Masaryk university Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Ing. Olga Martinová

Anglo-Irish Relations in the Fiction of

William Trevor

Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D.

2015

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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and

secondary sources in the list of the Works Cited..

…………………………….

Olga Martinová

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D.,

for his guidance and encouragement.

I would also like to thank my family for the support throughout my studies.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... i

2. William Trevor ...... 4

3. History of Ireland ...... 7

3.1. Ireland before the Union ...... 7 3.2. Ireland in Union with Britain ...... 11 3.3. Ireland after Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 ...... 16 4. The Story of Lucy Gault ...... 24

5. Stories of the Troubles ...... 32

5.1. The Distant Past ...... 32 5.2. Another Christmas ...... 37 6. Felicia’s Journey ...... 43

7. Conclusion ...... 50

Works Cited ...... 56

Summary ...... 59

Resumé ...... 60

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1. Introduction

The following thesis aims to analyse the depiction of Anglo-Irish relations in several writings by William Trevor and compare it with the actual contemporary happenings in Ireland.

The historical background of Ireland for the comparison of the fictions is summarized in the first half of the thesis. Four writings, set in a different periods of 20th century, are analysed in chronological order according to their time setting. The first analysed book is the novel The

Story of Lucy Gault, which primarily describes the early 1930s, however, the story spans until

1990s. Two short stories, both depicting the period of the Troubles in 1970s, but each with very different setting “The Distant Past” and “Another Christmas”, follow. The last discussed book - the novel Felicia’s Journey takes place in the last decade of the 20th century.

The life of William Trevor is described in the second chapter to both introduce the author and to present some of the topic and themes he writes about in order to find the issues he concerns himself with in his writing, which will be helpful in the understanding of the chosen fiction and the conclusion of this thesis. The basic information about his origin, education and the extent of his work are given there. Several events which influenced his work are described as well. Some of the topic and themes he employs in his works and which could be useful in the conclusion are identified.

In the third chapter, some events from the history of Ireland are summarized to provide context of the chosen Trevor’s writings. Since the Anglo-Irish relations were shaped by the history, several of the most important events for their formation are described. The historic terms and figures, which appear in the analysed writings are explained. This chapter serves to illustrate the historical background which inspired Trevor in writing them, as well as a material for comparison of the reality and the way, how Trevor depicts the Anglo-Irish relations in chosen fiction, which is made in Conclusion.

In the fifth chapter the novel The Story of Lucy Gault is analysed to investigate Trevor’s depiction of the Anglo-Irish relations during and after the Civil war in Ireland. The description

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of the strained relationship between the inhabitants of the island in 1930s in the novel is investigated. Since the novel takes place in a quite long span of time, it ends in 1990s, also the change in the opinions and attitudes of the characters and their surroundings in time can be noted from the story.

Two short stories depicting the period of the Troubles in 1970s are analysed in the perspective of the depiction of Anglo-Irish relations in the sixth chapter to show Trevor’s interpretation of this time in two different settings, and to try to find the connection between these two perspectives. Neither of these stories is actually set in the focus of the Troubles – in

Northern Ireland. Trevor describes the change, or more accurately the poisoning of the Anglo-

Irish relations that the Troubles brought. In the “The Distant Past” it is the relationship between the descendants of Ascendancy family and “Old Irish” inhabitants and in “Another Christmas” it is the relationship between Irish immigrants in England and their English friend.

The novel Felicia’s Journey is analysed in the seventh chapter for the purpose of seeing

Trevor’s description of the Anglo-Irish relations after the year 1990. This novel shows several different characters with very different views of the relation between Ireland and England.

Some of them seem to live in the past, still deriving their attitudes from the history.

Nevertheless there are others who do not view the relation in the context of the history and hatred. The new generation does not seem to be burdened by the assumptions of the past.

The seventh chapter, the Conclusion serves to compare the four fictions analysed in the previous three chapters with the historical context described in the third chapter. The description of the Anglo-Irish relations in the individual writings are compared to each other in order to find some connections. Some of the found connections are inspired by the themes, which are identified in the second chapter, as these, which appear in the Trevor’s fiction.

Writing this thesis I used a number of secondary sources. From these, those from which

I derived the most are the following books:

John Ardagh’s book Ireland and the Irish, which was written after the two-years long survey of the opinions of the population conducted in Ireland in the years 1991-1993 by the author. Aside from some historical data, this book provided me also with some information I

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could not find in the history books – for example about the fate of the Ascendancy families after

1921, the results of the public pool on the partition of island in 1993 or the public opinions of the British public on Ireland and Irish in the last decade of 20th century. These information helped me greatly in the comparison of the depiction of Anglo-Irish relations in the Trevor’s fiction with reality.

The book William Trevor: Re-Imaging Ireland by Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt. This book contains the analysis of many of the Trevor’s fiction. Some of the themes, which reappear in the

William Trevor’s writing, given in the second chapter of this thesis were derived from this book. I also find some of the observation about the books made by Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt useful for my analysis – for example the peculiarities and differences in the Ascendancy characters of the Gaults in The Story of Lucy Gault and the Middletons in “The Distant Past”, her observation of the characters of Felicia’s father in Felicia’s Journey, r Norah in “Another Christmas”, or the presumed open-mindedness or the English landlord Mr Joyce.

From the Dolores MacKenna’s book William Trevor: The Writter and His Work I derived many information about Trevor’s live. MacKenna describes the writer’s live and the events which impacted his writing together with the description of their influence on the stories and the themes he deals with. Some of them, which I found the most relevant for the thesis were used in the second chapter.

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2. William Trevor

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown on 24 May 1928 in a Protestant family as

William Trevor Cox. His family is not of Ascendancy descent – they were not among the

Anglo-Irish families of the rich landowners of 18th and 19th centuries. As Trevor said in his interview with Mira Stout in 1989, in retrospective, his descent has helped him as a writer.

What is now apparent to me is that being a Protestant in Ireland was a help, because it began the process of being an outsider—which I think all writers have to be—and began the process of trying to clear the fog away. I didn’t belong to the new post-1923 Catholic society, and I also didn’t belong to the Irish Ascendancy. I’m a small-town Irish Protestant, a “lace-curtain” Protestant. Poor Protestants in Ireland are a sliver of people caught between the past—Georgian Ireland with its great houses and all the rest of it—and the new, bustling, Catholic state. Without knowing any of this, without its ever occurring to me, I was able to see things a little more clearly than I would have if I had belonged to either of those worlds. When I write about, say, a Catholic commercial traveler, I can almost feel myself going back to those days—to an observation point.

And when I write about the Ascendancy I am again observing. (Stout)

Trevor’s background gave him the position of an ‘outsider’, which enabled him to observe the people around him with more objectivity than if he was one of them.

During Trevor’s childhood, his family moved a lot around Ireland because of his father՚s job. Consequently, he experienced the atmosphere of several Irish towns, which he has often used in his writings. Trevor received his secondary education in the boarding school in St

Colomba where he, as Dolores MacKenna writes, found another of his talents - the sculpture.

(43)

He went to study history in Trinity College afterwards, where he continued with sculpturing as well. He met his future wife Jane in Trinity, a London-born student of Modern

Languages. They were married in 1952. After the end of studies, William Trevor worked as a teacher for some time. Because of the lack of job opportunities, William, together with his wife, left Ireland and immigrated to England in 1953.

After some time in England, Trevor decided to make “an attempt to make a living from sculpture.” (54) He made several commissioned carvings, but “By the end of the decade [1960s]

Trevorʼs work had become abstract and he was no longer happy with the effect.” (MacKenna

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55) To boost the family income he wrote an autobiographical novel in 1958 A Standard of

Bahaviour and also found a job in London in advertising agency. (MacKenna 56) The work in advertisement did not catch his interest and he started to write his first short stories there; after the publishing of his first collection of short stories The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, he resigned.

With the end of his employment, Trevor moved with his family to Devon, where he has lived since then. He regularly visits Ireland, and “travels in Italy and France, spends long periods in Alps and the Ticino”. (MacKenna 57) Some of his stories are also set in Italy or

Switzerland.

So far, William Trevor has published about forty books – novels or collections of short stories. He has written several dramas and some of his works were publicized as radio plays or

TV drama. Aside from the fiction, he wrote a memoir and a book which is by Mary Fitzgerald-

Hoyt described as “non-fiction exploration of the impact of Irish places upon Irish writers.” (3)

Trevor won several literary prizes as well, for example the Hawthornden Prize, the Heinemann

Award, the Gilles Cooper Award, the Whitbread Award (several times) and he was also four- times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters, and in 1977 he “was made an honorary Commander of the British Empire” (MacKenna 133). In

2015 he was elected Saoi (ʻwise oneʼ) by Aosdána (council of Irish artists), for his outstanding achievement in arts. (Duncan)

Considering the books and stories discussed in this thesis, the stories of Troubles were written earlier, “The Distant Past” was published for the first time in 1975 in the collection of short stories Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories, and “Another Christmas” in 1978 in the collection Lovers of Their Time and Other Stories. The Whitebread Prize winning novel

Felicia’s Journey was published in 1994 and The Story of Lucy Gault in 2002. The Story of

Lucy Gault was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Whitebread Award.

In the beginning of his writing career, Trevor set his stories mostly in England, but since the 1970s he started to focus more on Ireland. It was both because he acquired the necessary distance from Ireland, to be able to write about it (MacKenna 106), and because of

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the Troubles, which started to occupy his mind. As he characterized his feelings about the

Troubles in a radio programme for BBC Radio produced by Judith Bumpus in 1981:

As an Irishman I feel that what is happening in Ireland now is one of the great horrors of my lifetime, and I find it difficult to comprehend the mentality, whether Irish or British, that pretends that it will somehow all blow over. It will not. There will be more death, more cruelty, more fear, more waste. The nightmare will go on … Compassion is thrown to the winds, distorting rules.

(qtd. in MacKenna 110)

Trevor was deeply disturbed by the contemporary events and in many of his following writings he, as Mary Fitzgerald Hoyt describes it, “began to examine the contagion of violence and the longevity of history.” (56) In these stories he also concerns the “theme of collective guilt”

(Fitzgerald-Hoyt 110), thanks to which the Irish who were not involved in the violence are affected by it.

William Trevor employs in his work the theme of Ascendancy families. Nevertheless, he is not a traditional author of the Big House genre, as have been the writings depicting the life of Ascendancy families called since 19th century, he “brings a unique perspective to his Big

House fiction. … he often eschews the familiarity of convention, compels the reader to examine characters on their own terms, not as familiar types.” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 122) In the fiction analysed in this thesis, this theme is also appears, as well as Trevor’s avoidance of the use of stereotypical characters.

Constanza del Río-Álvaro noted in an interview with Trevor from 2015, that many the literary critics have been taking Trevor’s fiction “as allegories of the Irish history, of Anglo-

Irish relationships or of the legacy of colonialism.” Trevor answered, that he considers himself storyteller, and he does not put the allegories intentionally:

They may find allegory or anything else that I haven’t put in and that wasn’t my aim at all. But, if they find anything in what I write which I haven’t intended, it doesn’t matter. That is what writing is all about. It’s about creating something which is then picked up, as it were, by other people. The

most important thing for me is to communicate, with, well, at least one person. (del Río-Álvaro)

In the end, considering the themes and setting which many of his fiction have, the involvement of the Anglo-Irish relations in these stories is unavoidable.

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3. History of Ireland

The Anglo-Irish relations which are depicted in the analysed fiction of William Trevor are based on the history of the Ireland and England. In this chapter some of the main events which shaped this relation are described, as well as the origin of the distinction between different groups of people living in Ireland, whose struggle is depicted in the stories by Trevor too. The past has been source of the animosity and bitterness between the English and the Irish, as some of the Trevor’s characters demonstrate. This chapter aims to explain some terms, which are used in Trevor’s writing and based on history, as well as the reasons for the division and aversion between people in the Trevor’s stories. The history of the 20th century is described in more detail, especially the periods in which the analysed fiction take place, or which are remembered by the characters. To improve the clarity, the chapter was divided into three subchapters, each describing the events in different stage of Ireland’s relationship with England.

The first subchapter Ireland before Union describes the history of Ireland since the

Anglo-Norman invasion until the 1800, when the Ireland lost its partial self-government and merged with Great Britain into Union.

The following struggle of the Irish to obtain again some kind of self-government of the years 1800 – 1921, culminating with the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which made Ireland dominion, is covered in the second subchapter Ireland in the Union with Britain.

The last subchapter contains the description of the development of Ireland after the

Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, until the 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

1.1. Ireland before the Union

The beginning of the struggle between England and the population if the Ireland Island dates from the Anglo-Norman invasion of the island, which began in 1169 and resulted in the supremacy of the English kings over the Norman and the Irish lords there. The English

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administration was adopted in the thirteenth century, the Parliament of Ireland was founded in

1297.

The Tudor era was crucial for the development of the relations between England and

Ireland. In this period, the basis for the division of the population of Ireland in the future centuries was laid as well. The submission of Ireland was very important for Tudors in order to ensure the safety of the kingdom. It was so especially after the English reformation, when the

Catholic religion in Ireland attracted catholic enemies of England, such as France or Spain.

Since 1540 the new Irish policy created by the Sir Anthony St. Leger was followed – the Ireland was made a kingdom and Henry VIII was crowned the King of Ireland in 1541. As John Guy explains, “the essence of the plan was to create a subordinate national superstructure for Ireland by translating Henry VIIIʼs lordship into kingship. … Above all, kingship committed England to a possible fullscale conquest of Ireland in the future” (254).

