The Big House: Space, Place, and Identity in Irish Fiction

University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)

The Big House: Space, Place, and Identity in Irish FictionAuthor(s): Claire NorrisSource: New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 107-121Published by: University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557910 .

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Claire Norris

The Big House:

Space, Place, and Identity in Irish Fiction

How does Irish fiction stand out as being "Irish"? Irish novels are markedly Irish?from Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800), the "first truly Irish

novel"1 to the recent fiction of Maeve Binchy and Niall Williams. On many occasions Ireland itself is presented as a character in the text, as in James Joyce's

Dubliners (1914)? where Dublin and its people stand for the whole of Ireland,

enhanced by the detail and exactness of the Dublin sites, streets, and characters.

In his 1988 critical history of the Irish novel, James M. Cahalan points out that

"the Big House novel was the most popular and enduring subgenre within the

Irish novel, except for the Irish historical novel."2 What is clear is that these fic

tions could not be set anywhere else; the action must take place in Ireland.

With both these genres the emphasis falls upon the Irish element?either from

the historical point of view or with a strong image (the Big House), which

evokes the Protestant Ascendancy. The spatial frames of Irish fiction are set and

determined, despite their occasional "disturbance" by visitors. Space and place in Irish fiction play an integral role in both the creation and rediscovery of iden

tity, on both a personal and a national level.

Published in 1800, Castle Rackrent may be seen as a novella or tale, owing to

its brevity. Its full and weighty title?Castle Rackrent, An Hibernian Tale: Taken

from Facts, and from the Manners of the Irish Squires, before the Year 1/82?iron

ically backs up the case for the text as tale over novel. Regardless, Edgeworth's title draws attention to the book's "Irishness."3 You know it is set in Ireland and

is about Irish people. Sydney Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl (1806) does this too,

but in a more subtle and discreet way. Indeed, later Irish fiction?from

Somerville and Ross's The Real Charlotte (1894) through James Joyce's fiction

and on to William Trevor's Fools of Fortune (1983)?does not seem to feel the

need to declare itself as Irish so early on. This change of tactic suggests that Irish

i. James Cahalan, The Irish Novel: A Critical History (Boston: Twayne, 1988), p. xxii.

2. Cahalan, p. 73,

3. Cahalan, p. 14.

NEW HIBERNIA REVIEW/lRIS ?IREANNACH NUA, 8:1 (SPRING/EARRACH, 2004), IO7-HI



The Big House: Space, Place, and Identity in Irish Fiction

fiction had finally found a secure footing in world literature, so it no longer needed to highlight itself as something different.

Despite this, Irish fiction is still "different" because of place and space. In

Writing Women and Space (1994), Catherine Nash argues that in Irish fiction,

place operates on three levels: "The abstract level of the nation ... the visual rela

tionship to place associated with the concept of'landscape' [and]... the sensual

lived experience of the local environment."4 Reinforcing this is Edmund Burke's

argument that "National identity begins with local attachment and extends

outward, encompassing neighborhood, province, and ultimately nation."5 Place

is integral to the formation of national identity in any literature, but in Irish fic

tion place and space combine to create both a national and a personal identity.

Following Nash's sense of moving inward from nation, it seems only appropri ate to begin with language as a social constituent of national identity. Much Irish

fiction is written in English, and most of the early texts were published in Eng land first. The intended audience was English, yet the focus was heavily Irish.

This is reflected in Edgeworth and Owenson in particular, with their awareness

of writing for the Other. The preface to Castle Rackrent explains that Thady "tells

the history of the Rackrent family in his vernacular idiom."6 Some concessions

will be made to the English audience: the footnotes and editorial comments aid

"the ignorant English reader" (CR 4) in his understanding. Edge worth's wan

dering explanatory footnotes are taken up in The Wild Irish Girl, where they cre

ate a whole subplot, Owenson s, which threatens at times to take over from the

main narrative. Owenson's reader is forced to choose between following the

romantic narrative or indulging in the historical undercurrents. Flann O'Brien s

The Third Policeman (1967) later exploits this method, with copious notes of

nonsense dominating the main "absurd" plot.

Owenson plays with language in The Wild Irish Girl, beginning with Hora

tio's superficial and repetitive "Adieu?" for example. Owenson intersperses Latin

and French in the text: "I proceeded with my compagnon de voyage... you know

in an entre nous manner."7 Such phrases as "this I intended to present in propria

4- Catherine Nash, "Remapping the Body/land: New Cartographies of Identity, Gender, and Land

scape in Ireland," in Writing, Women, and Space, ed. Alison Blunt, Gillian Rose (New York: Gulford

Press, 1994), p. 228.

