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Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction

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Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction Representing theTroubles in Irish Short Fiction Michael L. Storey Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction k The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2004 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require- ments of American National Standards for the Information Sci- ence—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Storey, Michael L., 1942– Representing the troubles in Irish short fiction / Michael L. Storey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8132-1366-5 (alk. paper) 1. Short stories, English—Irish authors—History and criticism. 2. Nationalism and literature—Ireland—History—20th century. 3. Politics and literature—Ireland—History—20th century. 4. Lit- erature and society—Ireland—History—20th century. 5. Romanti- cism—Ireland—History—20th century. 6. Ireland—In literature. I. Title. pr8807.S5S76 2004 823´.0109358—dc21 2003007835 For Anna Maria, my gradh geal k Contents Acknowledgments, ix Abbreviations, xi Introduction, 1 1. Romantic Nationalism: The Quest for an Irish Nation, 16 2. Violence, Betrayal, Disillusionment: The Naturalistic Story, 55 3. Gaining Distance: Humor and Satire, 84 4. Border and Sectarian Tensions: Realism and Irony, 116 5. Sectarian Violence: The Story of Terrorism, 150 6. Gender and Nationalism: Women and the Troubles, 179 Conclusion: The End of Cultural Identity?, 208 Glossary, 225 Selected Bibliography, 229 Index of Primary Authors and Their Works, 237 General Index, 239 Acknowledgments This project has been realized through the generous support and en- couragement of my family, friends, colleagues, students, and institution, as well as the staff of The Catholic University of America Press. From my institution, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, I re- ceived a sabbatical leave in the fall semester of 1998, which enabled me to write a substantial portion of the text. The College’s Council for Fac- ulty Research and Development awarded me study grants that allowed me to devote several summers to the project. To both the College and the Council I am grateful. I am also grateful to numerous colleagues, both in and out of the En- glish department, who have encouraged me over the years to pursue my research and writing about the subject. I would particularly like to name my good friend and retired colleague, Sister Maura Eichner, who for years taught Irish literature with me. Sister Margaret MacCurtain, Irish scholar, was very supportive of my work while a visiting professor at our college in 1995. After hearing my paper on an aspect of the topic at an IASIL conference in Gotenborg, Sweden, in 1997, Sister Margaret en- couraged me to extend the paper into a book. The clerical work that my student assistants have done over the last five years has been invaluable. In successive order, Jen Perkins, Jess Rapisarda, Kathy Nikolaidis, Guin Phoebe, and Natasha Allen have re- searched, tracked down, and photocopied materials; typed and proof- read text; and helped prepare an index. The staff of the Loyola-Notre Dame Library, especially those who work in the Inter-Library Loan de- partment, have also been extremely helpful to me. Throughout the book I have used, with permission of the editors, ix x acknowledgments portions of articles that I have published previously in Éire-Ireland and The New Hibernia Review. Those articles are identified in the bibliogra- phy. Dr. Thomas Dillon Redshaw, who was editor of Éire-Ireland at the time my article was published in that journal, provided me with helpful suggestions about the subject. I am especially appreciative of the editorial work done by my daugh- ter, Meg Storey. Meg’s ability to ferret out unnecessary and imprecise words and phrases, to straighten convoluted sentences, and to temper my passion for parentheses brought a greater clarity to the text. She also was a careful reader of the sense of the text, pointing out where the ar- gument needed to be stronger or the clarity greater. Members of The Catholic University of America Press, in particular Dave McGonagle, Susan Needham, and Elizabeth Kerr, have also been very generous and helpful in their support and editorial advice. More than anything, the unfailing encouragement and support of my wife, Anna Maria, has made this book possible. Abbreviations Primary works (short story collections, anthologies, and autobiogra- phies) frequently cited have been identified by the following abbrevia- tions. Complete information about these works may be found under Primary Sources in the Selected Bibliography. AN At Night All Cats are Grey, by Patrick Boyle. AQ Antiquities: A Sequence of Short Stories, by Val Mulkerns. BC Bones of Contention and Other Stories, by Frank O’Connor. BW A Belfast Woman, by Mary Beckett. CSO The Collected Stories of Sean O’Faolain. CST The Collected