During the era of Tudors, the policy of plantation started to be applied. Loyal Protestant settlers, mainly Presbyterians from Scotland, were sent to Ireland to live there, while the original Irish owners were disposed. The plantations policy was summarized by Robert Welch:

Plantation occurred broadly within the period 1550-1700 and was frequently a response to Irish rebellion against the English Crown. It sought to create a more unified form of Irish polity, to advance the Protestant Reformation, to facilitate the raising of taxes and revenue, and to destroy Gaelic society. ... Land confiscations, such as those under Cromwell or following the Battle of the Boyne, continued the process of transferring the land from Catholic to Protestant ownership, a strategy facilitated by the Penal Laws. The extent of these settlements and transferrals was such that by 1703 only 14 per cent of the land of Ireland was in Catholic hands [According to William

J. Smyth it was more than 80 per cent in 1600 and 59 per cent in 1641 (32)].(474)

The new settlers did not blend in the local population. The circumstances of their arrival together with their religion, separated them from the locals. According to William J. Smyth

“Possibly as many as 100,000 migrants entered Ireland between the 1590s and 1690s.” The plantations and the consequent animosity between the settlers and the present population caused great problems in the future and resulted into division of the people of Ireland. The plantations are also remembered in Ireland as one of the great injustices of the English.

With the coming of new settlers and consequent division of the population, also new terms to designate and also divide the inhabitants developed. The term Old/Gaelic Irish was

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used for families of Gaelic stock. People, who came from Britain were distinguished in two groups – the Old English were the Anglo-Irish, who settled there after the Anglo-Norman

Invasion, but before the English Reformation, and the New English were those who settled after the Reformation. However, as S.J. Connolly notes, the “Old English community actually included families of Gaelic descent that had been absorbed, culturally and politically, into the

English of Ireland. ... numerous connections were formed across both ethnic and religious lines of division by intermarriage.” (45-46) Furthermore, if should be noted, that those who were marked as of Gaelic descent, were not generally of the pure Celtic origin (Celts came to Ireland in the 5th century before Christ), their ancestors were also the inhabitants of the island before the arrival of Celts, as well as Vikings, who invaded Ireland in the end of 8th century.

Thorough the centuries, many events started to be remembered as the symbols of either the Irish savagery by English or the English cruelty and unfairness by Irish - one of the fertile period in this respect were the 1650s. Because of the continuing policy of plantations, the Irish

Catholic began to be afraid of further English legislation, which would confiscate their land. As a consequence, the rebellion broke out in 1641, which resulted in death of great number of

Protestants. As John Morrill explains: “With the legacy of hatred built into the Ulster plantations, violence inevitably got out of hand and something like 3,000 (that is, one in five) of the Protestants were slaughtered. Reports in England credibly suggested even larger numbers.”

(315) The revenge for these killings came from England in 1649 with the arrival of the newly appointed commander in chief in Ireland Oliver Cromwell. In order to punish the killings of

Protestants, he captured two towns - Drogheda and Wexford and their whole population was slaughtered – about 6,000 people in total. The massacre in Drogheda and Wexford, as Breandán

Ó Éithir notes, together with his ruthless reprisals against Irish, made Cromwell one of the most hated person in the Irish history. (30-31)

Another important symbol, not only for the Anglo-Irish relations but also for the division of the people of Ireland, became the date of the Battle of Boyne, the 1 June of 1690, when the deposed Catholic king of England James II attempted to gain back his throne from

Protestant William of Orange with the help of Irish Catholics. Nevertheless James II was

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defeated by William (whose army was from great part consisted of Irish Protestants). The date of the battle became an important anniversary.

In the early 18th cent. 1 July was celebrated as an official anniversary, with parades, bonfires, and firing of volleys. ... From the mid-1790s the anniversary of the Boyne, now an aggressively Protestant festival, became the central ritual of the Orange Order. The first deaths from sectarian violence in Belfast followed the 1813 celebrations there, and the commemoration of the Boyne was to be the occasion of recurrent violence in Belfast and elsewhere throughout the 19th and 20th

cents. (Welch 60-61)

After the victory of the Protestants, new discriminatory laws, known as Penal laws, were passed in Ireland by exclusively Protestant parliament. They were directed against the

Catholics, who gradually lost their rights. They were excluded from public offices, participation in politics and many professions. They could not keep weapons, or own horse valued more than

£5, or maintain schools for their children. The Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery

(1704) restricted the Catholics in ownership of land. (Welch 269) Some of the laws, in effort to force the conversion to Protestantism, damaged relations between Catholics.

New laws were passed which divided Catholic families. The son of Catholic parents who became Protestant could take over his parentsʼ property and use it as he wanted. These actions put the Irish Catholic population in the same position as other colonised peoples later on. Hatred between the

ruling Protestant settlers and the ruled Catholic Irish was unavoidable. (McDowall 113)

The unfairness of the Penal laws was bitterly remembered in the future. The division between the Protestants and Catholics deepened even more. In 1690s the term ʻAscendancyʼ, started to be used “to refer to the Protestant upper classes of Ireland in the 18th cent. and later.” (Welch

23) The term applied to the families of big landowners, who inevitably benefited from the discriminatory policies against the Catholic. William Trevor describes the position of the descendants of these families in the 20th century in some of his works.

The Catholics were excluded from the political life, but during the first half of the 18th century they gradually started to fight for political rights. In the last three decades of 18th century, some of the discriminatory laws against Catholics were repelled, because British government wanted to seek their loyalty in possible war with France. Since 1792 have been

Catholics allowed to vote.

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The repeal of some of the Penal laws was, however, not welcomed by some of the

Protestants, notably in Ulster, where the sectarian tension grew. One of the societies, formed to prevent the Catholic emancipation was the Orange Order, which was founded in 1795.

Meanwhile, struggle for the political freedom of Ireland began, led by Irish Protestants – patriots (the Catholics did not have much political rights yet). In Declaratory Act of 1720, the subordination of Irish parliament was enacted – the legislative power over Ireland was passed to

Westminster. This Act was a great offence to Protestant MPs of the Irish Parliament.

The transformation of the descendants of New English colonists and Cromwellian warriors into fervent Irish patriots … was encouraged by residence over several generations, allied to dissatisfaction with the workings of the Anglo-Irish connection, it was also made possible by the almost complete disappearance of Gaelic Ireland. … Ulster Presbyterians were consistently among the strongest supporters of successive agitations for legislative independence and parliamentary reform. (Connolly 50) The politic fight of the patriots brought the emancipation of the Irish parliament, nevertheless, it should be emphasized, that the Irish parliament of that time was still Protestant.

The rebellion of another patriotic movement in 1798– the Society of United Irishmen, which was founded as an alliance between intellectual Presbyterian elite and middle-class

Catholics, demonstrated the depth of the division of the population of Ireland. Despite the original ideals of the Society, the rebellion, which, as Robert Walter Dudley Edwards describes it, “was widespread only in Ulster and in Wexford, assumed a nakedly sectarian form resulting in the slaughter of many Protestants”. The rebellion was defeated in June in the Battle of

Vinegar Hill, but it, together with the possibility of the alliance between Ireland and France, made the British government strive for tighter control of Ireland. The Kingdom of Ireland was merged with the Kingdom of Great Britain with Union by the Act of Union 1800.

1.2. Ireland in Union with Britain

With the Act of Union, the Irish parliament was dissolved, and Ireland could be represented only in Westminster. During the negotiations of the Act, the emancipation of

Catholics was promised, but despite the willingness of the Prime minister William Pitt, king

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Gorge III did not permit it, providing the Irish with yet another example of untrustworthiness of the British.

One of the most important political figures of the 19th century was Daniel O’Connell.

This politician has been seen as a symbol of the peaceful emancipation of Catholics and for it was remembered and respected by the next generation of Catholics, as such, he is also remembered in the Trevor’s writings. He founded the Catholic Association in 1823 in order to fight for the rights of Catholics. The popularity of his efforts was shown in the general election of 1826, in which he was elected for Co.Clare. Because he was Catholic, he could not take the seat. This gesture, however, presented the “threat to the legitimacy of the political system.”

(Welch 89) to the British. In response, the Catholic emancipation, which repealed the rest of the discriminatory Penal Laws was passed in 1829. In 1840, OʼConnell founded a political body for the repeal of the Act of Union – the Repeal Association. The large open-air meetings were organized to demonstrate the opinions of public. However, when was one of these meetings banned by Government, OʼConnell, afraid of bloodshed, cancelled it. “This climb-down, followed by his conviction and imprisonment for seditious libel, dissipated the momentum.”

(Welch 496)

The 1850s in Ireland were affected by a natural disaster – the Great Famine, which lasted since 1845 until 1848. The harvests of potatoes, the main crop in the diet of a considerable part of the population, failed because of potato blight. The first year of the harvest failure, the British government imported Indian corn to Ireland for sale. Next year, the relief schemes – were applied. Nevertheless, they did not cover the need for food, and in October

1846 first deaths from starvation were reported. Next spring, the free rations were distributed from soup kitchens, but again it was not enough to feed the starved population. Furthermore, diseases started to spread through the island. The lowest estimation of the number of victims of

Famine was around one million. This disaster has left great impact on the Irish psyche, as John

Ardagh points out, it also started the “the tradition of mass emigration” (22). Irish kept left

Ireland in great numbers in following decades. “Between 1846 and 1921 some four million people left, and further two million by the 1960s.” (Ardagh 305) Nevertheless, the people kept

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leaving the country even after the end of Famine for economic reasons. It was impossible for them to earn a living there. As H.C.G. Matthew pointed out: Irish “economy could not sustain her population.” (500)

The role of England in the Famine was much discussed, England was accused of indifference or even of a genocidal policy by some (Welch 179). One of the most controversial aspects was, that Ireland produced enough grain to feed the population in the time of the

Famine. But since these crops were meant for the economic purposes of the kingdom, British government argued, that the intervention in the economic schemes would make the situation worse.

it seemed that the crisis was of secondary importance when it came to preserving the economic policies of the day. These policies were based on the principle of non-interference with market forces in economic matters. Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. But that was a ʻmoney cropʼ and

not a ʻfood cropʼ and could not be interfered with. (Ó hEithir 40-41)

The Famine became a powerful symbol of the English mistreatment of Ireland, furthermore as

John Ardagh observed in the last decade of 20th century: “Today the Irish still talk about the

Famine, more than about any other event in their history before 1916.” (23)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, new organizations to fight for the Irish independence were established. In 1858 Fenian Brotherhood was founded in America. The violence of Feniansʼ operations was growing in time - for example during the bomb attack on

Clerkenwell Prison in 1867 in London more than one hundred innocent persons were killed. It should be noted, that “The Fenian movement in no sense represented Irish opinion generally, but the danger that I might come to do so encouraged Liberal politicians, especially Gladstone, to concessionary action.” (Matthew 500) The British government introduced two Acts – in

1869, the Protestant Church of Ireland was destabilized and in 1870 was introduced the first

Irish Land Act, which recognized tenant right.

Thanks to the political talent of the Irish Protestant landowner Charles Stewart Parnell and his work in Westminster, which Edwards describes as: “policy of persistent obstruction, which compelled attention to Irish needs by bringing parliamentary business to a standstill”, the tenants were given further rights in the second Land Act of 1881. After 1885 elections, the 13

Parnell’s party held balance between government parties. Parnell skilfully used this power, and in a combination with the threat of the violence from Fenians, the British government was forced to act - the Home Rule Bill was prepared. Unfortunately, it was not passed in 1886.

Parnellʼs fight for the Home Rule ended in 1890 when his relationship with married woman was revealed, which meant his fall in politics and split of his party. The Home Rule Bill was rejected again in 1893. Parnell’s effort demonstrates the complexity of the relations in the Ireland. Not only Catholics, but also some of the Protestants, wanted to be liberated from the “direct rule” of the Westminster. Being Anglo-Irish Protestant landowner did not necessarily mean to be opponent of the Home Rule, as William Trevor shows in some of his fiction.

The last decades of the 19th century in Ireland saw the rise of Irish nationalism, the

Gaelic revival took place. This nationalism had nothing to do with the Protestant patriotism from the century ago, it was based on Gaelic culture, which was supposed to flower in Ireland before the coming of English. The nationalists derived their origin from Gaels, they “have always claimed that they, the Irish Gaels, were there first” (Ardagh 434), justifying so their claims against British and later settlers. Together with the nationalism also “Anglophobia and confessional identification, both well established for good historical resons” (Punch and Paddy

279) grew in this period. The image of the whole Ireland, united in the nationalist favour, would be false. The Unionists were not thrilled with the attempts to pass the Home Rule Bill and the

Orange Order was revived in 1880s in Ulster, attracting widespread membership.

After the election in 1910, the Irish once again held balance between the two winning parties in Westminster. The Home Rule Bill was introduced and passed in 1912, but it was supposed to take effect only two years later. In 1914 it was suspended further, because with the beginning of the World War I the British government was afraid of the outbreak of civil war in

Ireland, which seemed to be on edge because of the Home Rule Bill.

The Irish Unionists did not welcome the passage of the Act. Brian Barton summarizes their reasons:

In part they did so because they felt a positive and instinctive loyalty towards Britain and valued the security of belonging to a Protestant majority in the United Kingdom, as opposed to being part of a minority in a predominantly Catholic, self-governing Ireland.

