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Being Ordinary: Ireland from Elsewhere: A Reading of Eilís Ní Dhuibhne's "The Bray House"Author(s): Derek HandSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 30, No. 1, Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Fiction(Spring - Summer, 2000), pp. 103-116Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25517128 .

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Derek Hand

Being Ordinary ? Ireland from

Elsewhere: A Reading of Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's The Bray House

They've taken the skeleton

Of the Great Irish Elk Out of the peat, set it up, An astounding crate full of air.

(Seamus Heaney, 'Bogland')1

I spent a summer in the country, I

slept with one woman and thought I was in love with another; I dreamed up a horrid drama, and failed

to see the commonplace tragedy that was playing itself out in real

life.

(John Banville, The Newton Letter)2

Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's fiction is original and innovative, challenging many

preconceptions of what 'Irish' writing is and might be. Her first collection

of short stories, Blood and Water (1988), displayed a variety of concerns

with contemporary Irish life written from often startling perspectives. The best of these pieces demonstrate an anxious awareness of the

difficulties not only with the 'what' of stories but also with 'how' they are being told. Such self-conscious concerns with the medium through

which she is writing, with both language and form, mark her off from most of her contemporaries. Ni Dhuibhne's most recent collection, The

Inland Ice and other stories, goes even further in exploring the limits of

form, by interweaving contemporary stories with a reworking of the

Irish folktale 'The search for the lost husband'. This narrative ploy of

juxtaposing past and present makes clear Ni Dhuibhne's understanding that at the heart of the Irish condition is an on-going need to make creative and productive links between the past, the present and the future.3 Her

difficulty, as is the difficulty for many of her characters, is with

discovering a language or a voice that can truly map experience ? a

language that is at once true to the claims of the tradition while also

being capable of engaging with the challenges of the new.

1. Seamus Heaney, 'Bogland', in Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996 (London: Faber and

Faber, 1998), p. 41.

2. John Banville, The Newton Letter: An Interlude (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1983/

1982), p. 79.

3. Cf. George O'Brien, 'Introduction: Tradition and Transition in Contemporary Irish

Fiction', in Colby Quarterly, vol. xxxi, no. 1 (March 1995), pp. 5-22.

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IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

Ni Dhuibhne's 1990 novel The Bray House manifests similar concerns

to those in evidence in her short stories. It is set in a not-too-distant future

when Ireland and Great Britain have been covered in radioactive ash

after a devastating nuclear disaster. The 'Bray House' of the title is a

house excavated by a group of Swedish archaeologists who come to

Ireland not long after the catastrophe in order to learn about a culture

and a society that no longer exists. Ni Dhuibhne manages to weave

together an adventure story, a science fiction fantasy, and a morality tale

with an ecological message. It is accordingly a quirky, perhaps uneven

piece of work that could be construed as something of a failure. The Bray House certainly diverges from the realist norm that undoubtedly prevails

in much contemporary Irish fiction and her use of a popular genre like

science fiction is courageous in a tradition that, at times, appears to be

weighed down with the anxiety of literary influence. Ni Dhuibhne's

excursion into a popular genre does not necessarily imply that she

eschews high-brow interests in favour of simply entertaining her readers.

Rather, it allows her to approach Irish themes and subject matter from a

new angle. Her continuing concern with language and form are evident

in the novel so that beneath surface fears about the environment and its

destruction, is a narrative about narrative itself and the power struggles embedded in acts of writing and in acts of reading and interpretation.

* * *

Brian McHale contends that science fiction is the postmodern genre par excellence because in its juxtaposition of different worlds it so obviously

brings ontological concerns to the fore. The real world of the here and now and the projected world of the future are imaginatively contrasted so that questions can be raised ? as postmodern writing in general raises

questions ? about the nature of the world and modes of being in the

world.4 Of particular interest in a specifically Irish context is the point he makes about how postmodern writing has many affinities with

fantastic literature. The fantastic, like science fiction, also creates a

fictional space wherein contrasts can be interrogated: the self and 'other', the real and the unreal, and the rational and the irrational are probed and tested. Common to both science fiction and the fantastic, accordingly, is a desire to test limits and boundaries, to question accepted assumptions and prevailing attitudes and ideas about the world. Both genres comment

upon the present through a process of estrangement and defamiliar

ization.5 What is familiar and ordinary in the contemporary everyday

4. See Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London and New York: Routledge, 1987),

pp. 59-72. 5. Sarah Lefanu, In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction (London:

The Women's Press, 1988), pp. 21-2. See also Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature

of Subversion (London: Routledge, 1981), p. 179.

