"Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece;
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchis's strand,
And many Jasons come in quest of her."
The Merchant of Venice
The rain lashed down, as it had every other day that November. It had a distant quality. A dull thudding against the double glazed panes (the one improvement the council had made to these decaying flats this last decade). Damp seeped in through the plaster.
Furtive figures moved in the semi-darkness. The muted TV cast penumbric phantoms on the walls. Shadows which shifted with the camera, like a candle caught in a draught. A lone figure sat slumped in the single armchair. A scrapbook lay open in her lap.
She rarely went out anymore. The weekly grocery run an exercise in anxiety; fraught with peripheral fear. The cradled spirits glass was her reward, her relief. Dr Robson had told her it was rotting her liver, but she couldn’t care less. It was all she had left. Other than her cats, it was her only friend.
They were everywhere, her children. Rescued from shelters and the street. Fourteen in all. Through matted grey she regarded them. Curled up by the bar heater. Grooming in balletic poses. They sparred in the shadows, lounged on the windowsill, rubbed themselves against her swollen calves with a flick of the tail. Soon would come the nightly exodus and the local wildlife would fear for its existence. Where were they now? The ones she had named each in honour to. Tony, Harris and Miranda. Leigh, the ginger tom. It seemed another age, those days on the factory floor, everyone on speed to survive sixteen-hour shifts. They’d been happier times, ribbing each other to relieve the monotony. Egging each other on to wind up their line manager. Even he’d been phetted up. Was it Chris, his name? And when she could stand it no longer, she’d walked out one lunchtime and never went back. She’d been proper gam then. How had it come to this?
She was born the youngest of three children. Her brothers, Neil and Ryan, were ten and thirteen years older respectively. She suspected she’d been an accident.
Her parents were social workers. Senior practitioners, who worked long hours. For as long she could remember it seemed they were forever off with someone else’s neglected child.
The lion share of her childhood was spent in the care of her grandparents. It gave her the freedom to roam. She’d traipse the countryside, letting her imagination run wild. She was a tomboy, sat up her favourite tree, reading. She loved to read. Or sketching the landscapes about her and in her mind’s eye. She’d come home bloody kneed and filthy. The local kids thought she was a gypsy girl and she did little to shatter the illusion.
Puberty hit her like a seismic shock. At thirteen she discovered music; raided her brothers' record collections, spent hours listening to the radio. The novels of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stephenson gave way to biographies on Lennon, Bowie and Ian Curtis. It was the lyrics of the latter which most spoke to her soul.
At fourteen she was making herself up to look a decade older and sneaking out downtown. She’d get bought drinks and taken to clubs. Of course the men who picked her up expected something in return. They always went away disappointed.
She’d saunter in at five, six in the morning, to the refrain of her mother’s fury. No matter how tired she was, she always had time for one more argument.
Jason entered her life dressed in a leopard print t-shirt and drainpipe jeans, brandishing a guitar in each hand. Jason played lead in a local band, The Wandering Rocks. He had golden hair and eyes of sapphire.
Throughout the band’s forty-minute set her eyes barely left him. He caught her gaze and winked at her. Her cheeks blushed and drained of colour just as fast.
Jason approached her after the gig. Thin rivulets of sweat glistened on his forehead, the veins on his biceps stood erect from the exertion of playing. Jason was twenty-two. By day, Jason was a mechanic for the council. He’d formed the Rocks a year ago. He seemed unimpressed by the allusions to Greek myth the band’s name conjured up. He’d chosen it, he said, “’Cause it sounds like The Rolling Stones.” It only added to his charm.
After hours, Jason took her to the drummer’s house. Andy had scored a gram of coke and they both did lines while she looked on, nervously smoking one Berkley Red after another. And as the dawn chorus resounded across the estate, she gave herself to him on the bed settee. It hurt, but the pain was tempered with a kind of pleasure.
On the Sunday, he drove her out to the suburbs. He’d seen a 1963 Triumph Bonneville for sale in Exchange and Mart. It needed a lot of work, but to Jason, who’d already renovated the shell of a ’55 Vincent Black Shadow, the potential was obvious. He loaded the chassis into the back of his car and drove her away.
Exams came and went and life at home became intolerable. It was impossible to be in the same room as her mother without their exchanges deteriorating into a shouting match. With school ended, it happened all the more. Jason would save her. One afternoon he loaded her meagre possessions into the back of his car as her parents watched from the driveway:
"Oh Frank, why does she always have to be such a disappointment?"
"Come away Joyce. She’s old enough to make her own mistakes now."
It was bliss. Jason got her a job in the office at his works. Through the window she could watch him all day. At weekends he would drag her around the breaker’s yards looking for parts. Piece by piece, the transformation took place.
Jason would bring her to rehearsals and gigs with such frequency that Andy took to calling her Yoko. It was said with good humour. The Rocks adopted her as their mascot. At her seventeenth birthday party they performed ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ as their gift to her. Andy championed her suggestion that they perform it at the up coming Battle of the Bands. Jason objected, but the others talked him round. They were always kind to her.
It went down a storm. A blistering version as their finale ensured victory. The band carried her shoulder high through the streets. Jason, coked to the eyeballs, declared it had been his idea all along. They were all too exhilarated to argue. That night he entered her with an urgent intensity. Red welts marked her arms from his touch.
First prize was a day in a recording studio. The Rocks cut a five-track demo. They sent Red Rose Radio a copy and the Joy Division cover was chosen as their record of the week.
The Wandering Rocks went from strength to strength. They could now play venues twice the capacity as before. It could only be a matter of time before a major label offered them a contract. But even moderate success had gone to Jason’s head. His cocaine use, which had always been occasional and recreational, was fast becoming a habit. The transformation complete, he’d been forced to put the Vincent and Triumph up for sale to pay off his dealer. It didn’t help lighten his mood. He’d swing between sullen and arrogant, taking his frustrations out on her. He’d accuse her of flirting with the other band members, scream at her that she was worthless.
"Look at me when I’m talking to you, bitch."
Grab at her as she backed meekly away. When the put downs no longer satisfied him, he took to slapping her in the face. But even this wasn’t enough and with the advert placed in Exchange and Mart, the punches began.
It came to a head one fateful night. He’d got into an argument with their singer over something and nothing. It became more and more heated, until Jason hit the vocalist in the face. Rick cradled his swollen jaw and spat his resignation at the guitarist. But the rest of the Rocks had had enough of Jason’s irrational moods. They stood behind their singer and demanded Jason made way for a replacement.
"You can’t throw me out. he screamed. I am this fucking band. It’s named after me. You’re no better than session players. Get the fuck out. All of you!"
The Clashing Rocks formed the very next day.
He was higher than ever that night, pacing the floor like a caged beast. She never knew what she did to unleash his wrath; he probably didn’t, but the blows rained down nonetheless. He punched her repeatedly to the ground, kicking her prone body until it went limp. Then he grabbed her by the neck and propelled her head first through the glass partition door.
She was a fortnight in hospital. