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Reading the Gendered Shame Complex in the Fiction of John Mcgahern and Edna O'brien

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Reading the Gendered Shame Complex in the Fiction of John Mcgahern and Edna O'brien Bodies of Shame and the Shame of Bodies: Reading the Gendered Shame Complex in the Fiction of John McGahern and Edna O’Brien A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2018 Laura C. Schlüter School of Arts, Languages and Cultures 2 Table of Contents List of Abbreviations 3 Abstract 4 Declaration 5 Copyright Statements 5 The Author 6 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Binding Binaries and Duelling Dualisms 13 The Community 24 ‘I […] believed I had done something awful’: Censorship in Ireland 34 The Gendered Weight of Irish History 47 Part 1: The Female Body 58 Fashioning Femininity 59 (Un)dressing the Female Body: Assembling A Semblance of Identity 62 The Sexual Economy 82 ‘Do not appear if you do not want to disappear’: Abject Bodies 97 ‘Pink for a boy and blue for a girl’: Entrenching the old tropes? 108 Part 2: The Male Body 118 ‘I’m not half the man you are’: Anxious Masculinities, Anxious Men 119 ‘A generation wild with ideals’: Ireland’s Postcolonial Shame 124 Hypermasculinity 141 Competing Masculinities, Competitive Men 164 Part 3: Comparing Bodies, Competing Bodies 184 The (In)equality of Sexual Abuse 185 ‘The struggle towards repeated failure’: McGahern’s Boy and O’Brien’s Girl 197 Conclusion 227 Bibliography 244 Word Count: 78,754 3 List of Abbreviations John McGahern TB McGahern, John. The Barracks [1963] (London: Faber and Faber, 2008). TD McGahern, John. The Dark [1965] (London: Faber and Faber, 2008). AW McGahern, John. Amongst Women [1990] (London: Faber and Faber, 2008). TRS McGahern, John. That They May Face The Rising Sun [2002] (London: Faber and Faber, 2009). Edna O’Brien TCG O’Brien, Edna. The Country Girls [1960] (London: Books, 2007). GGE O’Brien, Edna. Girl with Green Eyes [1962] (London: Orion Books, 2007). GMB O’Brien, Edna. Girls in their Married Bliss [1964] (London: Orion Books, 2007). APP O’Brien, Edna. A Pagan Place [1970] (New York: Mariner Books, 2001). DBTR O’Brien, Edna. Down by the River [1996] (London: Orion Books, 2000). ITF O’Brien, Edna. In The Forest (London: Orion Books, 2002). 4 Abstract Critical analysis of the representation of shame in modern Irish fiction is noticeable only by its relative absence from the field. Indeed, there is a marked scarcity of scholarship that even acknowledge the presence of shame as a theme, and fewer still that explore its role and function. This project seeks to address this deficit by interrogating the place of shame in a modern Irish context, with specific reference to the work of two of Ireland’s pre-eminent twentieth-century novelists, John McGahern (1934-2006) and Edna O’Brien (b. 1930). This thesis argues the following: that, firstly, shame – both political and personal – represents a key element in the evolution of the postcolonial Irish cultural imagination; secondly, an approach to the modern Irish novel in terms of shame – or, to be more precise, a gendered shame complex – can lead to a new understanding of the relationship between gender, sexuality and nationality in the country’s cultural and political consciousness; and thirdly, in order to imagine a literature in which the postcolonial residue has been overcome, the concepts of ‘shame’ and ‘postcolonial existence’ must first be uncoupled. This project examines the presence and function of a shame complex in the works of McGahern and O’Brien using a gendered framework. It analyses both how shame is constructed and instilled in the psychological identity of characters, as well as the political and social utilisation of this transmitted shame complex by prevailing hegemonic power structures. In so doing, this thesis traces what I will argue is a transgenerational shame complex which indicates, on a literary level, a nation already bearing internally generated national scars. It additionally argues that intersectionality – that is, the tendency to accrete multiple power relations such as nation, sexuality and gender – must start to be troubled. Using a gendered approach, this project examines the different workings of shame in both male and female characters in the work of McGahern and O’Brien. It traces how these differences, however subtle, complicate the stereotypical fixed gender roles promulgated by twentieth-century Irish patriarchal, political, religious and educational discourses. This thesis is principally interested in how the shame complex is employed by both patriarchy and Catholicism to produce and transmit a gendered ideology, and how the characters are portrayed as responding to, subverting or conforming to this ideology. Shame plays a particularly prominent and powerful role in the regulation and self- regulation of the body to conform to fixed gender roles. In order to examine the militancy with which slippages and non-conformity are persecuted in order to privilege the heteronormative values of the hegemonic discourse, the instability of these roles is probed in order to unpack the culturally elusive but powerful phantom of ‘normal’ which starts to emerge in this period. 5 Declaration Some of the ideas in this doctoral thesis have their genesis in a 7000-word long essay I submitted as a requirement for the B.A. English and American Studies (2013) at the University of Manchester. However, there are no substantive instances of thematic overlap between that essay and this thesis, as the material has been so extensively developed that it no longer bears any resemblance to that earlier work. Copyright Statements i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=24420), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 6 The Author Laura Schlüter, née Hair, graduated from the University of Manchester in 2013 with a First Class Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature. In 2014, she received her Master’s Degree in Contemporary Literature and Culture with Distinction from the same institution. Acknowledgements My greatest debts are undoubtedly to Professor Laura Doan and Professor Liam Harte for their invaluable input and insight throughout their supervision of this thesis – I am sincerely grateful for the considerable time, effort, and energy they have given to my work. I would also like to extend my thanks to Dr. Clara Dawson for reading draft versions of this project and advising on revisions. I am additionally grateful for the financial assistance provided by a scholarship from Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the bursary funded by the President’s Doctoral Scholarship Scheme from the University of Manchester. Both were instrumental in enabling me to commence and complete this project. Finally, I am indebted to my husband, Martin Schlüter, for his unfailing encouragement and patience throughout this process: Du hast immer an mich geglaubt. Danke. I extend the same thanks to my parents, Wendy and Chris Hair, for supporting me in every conceivable way and without whom I could never have come so far. I would also like to acknowledge the kindness of my friends for providing much needed laughter and light during the composition of this thesis. I am particularly grateful to Natalie Nobitz for helping maintain my sanity during the more frustrating moments, and for providing constructive criticism on drafts and revisions. 7 Introduction The individual can … be shamed by whatever shames another. … This mechanism provides a perfect vehicle for the transmission and preservation of social norms from generation to generation. It also provides a mechanism for the preservation of social norms among adult members of a community, inasmuch as the evocation of shame … provide[s] powerful negative sanctions against the transgression of shared social norms. Silvan Tomkins, Shame and its Sisters1 What is a community? How do we define it? What power does it have? More pertinently to this thesis: what is an Irish community and how does it relate to notions of personal and national identity – is it simply a constitutionally recognised body comprising of men and women who call themselves Irish? What, in turn, does it mean to inhabit a male or female body within an Irish community? What – if any – congruence exists between institutional and physical bodies, and what role do these bodies play in the relationship between shame, the sexed body, and gender? Finally, how do these concepts of community, bodies, and nation interact with, conflict against, or reflect mechanisms of power? To answer questions such as these I will explore the operations of communal identity in the works of two significant late twentieth-century Irish writers – John McGahern (1934-2006) and Edna O’Brien (b.
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