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A READING OF EILIS Ni DHUIBHNE'S THE BRAY HOUSE

world is made strange and unfamiliar in the future or when experienced in a supernatural/gothic milieu. Perhaps, then, Ni Dhuibhne's use of

the science fiction genre in The Bray House can be thought of as a

thoroughly contemporary updating of various earlier Irish writers' use

of the fantastic in their art?6 Ni Dhuibhne's own background in folklore

and myth ? so much a part of her writing in general

? lends weight to

such an interpretation. Thus, science fiction becomes a means to both

look forward and backward simultaneously, to bridge the gap between

tradition and modernity. The Bray House is divided into three parts. The second part, Chapters

12-15, is taken up with the expedition leader Robin Lagerlof's scientific

report on the 'Bray House'. The report consists of a detailed description of the contents of the house, each room being painstakingly described

and catalogued. The mundane detritus of contemporary Irish life is laid

bare; wall-paper colour schemes, calendars, the photographic prints that

line the walls, clothes, are all itemised. The 'Bray House Report' also

includes a selection of documents belonging to different members of the

MacHugh family who had lived in the house at the time of the nuclear

accident: letters, legal documents, diaries are faithfully reproduced. Also

included are a number of newspaper articles that deal with relevant issues

and events leading up to the Ballylumford disaster. These are intended to offer a snapshot of public affairs and public opinion in Ireland prior to the disaster. Robin, the report's author and the narrator of the novel, claims at one point that the basis of the 'Bray House' excavation is the

'true aim of scholarship':

to provide information which will elucidate the past as fully as

possible and which will provide humanity with knowledge which is useful for its future

development.7

In the pursuit of such knowledge, the report is presented in a cold, detached language, matching the meticulousness of the methodology that had unearthed the house.

Robin's report takes up the central position in the novel, acting as the

fulcrum round which the rest of the narrative turns. Thus, the 'Bray House, very much like Seamus Heaney's Great Elk from his poem,

'Bogland', is an 'astounding crate full of air' ? empty, waiting to be

read and interpreted. The 'Report' is an attempt at understanding the

life that was lived in the house: its scientific neutrality is a means of

bringing order to the chaos of experience so that an act of interpretation

6. See Donald E. Morse and Csilla Bertha (eds.), More Real than Reality: The Fantastic in

Irish Literature and the Arts (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991). 7. Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, The Bray House (Dublin: Attic Press, 1990), pp. 108-9. All future

references will be incorporated into the main body of the text.

105




can occur. While the end of the report has an interpretative analysis of

the 'findings' of the excavation, it can be argued that the entire narrative

framing the report is an endeavour to unravel the secrets hidden in the

'Bray House'. All of the characters respond to and engage with the

possibilities that the 'Bray House' offers; all attempt to understand its

significance, its meaning. And the reader too is drawn into this act of

interpretation: s/he is like the characters in the novel itself, weighing up the 'evidence' and trying to imagine the MacHugh family's life and

relationships and what it all might mean or signify in terms of Ireland

and the disaster that befell it.

It would seem, then, to be quite straightforward: what is learned about

the 'Bray House' and the MacHugh family will tell us about the Ireland

of the late twentieth century. Ni Dhuibhne uses the elaborate device of a

future expedition to Ireland as a means of contrasting an imagined future

with the realities of the present moment, allowing the present to be

considered as if it were the past: beyond the demands of being faithful

to immediate lived experience in order that it may be observed with more objectivity.