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... Unionists were [also] convinced that Ireland had benefited materially from the union ... At the same time, Ulster unionism was also rooted in exaggerated fears regarding the likely consequences of Irish self-government. Its supporters assumed that Home Rule would in practice mean ʻRome ruleʼ. They anticipated a state in which the Catholic Church would exercise and all- pervasive political influence and where religious discrimination would be rampant, with

themselves excluded from public life, isolated and impotent. (13-15)

During their campaign in 1912, almost half million Ulster men and women signed the Unionist document Solemn League and Covenant to demonstrate their opposition to Home Rule. At first, the Unionists wanted to stop the whole idea of Home Rule, but later they demanded Ulsterʼs exclusion from it. The following year a paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), was established to “prevent, militarily, imposition of Home Rule in Ulster” (Welch 270). Not the whole Ulster, however, was against Home Rule - out of the nine Ulster counties, only four had Unionist majorities - Down, Antrim, Armagh, and Derry.

The Unionists were not the only ones, who armed themselves for fight. As a reaction to

UVF the Irish Volunteers were established in 1913. They also gathered arms and drilled, though their activity seemed to be understood differently by the British army. “While little of nothing was done to curb the gun-running activities of the UVF, an attempt was made to seize the Irish

Volunteer guns landed near Dublin in 1914. When it failed, the military, faced by a jeering and stone-throwing crown, opened fire and killed three civilians.” (Ó hEithir 52)

After the suspension of the Home rule Act, the British government “called on Irishmen to join the army. Many thousands did, encouraged by their MPs, who hoped that this show of loyalty would help Ireland win self government when the war ended.” (McDowall 163). Others did not. Group of Irish republicans organized a rising on the Easter of 1916. During the rising,

Irish republic was proclaimed. The rising was suppressed in few days and it did not have the approval of the public.

The rising was seen by many as a blow against the more modest aim of Home Rule and a stab in the back to those who had gone to fight in the war. After the surrender, prisoners were spat on and

abused on their way to prison camps in Britain. (Ó hEithir 56)

Nevertheless the harsh reaction of the British government – the execution of leaders of the

Rising - shocked the public and made the rebels national heroes. The general mood in Ireland changed.

15

After the end of the First World War in 1918, the British General Election were held. In

Ireland, the nationalist party Sinn Féin (ʻWe Ourselvesʼ), which strived for Irish independence, won. The leader of the party was one of the surviving leaders of the Easter Rising Éamon de

Valera. The elected MPs, however, did not join the Parliament in Westminster, but arranged their own parliament – Dáil Éireann (ʻAssembly of Irelandʼ) in Dublin. The allegiance to the

Republic proclaimed during Easter Rising was declared. Nevertheless, the independent state failed to achieve endorsement during Versailles Peace Conference. The situation in the Ireland become unsettled again and grew into The Anglo-Irish war (or Irish War of Independence).

In 1919, with London seemingly dragging its feet over Home Rule, the Irish Republican Army was created from the old Irish Volunteers, and in alliance with Sinn Féin it began guerilla warfare against the forces of the Crown. The Government responded by banning Sin Féin as a political

body. (Ardagh 25)

To control the worsening situation, British government dispatched units of British ex-soldiers in

1920. These men came to be known as Black and Tans because of the mixture of the army khaki clothes and the dark bottle-green uniform of Royal Irish Constabulary they wore. The Black and

Tans, together with Auxiliary Division of RIC, acquired fearsome reputation in Ireland, because of their ruthless, even lawless behaviour and counter-terror. These units “did a lot to discredit

British rule in Irelandˮ (59-60 Ó hEithir). After their coming, the fighting became even more violent. Ruthless attacks of IRA were countered with ruthless reprisals by British units. The situation was watched by the judging public outside the country and Britain acquired bad repute.

The international disapproval and stalemate in fights led to the start of truce talk. The hostilities gradually ceased and the conditions of the truce and the future setting were negotiated between

British and Irish delegates. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in 1921 and Ireland became

Britainʼs dominion.

1.3. Ireland after Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 However, the situation in newly established Irish Free State did not calmed down after the signing of the Treaty. Some of the Irish nationalist did not agree with its conditions, the most opposed was the partition of the island, caused by the effort of British government to

16

oblige the wish of the Unionists, and the oath of allegiance to the Crown. The partition of the island created two entities, whose population was much more homogeneous than before. In

South, it was 90 per cent Catholic and 10 per cent Protestant (according to its last pre- independence census in 1911). In the Northern Ireland the majority were Protestants with 66 per cent. (qdt. in Poole 138)

The opposition to the Treaty in the Dáil was great and it was ratified only with a small advance. Éamon de Valera did not accept the ratification, he resigned from his position of the

President of the Dáil and left it with a group of followers. IRA divided in two parts: pro- and anti-Treaty (Irregulars). Nevertheless, the election in 1922 proved the publicʼs favour of Treaty.

Afterwards, the civil war between pro-Treaty Army of Ireland and anti-Treaty Republican IRA broke in 1922. During the fights almost 1000 people died. (Edwards) The war was won by pro-

Treaty forces. The period after Easter Rising, till the end of the Civil war (1916-1923) is sometimes called Troubles, just like the events in Northern Ireland which started 1970s. (Welch

571).

The period of Troubles - the struggle for Irish independence and also the following civil

War, is often depicted by Trevor, since it was a crucial time for the whole Ireland and its future, as well as a time of great tensions in the country. Aside from the longed independence, the position of different social groups was redefined, as well as the relations between them.

Many of the families of previous big landowners of Ireland, who came in earlier centuries from England - the Anglo-Irish ʻAscendancy familiesʼ, started to leave the country, because they were threatened during the Troubles. After the birth of the independent state many followed, because they did not felt welcomed in the new state. Their residences, the ʻBig housesʼ were treated as symbols of previous injustice.

In the years after 1916 these families became obvious targets for IRA fury, and many of their ʻbig housesʼ were burned down – some 200 in 1920-23 alone, out of a total of 2,000 or so. Later, many other grand houses were demolished after their owners had sold or abandoned them, … And in the years after independence, most of the Protestant ruling and landed classes moved away from an Ireland where they no longer felt welcome. In Co. Clare, the number of Ascendancy

families dropped from around eighty in 1919 to ten by early 1930s. (Ardagh 321-322)

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Towards the end of 20th century only “about thirty major houses survive intact with their family portraits and original furnishings.” (Ardagh 321). Some of the descendants struggled to keep their residence in poverty, but some adapted the changed economic situation. (Ardagh 321)

The Free Irish State was based on the ideals of the Irish nationalism, born at the end of

19th century. Éamon de Valera, won the election of 1932 with his new party Fianna Fáil

(ʻSoldiers of Irelandʼ). Afterwards, he, as Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), started to cut off the links with the Britain. Between else, the oath of allegiance was abolished. The land annuities from Ireland to Britain stopped being paid, beginning the ʻEconomic Warʼ with Britain

(Fitzpatrick 259-260), which resulted in high import duties between the countries and worsened the economy of Ireland. The economic war was ended in 1938. The new constitution was created and passed by referendum. It came in force in 1937. Between else, it emphasised the

ՙspecial positionʼ of Catholic Church, established Irish language the first official language

(English was official language as well), and in Articles 2 and 3 stated the Irish duty to seek unification of Ireland. The constitution reflected de Valeraʼs idea of Ireland and Irish nation.

His idea was proposed as contrary to English and their materialism, in his speech in New York he said:

‘We Irish do not desire, like the English, to build up a nation where there shall be a very rich class, and a very poor class. I think the best ideal for our people, an ideal very generally accepted among us, is that Irelaad is going to become a country, where, if there are a few rich, there shall be nobody very poor.. (qdt. in Punch& Paddy, from E. Cullingford: Yeats, Ireland and Facisim

(London 1981))

During the World War II Republic of Ireland remained neutral, despite German air attack on Dublin in 1941 and despite the pressure of British prime minister and US president.

Nevertheless, it provided intelligence and assistance to Allies in discreet.

During de Valeraʼs government, economic nationalism was pursued and the policy of protectionism was applied, which eventually resulted in the economic isolation of Ireland. The rural Irish ideal was followed and the industry had a low priority. In 1950s, “Irish living standards were actually falling, and…as many as 400,000 people emigrated.” (Ardagh 70)

In General Election on 1948, Fianna Fáil was sent to opposition and the government was led by Fine Gael (‘Tribe of the Irishʼ). Next year the Republic of Ireland was declared. Britain 18

recognized the new republic, it only added the guarantee of the sovereignty of Northern Ireland

– no changes in its status should be made without its parliament’s consent.

Despite the efforts of de Valera, Ireland remained economically dependent on Britain, in

“the 1960s was still taking over 70 per cent of its exports” (Ardagh 10). Nevertheless since

1959, when new Taoiseach for Fianna Fáil was appointed – Seán Lemass, “ new economic, political and cultural policies were adopted, not least in terms of industrialisation, the massive development of second- and third-level educational institutions and the radical transformation in levels of information and media influence. (W. Smyth 40) One of these policies was attracting foreign investors and development of industrial production in Ireland. “Japanese, German and

American firms in particular responded, eager to obtain a foothold in the EC, which Ireland was then joining.” (Ardagh 73) The backward agriculture sector, started to modernize as well.

(Ardagh 96-97) In 1973 the Republic of Ireland entered European Economic Community. With the membership the Irish dependence on Britain was greatly reduced and EC also benefited greatly the Irish agriculture with the Structural Funds. The changes in economy culminated in the last decade of 20th century with the “Celtic Tiger” economy, during which Republic of

Ireland reached great rates of economic growth. Even the ever-lasting problem with unemployment was finally reduced:

The figures for the 1990s remain more or less unassailable: a growth rate outperforming that of other EU countries; numbers at work increasing by 45 per cent between 1987 and 2001; unemployment down from 17 per cent to 4 per cent over the same period; the standard of living going from two thirds the EU avarege to comfortabla equalling it ; the highes net immogration into

the EU and so on. (Luck and the Irish 35)

With the end of economic isolation also the cultural and social isolation ended. The women started to fight for rights. After many campaigns and negotiation, the divorce was legalized after its passage in referendum in 1995, and also the contraception, illegal until 1980, gradually became available. These events were possible also thanks to the weakening influence of the Church. In 1972, the parts of the Constitution asserting its ʻspecial positionʼ were deleted.

The reputation the Church was seriously damaged by several scandals in the last three decades of 20th century. The mass attendance decreased considerably towards the end of the century.

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Ireland underwent great changes after 1960s, not only in economic sphere, but also in the social sphere and in the opinions of the people. This gradual change reflects in some of the analysed Trevor’s writings, which depict this and later periods. He also often describes the lives of people in the time of the Troubles in the Northern Ireland (two of the stories covering this period are analysed in this thesis), whose description and reasons follows.

In 1966, the “British media first called attention to Protestant Ascendancy, political stagnation and discriminatory practices in Northern Ireland” (Luck and the Irish 102)

Northern Irelandʼs parliament was opened and started operate in 1921. To assure the

Protestant majority, the borders of the electoral districts were adjusted. Consequently, the

Protestants were in majority in the parliament (called Stormont) and the government was created to suit the Protestant Unionist population. The Catholics’ opposition, as Jim Smyth calls it, “was politically ineffective” and discriminative legislature against Catholics were passed.

Catholics were excluded from the best jobs, the best higher education, most council housing; flagrand gerrymandering swelled that majority further, and enabled Unionists to dominate nearly al local councils. It is true that the Catholics themselves may have been partly to blame for this

overall situation, for few of them tried to cooperate in making the new State work; (Ardagh 347)

Even though the Catholics were discriminated, violence did not occurred very often, “apart from sporadic murders by an IRA strongly committed to ending partition”(Ardagh 348), in the North until 1970s.

The civil-right movements, such as Civil Rights Association (1967) or People՚s

Democracy (1968) were founded in Northern Ireland and started to organize public civil rights marches to demonstrate the discontent and attract the worlds’ attention. The outbreak of sectarian violence following the demonstrations in 1968 is considered the beginning of the second period of Troubles in Ireland. (Welch 571) The riots escalated and Stormont, not able to handle the situation, asked Britain to send army to help to calm down the situation, which they did. In 1969, IRA split in ʻOfficialʼ IRA (something like political body) and Provisional IRA.

The same year Provisional IRA started campaign in Northern Ireland - “bombings and shootings in order to protect Roman Catholics, destabilize Northern Ireland’s institutions, weaken British resolve to maintain the union, and achieve Irish unity” (J. Smyth) In response, the interment

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without trial was applied by government. In the years 1971- 1975 hundreds of people suspected of the involvement with IRA were arrested. This policy, however, did not weaken the campaign, rather the contrary, the interment, often grounded on hearsay evidence “delivered a recruitment boost that the Provisionals could only have dreamt of.” (Luck and the Irish 115) On the opposite side, the Protestant Unionists formed their own paramilitary movements. William J. Smyth described their attitudes as:

The ultimate ʻRepublicanʼ goal is to reverse both the Anglo-Norman and Tudor conquests. Conversely, for the ʻLoyalistʼ community, the maintenance and assertion of their continued sense of superiority necessitates the retention of a British state apparatus and the non-recognition of the

material and symbolic rights of the nationalist community. (W. Smyth 41)

After the outbreak of Troubles, the idea of intervention was discussed in Republic of

Ireland, but many politicians did not believe that the Irish Army would be enough to handle the crisis (Luck and the Irish 109). The Taoiseach of that time was Jack Lynch and “his sane and careful response to the Northern crisis has been spectacularly vindicated with time” (Luck and the Irish 111) Some other politicians though, notably Charles Haughey, had different opinion.

