 10 Ambivalence, 68 1993 Amendment, The, 8 Andersen, 43, 47 Andersen’s Thumbelina, vii Aogan Ó Rathaille, 64 Araby, 4 Arnold, Matthew, 52 A Tale of the Bird, 44, 48, 49 A Tale of the Shoe, 44

B Babara Walker, 44 Bhabha, 56, 70, 71 Binchy, 4, 10 Binchy, Maeve, vi, 2, 6 Blunt, 19, 20, 22 Boland, Eavan, 21 Breakfast on Pluto, vi

C Casualties of Peace, 31 Catherine ni Houlihan, 72 Cathleen Ni Houlihan, v, 1, 36, 54 Catholic, 71 Catholic Church, The, v, 6, 8, 37, 75 Catholicism, 2, 7, 35, 68

Catholic religion, The, 8, 33, 54, 59, 67 Celtic legends, 35 Celtic Tiger, The, vii, viii, 36, 40, 63 Cherish, 5 Cinderella, 44 Colonization, vii Commission on the Status of Women, 5 Constance Markievicz, 3 1983 Constitutional Amendment, The, 8 1937 Constitution, The, 2, 24 Contemporary Ireland, vi, vii, viii Coole Park, 1929, 13 Council for the Status of Women, The, 5 Country Girls’ Trilogy, The, 2, 4, 31 Cultural diversity, 56, 69 Cultural essentialism, 69 Cultural identity, 13 Cultural nationalism, 17 Cumann na mBan, 3

D Dáil Éireann, 6 Dervorgilla, 17, 20, 25 De Valera, 3 Discipline and Punish, 16 Diversity, 75 Donoghue, 43, 44 Donoghue, Emma, vi, vii, 43–45, 49 Down by the River, 31 Dubliners, vi, 7, 63

E Éamon de Valera, 2 Elizabeth Bishop, 26 Emigration, viii, 3, 72

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80 Empty Family, The, 14 Essentialism, 54 European Union, The, 5 Europe-centered, 69 Eveline, viii, 63–65, 67, 69, 72

F Fairy tales, vii, 43, 44, 49 Family, The, 2 Father figures, 4 Female emigration, 7 Feminist fairy tale, vii Feminist movement, 5 Feminist re-writings, 49 Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, The, 6 Foucault, 20, 25 Francesca Lia Block, 44 Frank O’Connor, 40

G Gaelic English, 35 Gender and sexual identity, v Gender identity, 58 George Bernard Shaw, vi George Moore, 13 Grania, 20, 25 Gregory, vii

H Hag of Beara, The, 4 Hag of Beare, The, 53, 64, 66 Hall, Stuart, 56 Hans Christian Andersen, vii, 44 Helena Molony, 3 Henry James, 23, 25, 26 Hiberno-English, 35 Homi Bhabha, 56, 69 House of Splendid Isolation, 32 Hybrid, 71

I Identity, 51, 54, 64 Immigration, viii, 68, 72 Inghinidhe na hÉireann, 3 IRA, The, 32 Irish, 17 Irish-American, 35 Irish identity, 10, 56, 58, 68 2020 Irish general election, The, 75 Irish landscape, 35

Index Irish Melodies, vii, 31 Irish migrants, 31, 33, 34, 39 Irishness, v, vi, vii, viii, 51, 52, 54–56, 58–60, 71 Irish women, 1–3, 5–9, 11, 24, 64, 75 Irishwomen United, 5

J Jacques Derrida, 24 James Joyce, vi, viii Jen, Gish, vi, viii, 55, 60 Joyce, 4, 7, 63–65

K Kerry Babies case, The, 6 Kiberd, v Kissing the Witch, vii, 43, 49 Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins, 43

L Lady Gregory, vi, 1, 13–27, 31, 53 Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, 14, 19 Landing, 44 Little Africa, 39 Love in a Dark Time, 14

M Madonna, 64, 72 Mark Dorty, 26 Mary Colum, 16 Mary Donnell, 39 Mary Lou McDonald, 75 Mary McAleese, 6, 75 Mary Robinson, 6, 75 Master, The, 25 Maud Gonne, 3 McAleese, 6 Michel Foucault, 16 Migration., 75 Mother Ireland, 1, 6, 53 Multicultural, 54, 56, 60, 68, 70 Multiculturalism, 56, 69–71 Municipal Gallery Revisited, The, 13

N Narrative point of view, 65 National identity, v, 75 Nationalism, vi, 2, 7, 10, 14, 17

Index National University Women Graduates’ Association, The, 3 New Dubliners, vi, 2 Nostalgia, vi, vii, 32, 35, 36, 39 Nostalgic, 31

O Object Lessons, 21 O’Brien, Edna, vi, vii, 1, 2, 4, 31, 39, 40, 53, 66 On the Study of Celtic Literature, 52 Oscar Wilde, 26

P Patriarchy, 44 Patrick McCabe, vi Playboy of the Western World, The, 4, 54 Post- Celtic Tiger Era, The, 32 Postmodern writing philosophy, 23 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 66 Professions for Women, 21 Protestant, 71

R Racial discrimination, 69 Racism, 59, 63, 68 1983 Referendum, The, 5 2018 Referendum, The, 75 Reproduction, 8, 10 Re-writing, 22, 24, 47, 48, 63 Riders to the Sea, 1 Rising of the Moon, The, 13, 16, 25 Robinson, 6 Romantic Ireland, 34, 39 Ryan, Donal, vi, viii, 63, 64, 67, 69, 72

S Saints and Sinners, vii, 31 Sealed Letter, The, 44 Seamus Heaney, 34 Second Sex, The, 15

81 Shovel Kings, vii, 31–33, 36, 39, 40 Silence, vi, 14, 15, 18, 19, 23, 25, 27 Simone de Beauvoir, 15 Sir William Gregory, 14, 16, 20, 22–24, 26 Slammerkin, 44 Spreading the News, 13, 16 Stir-Fry, 43 St Patrick’s Day, 33 Synge, J. M., 1, 4, 13, 54, 66

T Tale of the Bird, The, vii, 44, 45 The Street, 39 Third space, The, 71 Thomas Mann, 26 Thomas Moore, vii, 31 Thumbelina, vii, 43, 44, 47 Time and Tide, 31 Tóibín, Colm, vi, 14, 18, 19, 25–27, 39 Travelling Man, The, 1, 16, 17

V Virgin Mary, 64, 75

W Whiteness, 68 Who’s Irish?, vi, viii, 52, 55, 58, 60 Who’s Irish (1999), viii Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 15, 27 Women’s Political Association, The, 5 Woolf, Virginia, 21 Workhouse Ward, The, 16, 17, 25

X X Case, The, 8 Xenophobia, viii, 63

Y Yeats, W. B., vii, 1, 13, 26, 31, 53, 66