The process of mourning in Anne Enright’s The Gathering

Abstract

AbstractAnne Enright’s writing evinces a nuanced sensitivity to words which nourishes a tension between the realist style and a strong self‐consciousness. This is evident in The Gathering, in which the seemingly chronological occurrences weave out a dynamic pattern of narrative time. Examining Veronica’s experimentation with tense, I argue that the ongoing writing aligns with her progressive mourning. Specifically, her reconfiguration of memories in the past reveals her temporal perspectives in the present, which sheds light upon her struggle to come to terms with Liam’s death. While Liam’s ghost exposes Veronica’s wish to prolong his presence, his last journey arranged in the present tense is her reenactment of his death. Veronica’s imagination of the inaccessible past and the disruption of retrospective narration suggest an overall strategy of presentification to counter the afterwardness of her belated writing. In addition, a series of changes in Veronica’s attitudes towards sex and motherhood attest to her progress in mourning, even though mourning for one’s loss is an unsolvable issue. The temporal self‐reflexivity in The Gathering, exhibited in Veronica’s manipulation of tenses and temporal perspectives, not only aligns with the Irish women writers’ battle against the amnesia imposed by the state and the church but also echoes the postmodern challenge of authenticity.