However, such simplicity is not entirely evident in Ni Dhuibhne's

novel. The declared reason for the journey to Ireland and the excavation

of the 'Bray House' is to unearth a past life that no longer exists, to learn

about a culture that has been destroyed. However, there is a problem

surrounding the time frame in which The Bray House operates. The future as envisaged in the novel is very much like the present. Ni Dhuibhne

does not engage much with the possibilities of what the future might be

like ? she is not concerned with gadgetry or with imagining a vastly different society. The desires and motivations of the various characters

and the manner in which they are articulated by themselves are very much grounded in the here and now. Consequently, the accepted pattern of science fiction is not being strictly adhered to in that different 'worlds'

(the future and the present) are not being placed in confrontation with one another. In other words, at a basic level, no real conflict is being set

up between this world and the projected world of the future. An early reviewer of The Bray House noted another manifestation of

this problem with time within the novel:

The account of the MacHugh family, pieced together from their documents and videos, is entertaining, but it is hard to credit that

fewer than five years after Irish culture has been wiped out so many

aspects of it are unintelligible.8

8. Sheila Hamilton, 'Black Ireland, green novel: A Review of The Bray House' in Fortnight, no. 286 Quly/August, 1990), p. 25.

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A READING OF EILIS NI DHUIBHNE'S THE BRAY HOUSE

Coupled with this is the fact that Robin Lagerlof, the expedition leader, had been married to an Irishman and had visited Ireland on many occasions before the nuclear disaster. There is, then, a curious sense of

pointlessness to the entire project being undertaken by these Swedish

archaeologists, which threatens to undermine the entire thrust of the

novel.

Earlier it was stated how science fiction is related to both the

postmodern and the fantastic in terms of its emphasis on the ontological collision of 'worlds'.9 This does not, or rather should not, preclude a

consideration of those mechanisms through which we engage with the

world ? language and texts, for instance. Rosemary Jackson argues that

the fantastic focuses on the imagination and how it apprehends reality and exists in reality10 Again and again such a self-reflexive interest in

the imagination can be observed in postmodern fiction too. The artistic

imagination especially comes under scrutiny, as does the ontological status of writing and its possibilities and limits. Consequently, it is pos sible to understand science fiction as also being a possible site where

such concerns can be played out. The Bray House on the surface, at least, would appear to fit neatly into this postmodern understanding of the

science fiction genre as well as sharing some of the features of the

fantastic. Not only is Ni Dhuibhne concerned with using the future as a

means to comment critically upon the present moment, but she is also

engaged in a self-reflexive consideration of the nature of the imagin ation's engagement with reality through texts and writing.

Two critics in particular, by locating The Bray House in a feminist

theoretical framework, highlight one particular aspect of the meta

narrational and self-reflexive possibilities of the novel. Gerardine Meaney argues that the novel specifically 'confounds a number of prevailing

assumptions about Irish women's writing' in the contemporary moment, as well as the mainstream Irish novel, in its use of the popular generic

mode of science fiction.11 Carol Morris also recognises how The Bray House subversively diverges from the norms of Irish writing, asserting that it is an example of what is called 'feminist genre fiction'.12 Such

fiction appropriates popular literary forms such as romance, fantasy, detective fiction and science fiction in order to undermine the dominant

patriarchal ideology inherent in Western culture by consciously writing

9. Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction, p. 74.

10. Cf. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, p. 23. 'Presenting that which cannot be, but is, fantasy exposes a culture's definitions of that which can be:

it traces the limits of its epistemological and ontological frame.'

11. Gerardine Meaney, 'Beyond Eco-Feminism: A review of Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's The

Bray House and Eating Women is Not Recommended', in Irish Literary Supplement, vol.

11, no. 2 (Fall 1992), p. 14.

12. Carol Morris, 'The Bray House: An Irish Critical Utopia', in Etudes Iralndaises, 21, 1

(Summer 1996), pp. 127-28.

