(POST)COLONIAL DISCOURSE AND THE IRISH SELF IN THE WRITINGS OF J.S. LEFANU

Richard Jorge

doi:10.36892/ijlls.v1i3.60

Abstract

It is widely accepted that the relationships of dominance between the self and the other are concurrent to both the Gothic genre and postcolonial theory. In Gothic literature this relationship has traditionally been expressed through the dichotomy self vs. other, in which the self is the male protagonist while the latter is “everything else in that world” (Day 19), Gothic literature being, thus, an exploration of the formation of identity. In colonial Gothic this is brought under the axiom colonizer-colonized, and, therefore, characters are analysed as manifestations of a dichotomy which usually links first the other to the monstrous, who is subsequently presented as the colonized subject. The Irish case further complicates this simple binary relation. The running argument of the present paper is that far from being a dichotomy, the Irish case is better understood as a triangle in which two of its vertices are fixed—Catholics/Irish and English—while the third vertex, that of the Anglo-Irish, gradually shifts positions from the English to the Irish one, following a creolization process in which they are both victims and victimizers. The characters in the fictions of J.S. Le Fanu all epitomize this constrained relationship, displaying an array of roles who do not comfortably fit into either category, showing a pervading feeling of being ill-at-ease. As this paper shows, a deeper reading reveals these figures to be just the opposite of what the prototypical colonialist figure ought to be—weak and feeble, terrorized rather than terrorizer, in awe of the other instead of subduing it.

Highlights

It is widely accepted that the relationships of dominance between the self and the other are concurrent to both the Gothic genre and postcolonial theory
As Boehmer (2005) reminds us, masculinity and its exertion of power were pivotal in the colonial quest; by making the male figure the centre of its criticism, the Irish Gothic short story performs a double function_it exposes the unsuitability of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy as a ruling class for their inaction and connivance with the colonizers, and it criticizes the application of the colonial system in Ireland
Given the span of Le Fanu’s career as a short story writer and, in an attempt to show how Le Fanu questions colonial discourse, representations of the self will be analyzed in two different stories at either ends of his writing career, A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family (1839) and The Familiar (1872), taken from The Purcell Papers and In a Glass Darkly, respectively

Summary

INTRODUCTION

It is widely accepted that the relationships of dominance between the self and the other are concurrent to both the Gothic genre and postcolonial theory. Hansen (2009) has expressed himself in similar terms, arguing that: This critical approach often imagines Anglo-Ireland as the lone name for colonial false consciousness, rather than as one hybridized component of a more complicated cultural and socio-political matrix that includes Catholics of the bourgeois, proletarian, and agrarian variety, a divided, declining AngloProtestant ascendancy, and an oft-overlooked Anglo-Protestant middle class. As Boehmer (2005) reminds us, masculinity and its exertion of power were pivotal in the colonial quest; by making the male figure the centre of its criticism, the Irish Gothic short story performs a double function_ it exposes the unsuitability of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy as a ruling class for their inaction and connivance with the colonizers, and it criticizes the application of the colonial system in Ireland. Far from being colonialist literature, he provides an analysis and a criticism of the Anglo-Irish ruling class by showing them as helpless and self-centred characters, embedded in a paralysis product of their double status as colonized and colonizer subjects, questioning their identity as a class

DISCUSION

CONCLUSION