In 1972 the riots became even more violent and Stormont was suspended, replaced by the direct rule from British Government. The dissolution of Stormont did not help to calm the situation (Morgan 582), but it helped to “set in motion the discussions on a new political framework involving the Republic” (Luck and the Irish 115-116). After several unsuccessful attempts to re-instant the self-government, the negotiation resulted in signing of the Anglo-Irish

Agreement in 1985, which officially gave the Republic of Ireland consultative role in the decision about Northern Ireland. This settlement was not welcomed by Ulster loyalists, but they were unable to stop it. (McDowall 175) The following years are characterized by Foster as:

The political narrative of 1985 to 1998 shows the Northern policies of the Republic and the United Kingdom running more and more closely together. The Anglo-Irish Agreement allowed the Republic formally to recognize both the legitimacy of the Northern Ireland state and the

impracticability of reunification. (Luck and the Irish 132)

The Downing Street Declaration from 1993 “drew the outlines of a possible settlement for

Northern Ireland, based on inducements to bring Republicans into the political process – including ʻdynamicʼ institutions linking North and South” (Luck and the Irish 134). In 1994, after much negotiation, IRA, as well as loyalist paramilitaries ceased fire. Further political 21

negotiation resulted in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, in which the “responsibility for most local matters was to be devolved to an elected assembly. There were institutional arrangements for cross-border cooperation on a range of issues between the governments of

Ireland and Northern Ireland and for continued consultation between the British and Irish governments.” (J. Smyth) The same year, a referendum on the cancellation of the Articles 2 and

3 of the Eire constitution in the Republic of Ireland was held. The Articles were abandoned after the agreement of the 96 per cent of voters. In the Northern Ireland, the population voted in another referendum inquiring the support of the Good Friday Agreement. The support was won, though from the Protestant part population, only 55 per cent agreed (Luck and the Irish 141).

The result of the referendum in the Republic of Ireland was not surprising. The situation was completely different from 1930s. Already since the beginning of Troubles, the majority of population did not strive for the rapid unification with problematic Northern Ireland.

The national pool in 1970 showed the support of Lynchʼs policy of 82 per cent of voters. (Luck and the Irish 110) With the growing economy in the South, even the past attractiveness of the industry in the North disappeared. (Luck and the Irish 145) According to “opinion poll for the

Irish Times in 1993” , “82 per cent felt that Irish unity was ʻsomething to hope forʼ, but an equal

82 per cent were prepared to postpone this unity ʻif it helped bring about an internal settlement in the Northʼ” (Ardagh 442)

Britain received a lot of criticism for its handling the situation in Northern Ireland.

Especially the security operation was criticized, the behaviour of the Army was often too harsh and violent. Furthermore there were incidents when the soldiers killed innocents – either by mistake or because of the loss of discipline. (Ardagh 367) One of the best known examples is the Bloody Sunday in 1972, when 13 people were killed by soldiers during non-violent demonstration. On the other hand the British handling of social and economic situation was quite good (Ardagh 437). The direct rule “has wiped out most of the injustices of the old

Stormont regime, and has helped the Catholics towards greater equality, if not enough in terms of employment. … And its economic support has prevented the Troubles from plunging the province into disaster.” (Ardagh 437-438)

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Many Irish emigrants were traditionally coming to Great Britain in search for better economic conditions. Great Irish diaspora can be found in Britain. “By 1961 the Irish-born population of England, Scotland and Wales had reached 805,000, or 3,5 per cent of the population. It had declined to 655,000 in 1991; but these figures do not include those born of

Irish parents in Great Britain.” (Luck and Irish 92) John Ardagh points out, that some of the

Irish immigrants in Britain faced problems thanks to the actions of IRA:

Some stupider British think of Ireland solely in terms of the IRA and know nothing else; they may even confuse North with South. So, however unfairly, the waved of bombings since the 1970s have created among some people a generalized anger against the Irish, and perfectly innocent Irish will sometimes catch the rough side of a British tongue, maybe a crude insult in a pub or train. This induces some people to disguise their Irish identity in public, notably in working-class areas, or otherwise to keep a low profile. (Ardagh 316-317) As for the view of the British public on Northern Ireland, they do not hope for the continuing

“occupation” of it, as some of the nationalists seem to think. They are “hartily fed up with the

North, and many people even favour negotiating a settlement with the IRA.” (Ardagh 438)

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4. The Story of Lucy Gault

The novel The Story of Lucy Gault describes lives of several people who get involved in an attack of arsonists on the house of Gault family in 1921. In this novel are portrayed the strained relations between different inhabitants of the island around the year 1920; between those who are of Anglo-Irish Ascendancy descent and thanks to their protestant religion and affinity to England were privileged in the past, and those who consider themselves purely Irish and feel the right to be angry about the past and take the revenge on the present generation.

Nevertheless, the changes in the perception of Lucy in time shows, that these feelings gradually mellow in time.

The attack of arsonists on their house is not surprising for Gaults, because this type of attack is frequent in the area. The aggression is caused by aversion, which some of the locals feel towards the descendants of Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy. The extent of this aversion is even more obvious from the refusal of family of one of the arsonists to accept apology from

Mr Gault, after he accidentally injures their son during the attack. For his deed and injury, this son receives admiration from ones and rejection from others. Mr Gault himself does not put the blame for the attack and the misfortune it has brought to his family on the arsonists, but on the both the past of Ireland, which caused intolerance and hatred between people, and chance.

Thanks to the time setting of the novel, which spans for several decades, also the changes in the attitudes towards Lucy, the only left descendant of Gaults in Ireland, in time is depicted.

The story begins with the attack on the house, when Lucy is 8 years old, and goes on for several decades, the last scene describes Lucy as an old lady, it takes place probably in

1990s. The main storyline is set in Cork in the house Lahardene. Lahardene has been home to the Gaults, an Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy family, for centuries. One night in June 1921,

Lahardane is attacked and the owner of the house Captain Everard Gault accidentally shoots one of the invaders. In fear, that the injury will bring revenge on his family, Captain and his wife

Heloise decide to take their daughter Lucy and leave the country. Lucy does not want to leave

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her home and to demonstrate her disagreement, she runs away. Unfortunately, Lucy hurts her leg during her escape and is forced to stay in a secluded place. Her parents cannot find her.

Furthermore, some of her clothes are found on the seashore. In the end, they come to believe that she committed suicide. The devastated Gaults leave Ireland to escape the tragedy. Several days later, Lucy is found, but the message of it never reaches her parents. The novel describes the lives of Lucy, her parents, and also Mr Horahan, the man who was wounded by Captain, after their meeting.

The family of the Gaults becomes the target of attackers because of their connections with England. Héloise Gault is an Englishwoman and also the Gault family itself, even though they have lived in Ireland for centuries, came to Ireland originally from England:

“The origins of the Gaults in Ireland had centuries ago misted over. Previously of Norfolk - so it was believed within the family, although without much certainty - they had settled first of all in the far western reaches of County Cork.” (4) Despite the long history of the family in Cork, the

Gaults, as an Ascendency family, are perceived as a link with England. Consequently, they are seen as enemies by some of the neighbours. After the house is attacked, Heloise blames herself for the misfortune of the house, but her husband Everard does not agree: “The nature of the house, the possession of land even though it had dwindled, the family’s army connection, would have been enough to bring that trouble in the night.” (7) The reasons for the attack do not lie only in Heloiseʼs nationality, but also in the history and origins of the family - their family and house symbolize English dominion. Aside from their origin, for generations, Gaults have traditionally joined the English army, which fact serves as another reason for the animosity as well. The politic opinions of the family are not specified, aside from their connection to army, but as Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt observes “at various times both the Lord Lieutenant [a person appointed by England who could employ militias] and Daniel O’Connell have been guests at the house.” (198) The family itself does not seem to give off an image of a family which considers itself superior to others, at least not in the time setting of the story. The whole family consists only of Captain Gault, his wife and daughter and they have only two servants. Mr Gault certainly does not consider or behave as superior towards others. “At the time of the attempted

25

arson, Everard Gault is a modest man who works alongside his servant, repairing the roof lead, replacing the window glass, keeping the deteriorating house going.” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 197) The fact, that Captain Gault hurries to apologise to the Horahan family after attack, illustrates his lack of aggression as well as the depth of the precariousness of the position of his family and consequently also of other families in that time. If the relations between people were fair, the necessity of the apology would be questionable. For sure, to wound a person is a reason enough for an apology, but if the injury was inflected in defence, in response to the aggression of the wounded, who threaten to burn the house with other people inside, the situation is quite different. But Mr Gault, aware of the extent of the hatred of the attackers and the possibility of the denial of his reasons, goes to apologize in hope for a peaceful solution.

Lahardene is far from being the only house, which is threatened by arsonists during the night in the area. There are many abandoned houses in the surroundings, which were left by their families. As Mr Gault points out: “what had been attempted at Lahardane was part of a pattern that was repeated all over Ireland.” (7) Many other houses, with similar character to

Lahardane, were threatened as well. The fatal attack, in which Mr Gault injures one of the arsonists, is expected by the family, because there was already one unsuccessful attempt. As a consequence of that failure, the Lahardene’s dogs were poisoned, so they would not spoil the next attack. After the death of the dogs, Captain Gault seeks the help of the army, but gets a negative answer, because the garrison does not have free people to protect the house.

‘We’re stretched at the barracks, sir,’ Sergeant Talty had said when he came out from Enniseala. ‘Oh, stretched shocking, Captain.’ Lahardane wasnʼt the only house under threat; every week somewhere went up, no matter how the constabulary were spread.‘Please God, thereʼll be an end

to it,’ (3)

The Sergeant understands the danger in which Lahardane is, but cannot help, because he does not have enough soldiers to protect all the endangered houses in the area. Many of the Anglo-

Irish inhabitants around chose the same option as the Gaults. In order to avoid the danger, in which their lives were, they left their houses and Ireland. “The Gouvernets had gone from

Aglish, he said, the Priors from Ringville, the Swifts, the Boyces. Everywhere, what you heard about was the going.” (9) The deserted houses are, even after the families leave them, viewed as

26

reminders of their original owners, supremacy of England and oppression. As such, they are not used as homes for others, but treated as unwanted articles. The aversion to the people is passed on the houses:

When the Gouvernets left Aglish they sold the house to a farmer who wanted it for the lead on the roof, who took off the slates and gouged out the fireplaces, leaving what remained to the weather. Iyre Manor had been burnt to its foundations and the Swifts had stayed at Lahardane while they thought about what to do. There’d been talk of the remains at Ringville becoming a seminary.

(150)

Even though Captain’s shot is unintentional, it is not recognized as such by the Horahan family. They do not believe in his words and do not accept either his apology or the compensation he offers them. The Captain did not mean to hurt anybody, when he shot the gun, he only wanted to warn the attackers: “He had not sought to inflict an injury, only to make it known that a watch was being kept.” (3) He regrets it, but he fired in order to protect his family and house, even remembering it afterwards, he does not know “what else could he have done”

(21). First, the Captain contacts the family of the injured man thorough the local Catholic clergyman. He wants to let them know, that the injury of their son was an accident. But the answer letter from the clergyman brings no reassurance, that the family acknowledges his message, furthermore there “was an awkwardness about his letter, about the choice of phrases and of words, as if he found it difficult to comment on what had occurred, as if he didn’t understand that neither death nor injury had been intended.”(3-4) Afterwards, Everard tries to write to the family himself. Receiving no answer to his letter, he goes to visit them.

Nevertheless, the Horahans do not listen to him and accept neither the apology nor the offered compensation. (11) The family seems to believe, that he intended to kill their son, when he was just walking around his land, lost. “Those three lads had been out snaring rabbits and had lost their way. They shouldn’t have been trespassing; no doubt about that, it was admitted. Captain

Gault didnʼt mention the petrol tins.” (11) The Horahan family is so hostile, that Captain in the end does not even mention the obvious ill intentions of their son and his friends, knowing that it would not bring him the result he sought - to make a truce with the family, which would prevent them from taking revenge on his. It was impossible to convince the Horahans for him.

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Mr Horahan, the man who was injured during the attack, is afterwards admired for it by people around him. After he recovers and is able to walk again, people in the town seem to think highly of him. As he walks on the streets the injury attracts “glances of approval from older men, who invited him to join any one of half a dozen pitch-and-toss schools” (25). Even a beggar woman sympathizes with him: “‘Well, isn’t it shocking what would happen to you!’ ...

‘A man to take a gun to you!’” (75) This comment sounds as if, as like as Horahan’s family and probably all his admirers, she believes or pretend to believe, that Mr Gault has done something outrageous without being provoked. The one who is especially proud of young Horahan is his father. The father does not have doubts about the rightness of his son’s actions, even after the news of the tragic misunderstanding and separation of the family gets to them. He does not feel any sympathy for Gaults at all,

his father had always taken pride in what had occurred, since it had been swiftly followed by the departure - apparently for ever - of a one-time officer of the British army and his English wife. That this couple had mistakenly believed their child to be dead amounted to no more than just deserts (76) According to the father of family, the Gaults, as Ascendancy family, deserve everything that happened to them. “They are viewed as justifiably punished for the ascendancy usurpation they symbolise.” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 206)

However young Horahan is not given only approval. The girl she likes refuses him because of the way he got his injury and he himself, as the time goes by, starts to feel guilty about the events in Lahardane and the consequences of the attack for the Gault family. There are also others who regret the leaving of the Gaults – for example the lawyer Mr Sullivan and the servants of the family. One day, young Horahan shows the scar to the girl he goes out with, to make an impress on her. He expects, that she will join the general admiration, but after he explains her how he got injured, she only replies that “she didn’t know I [Mr Horahan] was one of the lads going out on that game.” (185). She does not want to meet with him anymore afterwards. Young Horahan starts to feel regrets about his act after the death of his father.