107




from a feminist perspective.13 In this reading the science fiction genre releases the writer from the constraints of realism, offering the

opportunity to critically examine and question the accepted norms and

hierarchies of the contemporary world by, quite simply, imagining a

world other than this one.14

The ambiguities thrown up by Ni Dhuibhne's eccentric and unortho

dox time frame are easily answered in Carol Morris's interpretation of

The Bray House. It is precisely this playing with the accepted conventions

and structure of the science fiction novel which makes Ni Dhuibhne's

work a feminist rewriting of the genre. Both Morris and Gerardine

Meaney are careful to acknowledge the author's sophisticated rendering of her feminist politics:

Under so much that can be described as eco-feminist writing, there

is no bland assumption in The Bray House of feminine moral

superiority, rather a powerful questioning of women's political

responsibility.15

Morris, similarly, contends that Ni Dhuibhne has written:

a scathing attack on those feminists who, by failing to face up to

their own identities as women, merely turn themselves into parodies of men, by appropriating male power for themselves.16

The novel, as a result, cannot be read merely as a straightforward acclamation of feminine virtues, or as a portrayal of a ferrtinine utopia.

Morris argues that The Bray House deviates and reverses many of the

accepted conventions associated with 'Utopian' science fiction writing. Thus, there is no 'utopia'

? feminine or otherwise ? in the novel: no

perfect place in the future from which to criticize the present day. Morris's

conclusion is that this situation affords Ni Dhuibhne the opportunity to

engage critically with gender and gender relations, moving beyond any

pat propagandist position. Such a feminist perspective elucidates many areas of interest for the

reader, especially foregrounding 'form' as a site for working out

conflicting ideologies. Nevertheless, it obscures some of the more

peculiarly and specifically Irish subject matter of the text. It does so

because it fails to appreciate the lingering difficulties that Ni Dhuibhne's

problematic time frame poses for the reader. Without question it is one

13. Ibid., p. 128. Morris takes her argument from Anne Cranny-Francis's Feminist Fiction:

Feminist Uses of Generic Fiction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). 14. See Sarah Lefanu, In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction,

pp. 21-2.

15. Gerardine Meaney, 'Beyond Eco-Feminism', p. 14.

16. Carol Morris, 'The Bray House: An Irish Critical Utopia/ p. 139.

108



A READING OF EILfS NI DHUIBHNE'S THE BRAY HOUSE

of the main features of the novel that powerfully challenges the con

ventions of the science fiction genre, and yet this feminist interpretation still adheres fundamentally to the underlying notion of 'conflicting

worlds'. As Morris argues, Ni Dhuibhne's work being an example of

'feminist genre fiction', combined with the obvious ecological questions it raises, moved The Bray House 'away from parochial Irish concerns'

toward more general and universal issues.17 Thus, a conflict is set up between solely Irish interests and universal concerns. In the context of the novel, an imagined Sweden of the future is set against an Ireland of

the past.

While it would be impossible to deny Ni Dhuibhne's concern with

the wider issues surrounding global ecological matters, it can be argued that, primarily, her interests are with local and particular issues relating to Ireland. Put simply, rather than reading Ni Dhuibhne's novel with

theories from elsewhere and imposing a theoretical framework upon the text from 'outside', it is possible to consider her work from a position

within an Irish literary and critical environment. Indeed, it is exactly this conflict between the act of reading Ireland from elsewhere and the

Irish actively reading themselves, as well as a wider world, that is at the

heart of the novel's dynamic. A reading more aware of local issues is found in Gerry Smyth's recent

survey of contemporary Irish fiction, The Novel and the Nation, where he reads The Bray House as reflecting the Irish obsession with land.18 Smyth

makes a convincing argument for the significance of the 'land' in Irish

thinking and culture and its continued importance in the contemporary moment, presenting it as a vital location for the contemplation of Irish

national identity. Smyth's assessment of this Irish obsession recognizes a gap between the use that land can be put to and the discourses and

language that surround it. Smyth insists that Ni Dhuibhne's novel is

simply a 'thesis novel' which considers this Irish obsession from a con

temporary ecological perspective. He claims that The Bray House demands that the modern Irish reader reassess traditional nationalist discourses

associated with the 'land' and attempt to wed these to the imperatives of dealing with the present global ecological crisis. His interpretation of the novel sees Ni Dhuibhne exploiting this gap between discourse and

reality, as she comments on the lip service being paid to the 'land' while, in terms of preservation and ecology, nothing is being done.