5. Quoted in Esther Wohlgemut, "Maria Edgeworth and the Question of National Identity," Stud

ies in English Literature, 39 (1999), 646,

6. Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 4; hereafter cited

parenthetically, thus: (CR 4).

7. Sydney Owenson, The Wild Irish Girl (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 136; hereafter

cited parenthetically, thus: ( WIG 136).

io8




persona, that I might get a kiss of the hand in return" ( WIG 160) convey arro

gance and showing off, to which the explanatory notes simply attest. Horatio's

letters are littered with quotations in various languages, bearing witness to his

vast literary and general knowledge. Owenson's use of languages here is a sub

tle criticism of the English, reflecting their mastery and arrogance, though by its

excesses revealing the extent of space between them and the nation they control.

It is striking that The Wild Irish Girl is so full of different languages, since it

is part of the "genre of the national tale."8 Because Horatio, the intrepid hero,

falls in love with Ireland and its culture as much as with Glorvina, it comes as

no surprise that he announces "I have actually begun the study of the Irish lan

guage" ( WIG 88). His embracing of Ireland seems to be both complete and inti

mate, as "Taught 'con amore' the Irish language becomes entangled with the

nonverbal language of the body."9 Horatio's relationship with Ireland reflects his

relationship with Glorvina; both are dependent upon language. Indeed, as Hor

atio embraces Ireland, the Irish language, and Glorvina, his once familiar iden

tity is disrupted and he is forced to confront a new, more truthful identity. When he returns once more to society?but in Dublin rather than London?

his reaction is noticeably different: "I am writing to you from the back room of

a noisy hotel in the center of a great and bustling city, my only prospect the

gloomy walls of the surrounding houses" (WIG 225). Horatio is no longer com

fortable or at ease with society and city life, as his identity has altered so much.

In a similar vein, Somerville and Ross's heroine of The Real Charlotte cross

es the borders of social class owing to her ability to converse with people on all

levels. Charlotte is just as happy talking to Christopher Dysart as she is with Julia

Duffy and Mary Norris: "If I hear another word out of yer mouth I'll give you and your fish to the police: and the streets'll be rid of you and yer infernal

tongue for a week."10 Her verbal ability enables her to fit in, to a certain extent,

with every level of society?the Irish peasants and the Anglo-Irish gentry.

Through language the reader?and eventually Christopher?discover the truth

about Charlotte Mullen. The "real" Charlotte is exposed through language,

despite her confidence and skill with it:

8. Ina Ferris, "Writing on the Border: The National Tale, Female Writing, and the Public Sphere,"

in Romanticism, History and the Possibilities of Genre, ed. Tilottama Rajan, Julia H. Wright {New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 86.

9. Ina Ferris, "Narrating Cultural Encounter: Lady Morgan and the Irish National Tale," Nine

teenth-Century Literature, 51 (1996), 298.

10. Edith Somerville and Violet Martin, The Real Charlotte (Nashville: J. S. Sanders, 1999)1 PP

236-37; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: {RC 236-37).

109




The accurate balance of the sentence and its nasal cadence showed that Charlotte

was delivering herself of a well-studied peroration. Her voice clashed with the

stillness as dissonantly as the clamour of the young herons. Her face was warm

and shiny, and Christopher looked away from it, and said to himself that she was

intolerable. (AC 351)

Language is a social constituent of national identity not just in early Irish fiction,

but in later texts also. Flann O'Brien's The Poor Mouth (1941) comments satiri

cally upon the plight of the Gaels at the hands of both nature and the English. O'Brien emphasizes language with numerous references to the Gaels and Gael

ic?some fifty-three mentions over two pages.11 The Gaels are poor and wallow

in their poverty: "... life was passing

us by and we were suffering misery, some

times having a potato and at other times having nothing in out mouths but

sweet words of Gaelic" (PM 99). Their language is their sustenance and identi

ty, which keeps them strong against the English yet the name "Jams O'Donnell"

is applied to all Gaels universally, denying them individuality and identity. The

very concept of the "Gaeligores" (Gaeilgeoiri) simply reflects a further exploita tion of the Irish: "One of the gentlemen broke a little bottle of water which Sitric

had, because, said he, it spoiled the effect" (PM 88). They want to keep the

native Irish poor, as like this they are marketable. To the English, Ireland and the

