Strange associations: Elizabeth Bowen and the language of exclusion

Brown, Matthew

doi:10.1080/09670882.2011.624325

Irish Studies Review

2012

DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2011.624325

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Strange associations: Elizabeth Bowen and the language of exclusion

Matthew Brown

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Cited by 4 publications

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“…This expanse in outlook serves as a segue into a discussion of The Last September, which revolves around September of 1920, the point in time which Matthew Brown (2012) describes as the "fitful last September of the Republic's colonial ties to England, with [the Anglo-Irish's] historical role as settlerscolonialists" (p. 4); therefore, the time when the Anglo-Irish were coerced out of their big-house complacency to look beyond themselves. Honing in on just The Last September in his articlepublished five years before Unseasonable Youth - Esty (2007) demonstrates how Elizabeth Bowen's second novel, employing the "motif of the retarded juvenile," likewise makes use of the tropes of frozen youth and uneven development (p. 260).…”

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confidence: 97%

“A Cake for which the Flour had been Forgotten”: The Escape from Queer Nonentity in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September

Utchin

2021

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Building upon the popular notion that Lois's growth in The Last September remains stunted, this paper posits that the young protagonist, who even wallows in a state of queer nonentity, does, in fact, grow up. Employing Virginia Woolf's concept of the artist's self-effacing androgynous mind, the paper traces how Lois's androgynous qualities seem to keep her in a state of limbo, in which her identity is void or frozen, not unlike that of her Protestant Ascendancy class in 1920. However, both Lois's political and sexual maturation, which culminates in the ruined mill scene at the end of the novel's second section, is set in motion by the guidance of Marda Norton, who, also possessing androgynous characteristics, serves as Lois's mirror figure but, embodying a more experienced and established identity, disapproves of Lois's kind of void-inducing queerness. Although the end of the novel points to the notion that both Marda and the now-mature Lois still face the constant threat of being, again, stunted, their existence attests to the survival of the Ascendancy, albeit in a less complacent state, as Danielstown, the symbol of the Anglo-Irish Big House culture, is being burned down at the end.

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confidence: 97%

“A Cake for which the Flour had been Forgotten”: The Escape from Queer Nonentity in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September

Utchin

2021

THTS

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“Fumbling Along the Boundaries of the Personal”: History and Affect in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September

Stasi¹

2017

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Living on the Hyphen: How Elizabeth Bowen Portrays the Predicament of the Anglo-Irish in The Last September

Green¹

2015

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This paper explores the portrayal of the Anglo-Irish in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September. Bowen writes from personal experience with a strong sense of irony to explore the relationships of this declining class and their relationship with their adopted homeland. As an inhabitant of an Anglo-Irish Big House, Bowen writes from the perspective of the Anglo-Irish but views their deteriorating existence with the clarity of one far more removed. Bowen's life mirrors that of the protagonist Lois, struggling with issues of identity and escape from an antiquated society. The essay notes the effects this lack of identity has on the characters in the novel and the Anglo-Irish class as a whole at the time it is set. Issues of detachment from land and heritage, lack of communication and relationships between characters, and the ignorance of a middle and upper social class, the Anglo-Irish, to understand their deterioration during the years of the Irish War of Independence are also explored.

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Strange associations: Elizabeth Bowen and the language of exclusion

Cited by 4 publications

References 10 publications

“A Cake for which the Flour had been Forgotten”: The Escape from Queer Nonentity in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September

“A Cake for which the Flour had been Forgotten”: The Escape from Queer Nonentity in Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September

“Fumbling Along the Boundaries of the Personal”: History and Affect in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September

Living on the Hyphen: How Elizabeth Bowen Portrays the Predicament of the Anglo-Irish in The Last September

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