International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.28 ISSN: 2456-7620 ‘Contrary Emotions’: The Irony of Fear in Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (2007) Issaga NDIAYE
Assistant Professor, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal
Abstract— The aim of this paper is to show that a of fear as it permeates the text, and then the study will peculiar logic of defeating expectations underpins zero in on the interplay of ironic situations. McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. The paper posits that situational irony underlies the whole framework of the II. FEAR IN A WORLD OF FEAR narrative; and that it generates, maintains and eventually Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach is set in 1962. defines the narrative line of the novel. On the other hand, Accordingly, it addresses socio-political issues the United we argue that irony mainly proceeds from fear and Kingdom and the West confronted in the late 50s and misunderstanding. The study shows that the ironic early 60s: the sexual revolution2, the arms race, and the situations in the novel stem mostly from irrational fears uncertainty and anxiety stemming from a changing relating to sexuality and failure, and a lack of paradigm in geopolitics. All the allusions to politics in the communication between two young lovers in the early novel are fear-arousing. Prime Minister Harold years of the sexual liberation movement. Macmillan is fictionalized as a means to convey that Keywords— On Chesil Beach; Ian McEwan; irony; anxiety. He is time and again hinted at, sometimes about fear; sexuality; misunderstanding. the fall of the British Empire, sometimes about the Cold War. On home affairs, for example, “some cursed him for “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and giving away the Empire [...] with these winds of change the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the blowing through Africa” (OCB 131). And, at the hotel unknown” (H. P. Lovecraft, p. 1). where Edward and Florence spend their wedding-night, Macmillan is, at some specific point, the focus of I. INTRODUCTION attention. His speech on TV in the main bulletin gives Among the requirements for a literary production voice to the existential anxiety serving as a backdrop to to be considered a novel is the length of the story told. the novel: This quantitative issue has led critics to consider Edward and Florence heard the muffled McEwan’s On Chesil Beach to be a novella rather than a headlines and caught the name of the novel. Though we shall regard it, for the purpose of the Prime Minister, and then a minute or study, as a novel, On Chesil Beach is to say the least quite two later his familiar voice raised in a a short fiction. One should not, however, be surprised at speech. Harold Macmillan had been this fictional brevity. The novel is consistent in its addressing a conference in Washington conciseness for it relates an aborted wedding night: the about the arms race and the need for a wedding of Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting, and test-ban treaty. Who could disagree that their marriage which has roughly lasted eight hours1. The it was folly to go on testing H-bombs in brevity of the novel is, thus, ironically reflexive. As the atmosphere and irradiating the suggested in the one-night marriage subject-matter, the whole planet? But no one under thirty— novel is ironic both in form and content. certainly not Edward and Florence— This paper posits that irony underlies the whole believed a British Prime Minister held framework of the narration in McEwan’s novel. On the much sway in global affairs. Every year other hand, we argue that irony mainly proceeds from fear the Empire shrank as another few and misunderstanding in the story, which unfolds as a countries took their rightful space dedicated to a transformation of sex into discourse. independence. Now there was nothing In this textual/sexual dynamic, irony will be regarded in left, and the world belonged to the relation to Paul de Man’s theory, that is, more as a Americans and the Russians. Britain, question of disillusion, of a disruption of a narrative line England, was a minor power—saying than a matter of interpretation. In other words, the focus this gave a certain blasphemous pleasure shall be put less on verbal irony than situational irony. (OCB 24). Our first endeavour shall consist in discussing the theme www.ijels.com Page | 367 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.28 ISSN: 2456-7620 Along with the independences of the former colonies, this the cinema, at the showing of A Taste of passage expresses anxiety on the arms race, especially the Honey, when she had leaped out of her H-bomb. By the way, provided the novel’s concern with seat and into the aisle like a startled the existential anxiety of that period, it is not surprising gazelle. That single mistake took weeks that Edward and Florence first met at a meeting about to repair—it was a disaster he dared not weaponry: repeat (OCB 90). As his eyes adjusted, the first person he The idea in this passage is that, previous to their wedding, saw was Florence [...] her gaze was on whenever Edward’s behaviour was unseemly, whenever him as he approached, and when he was he behaved in a sexually suggestive way towards her, near enough she took a pamphlet from Florence rejected him. She disapproved of such her friend’s pile and said ‘would you behaviours across the board. like one? It’s all about a hydrogen bomb landing on Oxford’ (47-48). III. THE IRONY OF FEAR It is worth noting that this passage is a replica of Edward’s lack of experience too, can account for Florence’s presence at the meeting: just as Edward, she his fear of failure. He is very anxious about his upcoming had left home “with a vague ambition of wandering” (54)3 sexual performance in the wedding night. Just like and ended up at the meeting in Oxford where she is Florence, he ignores much about sexuality. The unknown explained, by one of her old acquaintances, the dangers of arouses in him fear and, furthermore, he is afraid of the H-bomb, and asked to help hand over the pamphlets: leaving Florence unsatisfied. For that very reason, he As her eyes adjusted, she looked about refrains from the masturbation he used to indulge in. He her [...] he began to outline for her the did not want to be “in real danger of arriving too soon” consequences of a single hydrogen (OCB 31); and he consequently made strenuous efforts to bomb falling on Oxford [...] The crater avoid experiencing such a disappointment. As the narrator he was describing would be half a mile observes: across, a hundred feet deep. Because of Edward’s single most important radioactivity, Oxford would be contribution to the wedding unapproachable for ten thousand years arrangements was to refrain, for over a [...] and then she saw Edward coming week. Not since he was twelve had he towards her (55-56). been so entirely chaste with himself. He The context of anxiety and fright Edward and Florence wanted to be in top form for his bride first met in crystallizes somewhat the feeling of fear that (20). pervades the novel. As a matter of fact, fear unites both The most appealing irony in On Chesil Beach is the protagonists. Likewise, as we shall see, it is through linked, as it happens, with this fear of dissatisfaction: the the agency of fear—namely the consequences it reader, enjoying what Holdcroft calls “grim humour” engenders—that Edward and Florence separate. An (493), is informed in the third part of the novel that intense and inhibiting fear characterizing altogether both Edward has experienced premature ejaculation. His dream characters causes their wedding-night to be a real flop. has become a nightmare as “the most sensitive portion of Edward is depicted as a character terrified by the himself” would not, would even never, “reside, however prospect of failure, especially in his relationship with briefly, within a naturally formed cavity inside this Florence. Florence, contrary to Edward, is from the cheerful, pretty, formidably intelligent woman” (OCB 7). upper-class. She is from a rich family—her father is a This ironic situation, indeed a situational irony, which businessman and her mother a lecturer at the university— generates the paradox of early divorce, is somewhat due and is accordingly educated. As her love for classical to Edward’s warranted anxiety about the “uncanny”; but it music attests, Florence is a sensitive soul. She is, so to also results, in good part, from Florence’s own phobia speak, squeamish. Conversely, Edward is from a fairly about sexuality. As Jaclyn Melcher writes, “Both Edward poor family4 and he enjoys rock music. It is mandatory and Florence were products of their time, and both were that he adjust and avoid being coarse lest he should lose entirely unprepared for the romantic notions thrust upon her. As a result, because of all these sociological and them by Western society and the marriage plot” (40). psychological pressures, Edward “did not trust himself” The inconsistency in Florence’s relationship with (OCB 91)5. He fears loss and castration, as the following Edward lies in that she deeply loves Edward and willingly passage suggests: accepts to be his wife while, simultaneously, she repels [Edward] could not escape the the idea of sex relationships. Where Edward “merely memories of those times when he had suffered conventional first-night nerves, she experienced misread the signs, most spectacularly in a visceral dread, a helpless disgust as palpable as www.ijels.com Page | 368 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.28 ISSN: 2456-7620 seasickness” (OCB 7). The feeling of fear is, besides, This sexually explicit passage, reminiscent of what more intense in her than in Edward. As already suggested, Kohlke terms the sexational trend in contemporary Florence is in McEwan’s novel the epitome of the prudish fiction, namely neo-Victorian fiction (2015: 159), seems Victorian woman6. She suffers, perhaps, from a sexual to be proclaiming