Irish language, are a commodity and any real identity is meaningless. As Edge worth points out in her tongue in cheek preface to Castle Rackrent, "when Ire

land loses her identity by an union with Great Britain, she will look back with

a smile of good-humored complacency on ... her former existence" (CR 5). For

Ireland to keep hold of its national identity, it seems that it needs to keep hold

of its language. In William Trevor's Fools of Fortune (1983), however, we see language as

dangerous, set up against the healing power of silence. It is not made clear

whether this is a result of the English overpowering the Irish, and of the grad ual disappearance of Gaelic, or whether Trevor s novel is simply making

a crit

icism against language in general and its inherent destructive force. Celeste

Loughman draws attention to the fact that, in Fools of Fortune, "Trevor focuses

on the power of language not only to preserve history but to create it, often with

disastrous effects."12 Language is dangerous; the raid on Kilneagh

was an act of

revenge for Doyle's death, who was punished for treachery. His tongue was the

instrument of his crime and, indirectly? others suffered. In this way, language was to blame for all the deaths in the novel. Loughman notes that "Without the

h. Flann O'Brien, The Poor Mouth, trans. Patrick C. Power (1941: Dalkey Archive Press, 1996),

pp. 54-55; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (PM 54-55).

12. Celeste Loughman, "The Mercy of Silence: William Trevor's Fools of Fortune" Eire-Ireland, 28

(i993)>87

110




relentless voice of Willie's mother repeating Rudkin's name or the stories of the

Quintons' and Ireland's violent past, the chance events could not have made

such an impact."13 The sequence of violence could have been put to rest if Evie

had not bullied Willie in this way. Imelda is treated similarly by Marianne

through direct words, overheard conversations, and written words from her

diary. Rather than succumb, in Loughman s words, "to the destructive force of

language," Imelda retreats into silence: "She made a whimpering sound and then

was silent."14 In doing this she can live in a mute, idyllic garden, "in which there

is no ugliness" (FF 192). For Imelda, silence is her escape, yet she still "listens"

to talk?not of Ireland past, present or future, but only of the garden and the

harvest (FF 192). In Ancestral Voices (1992), Max Deen Larsen claims that the concluding

pages of Fools of Fortune "develop a kind of fool's paradise regained, in which the

old order with its long shadow of carnage has been displaced by ambiguous gifts of the imagination, renewing the link to primal senses of value."15 In this way,

the violence and destruction of the Troubles are overcome by a return to the

land, a return to "primal values." Trevor clearly suggests that, in order for the

Irish to escape violence and maintain their identity, they should return to their

roots and set aside the political and social problems imposed on them by the

Other, the English.

Turning back from Trevor's Fools of Fortune to Castle Rackrent, it becomes

clear that Edgeworth's early novel "introduces several of the most distinctive fea

tures of the Irish novel," according to James Cahalan, "that would be evident in

many [later] books by many writers."16 Among those features is the tendency for

Irish novels "to have strong narrators and weak plots."17 In Irish fiction, the

main plot is weak so as to make way for stronger subplots reinforced by strong narrators. The chief subplot underlying the majority of Irish fiction is that of the

search for identity on two levels: on the personal level of the characters and on

the national level of Ireland. Every main plot must be substantially weak so as

to allow the subject to flourish and be explored.

History is a strong element of this subplot, and it moves towards a union of

Nash's abstract level of nation with the concept of landscape. In many Irish nov

els, whether part of the "national tale" or not, history constitutes an important

13- Loughman, 95.

14. William Trevor, Fools of Fortune (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 175; hereafter cited paren

thetically, thus: {FF 175).

15. Max Deen Larsen, "Saints of the Ascendancy: William Trevor's Big House Novels," in Ancestral

Voices: The Big House in Anglo-Irish Literature, ed. Otto Rauchbauer (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992),

p. 258.

16. Cahalan, p. 15.

17. Cahalan, p. 14.

Ill




and relevant part of the text. W. J. McCormack, writing also in Ancestral Voices, states that Castle Rackrent is "mock-elegiac, lamenting the decline and fall of the

Rackrent(s)."18 Whether a true elegy or not, Castle Rackrenfs sense of history remains strong. Likewise, Cahalan explains that Thady Quirk "laments the lost

pseudo-feudal world in which reputedly faithful stewards like himself suppos

edly lived happily ever after on the estates of their good hearted if incompetent landlords."19 Just as Trevor's Imelda dreams of an idyllic future, so Thady and

indeed Owneson's Prince of Inismore view the past idyllically. Irish history is bound up with that of the English, but is also distorted

because England remains the "outsider." Commenting on Lady Morgan, Ina

Ferris defines the Irish national tale as "the revenge of a subdued and oppressed

country upon her masters"20?either through the reader as outsider suffering

revenge through the novel, or through the English person coming to Ireland and

changing his opinion of it, as Horatio does. The Irish revenge comes out, despite its history and antagonism against the English, through the new and better

image of Ireland, which is presented to the English characters and audience.