Common to both Smyth's reading and the feminist reading of The

Bray House is conflict. The feminist reading stresses gender conflict, while

Smyth's reading acknowledges the 'land' as a contested site of conflict in Ireland's colonial and post-colonial relationship with Britain. For

17. Ibid., p. 132.

18. See Gerry Smyth, The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (London: Pluto Press, 1997), pp. 167-68.

109




Smyth, too, there is an on-going conflict between the 'land' as a cultural

icon and the 'land' as a real space/place. The difficulty with both these

approaches is that they consistently return to the ecological theme,

emphasising this aspect of the novel above all else. In other words, while

both acknowledge the meta-narrative elements of the novel, neither fully

explores the potential of such a reading.

Accordingly, the main concern of Nf Dhuibhne's The Bray House is

her meditation, not on the Irish obsession with land, but rather on the

Irish obsession with 'texts' and interpretation. It is the cultural sphere and the cultural engagement with the 'land' which has always been of

more importance than what could be practically achieved with the 'land':

place is very much secondary to the narratives and stories associated

with place, or indeed, even to the act of naming associated with place. From the early poems of Yeats and others associated with the Literary Revival, for instance, 'naming' rather than accurate description or

topographical verisimilitude was to the fore. Even James Joyce's Ulysses could be said to eschew detailed descriptions of the streets and

architecture of Dublin in favour of a barrage of names and a creation of

mythical significance through associating places with people and stories.

More recently, Seamus Heaney has recognized the powerful imaginary

purchase that the 'land' still has in Irish cultural and political discourse. His conception of the Irish bog as a kind of 'memory bank' brilliantly

brings together many of the threads/issues contained in the idea of

'land'. For Heaney, notions of Irish identity are, in his use of the image,

inextricably bound up with the tangibility of the Irish landscape.19 One

reason for this, perhaps, can be found in his poem 'Digging' where he

suggests a personal and communal need to constantly engage with this

landscape and its reservoir of potential meanings. While the 'land' itself

is undoubtedly important in this exchange, its true importance is as a

source of narrative rather than being significant in and of itself. Thus, the emphasis is very much on an imaginative, or a cultural, engagement

with the landscape.20

Consequently, the real conflict, or power struggle, within The Bray House is not simply centred around opposing 'worlds' ? the future and

the present, Sweden and Ireland?but rather around opposing versions

19. Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978 (London: Faber and Faber,

1980), p. 55. 20. It could be argued that the changes to Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish Constitution made

in a referendum on May 22nd 1998 reflect this attitude to the 'land' and the idea of

territory. The constitution was altered so that national identity need no longer be

solely connected with an idea of territory /'land'. The relevant section is in Article 2

of the Irish Constitution: 'Furthermore, the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and

heritage.' See Republic of Ireland, Constitution, Articles 1-3 <http: /www.maths.

ted.ie/pub/Constitution/Articlesl-3.html>.

110




of the world or, to be more precise, differing versions of Ireland. Thus, Ni Dhuibhne uses the device of a future expedition to Ireland as a way

to consider such acts of reading and writing, rather than as a means to

simply chastise present day indifference to ecological issues. The

estrangement and defamiliarization ? a crucial feature of the science

fiction genre ?

produced for the Irish reader are generated by these

varying representations, distancing the contemporary reader from what

is ordinary and everyday in Irish life. Thus the novel's eccentricities, when approached from this critical perspective, can be understood. For

instance, the unevenness of the narrative can be regarded, not as a failure on Ni Dhuibhne's part, but as a conscious attempt to render the struggle for dominance of these differing representations.

The 'Bray House Report' is one such act of re-presenting Ireland. Its

supposedly impartial use of language gives it a certain objectivity and,

thus, validity. However, the fact gathering and cataloguing of the early

part of the Report leads inevitably to an attempt at interpreting this

material. As a result, this scientific approach and use of language alters

the reality of the 'Bray House' and those who lived there. What was, in

actuality, ordinary and mundane is transfigured into the realm of the

extraordinary as these lives become, or are forced to become, repre sentative of an entire society that no longer exists. Robin's analytical treatment of the material and documentary evidence comes at the end

of her report and from the outset it is observable how she perceives her

act of interpretation in terms of power and control. It is basically for her an issue of authority and authorship. She declares that she is the most

capable person to 'read' the 'Bray House' material:

apart from being the person best acquainted with the material in

question, I am also in possession of contextual and background information which is not common

knowledge among Swedish or

world archaeologists /anthropologists (...) on account of my long

standing, indepth knowledge of Ireland. (TBH, p. 157).