fulfilment in both the protagonists, and desire disorder. There is no doubt, however, that she is the reader also. One could at this point of the story believe psychologically unfit for the realm of sexuality, as it there would be no “discrepancies between expectations appears when she is exposed to sexually explicit and actual performances” (Holdcroft 493), that there materials: would be, in other words, no ironic situation. The In a modern, forward looking handbook narrative line, nonetheless, gets unexpectedly disrupted, that was supposed to be helpful to entangling in “erotic disappointment” (Kohlke, 2006: 5). young brides, with its cheery tones and In horror she let go, as Edward, rising exclamation marks and numbered up with a bewildered look, his muscular illustrations, she came across certain back arching in spasms, emptied himself phrases or words that almost made her over her in gouts, in vigorous but gag: mucous membrane, and the sinister diminishing quantities, filling her navel, and glistening glans. Other phrases coating her belly, thighs, and even a offended her intelligence, particularly portion of her chin and kneecap in those concerning entrances: Not long trepid, viscous fluid. It was a calamity, before he enters her...or, now at last he and she knew immediately that it was enters her, [...] Almost as frequent was a her fault, that she was inept, ignorant word that suggested to her nothing but and stupid. She should not have pain, flesh parted before a knife: interfered [...] (105). penetration [...] the idea of being Florence’s attempt at surmounting her fears is not ‘touched down’ by someone else, even rewarding and, most importantly, her reaction to the someone she loved, was as repulsive as, incident gives way to a misunderstanding resulting from say, a surgical procedure on her eye her tendency to keep up appearances. “She was (OCB 7-8). incapable”, says the narrator, “of repressing her primal Florence’s visceral revulsion for sex is, in spite of that, disgust, her visceral horror at being doused in fluid” balanced by her tendency to keep up appearances. She (105). loves Edward and does her best to avoid offending him; Nothing in her nature could have held and this is in this state of mind that she unwillingly back her instant cry of revulsion [...] as prompts his failure. Edward shrank before her, she turned Because she is troubled by her fear for sexual and scrambled to her knees, snatched a relationships, on the one hand, and she is afraid, on the pillow from under the bedspread and other hand, of offending her lover—how could she wiped herself frantically (OCB 105- otherwise justify a refusal to enjoy utmost intimacy with 106). her husband on their wedding-night?—she decides to She then runs out of the hotel room toward the make the first move. She lifts the curtains of what Marie- beach in search of a soothing and consoling locus. This Luise Kohlke calls ‘the consummation scene” (2015: “comic climactic moment [...] in which ejaculation 155), proposing Edward to get into bed with her (OCB becomes absurd and disempowering” (Head 122), 32). Unfortunately, the outcome of all her subsequent dramatic as it may be, arouses nevertheless an amusing bold acts ironically reinstates her in her revulsion for sex: feeling in that Edward misinterprets Florence’s reaction. She was going to get through this. She Florence is, in reality, not so much shocked by would never let him know what a Edward’s flop as she is traumatised by the fact that her struggle it was, what it cost her, to skin has got “fluided”. However, Edward firmly believes appear calm. She was without any other that Florence’s reaction proceeds from a disappointment desire but to please him [...] Her panic at his premature ejaculation, at his inability to satisfy her and disgust, she thought, were under in their wedding-night, and at a prospect of having to live control [...] amazed by her own with a man who is impotent7. He is, as a result, totally boldness, she moved back down a little, distraught, bewildered, extremely offended and deeply to take his penis firmly, about halfway ashamed: along, and pulled it downwards, a slight He was feeling the pull of contrary adjustment, until she felt it just touching emotions [...] this over-obvious fact was her labia (OCB 103-104) too harsh. How could he get by, alone www.ijels.com Page | 369 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.28 ISSN: 2456-7620 and unsupported? And how could he go [...] She did feel sorry for him, but she down and face her on the beach, where also felt a little cheated (139-141). he guessed she must be? His trousers Edward, however, outdoes Florence as to this felt heavy and ridiculous in his hand, symptomatic interplay between guilt and its rejection on these parallel tubes of cloth joined at the partner. The irony in the misunderstanding of the two one end, an arbitrary fashion of recent lovers is more manifest in him because guilt rejection in centuries. Putting them on, it seemed to him eventually turns into