Owenson exploits the sense of national history in The Wild Irish Girl by con

tinuously alluding to and paralleling Ireland with Classical Greece. By aligning Ireland repeatedly, in both text and footnotes, with this great and ancient civi

lization, Owenson stresses the importance and prominence of tradition and the

past in Ireland. Irish history precedes English control, as does Irish identity.

Though Trevor plays around with inherited gender constructs, he maintains

the sense of inheritance and history as a strong undercurrent and subplot. Con

sequently, Thomas Morrisey observes that "It is the forced relationship with

England that leads to the deaths at Kilneagh, but because of inter-marriage and

800 years of shared history the relationship is a complicated one."21 Willie and

Marianne's relationship reflects history repeating itself, as if there is no escape from it. Both Willie and Imeldas upbringings are immersed in history, with

endless stories, memories, and visions of the past. During the raid at Kilneagh, Willie is haunted by images of Anna Quinton: "I saw that the teeth glistening in

the confessional were Anna Quinton s, which was why Father Kilgarrif read her

i8. W. J. McCormack, "Setting and Ideology: With Reference to the Fiction of Maria Edgeworth," in Ancestral Voices (1992), p. 52.

19. Cahalan, p. 15.

20. Ferris, "Narrating Cultural Encounter" (1996), 288.

21. Thomas Morrissey, "Trevor's Fools of Fortune: The Rape of Ireland," Notes on Modern Irish Lit

erature, 2 (1990), 60. Trevor s novel also reverses, in Cahalan's words, "the longstanding Irish nov

elistic tradition" of portraying an Englishman coming to Ireland and loving an Irish woman. James

Cahalan, Double Visions: Women and Men in Modern and Contemporary Irish Fiction (Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 163.

112




letters" (FF 44). Indeed, Annas story is never far from the surface. Gregory Schirmer argues that "The strength of Anna s commitment, and the price that

she paid for it, are embedded in .. .[Willie's] character."22 Her influence over

him is very strong indeed, maybe even stronger than that of his parents or

Father Kilgarrif. In this way, the past dictates Willie's actions more than the pres ent does, and through him the past is made present. In a similar way, Imelda is

haunted by a past that she has only heard about. Her visions of it are mere lib

erties of her imagination that confine her to a past which is not hers, but her

father's.

Connected to the strong sense of history in Irish fiction?and grounding the

argument further in Nash's concept of landscape?is the image of the Big House

in Irish fiction and the subgenre of "Big House novels." As Otto Rauchbauer

explains in the introductory essay to Ancestral Voices, "For more than two cen

turies, the Big House has been a setting, a subject matter, a symbol, a motif,

[and] a theme in Irish fiction."23 Strikingly, then, in Castle Rackrent, "There is

no reference to the Big House," because it is narrated from within. Attention

does not need to be drawn to the Big House in the early 1800s, as it was such a

common sight on the landscape.24 In later novels, references to the Big House

grow more prominent?from the ruined castle at Inismore in The Wild Irish

Girl to the cursed Kilneagh house in Fools of Fortune,

Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent tells the story of several generations of one

family under one roof, but McCormack observes that building is not "stable,

fixed [or with] integral qualities," and he goes on to raise the question of

whether Castle Rackrent is in fact a castle or Big House, for the "closeness of

farm-yard to dinner-table is quite in keeping with the small-scale houses "25 Sir

Patrick's idea of fitting the chicken house "up for the purpose of accommodat

ing his friends and the public in general, who honoured him with their com

pany unexpectedly" (CR10), anticipates the ambitions of O'Brien's O'Coonassa

family. On their neighbor's advice, the family in The Poor Mouth builds a hut to

deal with the overcrowding of people and cattle in their house. Rather than

putting the animals into it, they sleep there themselves, but "we were so cold and

drenched wet that it is a wonder we did not die straight away and we couldn't

get any relief until we went back to the house" (PM 20). Like the Rackrents, their

fate is tied up with their house.

22. Gregory Schirmer, William Trevor (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 148.

23. Otto Rachbauer, "The Big House and Irish History: An Introductory Sketch," in Ancestral Voic

es, p. 17.