Especially the separation of the family and abandoned child causes him great distress. (76) He starts to dream about the attack on Lahardane. In his dreams, reality mixes with events that did

28

not happen, a body of dead child often appears in them (76), multiplying his feeling of guilt. He changes jobs several times, trying to get rid of his delusions, but it does not help. In the end he joins the army. “Here he knelt, and pleaded that in return for his service to his country he would be rewarded with peace of mind, that his insistent dreams, oppressing and tormenting him by night and haunting his memory by day, would cease.” (96) But not even the service in the army does bring him the longed peace of mind. As Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt summarizes his situation:

“Horahan stumbled into the arson scheme, and his life has been blighted by the experience. His lack of political commitment is evident; what is apparent is that the experience at Lahardane has unhinged his sanity.” (195) Horahan lacks the political conviction of his father and therefore is unable to cope with the situation. When finally, after 29 years of exile, Captain Gault comes back to Ireland, Mr Horahan takes it as a sign. (160) Already half-mad he visits him to plead for forgiveness, but even though he gets it, it does not save him from insanity. (161)

Mr Gault, does not feel bitter about his country and the attack, even though it caused him great misfortune. He character seem contrary to the arrogant image of the Ascendancy family member. He sees his misfortune as a product of the past of Ireland, the centuries of unfairness as well as of chance. Even Lucy, seems to adopt his view, in the course of time she understands, that she has no one to blame. After Captain fails to persuade the Horahans that he had no intention to kill their son, he is not surprised or outraged by it. Despite the fact that he is driven out of the only home he has ever knew, he seems not to be angered by the unfair accusation and seemingly senseless hatred of Horahans. He does not blame the family, he even forgives the son, even though the blame for the destruction of Gault family could be easily put on him. Captain sees his homeland as country with such a history that led to the impossibility of the fair relationships between some groups of inhabitants.

He thought of Ireland, drained of its energy by centuries of disaffection, and the feeling he had experienced at the beginning of his exile came back - of punishment inflicted for those sins of the past to which his family might have contributed. Had it been greed that the Gaults had held their ground too long? While penal laws were passed there had been parties at Lahardane, prayers said

in church for King and Empire, the aspirations of the dispossessed ignored. (146)

Mr Gault does not blame individuals, because according to him it is the past of Ireland, filled with unfairness, the past on which his family participated as well, that caused the aggression and 29

consequently his exile. It is not just past who was at fault though, as Mr Gault understands well.

The disappearance of his daughter could not be assigned to the bitter feelings of their neighbours, just “blaming history will not do” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 203): “Chance, not wrath, had this summer ordered the fate of the Gaults.”(36) Lucy, after meeting Horahan, the man whose injury initiated the separation of her family, does not feel that she can blame the insane person before her.

She might have wept but she had not and she did not now; she wondered if she ever would again. For a moment she looked into the features of the man who had returned after so long and saw there only madness. No meaning dignified his return; no order patterned, as perhaps it might

have, past and present; no sense was made of anything. (191)

She knows that he is, as well as she, only a victim. He did what seemed to be right for others, but it was not for him. Several days after the meeting, Horahan loses his memory and power of speech. He is admitted taken to an asylum. Lucy visits him there regularly every fortnight until his death, for the next 17 years. (220) Her reasons are not really specified, she does that probably from the sense of belonging, or to “impose some kind of order of purpose onto her lonely existence” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 197). In the asylum, they play as Fitzgerald-Hoyt points out, very significantly, game of chance Snake and ladders (196).

In the course of time, the attitude of the locals towards Lucy changes. Lucy, aside from a couple of remarks from one girl in her class, does not seem to be threatened by others because of her origin, though some despise her for her silly action, which caused such distress to her parents and the separation of the family. As the time flows, she is seen in very different light from a member of despised Ascendancy family. “With the compassion engendered by independence and passing time, Lucy is variously seen as a pitiable figure, an oddity “the

Protestant woman” in a Catholic-dominated land and a saintly peacemaker.” (Fitzgerald Hoyt

206) As the time goes by, the attitude towards the Ascendancy families mellow, as it is demonstrated on the view of Lucy.

The year 1921 is marked with the strong aversion to the part of the inhabitants against those, who are of Anglo-Irish Ascendency. The Gault family, thanks to its English origins, the connection of several of its members with English army and also to fact that the wife of the last

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owner is an Englishwoman becomes a target of an attack of arsonists. There are many houses of the similar characters around, which are threatened as well. There are so many, that the Sergeant does not have enough soldiers to help Captain Gault with the protection of the house. Even though Captain goes to the Horahans, the family of the arsonist he has injured during the attack, to explain that the shot was unintentional and to offer apology and compensation, he is not listened to at all. The family tells him that they believe that he wanted to kill their son, when he wandered to his property. The aversion of the Horahans to Captain Gault, the member of

Ascendency family with English wife, is so strong, that they do not mind to ignore the truth.

They are happy, that the Gaults are forced to leave the country. The father of the family even thinks of their following suffering, as of a ‘desert’. The young Horahan, is generally admired by many people around him for his wound, but not by all of them. The girl Horahan likes, refuses him because of it. Another one, who does not admire young Horahan is he himself. After the death of his father, he starts to be haunted by guilt for the deed, which caused separation of the family. He is haunted by it for decades, in the end it makes him insane. Mr Gault does not blame the Horahans for the attack and misfortune of his family, he believes that in fault is the past of Ireland and chance. Because of the past, filled with unfairness and oppression, on which the Gault family probably participated as well, the contemporary inhabitants feel the aversion towards them. Lucy does not blame Horahan either, similarly as her father, she sees him as another victim of the past and bad luck. Lucy, who stays in Ireland, is in time viewed different from a member of the despised Ascendancy family.

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5. Stories of the Troubles

In the following chapter the relations between English and Irish in the two short stories by William Trevor are described. Both the stories are set in the period of Troubles in 1970s.

Even though neither of them takes place in the Northern Ireland, and the protagonists do not face or cause the violence, their lives are greatly affected by it. For the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy family Middletons in “The Distant Past”, the Troubles end the friendship and tolerance they shared with their neighbours. The family of Irish immigrants in “Another Christmas” who live in England lose the friendship of their English landlord, because of their assumed agreement with the paramilitaries of the North. Furthermore, the future life of the family in the English community is expected to deteriorate, because of the deeds of their fellow countrymen which seem to cast the blame for them also on their family. Both stories depict the poisoning of the

Anglo-Irish relations caused by the Troubles, which inevitably spread outside the borders of

Northern Ireland. The citation of the stories comes from the book The Stories of William Trevor (1983).

1.4. The Distant Past ‘The Distant Past’ is a short story, depicting the lives of two descendants of the

Protestant Middleton family in time of the Troubles in 1970s. The siblings stayed in the

Republic of Ireland, despite their Ascendancy origin and loyalty to the idea of Union with

England. In time, the initial animosity towards them, felt by the Catholic inhabitants of the close town, disappeared and they became respected there, they even have friends among the locals.

However, this situation changes after the outbreak of Troubles and the end of prosperity of the town. The old animosity of the locals against Middletons, even though they do not have anything to do with the Troubles is waken again.

The Middleton family has lived in the house Carraveagh for many generations, their house was built in 17th century. Carraveagh is located in the north of the Republic of Ireland, about sixty miles from border with the Northern Ireland. The siblings, although the family used to prosper in the past, are very poor now, even the house was mortgaged by their father (345).

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The situation of the siblings illustrates the decline of the Ascendancy families after the 1921 in

Ireland.

Mr and Mrs Middleton are “loyal to the past” (346). Even though many years have already passed since the declaration of the Republic of Ireland, they remain supporters of the

Union openly. They also display a certain arrogance towards the Irish history that relates to their upbringing. Right after the establishment of the new regime, the siblings believed, that it would not last (345), but as the time has shown, they were wrong. Still, the Middletons stay loyal to the idea of the Union and to England, as their family always has been. They keep symbols of this loyalty in their house, they have a Cross of St George in their hall and also the portrait of their father in the uniform of Irish Guard. (347) The Middletons are open about their opinions and sometimes even demonstrate them in the near town: “they rose to their feet when the BBC played ‘God Save the King’, and on the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II they drove into the town with a small Union Jack propped up in the back window of their Ford Anglia.”

(346) The loyalty of the Middletons to the past nevertheless displays itself also in their self- consciousness, they show certain amount of arrogance towards history and consequently towards others. Commenting on the loss of their fortune, as Robert E. Rhodes points out

“consistent with their attitudes toward the new order in Ireland”, they blame the new national regime as well as the Catholic Dublin woman, because of whom, at least according to rumours, their father lost the property: “In the days of the Union back such women would have known their place: wasn’t it all part and parcel?” (345) In old days such a woman would not be considered worthy. As Lis Christensen, Lis Phil and Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt observed, Midlettons are ignorant of the history or at least of consequences of the history for them. They, as Lis

Christensen and Lis Phil argue, evince “an almost total unawareness of Irish history and its reverberations in the present” (qdt in Fitzgerald-Hoyt 58). Similarly “their attitude towards the changing state of Ireland bespeaks an arrogance based on privilege.” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 58) As mentioned earlier, Middletons did not believe in the preservation of new regime. Their attitude displays the sense of superiority in which they were brought up.

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Despite the difference in opinions, the siblings interact and even become friends with some of the townʼs inhabitants, who are Catholics and content with the established republic.

Their initial suspicion towards the siblings “had seeped away” (350) in time. Now, the

Middletons have several friends in the town, they regularly meet them when they go shopping there. (345-346) They have a good relationship even with the local butcher Fat Driscoll, who was involved in an incident with them in the time, when the republic was still fought for. He, together with several other men, waited in front of Carraveagh to fight the English soldiers, who were expected to come for the loyal Unionists in the house. Meanwhile, the Middletons were locked inside. However, the soldiers never came, preventing so the bloodshed. Despite this kind of past, there seem to be no ill feelings between the butcher and the siblings now. They even remember these events with amusement.

‘Will you ever forget it, Mr Middleton? I’d ha’ run like a rabbit if you’d lifted a finger at me.’ Fat Driscoll would laugh then, rocking back on his heels with a glass of stout in his hand of banging their meat on to his weighing-scales. Mr Middleton would smile. ‘There was alarm in your eyes, Mr Driscoll,’ Miss Middleton would murmur, smiling also at the memory of the distant occasion.

(346)

The locals do not discriminate the Middletons on grounds of their faith and political opinion, at most they sometimes laugh at their peculiarity. They are respected in the town. Even though new regime was established in the country, Middletons, while still Unionists, decided to stay in Ireland. Sometimes even they wonder why. To others, and gradually even to themselves, they look like an anachronism. (348) They are seen as strange, but not dangerous people and they are liked and respected in the town: “Odd, people said, and in time this reference took on a burnish of affection.” (345) The tourists, visiting the town, sometimes wonder about the situation - Middletons disagree, but do not fight and live peacefully within the local community.

“It a was a pleasant wonder, more than one of them remarked, that old wounds could heal so completely, that the Middletons continued in their loyalty to past and that, in spite of it, they were respected in the town.” (348) Their peaceful disagreement, contrasting with the violence in the past, has won this respect for the Middletons. As Mrs. Middleton says, they were able to achieve “a kind of dignity: you could take a pride out of living at peace” (351).

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After the break of the Troubles, the atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance gradually disappears from the town. The people start to behave towards Middletons the same way as they did in the ‘distant past’. In 1967, with the bombing of the post offices in Belfast, the news of

Troubles reach the town. (348) Both the inhabitants of the town and Middletons are shocked and unhappy about the events, they share the same opinion on the situation.

‘A bad business,’ Fat Driscoll remarked, wrapping the Middletons’ meat. ‘We don’t want that old stuff all over again.’ ‘We didn’t want it in the first place,’ Miss Middleton reminded him. He laughed, and she

laughed, and so did her brother. (349)

At first, it seems that the violence in different country will not change the relationship between

Middletons and their friends. However, the unsettled situation causes, that the tourists, the source of income to many locals, stop coming to the area, because they are afraid of the violence. The town stops flourishing. “As anger rose in the town at the loss of fortune so there rose also the kind of talk there had been in the distant past. There was talk of atrocities and counter-atrocities, and of guns and gelignite and the rights of people.” (350) With the loss of prosperity, people start to remember the violence and suspicions, which they felt in the past.

The coming of British soldiers in Northern Ireland reminds the old times as well. Gradually, the locals stop talking to Middletons (350), who were Unionist and supporters of England all their lives. Their previous actions, which were understood as a funny peculiarity before, seem suspicious now.

It was as though, going back nearly twenty years, people remembered the Union Jack in the window of their car and saw it now in a different light. It wasn’t something to laugh at any more, nor were certain words that the Middletons had gently spoken, nor were they themselves just and old, peculiar couple. … The stand they had taken and kept to for so many years no longer seemed ridiculous in the town. Had they driven with an Union Jack now they would, astoundingly, have

been shot. (350)

In the end, the Middletons lose the precious tolerance, which they have gained in time. For the people in the town, they are no longer just stubborn old people, kind of funny anachronism, but they became a connection with the contemporary violence, since it was stirred up on the base of the past problems. After many years of tolerance and friendship the siblings become suspicious and ostracised the same way as they were in the past.