Despite her own estimation of her ability to understand Ireland and the

'Bray House', much of what she proposes is dubious, to say the least.

Her conclusions merely conform to various stereotypes and caricatures

of Ireland and Irishness. Thus, the father ? Murphy MacHugh

? is a

mother-fixated dipsomaniac with an inability to treat women as equals, while the mother, Elinor, is 'weak' and 'dependent', and in spite of her

artistic and feminist leanings succumbs far too easily to the patriarchal world. Fiona, the daughter of the MacHughs, is, in Robin's view, an

'undesirable human being', a juvenile delinquent:

Although we have no concrete evidence of it, we can be sure that

she drank cider on the beach in Bray at weekends, probably experimented with drugs, and would most likely have died of AIDS

111




or some similar malady had the Incident [the nuclear disaster] not occurred. (TBH, P. 165)

Annie MacHugh, the grandmother, is described as 'almost medieval' in

her habits and attitudes because of her use of rosary beads and her 'son

worship and daughter-in-law antipathy;' she is a 'living representation':

of the evil stepmothers ... that we encounter again and again and

again in the folktales of Europe (...) As such, she was a type extremely

rare and valuable to the anthropologist... (TBH, pp. 165-66)

The scientific language of this section of the Report is no longer unbiased;

indeed, it performs the function of turning hypothetical musings into

hard, unassailable facts. Consequently, what at first can be thought of as

mildly speculative becomes, by the finish, outrageously absurd nonsense

with no basis in any reality. An early reviewer of The Bray House felt that

'the conclusions [Ni Dhuibhne] draws from her imaginary retrospect are disappointingly predictable.'21 Though the reviewer does not

elaborate on what these 'predictable conclusions' might be, it is nonethe

less an astute comment because it recognizes the fundamental ordinari

ness of the MacHugh family's situation in contemporary Ireland. Beneath

the stock characters being presented: the drunk father, the difficult

mother-in-law, the timid wife and so on, can be discovered the real com

monplace tragedy of marital breakdown and separation. However, there are no final conclusions, no definitive judgements

made about the various relationships within this fractured family. The

unadorned 'facts' hint at a number of possible scenarios but nothing can

ever be accepted as the final word on the matter. The life of the 'Bray House' is the focus of the expedition and of the novel, but by the

narrative's end, the reader is no closer to a clear, unambiguous under

standing of its significance. Ironically, Robin later says of her own life:

When outsiders look at somebody's life, and note its more dramatic

events, they will attribute causes and motives as a detective might,

supposing that every act has one cause. But reality can be different.

(TBH, p. 209)

She is capable of recognising the limitations of her method when applied to the complexities of her own life but is unable to apply the same candour

to her analysis of Ireland.

This Report would appear to stand apart from the rest of Robin's

narrative: a text-within-a-text, isolated from the action going on else

where; its impermeability from the 'story' of its production being

21. Aisling Maguire, Review of The Bray House, in Irish Times, Weekend Section, 5th

May 1990, p. 8.

112




reinforced by the cold, hard language of science. However, coupled with its over-the-top conclusions, are comments like the above one which

should signal to the reader that despite the semblance of academic rigour and scientific discourse, the 'Bray House Report' is, ultimately, as

subjective as the rest of Robin's narrative. The supposed clear demar

cation between this text-within-a-text and the wider narrative breaks

down, forcing the reader to fundamentally reappraise the purpose of

the expedition and, indeed, the entire novel.