24. McCormack, p. 43.

25. McCormack, pp. 44-45

113




Thus, the appearance of each landlord of Castle Rackrent is mirrored by the

house itself. As the landlord increases in incompetence and fails, the house falls

into increasing disrepair and decay. Sir Murtaugh's greed leads Thady to remark

"that he [Sir Murtaugh] did not like to hear me talk of repairing fences" (CR14). In a similar way Sir Kit's spending and gambling abroad meant that the agent "ferreted the tenants out of their lives" (CR 21). Whether the landlords were at

home or away, the house and estate did not fare well. With Sir Condy comes the

climax of destruction; he loses his money, his wife, and eventually Castle Rack

rent itself. When Sir Condy leaves Castle Rackrent, the house is far from being in good condition, Thady tells us,

Then as I heard my master coming to the passage door, I finished fastening up

my slate against the broken pane,... "This window is all racked and tattered "

(says I,) ... "It is all racked and tattered, plain enough" (says he,) "and never

mind mending it, honest old Thady" says he, "it will do well enough for you

andr (Ci? 68-69)

Sir Condy s dismissive and negligent attitude personifies the laxity and fall of the

Protestant Ascendancy.

Owenson's historical novel takes up this thread at a later date, after the "cas

tle" is ruined. Shining through those ruins, through the negligent landlords of

Castle Rackrent, is the strong Irish pride of the inhabitants of Inismore. The

Prince reminisces of a Gaelic Golden Age when things were better: "It was not

always thus?this hall once echoed to the sound of mirth and the strain of gai

ety" (WIG 168). Horatio notes that "the Prince affects an air of grandeur, and

opulence?he keeps a kind of open table in his servants' hall, where a crowd of

labourers, dependents, and mendicants, are daily entertained" (WIG 168-69).

Yet, the Prince's glory days have ended, leaving him destitute and soon to be

arrested. His glory days are a return to the "reign" of Edgeworth's profligate Sir

Patrick. The question remains whether such glory days were ever that good in

the first place, or have been as romanticized as much as Ireland is in The Wild

Irish Girl. The focus certainly seems to be upon what Bernard Mac Laver ty describes in his novel Cal as "An Ireland which never was and never would be."26

Somerville and Ross's Big House family, the Dysarts, clearly indicate that the

destruction of the Big House?and the Ascendancy for which it stands?is

complete and final. R?diger Imhof explains that "The Dysarts represent the

Anglo-Irish Ascendancy but in a considerably degenerate phase,"27 particular

ly through the three main figures of the family?Lady Dysart, Sir Benjamin, and

26. Bernard MacLaverty, Cal (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), p. 83.

27. R?diger Imhof, "Somerville and Rosss: The Real Charlotte and The Big House oflnver" in Ances

tral Voices (1992), p. 98.

114




Christopher. Pamela is simply too good to be taken seriously as a member of the

Ascendancy. Lady Dysart is "well meaning but simple minded,"28 and com

pletely inefficient. Confined to a wheelchair, Sir Benjamin is practically senile,

thus reflecting the failing power of the Ascendancy. Imhof argues that Sir Ben

jamin stands for the "paralysed and impotent social order."29 Christopher, the

heir apparent, is much more sensible and capable than both his parents. Yet he

also reflects the deterioration of the Ascendancy, for at twenty-seven, he still

"seemed far from taking his place in the country." Christopher does not readi

ly fit any role, "he was not smart and aggressive enough for the soldiering type, not sporting enough for the country gentleman, but neither had he the docili

ty and attentiveness of the ideal curate; he could not even be lightly disposed of

as an eccentricity" ( WIG 50). However, after Sir Benjamin's death, he does take

on his new role surprisingly well. Imhof argues despite this, that Christopher "is

no match for Charlotte and that stratum of Irish society she represents."30 His

losing battle embodies the flailing Ascendancy, which is slowly being replaced

by the lower classes.

Somerville and Ross predict the future of the Dysart family in Julia Duffy and the decaying and dilapidated Gurthnamuckla. Once "a magnificent Big

House,"31 now both the castle and family are run down and defunct. Charlotte's

conniving usurpation of Julia mirrors that of Edgeworth's Sir Condy by Jason,

heightening a sense of fate, and the notion that those closest to the land should

own the land, rather than those with an abstracted power over it. The wistful

ness in Somerville and Ross's novel resembles that felt by the inhabitants of

Owenson's Inismore. It is focused in a different way in The Real Charlotte,

though. There, it comes from the authors rather than the characters, with their

boat trips, tennis parties, amateur plays, and dashing soldiers.32 The author's

wistfulness creates a sense that the fall and degeneration of the Ascendancy has

happened in a very real and definite way. The motif of the deteriorating Big House and its society recurs throughout

Irish fiction, appearing even in Irish short stories. In Michael McLaverty's "The

Game Cock," the Big House and its history stay with the narrator: "The Big House was in ruins, crows were nesting in the chimneys, and the lake was cov

ered with rushes and green scum."33 When he makes the wheels of the train

28. Imhof, p. 98.

29. Imhof, p. 99.

30. Imhof, p. 100.

31. Imhof, p. 97.

32. Imhof, p. 97.

33. Micheal McLaverty, "The Game Cock," in The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories, ed. Benedict

Kiely (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), p. 255.