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For the Middletons, the Troubles end the peaceful period of their lives, the consequences of the history and of their origin affects them again. They do not expect to be able to be accepted in the community again. The Middletons seem to have left the past behind them, they do not fight and do not complain about their poverty. Nevertheless the inhabitants of the town are reminded of it by the violence in the North and by the loss of prosperity. The changed situation seems unfair to the locals, similarly as was unfair the state of affairs in the past. Being left by their friends, the Middletons even take down the symbols of their loyalty to in their house “in mourning for the modus vivendi that had existed for so long between them and the people of the town.” (350) The period of the time, which they were able to spend in the community and which was so real, now seems like only a temporary truce. Mr Middleton believes, that the final peace could come only after their death, that only that way “the distant past would be set to rest” (351), because there is no one to inherit the house (351). Even though there was temporary truce between them and the townʼs people, it was not enough to fight the animosity and suspicion from the past. Mrs Middleton reminds that from the beginning, this truce was something that was possible for them thanks to their attitude: “the modus vivendi had been easy for them, ... because they hadn’t really minded the dwindling of their fortunes while the town prospered.” (351) The siblings did not fight for the maintaining of their previous status, furthermore they also missed the prospect of future. Thanks to that, they did not feel the urge to be forceful in their opinions and there was no chance that their children could do so.

These things made them look less dangerous and more acceptable for others. They were able to put the past to sleep, but the outbreak of the Troubles and the end of prosperity remind the locals old hostilities and makes the Middletons scapegoats. They are not able to escape the prejudice and implications from the past, even though it seemed so for some time. The implications of history overpower their efforts.

Mr and Mrs Middleton, Protestants from an Ascendancy family, have been all their life

Unionists. Even though they have stayed in the Republic of Ireland after its establishment, they did not change their opinion. They even express it in front of their neighbours. However, the difference in opinions on the stateʼs establishment does not reflect in their relationship with the

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Catholic Republicans from the near town now, decades after the change of regime. In time, they even have gained friends there. They are friends even with a man, who was involved in an attack on their house in the past. For their peaceful disagreement, Middletons are liked and respected in the town, the people at most sometimes laugh at their peculiarity. This establishment however changes after the outbreak of the Troubles and the consequent end of prosperity of the town. Gradually, people, losing their fortunes and remembering the unsettled past, start to be suspicious towards Middletons for their affinity with England, and start to avoid them. The siblings lose the respect and friends. After many years of tolerance and friendship they become ostracised the same way as they were in the past. Middletons do not expect that the tolerance they enjoyed before will return. It was their calm disagreement and the lack of future prospects, which made the period of tolerance possible. Since they were content with the present and did not hold grudge against the past, they were able to put the past animosity to sleep. However, the Troubles and the hardships it brought on the inhabitants of the town reminded the neighbours the disagreements of the past. The lingering connection between the

Middletons, England and past makes them ostracised again, the same way as they were in the

‘distant past’. In the end Middletons are unable to escape the implications of the past, and despite their powerlessness, they bear the guilt impelled on them by history and the believes of the people.

1.5. Another Christmas

The short story “Another Christmas”, similarly as “The Distant Past”, describes the impact of Troubles on the people and also on the relations between Irishmen and Englishmen, who are not directly involved in them. The setting of the story is however very different. The situation of the Irish Catholic immigrants in the England after the spread of the violence and terrorist attacks in Britain is depicted. In the story, these attacks roots the end of the friendship between the family of Irish immigrants and their English friend, who comes to believe that they sympathize with the paramilitaries, for one comment of the father of family Dermot made on the violence. Dermot talked about the background of the attacks, in a way that sound as if the 37

justified the attacks. The difference in the understanding of the violence also drives a wedge between Dermot and his wife Norah. Norah disagrees strongly with the attacks, because of them she even starts to feel ashamed for her nationality. She tries to persuade her husband to go and apologize to their friend, because what he said was wrong, but she fails to do so. Norah understands that the attacks of their fellow countrymen cast bad light also on them, they could be associated with them by some.

The story takes place the day before the Christmas in 1980s in a house in Fulham. The

Irish family have lived there for more than twenty years now. Since they have moved in the house, they have been friends with their English landlord Mr Joyce. It was a really close friendship, Mr Joyce had been even spending Christmas with them (488). Norah tries to persuade her husband to go to their landlord, so he can come to spend Christmas with them again.

The friendship between the family of Irish immigrants and their English landlord does not stop with the first bomb attacks of IRA in Britain. Initially, Mr Joyce does not seem to make the connection between the attacks and his friends. They even watch the news together. Mr

Joyce does not presume that his Irish friends would have different opinion on this kind of violence from him, even though the attackers are also Irish. The couple condemns the violence as well. “He couldn’t understand the mentality of people like that, Mr Joyce said yet again, killing just anyone, destroying life for no reason. Dermot had shaken his head over it, she herself had said it was uncivilized.” (493) Since the innocents have been dying during the attacks, Mr Joyce does not see any logic in the behaviour of the bombers.

It is only after one comment on the situation made by Dermot, which implies that the attacks are well-reasoned because of the past happenings in Ulster, that Mr Joyce stops visiting the family. Several months after the first IRA bombings, when another attack is announced in television, Dermot says something, which makes the landlord doubt, that the views of his friends and his are the same. After the initial disagreement with the violence, Dermot adds:

they [the people in the room] mustn’t of course forget what the Catholics in the North had suffered. The bombs were a crime but it didn’t do to forget that the crime would not be there if

generations of Catholics in the North had not been treated as animals. (493)

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With this note, Dermot maybe only tries to explain the reasons for the attacks, but it sounds as if he thinks that the killing of the innocents have a good reason behind it, which is something unacceptable to hear from his friends for Mr Joyce. After he leaves that evening, he never comes to visit them again.

Norah feels ashamed of her husband’s words and because of the attacks also of her nationality. She does not agree with that way of solving problems and she is also afraid of what the image of the Irish in Britain will become after the attacks. Contrary to her husband, Norah sees the reason, why Mr Joyce stopped visiting them. She believes, that Dermot should not have said what he did, that it was wrong from him. As Dolores MacKenna suggests: “Norah realises that her husband’s intransigence rules out compassion, a virtue which in the circumstances, the story suggests, would have been more appropriate than honesty” (109) Norah tries to explain her view to him: his comment was very untactful and making it, he also offended the generosity, which Mr Joyce offered to them.

Mr Joyce had been generous and tactful, she said loudly. It made no difference to Mr Joyce that they were Irish people, that their children went to school with the children of I.R.A. men. Yet his generosity and his tact had been thrown back in his face. Everyone knew that the Catholics in the North had suffered, that generations of injustice had been twisted into the shape of a cause. But you couldn’t say it to an old man who had hardly been outside Fulham in his life. You couldn’t say

it because when you did it it sounded like an excuse for murder. (493)

The fact, that Mr Joyce, despite their nationality, did not connect them with the attacks, was accepted with gratitude by Norah. She believes that it was not self-evident, that he could take a very different stance. The reasons behind the attacks might be good enough for Dermot, but they could not be good enough for Mr Joyce. Every time, another attack takes places, Norah hopes it was not done by Irish. Because of them, she becomes ashamed of her nationality -

“she’d begun to feel embarrassed because of her Waterford accent.” (493). Norah hates the attacks and is also afraid of the image which they would possibly create for the Irish, of the generalization of their nation. “She felt she should be out on the streets … violently stating that the bombers were more despicable with every breath they drew, that hatred and death were all they deserved.” (494) Norah would like to somehow show that not all the Irish people thinks the same, not all of them share the opinions of IRA, the right to kill innocents. She is afraid that

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every Irish would become suspicious, that they would be seen as those, who kill the innocents.

That even her husband would be seen as: “a man with an Irish accent …, who was guilty of a cruelty no one would have believed him capable of.” (494) Furthermore, Norah is convinced,

“that her husbandʼs obstinacy has implicated them in violence: “She cleared up the tea-things reflecting that the bombers would be pleased if they could note the victory they scored in a living-room in Fulham” (495)”(Fitzgerald-Hoyt 60) She is afraid of the future, that the people around will turn against them. Because of the attacks, she thinks that their potential discrimination would be natural and even “understandable and fair’’. (494)

Even though Norah asks her husband to go and apologize to Mr Joyce, he refuses to do so, because from his point of view, he did not do anything wrong. He believes it was his duty to say the truth. Norah considers his need to state it as hypocrisy. (494)

‘You have to state the truth, Norah. It’s there to be told.’ ‘I never yet cared for a North on Ireland person, Catholic or Protestant. Let them fight it out and

not bother us.’ (493)

Norah protests, that even though the things he said might be truth, they do not concern them.

They do not live in the North and nobody oppress them because of their religion. As Mary

Fitzgerald-Hoyt observes, even though Norahʼs reasons for this attitude are understandable, “we also recognise that in the world of Trevor’s fiction her disavowal of connection with other suffering people – and with Irish history – is both short-sighted and morally questionable.” (60)

And as such it is seen by Dermot, who replies her: “You shouldnʼt say that, Norah.” (493) After some time Norah, considering the nature of her husband, realizes that he did not talk in the heat of the moment, but that he thought about it for a long time and considered saying it as “his

Catholic duty” (494). Dermot is so sure about it, that he even believes that Mr Joyce has maybe already realized the truth of what he said. “‘I think he’s maybe seen it by now,’ he said. ‘How one thing leads to another.’” (494) He tries to persuade his wife about the rightness of his decision to make that comment, to tell about the truth he believes in. “He spoke of keeping faith with their own, of being a Catholic. Crime begot crime, he said, God wanted it to be known that one evil let to another.” (494) He believes, that the crimes of the past could not stay unavenged.

That the killings of innocents were inevitable because of the past struggle of Catholics in

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Ireland. And so he has no reason to apologize to Mr Joyce. Robert E. Rhodes aptly summarizes the disagreement between the husband and wife: “both Dermot and Norah understand how the past renews itself in the present; but where Dermot blindly perpetuates that past, Norah is willing to break the circle of violence begetting violence by forgiveness. In even simpler terms, he wants justice; she wants mercy.” (Rhodes)

The damage of the friendship seems to be the fault of Dermot, but in fact it is not entirely so. As Fitzgerald-Hoyt argues, Mr Joyceʼs

own intransigence brings into question Norahʼs belief that their Irishness had made no difference to him. If Dermotʼs comment that injustice and violence are connected in Northern Ireland causes Joyce to turn his back on a decades-long friendship, perhaps the connection between the Irish

expatriates and their English landlord was far more tenuous than either was willing to admit. (60)

Even though Norah is convinced of their landlord’s good will and of the blindness of her husband, it is true that Mr Joyce does not make much effort to keep the friendship. Dermotʼs remark could be easily misunderstood, but Mr Joyce primarily chooses the meaning, which builds a wall between him and his friends, generalizing the Irish according the deeds and opinions of paramilitaries.

The friendship between the Irish immigrant family and their English landlord is ruined because of the difference in view of IRA attacks in Britain between Mr Joyce and the father of the family Dermot. The attacks are not the original cause of the breakup though, initially, Mr

Joyce does not condemn his friends because they have the same nationality as the attackers.

However, after Dermot comments on the situation as if he implies that the killings of innocents are well reasoned, Mr Joyce stops visiting the family. Dermotʼs wife Norah wants him to apologize to their landlord, according to her he should not say what he did, because he offended their generous friend with it, to their landlord his words sound like an excuse for murder. Norah hates the attacks and also the possible negative view it will create for all the Irish, even for her family. But she cannot persuade her husband, he believes that stating his truth was his duty and it was right to do so. The end of the friendship seems to be Dermotʼs fault, but in fact, Mr Joyce did not make any effort to understand better his friendʼs opinion, he took his note as a clear evidence of the great difference in their opinion, which questions the absence of a bias towards

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his Dermot’s nationality. Similarly as in ʻThe Distant Pastʼ, even though the couple does not participate in the violence, their lives are affected by the image of the Irishmen it creates.

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6. Felicia’s Journey

In Feliciaʼs Journey, very different attitudes towards the relations between Ireland and

England are presented, in which the illustration of the change in the views of the people towards them, which took place during the 20th century, can be seen. The story is set in the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century and some of the characters seem to still have opinions from the time of the Anglo-Irish War of early 1930s. Other characters, on the other hand, display the changed mood in the perception of the Anglo-Irish relations, they do not see England as an enemy of Ireland anymore. The new generation does not seem to be burdened by the past as much as their predecessors, the atmosphere between the nations has changed. Still, there are some people who do consider the past crucial for the present.

Feliciaʼs father, despite the fact, that the Anglo-Irish War happened 70 years ago, still honours its memory. Because of his loyalty to the ‘Irish cause’, the possibility, that his daughter would be in relationship with a man involved in British Army, is unacceptable for him. Feliciaʼs boyfriend Johnny, on the other hand, even though he comes from the same town, does not seem to harbour ill feelings against England. He leaves Ireland, because he cannot find job there and after coming to England, he joins British army. Finally, an Englishman Mr Hildich with his

‘imperialistic mind’ thinks of Ireland as of a backward country, which was better off when it was under English rule.

Seventeen-year-old Irish girl Felicia leaves her home in the Republic of Ireland and goes to England to find her lover. Felicia is from a Catholic family, before her departure, she lives in a house with her father, brothers and great-grandmother. Her family is very patriotic.

She falls in love with a young man called Johnny, when he is visiting his mother in his and

Feliciaʼs home-town. After Johnny leaves for England, where he works, Felicia finds out that she is pregnant. Johnny did not give her any contact information and his mother does not want to help her, so she decides to go and find him on her own.

The main reason, for which Feliciaʼs family identifies itself so strongly with the idea of independence of Ireland, is, that the husband of Feliciaʼs great-grandmother was killed in 1920s

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when fighting for it. This fact have been always stressed by Feliciaʼs father in their household.