The 'Report' has little to do with the truth and knowledge she had

earlier claimed are at the heart of her academic discipline. It has

everything to do, though, with power. Robin herself declares at the end

of the Report:

My report and analysis have now been presented. It would be easy to assume on account of their neat logic and easy flow that the

excavation they describe followed a similarly systematic and

untwisting path. But unfortunately this was not so. (TBH, p. 169)

In recognizing the difference between her ordered text and the chaos

out of which it was written, she admits the gap between her writing and

reality. It is an admission, too, that her writing is a form of assertion,

imposing her will ? her interpretation ?

upon the world.

These power struggles on the level of discourse and linguistics are

mirrored and reinforced in the microcosmic sphere of the relationships between Robin and her three crew members. Matters come to a head

when Karl and Jenny, two of Robin's crew, have rebelled against her for

not allowing them the opportunity to dig and excavate on their own.

They leave Robin and Karen, the other member of the expedition, at the

'Bray House' site and go inland. They return a number of weeks later

with a surprising discovery: a survivor of the nuclear disaster.

There are a number of issues of significance surrounding this dis

covery. First of all, there is the manner in which Jenny chooses to relate

the tale of their adventure:

"Once upon a time", she said, in a low intense tone, a story teller's

voice. "Two people called Karl and Jenny were

feeling very sad and

dejected. Rejected, dejected, worn out, useless. Fed up with life. They did not know what to do with themselves."

I interrupted her: "Must you use this style? It's irritating, frankly, in my opinion." "Too bad," said Jenny. "It's this or

nothing." (TBH, pp. 218-29)

Jenny can be seen here to tell her story in her own way, despite Robin's

desire for a more straightforward narrative technique. It is a sign of her

and Karl's assertion of themselves in this power struggle with Robin.

The fact that Jenny makes use of a traditional narrative form ? the

113




folktale ? registers for the reader that 'truth' can be found in different

narrative forms: that the scientific language of the Report is not the only means of gaining and presenting knowledge. Playfully, Karl and Jenny have called their survivor 'Elinor MacHugh', recognizing perhaps the

shortfalls in Robin's reductive method. Robin, however, begins to take

seriously the possibility that this is the 'Elinor' of the 'Bray House' and

spends hours with the new arrival asking questions about her 'daughter' Fiona and her husband. 'Elinor' refuses to speak, thus challenging Robin's position by not entering into a struggle with her through

language. There is a madness, certainly, in Robin's actions and beliefs. She even

goes so far as to murder Karl because he will not let her have access to

his notebook with his 'report' on discovering 'Elinor':

[T]hey had done it, to keep valuable data from me. They wanted

my enterprise to fail, they wanted to steal the most important facts.

Ruthless, selfish, blindly ambitious, is what they were. I would not

succumb to their power. (TBH, p. 229)

Once she comes into possession of the notebook she finds out that 'Elinor'

is, of course, not one of the MacHughs, her name being Maggie Byrne. While the 'real' person is certainly important to Robin, what is of more

concern to her is another 'text' or another version of Ireland that might conflict with her own written assessment.

She is nonetheless perplexed by the presence of an actual Irish survivor

of the disaster. When Maggie Byrne tells her own story, Robin observes:

I had clung to the hope that she was one of the MacHughs, not Elinor, necessarily, but at least Annie. I had looked forward to reading my

report to her, to having her comments on it. Her confirmation that

my theories were correct. (TBH, p. 248)

She goes on to declare the veracity of her report, or story, as she now

begins to call it, claiming that even if a MacHugh 'came along and

suggested otherwise' it would still be true: 'The MacHugh/ as she says, 'would be wrong.' In the end, the fact that there is a survivor capable of

telling ? if not Ireland's story as such ? but her own story is of no real

consequence to Robin. In the first section of the novel, she revealed that T must admit I have little or no interest in other people's motivations.'

(TBH, p. 52). In other words, she is not interested in people ? dead or

alive ? at all. And yet, she is adamant that she must tell the 'Bray House'

story, give it to the world with her own analysis and interpretations attached.