115




chant on his journey home, "They took the land from the people ... God cursed

them,"one sees how much he was touched and affected by the historical pres ence of the house?it is his history too.34 It is the outside of the Big House that

is in focus in Mary Lavin's "A Memory." This is where her protagonist James

dies, "his face was pressed into the wet leaves and when he gulped for breath, the

rotted leaves were sucked into his mouth."35 Death and decay surround the Big House, as it no longer reigns strong. Likewise, in Elizabeth Bowen's "The Cat

Jumps," a grisly murder is continually alluded to. Abandoned because of this

crime, the house deteriorates: "white paint peeled from the balconies; the sun

... bleached the floral wallpapers."36 It seems clear that from the 1800s on, the

motif of the Big House often recurs in Irish fiction associated with death and

decay.

Trevor's Fools of Fortune creates a contrast between the once flourishing Big House and its burnt-out remains. Kilneagh is still an impressive sight from

afar, Marianne observes "the burnt-out house lay below me, its stark outline

beautiful against the pale landscape" (FF 129). Closer inspection reveals a very different picture: "Black walls exuding such damp bleakness... The weeds in the

hall were less green, less vigorous than they'd been that summer, and snow fell

in the drawing-room ... once been scarlet" (FF 129). Likewise, Ireland looks very different from afar than it does from close up, as Owenson's Horatio discovers

to his heart's delight. The Ascendancy still looks grand and magnificent, but in

truth it is not. The Big House stands as "symbolic of a social base,"37 as well as

for the Irish nation itself, but ambiguously so. As Otto Rauchbauer explains, the

Big House was once an "object of elegiac commemoration," but then its role

changed to "provide a backdrop for the drama of modern man s (and woman's) isolation"38 from self, society, and nation.

Trevor opens Fools of Fortune with another, equally stark contrast between

Kilneagh and Woodcombe Rectory?two Big Houses on opposite sides of the

Irish Sea. As striking as the contrast between life at Kilneagh before and after the

raid, this one proves as telling, but in different ways. Now that the Anglo-Irish

Ascendancy has fallen, it appears to be acceptable to compare England and Ire

land in such a blunt way. Most of the action of Trevor's novel takes place on Irish

soil, apart from Marianne's stay in Switzerland?the famously neutral coun

try?and apart from Willie's exile in Italy, a country remarkably similar to Ire

land in numerous ways. Marianne and her mother come to Ireland twice, before

34- MacLaverty, p. 256.

35. Mary Lavin, "A Memory," in The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories, p. 247.

36. Elizabeth Bowen, "The Cat Jumps," in The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories, p. 190.

37. McCormack, p. 33.

38. Rachbauer, p. 17.

li?




Marianne decides to remain there. Though raised in Ireland, Willie leaves, only to return when "Enough years have passed" (FF 183). Trevor's Ireland maybe the

subject of much violence?and one must not overlook the role of the English in the guise of the violent Black and Tans?it is also the site of life. Fools of For

tune suggests that it is better to have life and violence than neither.

At the opening of Trevor's novel, Woodcombe Rectory is full of voices of the

present, with all the tourists and visitors. In Kilneagh, only echoes can be heard,

yet these echoes create a truer picture of the past than a town "famous for the

delicacy of its mullioned windows" (FF 9). While Kilneagh boasts of its mul

berry orchards, and connections to Normandy and the church, Woodcombe

boasts of "butter-scones and shortbread." (FF 9). Kilneagh is a much more real

place than the now-commercialized Woodcombe, which denies its Irish con

nections, thus denying part of its history. We see Ireland as rooted in its past, its

heritage, its land, and its religion denying nothing, even the bad and violent

aspects. England on the other hand, is rooted in the past as a way to make

money?sustaining the past or history at the price of truth.

History and the past, through the Big House motif in particular, are impor tant to Ireland and to Irish fiction. Both identity and the future are built up from

the past, so one should embrace it, as Kilneagh does, rather than reject or fab

ricate it, as Woodcombe Rectory does. Some Irish fiction reflects a desire to

ignore the past or move on regardless of it. Yet, as Joyce's "The Dead" so

poignantly reveals, Gabriel Conroy's "journey westward," whether literal or

metaphorical, is possible only now that he has faced the truth of his past, and

in doing so learnt the truth of his future.39 In contrast, the Bentleys, in Elizabeth

Bowen's "The Cat Jumps," did not think about the past history of their new

house and did all they could to physically alter the building: they "had the flo

ral wallpapers all stripped off;... they removed some disagreeably thick pink shades ... and had the paint renewed inside and out... The bedroom mantel

piece ... had to be scrubbed with chemicals."40 Despite their thoroughness, the

past still manages to cause havoc in their lives.