After the death of her husband, the great-grandmother was left alone, pregnant. She had to scrub floors all her live to be able to support her family. But she overcame these hardships, taking comfort of the importance of the sacrifice of her husband. ‘‘But the hardship was ennobled during all its years by the faith still kept with an ancient cause.”(25). She needed to believe in the importance of the ‘ancient cause’, because it gave sense to the death of her husband and also to her suffering, this faith was giving her strength. She passed these feelings on Feliciaʼs father and after she has lost her wits he keeps it alive himself, he honours ‘‘the bloodshed on his own”

(25). On evenings, he goes thorough the old scrapbooks, which contain mementos like photographs, newspaper articles and copies of the documents important for the birth of the Irish republic. As well as the great-grandmother, they are symbols of the things that matter to

Feliciaʼs father, and source of his pride, they are ‘‘a monument to the nation and brave womanʼs due, a record of her sacrificeʼs worth.”(26) Feliciaʼs father admires his grandmother and cares for her a lot, his first question after coming home inquires about her well-being. (25) Even though she is already out of her mind, he visits and talks to her every day, just being with her gives him strength ‘‘Her presence rekindled a spirit in him, her history had long been rooted in his sensibilities.”(25)

The strength of the patriotic feelings of her father reflects also in the choice of Feliciaʼs name. He had chosen it from one of the articles in the scrapbook. She was named after ‘‘A woman whoʼd manned the barricades in 1916, whoʼd met her death there.” (62) While it might seem unusual, to give a little baby-girl name after someone, who died violently more than 70 years ago, it is exactly this kind of woman that Feliciaʼs father admires. Someone who fought for the liberation of Ireland.

Feliciaʼs father wants to stop his daughter from seeing her lover because of his supposed job in British army. The connection with such a man would be against the patriotic nature of the family. When her father finds out about Feliciaʼs seeing Johnny, he wants her to stop the relationship, because he heard that Johnny joined British army. Felicia does not want to do so and she refuses to believe the rumours, because Johnny told her, he works in factory

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stores. (54) Still, Feliciaʼs father press her to end the relationship. For her, being from the family she is, is impossible to be with someone who is suspected of involvement in British army. It contradicts the loyalty to the Irish cause which is passed on in the family.

ʻYou will not live in this house and keep company with a member of the occupying forces. This family knows where it stands, and always has done. … For eight centuries, not an hour less, the Irish people have known only the suppression of language, religion and human freedom. A vision was born on the streets of Dublin seventy-five years ago during those Easter days. It was not fulfilled, the potential has not been realized: you have only to look around you. On top of that the jackboot of the British bully is still in six of our counties; there is still the spectre of death and torture on the streets of towns as humble as our own. No child of mine will ever be on that side of

things girl.ʼ (58)

He wants her to stop the relationship because he sees the British army as an enemy of Ireland and so of his family, in the past and also in present days; it was this army, the Irishmen had to fight to get the independence. According to Feliciaʼs father, being in that army means, that

Johnny does not care for the suffering or Irishmen in previous centuries and the fight of his ancestors, the things which he considers so important. Furthermore, the fight for independence and the end of oppression is not over, the British soldiers occupy Ulster. For him, Johnny is a traitor, who might even fight members of his own nation. ‘‘A member of the British forces could be sent into the North. He could be set to killing our own.ʼʼ (54) However, it should be pointed out, that the father tries to persuade his daughter like this before he knows that she is pregnant, which fact makes her choice of boyfriend impossible to change. The opinion of the father, after he discovers that she is pregnant is not given in the book. Felicia only remembers his initial burst of anger and his condemning her. (59-60) After she leaves, he regrets her leaving. (203)

The attitudes of Felicia towards patriotism, England and its army, are never given clearly in the book. Nevertheless, it would be impossible for her to tell her father, who fanatically goes thorough the scrapbooks on evenings, something that would not correspond with his views. Even though she calls her fatherʼs disagreement with Johnny as ‘‘unreasonableʼʼ

(58, 64), it is not really clear which part of it she finds unreasonable. It can be that she does not consider fatherʼs objections as relevant, or that they do not have a reason simply because

Johnny is not in the army. The second possibility seems more believable, thanks to the fact, that

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during her search, she never accepts the possibility that Johnny is in the army. On the other hand

Felicia is sympathetic to Johnnyʼs choice to leave Ireland. (23) She is unemployed for some time and she feels very bad about it: “The freedom had been taken from her with the loss of her employment” (23-24), so she can relate to the possible Johnnyʼs despair for work. There are not much perspective for her in the town either. Contrary to her father, Felicia seems to be much more aware of it. Despite the fact, that the De Valera’s vision “was not fulfilled, the potential has been not realized” (58) and “Ireland’s partial independence has not brought Felicia’s family the ideal life that de Valera envisioned: their legacy is poverty, unemployment, and a dreary quotidian reality” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 165), Felicia’s father still believes in its rightness.

Nevertheless, Felicia does not hesitate when leaving the Ireland, she does not perceive it as going to an enemy territory.

Johnny does not hold ill feelings against England and his life there. He does not share the patriotic believes of Feliciaʼs father at all, he even joins the British Army. Johnny does not feel bound to Ireland. As Felicia remembers, he did not belong much to their town’s community in the past either. ‘‘He had never belonged with the Lomasney lot or Small Corwley's crowd; he’d been more on his own, going off to Dublin when he left the Brothers’ and soon after that going to England.” (22) Johnny went to England, because he could not find a job in Ireland.

When Felicia asks him about his life in England, he seems content with it, he says England is:

ʻAll right. You get used to it. You can get used to anywhere when youʼre there a while.ʼ ʻThereʼs some gets lonely. Patty Maloney came back.ʼ

ʻThe likes of Patty Maloney would. ʼ (30)

But the likes of Johnny Lysagh would not. Johnny however realizes, that his job in army would look bad in the eyes of the locals in his home-town and he keeps silent about it. As Feliciaʼs fathers marks: “Itʼd be a natural enough thing for him to keep it quiet about the army.” (53) It is not something he could boast with around. Even Felicia thinks of the rumours about his job as

“condemnation” (54). She believes that they are based on the fact that he works in England.

“Yet now, just because someone worked in England, just because he had an English Accent, he had to be condemned, and lies made up about him.” (59) With this thought she shows that the even the facts that he works in England and has the English accent alone, might be so unpopular

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with people there, that they would start to create bad rumours. Johnny’s view of things is different from the general attitude in his home-town.

In England, Felicia does not encounter animosity from the people she talks to, caused by her nationality, which seems to be obvious to others. Nevertheless Mr Hilditch does not follow this pattern, he thinks of her in terms of his opinion on Ireland, which is based on his admiration of the imperial history of Britain. The first time Mr Hilditch sees Felicia, he observes that “she doesnʼt belong” (11). She holds plastic bags with unfamiliar trademark and after she speaks, he knows immediately that she is Irish. (11) Her accent is recognized right away by a homeless woman she meets as well (103). The people she deals with, with the exception of Mr

Hilditch, try to help her, when she asks about Johnnyʼs workplace and do not seem to care about her nationality (14). She is even given place to sleep when she asks (85, 106). For Mr Hilditch though, her nationality differentiate her greatly from his other girlfriends. He understands her according to his image of Ireland. He evaluates her as: “Simple as a bird, which youʼd expect her to be of course, coming from where she does.” (127) He thinks of her not as of Felicia, but as ʻthe Irish girlʼ. His thoughts sometimes disclose his opinion on Ireland - Felicia is a

“runaway from the Irish boglands” (127) He sees Ireland merely as a bogland, backward and problematic country, who should have been sorted out by Black and Tans (149). This view is something, one would expect from a person, who is at least one generation older than Mr

Hilditch. As Constanza Del Río-Álvaro points out: “In fact, the little knowledge that Hilditch has of Ireland –a prejudiced and stereotypical view revealing his imperialist mind– seems to have been passed down by his Uncle Wilf.” (William 4) Uncle Wilf was one of his motherʼs lovers. He was a soldier of British Army and fought in Ireland after the First World War as well

(20). His opinions and stories were passed on Hilditch, he identifies with them and, consequently, his view of Ireland is the same as a soldier who was sent to Ireland after First

World war, to “settle the unrest” (20) in 1930s.

The ʻimperialist mindʼ of Mr Hilditch, which is discussed in the previous paragraph, inspired several authors such as Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt and Christine St. Peter to see the novel as a post-colonial allegory. “Hilditch ... has created a false identity for himself based on stories of

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British imperial power colonizing Ireland” (St.Peter 335). As mentioned previously, he believes in the rightness of the British Empire. The connection of the character of Mr Hilditch and

Empire does not display only in his opinions, but also in his houseʼs location and furnishing style:

His vast home is located at No. 3, Duke of Wellington Road – names for the Irish-born yet Irish-scorning military defender of British colonial interest. The house itself contains vestiges of colonialism – it once belonged to a tea merchant, and its furnishing include “ivory trinkets”, “second hand Indian carpets”, and “Twenty mezzotints of South African

military scenes” (7). (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 163)

The other allegorical features can be found in Mr Hilditchʼs desire to monopolize the ʻIrish girlʼ

Felicia (considering that Ireland was often identified with female icons (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 144)) and his discontent with her refusal of his help and her ʻingratitudeʼ towards him, reminding the

ʻingratitudeʼ of the Irish towards their English occupants (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 161). When Mr

Hilditch starts to feel endangered by Felicia, he also “describes his feelings in decidedly colonial terms… (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 167): “he awakes with the eccentric notion that the Irish girl has invaded him, as territory is invaded” (179).

The characters of the book, which seem to concern themselves with the past the most, are portrayed as not fully aware of the present reality, or purposely avoiding it. In the case of

Felicia’s father, his reluctance to see the reality can be seen in his continuing believe in de

Valera’s ideals, despite the economic situation it has brought to his family. Mr Hilditch, who, as

Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt aptly describes, “cannot bear much reality” (169), creates new identity for himself, according the character of the Uncle Wilf, suppressing his own memories. Mr

Hilditch is however reminded of the reality in the end of the book, when after leaving his house’s refuge, he roams the street of his childhood and founds them changed by the immigrants from the collapsed Empire. (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 165)

The novel Feliciaʼs Journey portraits several very different people with very different perspectives of the Anglo-Irish relations. Feliciaʼs father, inspired by the sacrifice of his grandparents, believes that the fight for independence is still not over. Britain is still an enemy.

For him, who even named his daughter, after deceased fighter for freedom, is unacceptable to

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have his daughter going out with a possible member of British Army. It is not certain if Felicia shares her father’s view, but Johnny, as non-typical representative of the young generation of the town does not. The past does not stop him from joining the British Army. Still, he keeps quiet about it in his home-town in Ireland, because he knows the people would not like it. The people in the England which Felicia meets in do not see her as suspicious person because of her nationality. Mr Hilditch prejudiced view of Ireland projects on his view of Felicia. He, admiring the imperial past and the army, believes, that Ireland is a backward country, which was supposed to be taken care of by Black and Tans. Thanks to the character of Mr Hilditch, his agreement with the rightness of the dominion of Britain, and his effort to “dominate” or colonize Felicia, post-colonial subtext can be found in the story.

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7. Conclusion

The fictional stories by William Trevor, analysed in the previous chapters focus on the description of the people whose lives are influenced by the relations between the English (or the

British) and the Irish. The characters of the stories are, in a sense, ordinary people, they are not involved in politics or fights. Nevertheless, the Anglo-Irish relations and the changes in it, have still great impact on their lives, chiefly because of the people around them, which apply the principle of collective guilt to them. The setting of the stories is based on the actual events taking place in the 20th century, the reference to actual happenings and people can be found in it.

Trevor portrays people with different attitudes on the issue of Anglo-Irish relations, even if some characters come from the similar background, they are generally very different in their opinions and views from each other. His practice of the employing very different characters, his avoiding of “easy categories that reduce people to expected roles or labels and ignore their complex albeit thorny humanity” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 77), underlines the unreliability of the generalization of the people, as well as its unfairness.

Many families in the time of the “first Troubles” in Ireland, who were of the Anglo-

Irish Ascendancy descent faced the same situation as the Gaults in the novel The Story of Lucy

Gault and were threatened with an attack. As well as it is depicted in the book, many of them left the country and their ʻBig housesʼ, which were often destroyed or neglected afterwards. The aversion to Ascendancy families was not felt by the whole rest of the population, as the novel also reminds. Not all the Irish agreed with the violence against them, but some did and inflict it.

The difficulty of the position of these families is shown by the Captain’s Gault striving for reconciliation with the Horahan family, whose son’s injury he unintentionally caused during the attack. The Horahans, however, demonstrate in response the obstinacy of the people who despised the Ascendancy families, when they refuse to accept Captain’s apology. Nevertheless, there are still characters who do not agree with young Horahanʼs act, for example his girlfriend

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and after some time also young Horahan himself, who is unable to cope with the following feeling of guilt.

The Gaults are not an example of a family convinced of their superiority over other people in the island. It is true, that they have servants, which implies their better social status, but they have only two of them and Captain Gault even works beside them on house repairs.

The fact, that Captain Gault tries to convince the Horahans to accept his apology also illustrates his lack of aggressiveness. After the misfortune of his family, Captain Gault’s pacifist nature shows again, he does not have bitter feelings towards the Ireland and its people. He believes in the role of chance and also the history - that the unfair conditions of the Irish people in the past justify the anger and unfairness of the present.