In John Banville's The Newton Letter, the unnamed narrator says of his summer in the Irish countryside:

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I spent a summer in the country, I slept with one woman and thought I was in love with another; I dreamed up a horrid drama, and failed

to see the commonplace tragedy that was playing itself out in real

life.22

Banville's historian and Ni Dhuibhne's archaeologist have a great deal in common. Both attempt to understand events through acts of writing and both are ultimately shown failing to come to any such understanding. Thus, Ni Dhuibhne's The Bray House can be read productively in much

the same vein as Banville's work: as a postmodern examination of

language and writing's inability to connect the world that it promises to

explain. In The Bray House, the conflict set up between differing narratives

and modes of discourse emphasises reality's refusal to be encompassed

by any single utterance or text.

However, both Banville and Ni Dhuibhne are interested not solely in

these general difficulties, and also reflect more local issues. Ni Dhuibhne

and Banville's narrators share one other important characteristic: both

are, at some level, influenced greatly by literary texts. For the unnamed

historian it is various nineteenth-century novels and Anglo-Irish writers, from Elizabeth Bowen to W.B. Yeats, which captivate his mind and distort

his reading of reality. Like Robin, he is obsessed with texts of all kinds, and takes them for actualities. Another instance, then, of that peculiar Irish infatuation, not with reality but with representations of reality.

Robin, too ? though perhaps on a less conscious level than Banville's

historian ? is seen to be influenced by literary texts. One of the more

important is the novel Robin reads on the voyage to Ireland: Daniel

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. As Carol Morris argues:

[Robinj is in fact another coloniser, yet another invader of Ireland,

taking and not giving back, no better than the oppressors who have

preceded her through the centuries.23

While this highlights for the reader that the model for Robin's engage ment with Ireland is a colonial one, it is a different type of colonialism to

that which went before. For Robin it is not a case of appropriating and

controlling territory, rather it ? as has been stressed throughout ? is a

desire to control the 'story' of Ireland.

It is thus a question of agency, of who speaks and who is allowed to

speak. Obviously, for Robin, there is no need for an Irish person to speak.

Maggie Byrne's story ? which is eventually related ? does not negate

her Report because that Report is still presented. Set side by side with

the sensational conclusions of the Report, Maggie's tale of survival is

simple and mundane and soon forgotten.

22. John Banville, The Newton Letter, p. 79.

23. Carol Morris, 'The Bray House: An Irish Critical Utopia', p. 138.

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At the core of the novel is this conflict between Ireland being 'read'

and written about from elsewhere and the ability of the Irish to read and

write their own stories. Perhaps Ni Dhuibhne is commenting critically upon what is increasingly becoming an area of contention within Irish

studies in general as tensions begin to appear between those who practice their criticism from within and without the geographical space known as Ireland.24 In this reading Robin's is an act of exploitation, transf orrning the ordinary realities of Irish life into an extraordinary and exotic tale.

And yet to understand her novel in this way is far too simple and

reductive.

Ni Dhuibhne herself is writing from within Ireland and while

undoubtedly she is being critical of those who come to Ireland and Irish

studies with their own agendas, she is being critical too of the Irish

themselves. She is aware, as has been seen, of the Irish obsession with texts and how texts can be far too easily read as the realities that they are

representations of. It can be noted, too, how she reinscribes and updates the colonial relationship associated with Britain, applying it to

contemporary Ireland's relationship with Europe and beyond. It is as if

Ireland is unable to imagine itself in any other way, and is thus

condemned to perpetuate that model of engagement on into the future.

Even if her characters remain trapped, Ni Dhuibhne in her own acts

of writing is able to confront and, perhaps, overcome the difficulties of

finding new ways of interacting with the Irish experience. The Bray House

is an example of that type of writing. It is an interrogative novel,

confidently challenging the conventions associated with Irish writing while also being aware of those questions and concerns which are

peculiarly Irish. While looking forward and making innovative use of a

popular genre to do so, Ni Dhuibhne looks back also, attempting to make a creative, productive and very necessary link between the past, the

present and the future.

24. See P.J. Mathews, 'More Talked about than Talking', in Graph: Irish Cultural Revieiv, 3.3 (Summer 1999), pp. 5-7.

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special issue: contemporary irish fiction || being ordinary: ireland from elsewhere: a reading of...

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