Bound up tightly with historical presence in Irish fiction is a consciousness

of fate and the inevitable. After a succession of incompetent landlords, it stands

to reason that eventually the house will fall, as in Castle Rackrent. Secrets are

never a good omen in fiction, especially when between lovers or family. Hora

tio's secret heritage had to be kept a secret in The Wild Irish Girl, but also had

to be revealed eventually, as did the identity of the secret benefactor and Hora

tio^ father s secret relationship. The only controlled thing about the situation,

39- James Joyce, Dubliners (New York: Dover, 1991), p. 152; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (D

152).

40. Bowen, p. 191.

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was when it would all be discovered. Even Horatio's arrival and journeyings to and from Inismore are chance. They are tied to fate, with his horse taking him there, as if drawn to the place: "When he had passed the avenue of the

lodge the animal instinctively took that path" (WIG 232). Owenson suggests,

thus, that Horatio's destiny lay in Inismore, through his historical and family connections to the place. Charlotte Mullen's destiny is never to be happy or get

what she wanted in Somerville and Ross's novel, for she is, as Cahalan notes,

tragic. Not only is she caught between different social strata, but her passion for Roddy Lambert is her fatal flaw.41 When he is finally free and available to

marry her at the end of the novel, he is no longer a "worthy" figure. He is use

less to Charlotte now, because of her new position in society, so she is still

unable to be with him. Despite all that she has done to others in the novel,

Charlotte is portrayed also as a victim, tormented by "the biting thought of

how she had been hoodwinked and fooled" (RC 300), so that "each time

Charlotte stood before her glass her ugliness spoke to her of failure, and goad ed her to revenge" (RC 310). Likewise, the sense of fate and the past as integral to the future marks Trevor's novel, although Marianne hopes that "the most

important things of all happen by chance" (FF 164). From the very beginning of Fools of Fortune, Trevor emphasizes the idea that history repeats itself and,

consequently, proposes the unavoidability of fate. Indeed, ghosts of the past haunt the novel, thus emphasizing Anna Quinton's emergence as a tangible and real character in the story.

Violence, invasion, and poverty are explored in various ways in Irish fiction.

Sometimes these themes are exploited and overemphasized because they are

part of the Irish identity and so must be claimed and reinforced as such. The

border between Nash's concept of landscape and local environment is blurred

in Irish fiction. As the house in Castle Rackrent reflects the state of its owners,

so the land and surroundings in The Wild Irish Girl reflect Owenson's charac

ters. In this national tale, Owenson unites the national with the natural. Nation

al identity becomes caught up with and dependent upon the surroundings. This

is mirrored by the sense of personal identity as connected to place, space, and

land, as when Trevor's Imelda writes: "Imelda Quinton is my name, Ireland is

my nation. A burnt house is my dwelling place, Heaven's my destination"

(FF 155). Trevor's emphasis upon the personal as connected to nation, space,

place, and land is clear. For personal identity to be created, the national and

physical space need to be identified and recognized as belonging to the "I."

4L Cahalan, Double Visions, p. 76.

118




With Imelda's inscription Trevor echoes the more famous* inscription in the

flyleaf of Stephen Dedalus's geography book. There Stephen reads: "himself, his

name and where he was."

Stephen Dedalus

Class of Elements

Clongowes Wood College

Sallins

County Kildare

Ireland

Europe

The World

The Universe42

More than Imelda's, Stephen's inscription emphasizes the connection between

identity and place on a local level and Stephen's quest for personal identity, thus

reflecting the intimate connection between national identity?politics and reli

gion?and spatial awareness.

In The Wild Irish Girl, the sense of isolation is most striking, but it is this

space that Horatio needs in his search for a new identity. He needs to be com

pletely cut off from his own culture and heritage, so as to embrace fully a dif

ferent one. In The Real Charlotte, Francie is also abstracted from her local envi

ronment and has to construct a new identity for herself, to deal with the new

surroundings. Her stay with the Dysarts causes her "to doubt as to the fitness of

her social methods" (RC132). Like Horatio, she is an outsider and must take on

a different cultural outlook to succeed.