The first of the two chosen stories set in the period of Troubles in 1970s the “Distant

Past” describes the situation of a couple of descendants of an Ascendancy family. The

Middletons stayed in the Irish Free State after the 1921. They, as many of those of the

Ascendancy origin who stayed in Ireland in reality, are not able to maintain their ʻBig houseʼ in the new economic situation. Aside from their poverty, they do not seem to live unhappily.

Because they are not forceful in their belief, they are, in time, able to gain the acceptance in the community of their Catholic neighbours, despite being open about their loyalty to Unionist idea and England. As well as in reality (and as it is also depicted in The Story of Lucy Gault), after the liberation of Ireland, the time has mellowed the animosity towards them.

Nevertheless, the relations between Middletons and their neighbours change after the outbreak of Troubles. The end of the acceptance of Middletons in the community comes, quite significantly, only after the loss of prosperity in the area caused by Troubles. This fact illustrates the changed view of the Irish on the Northern Ireland. Even though after the separation of the island many did feel bad about it, decades later the Irish in the south did not see the problems in the North as much of their concern as they did in the past. They started to focus on their economic situation, which started to improve in 1960s and they did not want to look for problems which could endanger it. Nevertheless, the loss of prosperity, the direct impact of

Troubles on their lives, reminds to the locals the problems, which were in the past of the south,

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but which grew in the North after the separation, where were the Catholics discriminated by

Protestants. Consequently, the Middletons, as the living reminders of the old days and the

Protestants living in the neighbourhood who never hid their loyalty to Unionist ideals, are made the scapegoats and become ostracized by others as they were in the past.

The second story on Troubles “Another Christmas” illustrates the impact of the

Troubles on the lives of Irish immigrants in Britain, after the terrorist attacks of IRA in Britain.

The Irish have traditionally immigrated to Britain to seek better economic opportunities, and their national minority in Britain has been quite big. The story depicts a married couple of the

Irish immigrants Dermot and Norah. Just like Norah worries in the story, the image of the Irish immigrants in England, despite their general non-involvement in the violence of paramilitaries, was affected in the reality. Some of the British citizens started to suspect their Irish neighbours, often not knowing neither the people nor the history, they generalized their view of the all Irish according to the image created by the paramilitaries. The couple of immigrants in the story is left even by their best English friend, who assumes their agreement with the paramilitaries because of one comment made by Dermot on the attacks.

Another thing, which is demonstrated in “Another Christmas” is the difference in the views of the immigrants on the attacks. It cannot be assumed that they all shared the same opinion. Dermot, even though he does not agree with the violence, thinks that it was an inevitable result of the bad treatment of Catholics in the North, which could not stay unavenged.

Norah, on the other hand, disagrees strongly with the violence, she does understand the reasons given by her husband, but does not see them as sufficient for the indiscriminate violence. Aware of the possible implications of the actions of paramilitaries on all the Irish, she starts to feel ashamed for her nationality, which connects her with the attacks.

In the Feliciaʼs Journey, different views of Anglo-Irish relations, illustrating the diversity of them in the last decade of the 20th century, are presented. Although it seems that the relations between England and Ireland has mellowed generally, there are still some individuals who keep the past attitudes. Some characters in the book see the Anglo-Irish relations in the perspective from the time when Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed. They are, however, presented as

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somehow not really seeing the reality. Felicia’s father’s attitude coincides with the opinions of some of the fervent republicans of the 1920th. It should be noted, that in reality there were still some, who believed in at least some of these ideals as well even in the end of the century.

During the referendum on the cancellation of the Articles 2 and 3, some did vote against it. The

Felicia’s father’s alienation from reality displays in his believe in de Valera’s vision, even though it did not bring him the results it promised and in his habit of obsessive going through the scrapbooks, which show the past and stop him from seeing the present reality. Mr Hilditch, with his admiration of Empire, seems to present much greater exception from the general opinions, which is considering his unstable mental state not surprising. In reality, most of the

English contemporaries, after so many years of the Troubles in the North were fed up with

Ireland and did not really want to deal with it. Mr Hilditch, creates his personality according the

Black and Tan soldier, and do not have much grip of the present reality as a whole.

Many other characters, however, display the general calming in the Anglo-Irish relations, and the changed view of the Britain in Ireland. The people who Felicia meets are not suspicious of her because of her nationality. Johnny does not see England as an enemy territory at all. Felicia does not hesitate when going there as she would, if she expected to be in danger there. The new generation does not seem to be burdened by past so much. The long-termed problems with unemployment described in the novel correspond with the situation in Ireland of that time.

The backgrounds of the stories correspond with the actual happenings and the realities of the Anglo-Irish relationship throughout the 20th century. The gradual calming of the Anglo-

Irish relations after the Anglo-Irish Treaty is described, as well as the decline of the Ascendancy families. The two short stories of the Troubles depict the poisoning of Anglo-Irish relations by them, which inevitably spread after the outbreak of violence. In the “Distant Past” Trevor points out the change in the view of the population of the Republic of Ireland of the Northern Ireland.

In the analysed writings a certain change in the mood of the stories according to the time they were written can be found. The stories, which focus on the depiction of the Troubles, were written a few years after the outbreak of Troubles and give off a feeling of inevitability of

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the following suffering. The lives of the characters are burdened by the suspicion and animosity, which is applied on them because of their descent. They do not seem to be able to escape it and they do not have hope in better future. They “discover that geographical, chronological, and emotional distance cannot protect their lives from being disrupted by violence.” (Fiztgerald-

Hoyt 56) Contrary, the two novels, which were written later, in time when the negotiations were giving hope in peace in the future, end in a lighter mood. The characters perhaps do not have a bright future in front of them, but at least they do not see it as filled with suffering and danger.

They somehow find peace in their lives in the end.

In The Story of Lucy Gault, “The Distant Past” and “Another Christmas” Trevor shows, that the violence creates only victims. The victims are not only those who are injured and killed, but also people who do not have anything to do with actual violence are burdened by it. In The

Story of Lucy Gault, even young Horahan, who seems to be somehow appreciated for the violence he inflicted, ends up as victim. Like that, Trevor demonstrate the meaninglessness of the violence, there are no winners.

The chosen fiction of William Trevor depict characters, which are somehow influenced by the development of the Anglo-Irish relations. Inevitably, he also explores the “theme of collective guilt” (Mackenna 110). The character of the stories are considered guilty for the deeds they did not participated in. The Gaults and the Middletons are despised because of the privileged pasts of their families, the Irish family in “Distant Past” becomes ostracized because of its nationality connecting it with terrorist attacks. In the same time, the characters Trevor depicts are very different in opinions and their views, even if their background is similar – for example, even though both Middletons and Gaults are both from Ascendancy families, their views of themselves and the change of regime are very different. Also the opinions of the couple in the “Distant Past” differ fundamentally, despite their similar origin and long-termed marriage. Trevor’s use of different points of view it also detects the complexity of them and demonstrates the impossibility of their generalization.

Trevor himself said in the interview with Mira Stout, that what interests him the most are the relationships between people:

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Well, what seems to nudge me is something that exists between two people, or three, and if their particular happiness or distress exists for some political reason, then the political reason comes into it—but the relationship between the people comes first. I’m always trying to get rid of a big reason—a political one, for instance—but sometimes it’s difficult. Human reasons, for me, are

more interesting than political ones. (Stout)

Similarly, in the analysed fiction he does not focus on the people from the perspective of their politic opinions, but from their understanding of the world, communication with others and their inner world. He depicts their views, their hopes and their worries, in short their human side.

Consequently, knowing the characters from this side, in all their particularity, the senselessness of categorization of the people according to their religion or some general image of the people from the same social group becomes apparent. As Mary Fitzgerald-Hoyt argues, one of the lessons which Trevor gives in his work is: “the necessity to remain uncontrolled by traditional images, an acknowledgement of the ease with which groups of people may be categorised and the urgency of resisting such stereotyping.” (Fitzgerald-Hoyt 205) The depth of the understanding of the characters, which Trevor presents to reader makes the application of so often used collective guilt look nonsensical, it creates offenders without guilt.

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of Ireland. Ed. Brian Graham. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997. 43-63. Print.

Del Río Álvaro, Constanza. ‘‘Talking with William Trevor: ‘It all comes naturally now’. Estudios Irlandeses 1 (15 March 2006): 119-124. Estudios Irlandeses. Web. 3. Oct. 2015. Del Río Álvaro, Constanza. ‘‘William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey: Inherited Dissent or Fresh

Departure from Tradition?’’ Estudios Irlandeses 2 (2007): 1-13. Estudios Irlandeses.

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elected Saoithe.’’ The Irish Times. 2015 THE IRISH TIMES, 16 Sept. 2015. Web. 3 Oct.

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Duncan, Pamela. ‘‘Imogen Stuart, Edna O’Brien and William Trevor elected Saoithe.’’ The Irish Times. 2015 THE IRISH TIMES, 16 Sept. 2015. Web. 3 Oct. 2015. . Edwards, Robert Walter Dudley. “Ireland” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2015. Web. 4 Nov. 2015. . Fitzgerald-Hoyt, Mary. William Trevor: Re-imagining Ireland. Dublin: The Liffey Press. 2003. Print. Fitzpatrick, David. “Ireland since 1870” The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland. Ed. R.F.

Foster. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. 213-274. Print.

Foster, R. Luck and the Irish: a brief history of change from 1970. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print. Foster, R.F. Paddy & Mr. Punch. London: Clays Ltd, 1993. Print.

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Guy, John. “The Tudor Age.” The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain. Ed. Kenneth O.

Morgan. Reissued in new covers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 223-285...

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Mackenna, Dolores. William Trevor: The Writer and His Work. Dublin: New Island Books.

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McDowall, David. An illustrated history of Britain. Harlow: Longman, 1989. Print.

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Rhodes, Robert E. “William Trevorʼs Stories of Trouble.” Contemporary Irish Writing. Ed. James D. Brophy and Raymond J.Porter. Iona College Press, 1983. 95-114. Rpt. In Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed Jeffrey W. Hunter and Timothy J.White. Vol. 116, 1999. Literature Resource Center. n.pag. Web. 2 Nov. 2015. St. Peter, Christine. ‘‘Consuming Pleasures: Felicia’s Journey in Fiction and film.’’ Colby

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Summary

This thesis focus on the analysis of the depiction of Anglo-Irish relations in several fictional stories by William Trevor. From this point of view, four Trevor’s works, which cover different periods of the 20th century, were investigated – two novels The Story of Lucy Gault and

Felicia’s Journey, and two short stories “The Distant Past” and “Another Christmas”.

The second chapter of this thesis looks into the author and his life, as well as into the themes and topic, with which William Trevor often concerns with in his fiction. In the third chapter, the historical context of the stories, as well as of the Anglo-Irish relations is given by summarization of the historical events in Ireland. In the following three chapters the analysis of the Trevor’s writing about the Anglo-Irish relations is done, in the chronological order according to their time setting. The two short stories are covered in one chapter, since they are set in the same period. The last chapter Conclusion contains the comparison of the depiction of the Anglo-Irish relations in the Trevor’s writing with the actual happenings described in the third chapter, as well as the comparison of the depiction of Anglo-Irish relations between writings in order to find common features.

In his stories William Trevor depicts characters, which are influenced by the Anglo-

Irish relations, even though they are not involved neither in politics nor in fights. It is so, chiefly because the people around them apply the principle of collective guilt to them. Trevor portrays people with very different attitudes and lives, even if the characters come from the similar background, they are very different. His depiction of these characters, focusing on their personal side, which is particular for each of them, underlines the unreliability of the generalization of the people on the basis of their origin, as well as its unfairness. The setting of the stories is based on the actual events taking place in the 20th century, the reference to actual happenings and people can be found in it.

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Resumé

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá analýzou vykreslení Anglo-Irských vztahů v několika fikcích William Trevora. Z tohoto pohledu jsou prozkoumána čtyři Trevorova díla, která se odehrávají v různých obdobích 20. století: dva romány - The Story of Lucy Gault a Felicia’s

Journey, a dvě povídky: “The Distant Past” a “Another Christmas”.

Druhá kapitola je věnována autorovi a jeho životu, stejně tak jako uvedení témat a předmětů, kterými se William často ve svých dílech zabývá. Třetí kapitola shrnuje historii Irska,

čímž poskytuje jak kontext k příběhům, tak historický kontext Anglo-Irských vztahů.

Následující tři kapitoly obsahují analýzu Trevorových děl v časové posloupnosti, podle období, ve kterém se příběhy odehrávají. Dvě analyzované povídky jsou shrnuty v jedné kapitole, protože se odehrávají ve stejné době. Závěrečná kapitola se zabývá porovnáním zobrazení

Anglo-Irských vztahů v Trevorově díle se skutečnými událostmi, popsanými ve třetí kapitole, společně s porovnáním zobrazení Anglo-Irských vztahů v příbězích navzájem, za účelem nalezení společných rysů.

William Trevor ve svých dílech zobrazuje postavy, které jsou ovlivněny Anglo-Irskými vztahy, přestože se se nezapojují do politiky ani bojů. Tento vliv je způsoben především lidmi v jejich okolí, který na ně hledí z perspektivy kolektivní viny. Trevor představuje postavy s velmi odlišnými názory a životy, i v případě že některé postavy pochází z podobného prostředí, jsou navzájem velice odlišné. Jeho zobrazení hrdinů, které se soustředí na jejich specifickou osobní stránku, podtrhuje nespolehlivost generalizace lidí na základě jejich původu, stejně tak jako její nespravedlnost. Děj příběhů je založen na skutečných událostech 20. století, je možné najít i o d k a z y

60 n a