Stories, by William Trevor. DC Death of a Chieftain and Other Stories, by John Montague. DP Departures, by Jennifer C Cornell. DR Domestic Relations, by Frank O’Connor. EC Everything in This Country Must, by Colum McCann. FG Forgiveness: Ireland’s Best Contemporary Short Stories, edited by Augustine Martin. FS Fishing the Sloe-Black River, by Colum McCann. GN Guests of the Nation, by Frank O’Connor. HB The Hounds of Banba, by Daniel Corkery. HE Heritage and Other Stories, by Eugene McCabe. HW The Hurt World: Short Stories of the Troubles, edited by Michael Parker. xi xii abbreviations MS More Stories by Frank O’Connor. NM Northern Myths, by John Morrow. OC An Only Child, by Frank O’Connor. OS Oranges from Spain, by David Park. P&S Poems and Stories, by Brendan Behan. PS The Patriot Son and Other Stories, by Mary Lavin. S&P Stories and Plays, by Flann O’Brien. SD Shame the Devil, by Liam O’Flaherty. SFO The Stories of Frank O’Connor. SH Sixpence in Her Shoe and Other Stories, by Maura Treacy. SI The State of Ireland: A Novella and Seventeen Stories, by Benedict Kiely. SM A Season for Mothers and Other Stories, by Helen Lucy Burke. SS Spring Sowing, by Liam O’Flaherty. TS Tears of the Shamrock: An Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories on the Theme of Ireland’s Struggle for Nationhood, edited by David Marcus. TT The Tent, by Liam O’Flaherty. TV Territories of the Voice: Contemporary Stories by Irish Women Writers, edited by Louise DeSalvo, Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy, and Katherine Hogan. VM Vive Moi!, by Sean O’Faolain. WC The Wounded Cormorant and Other Stories, by Liam O’Flaherty. WD Walking the Dog and Other Stories, by Bernard MacLaverty. WP The Way-Paver, by Anne Devlin. Introduction i k The modern Irish short story arrived in 1903 with the publi- cation of The Untilled Field by George Moore. Moore combined con- temporary themes of emigration, clerical interference, poverty, and rural loneliness with psychological characterization and narrative economy. In doing so, he severed the modern Irish story from its nineteenth-century roots, particularly the Gothic tales of Sheridan Le Fanu and the loosely- constructed stories of William Carleton, whose model had been the Irish seanchái, the famed oral storyteller of Irish tradition. James Joyce’s Dubliners, published in 1914, further modernized the Irish story through greater artistic economy and precise, realistic representation of Irish life. In the ensuing decades, the Irish short story established itself as the pre- mier national literary genre through collections by Daniel Corkery, Liam O’Flaherty, Frank O’Connor, Elizabeth Bowen, Sean O’Faolain, and Mary Lavin. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Benedict Kiely, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, Mary Beckett, John McGahern, Bernard MacLaverty, Val Mulkerns, Clare Boylan, Colum McCann, and numer- ous others brought international acclaim to the Irish short story. Based solidly in the mode of realism, the modern short story is a veri- table chronicle of Irish life, probing every significant Irish social and po- litical issue of the twentieth century: rural poverty and hardship, forced emigration and exile, village provincialism, moral prohibition, clerical interference, marriage relations, sexual and gender issues, divorce and abortion. But no issue has been treated so extensively and so probingly in the modern Irish story as the Troubles. In fact, a reader could gain no better insight into the human aspects of the Irish Troubles than to read the many Irish short stories that deal with that phenomenon. 1 2 introduction ii The Troubles, the Irish euphemism for political turmoil and violence, have their roots in Ireland’s colonial relationship to England and the political and sectarian divisions in Ireland flowing out of that re- lationship. The term was first applied to the revolutionary events that took place between 1916 and 1923, a period that included the 1916 Easter Rising, the War of Independence of 1919–1921, and the Civil War of 1922–1923. It was later revived to label the sectarian hostilities that erupt- ed in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s and that continued unabated into the 1990s. A 1994 ceasefire and a 1998 peace agreement (commonly referred to as the Good Friday Agreement) have lessened the frequency of the violence while not completely stopping it. While these two peri- ods (1916–1923 and the late 1960s to the present) are distinctly different in their political situations, they closely resemble each other in the vio- lent and brutal behavior of the hostile factions and in the misery, tragedy, and death brought to many innocent victims. Thus, the Trou- bles is an apt term for both periods.1 There is now, however, an excellent possibility that, with successful implementation of the Good Friday Agreement at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the term may be retired once again—perhaps forever.
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