depressive regrets: him, would return him to the social For a whole year [Edward] had suffered world, to his obligations and to the true in passive torment, wanting her till he measure of his shame (130-131). ached, and wanting small things too, His shame is so far-reaching that he who would have pathetic innocent things like a real full lived with Florence for the best and the worst and would kiss [...] He had been patient, have died to protect and cherish her, seems now to resent uncomplaining—a polite fool. Other her. Love is shifting into hatred: men would have demanded more, or [Edward] stood here, half naked among walked away. And if, at the end of a the ruins of his wedding-night. He was year of straining to contain himself, he aided in his surrender by the clarity that was not able to hold himself back and comes with a sudden absence of desire. had failed at the crucial moment, then With his thoughts no longer softened or he refused to take the blame. That was blurred by longing, he was capable of it. He rejected this humiliation, he did registering an insult with forensic not recognise it. It was outrageous of objectivity. And what an insult it was, her to cry out in disappointment, to what contempt she showed for him with flounce from the room, when the fault her cry of revulsion and the fuss with was hers (134). the pillow, what a twist of scalpel, to The misunderstanding which the passage above run from the room without a word, foregrounds is very telling as to the place of irony in the leaving him with the disgusting taint of structuration of McEwan’s novel. Misinterpretation shame, and all the burden of failure. She stemming from ignorance and lack of communication had done what she could to make the determines both Edward and Florence, and their situation worse, and irretrievable. He endeavours to absolute union make separation was contemptible to her, she wanted to unavoidable. The marriage between Edward and Florence punish him, to leave him alone and has lasted merely a few hours. Union and separation, contemplate his inadequacies without marriage and divorce are, therefore, unusually synchronic any thought for her own part (133). in On Chesil Beach. The marriage is not, and will never, In Edward, what should have been the joys of a be consumed because the ironic knots that disrupt the wedding-night has become affliction, and the honey narrative line keep deferring ad infinitum the happy- moon, a bitter moon. Besides, the passage above ending denouement any readers should be expecting from underscores in Edward a move from shamefulness to guilt the outset of the story. and then its rejection. Florence experiences this feeling as The incident that ultimately provokes inevitable well. In fact, when she saw Edward heading towards her separation in the couple is what Foucault would term on the beach, a feeling of fear arouses in her: Florence’s transformation of sexuality into discourse (28), She watched him, willing him to go her “self-effacing” proposal: against all odds, Florence, slower, for she was guiltily afraid of striping marriage of its procreative function, recommends him, and was desperate for more time to that she should live with Edward as wife and husband but herself. Whatever conversation they never have sexual relationships with him, and affirms that were about to have, she dreaded it [...] she should not mind when the latter would need to cheat She was ashamed. The aftershock of her on her. Suggesting gender troubles, and revealing in own behaviour reverberated through Florence some Sapphic orientation, this proposal is her, and even seemed to sound in her expressed as follows: ears [...] She had behaved abominably. We love each other—that’s a given. [...] She was aware of his disgrace [...] Neither of us doubts it [...] Really, no Did she dare admit that she was a tiny one can tell us how to live [...] people bit relieved that it was not only her, that live in all kinds of way now, they can he too had something wrong with him? live by their own rules and standards www.ijels.com Page | 370 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.28 ISSN: 2456-7620 [...] mummy knows two homosexuals, obvious. With its sexually explicit content, McEwan’s they live in a flat together [...] What I novel exemplifies to a great extent “present-day sexual mean, it’s this—Edward, I love you and liberation” (Kohlke 2015: 159). McEwan’s fiction is very we don’t have to be like everyone, I telling too, about that sexual liberation movement of the mean, no one, no one at all...no one 1960’s. As Head writes, “one failed wedding-night in would know what we did or didn’t do. 1962 can be taken as emblematic of the dividing line We could be together, live together, and between the sexual liberation of the 1960’s and the if you wanted, really wanted, that’s to repression that preceded it” (118). say, whenever it happened, and of Disrupting the narrative line and defeating course it would happen, I would expectations is characteristic of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil understand [...] I’d never be jealous, as Beach. As discussed earlier, situational irony is central in long as I knew that you loved me (OCB this McEwan’s fiction. The climactic irony about the 155). failure in the wedding-night, turning the honey-moon into In trying to cut corners and avoid early a bitter moon, is revealing enough of this phenomenon. separation, Florence manages only to further irritate The main characters, and the reader too, experience Edward. The latter is shocked by her proposal of faking disappointment from what should have procured joy and marital life. “His indignation”, as the narrator notes, “was confer to the text pleasure. The significance of McEwan’s so violent it sounded like a triumph. ‘My God! Florence text lies, undeniably, in the author’s ability to easily [...] You want me to go with other women! Is that it? [...] entangle the story in a web of ironies (situational and You’re telling me I could do it with anyone I like but dramatic alike); ironies that proceed mostly from you’” (155). The traumatising proposal from Florence, irrational fears of sexuality and failure, and lack of unsurprisingly, prompts the ending of their union. The communication between two young lovers in the early tight knot linking them gets then irretrievably unwoven, years of the sexual liberation movement. Fascinating, at untied flat. And the trauma Edward suffers from this latest the same time dramatic and amusing, irony in McEwan’s blow is extensive, as reflected in this stream of novel exhibits all its paradoxical nature. Be it situational, consciousness of his: dramatic or verbal, irony always, one way or another, To marry him, then deny him, it was succeeds in harmoniously associating two opposites: the monstrous, wanted him to go with other tragic and the comic. women, perhaps she wanted to watch, it was a humiliation, it was unbelievable, V. NOTES no one would believe it, said she loved 1. Joyces’ Ulysses is, in this logic, a “counter- him, he hardly ever saw her breasts, example’’ since it relates the one-day happenings tricked him into marriage, didn’t even of Leopold Bloom, the main character, but is, know how to kiss, fooled him, conned contrary to On Chesil Beach, a lengthy narrative. him, no one must know, had to remain At any rate, as Dominic Head writes, “shorter his shameful secret, that she married fiction is determined overtly by structure and him then denied him, it was monstrous device, and […] such considerations restrict the (158-159). experimental treatment of larger issues and The prospect of living happily ever after expected in a themes (Head 116). fiction staging a wedding night between two young lovers 2. The lift in 1960 of the ban over D. H. is thus thwarted in On Chesil Beach. Edward’s failure Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a novel and subsequent disappointments, a situational irony that was deemed obscene in 1920, among others, followed by dramatic ironies, makes happiness is illustrative enough about the changing impossible. As for Florence who needed perhaps to “be attitudes about sexuality in the West. As psychoanalysed. [To] kill [her] mother and marry [her] suggested in Philip Larkin’s poem, Annus father” (OCB 153), she is left one option: to repress her Mirabilis, the end of the Chatterley ban sexual aversion and fears in classical music. constitutes a milestone in this sexual revolution. 3. Edward left home in the same circumstances and IV. CONCLUSION had even planned to go to London but eventually In On Chesil Beach, Dominic Head argues, ended up in Oxford. “McEwan would seem to be very much in debate with 4. Edward’s father is a school teacher and his contemporary culture, and the perceived sense that we mother is brain-damaged. live in an increasingly sexualized world” (121). To be 5. For Dominic Head, “it is hard not to conclude sure, the carnality and permissiveness of the novel is that the joint failure of Edward and Florence to www.ijels.com Page | 371 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-2, Mar - Apr, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.2.28 ISSN: 2456-7620 commence a family life is partly explained, on [10] KOHLKE, Marie-Luise. 2015. “‘Abominable Edward’s part, by the lack of a domestic model Pictures’: neo-Victorianism and the Tyranny of the on which to found his expectations, and the Sexual Taboo”. In Transforming Anthony Trollope: absence of an emotionally sustaining Dispossession, Victorianism and Nineteenth-Century upbringing” (Head 119). Word and Image. Ed. Simon Grennan and Laurence 6. Although the setting in On Chesil Beach is not Grove. Leuven: Leuven University Press. 151-174. nineteenth-century England, the Victorian period [11] KOHLKE, Marie-Luise. 2006. “The Neo-Victorian and its repressive attitude towards sex (which Sexation: Literary Excursions into the Nineteenth Foucault questions) is implicitly addressed in the Century novel. The subtlety of this neo-Victorian Erotic”.
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