The connection to place through pride, in Castle Rackrent and The Wild

Irish Girl, comes out differently in The Real Charlotte. Here, both Julia and

Charlotte stand out as the "real" landowners through their intimate connection

to the land, "as the stony country began to open its arms to the rich, sweet pas

tures, an often repressed desire asserted itself, and Charlotte heaved a sigh that

was as romantic in its way" (RC 67). Wayne Hall argues that "The novel's main

patterns . . .

consistently reflect an awareness of place and also question any

sense of entitlement; no character occupies a place to which he or she can be

said truly and naturally to belong."43 It is the question of entitlement that

muddies the waters, for many of the characters in The Real Charlotte are dis

placed and uneasy.

42. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ed. Chester G. Anderson (New York: Nor

ton Critical Editions, 1968), p. 15.

43. Wayne E. Hall, "Landscape as Frame in The Real Charlotte," New Hibernia Review, 3, 3 (1999),

98.

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However, the answer is not always to leave Ireland. Francie and Lambert's

honeymoon in Paris and the discomfort felt there reflects that of George Moore's hero in "Home Sickness," who is not at home in either space?Ireland or America. Ultimately, his thoughts return to Ireland: "The things he saw most

clearly were the green hillside,... the greater lake on the distance, and behind

it the blue line of wandering hills."44 He is drawn toward the nation he is not

completely comfortable in, but which he can never quite leave alone. The Ulster

poet John Hewitt wrote in "The Colony" that

... we have rights drawn from the soil and sky:

the use, the pace, the patient years of labour,

the rain against the lips, the changing light, ... this is our country also, no where else;

and we shall not be outcast in the world.45

Hewitt's strong statement "this is our country" reverberates throughout Irish

fiction, and the Irish novel in particular. Irish people?native Gael or Planter?

are intimately connected to the land, it belongs to them, and they are as much

a part of it as it is of them. For ail the dissatisfaction felt by Irish people, Ireland

is their home, it is a part of them and they rightfully claim their space. As

Ignatius Gallaher says, in Joyce's love ode to the city from which he is exiled, "I

feel a ton better since I landed again in dear dirty Dublin" (D 47). In a similar

way the love between Willie and Marianne is sparked in the local environs of

Kilneagh. Willie explains,

I have loved that summer all my life? I stole glances at you while we stood near

Mrs Hayes's shop and looked down at the city, at spires and roofs and water,...

I showed you the Opera house and Mercier Street Model School... We strolled

by the river and the railway track ... all the time I wanted to take your hand

(FF 94-95)

Nash's distinctions of nation, landscape, and local environment in Writing, Women, and Space, are mixed in much Irish fiction, for they all concern to the

creation of a personal and national identity. Irish fiction represents the Irish

people on both a personal and a national level; it tells their story, and speaks their words. It operates with a heightened level of identity. Spanning two cen

turies, Irish fiction brings the Irish space and the Irish identity to the rest of the

world. More often than not, it is Ireland itself that takes center stage. As happens to Owenson's Horatio, the reader falls in love with the great nation, as much as

it does with Glorvina. Cahalan remarks that, at the beginning of the nineteenth

44- George Moore, "Homesickness "

in The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories,, p. 96.

45. lohn Hewitt, "The Colony," quoted in Ancestral Voices, p. ix.

120




century "it was as if the Irish novel had achieved its own epiphany, moving out

of the shadows into the bright blaze of a very different era."46 Ireland as a nation

found its footing and rediscovered its roots, just as Irish fiction took a leap of

faith into the unknown to assume its place in world literature. Irish fiction

brings us face to face with Ireland and the Irish people, teaching us about

them?about who they are and what they stand for?while at the same time

raising interesting and probing questions about our own spatial frames and our

identity.

^ INDIANA UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

46. Cahalan, p. 126.

News of Authors: Nuacht faoi ?dair

The Spring, 1991, issue of New Hibernia Review (volume 3, number 1) opened by

presenting five of Terrence Winch's sometimes antic, sometimes bittersweet

vignettes of life as an Irish musician as "In The Band: Five Sessions." Hanging Loose Press has recently issued a longer collection of Winch's personal writings on the Irish-American music scene? including the material that first appeared here? as That Special Place: New World Irish Stories (ISBN 1-931236-34-8).

Readers with an interest in economic history and in mid-twentieth century Ireland will recall Dr. Gary Murphy's article, "The Irish Government, the

National Farmers' Association, and the European Economic Community

1955-1964," from volume 6, number 4 (Winter, 2002). A revised version of this

article appears as a portion of Gary Murphy's new book, Economic Realignment and the Politics of EEC Entry, Ireland 1948-1972 (ISBN 1-930901-73-9) published in 2003 as a title in the Irish Research Series of Maunsel Press.

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The Big House: Space, Place, and Identity in Irish Fiction

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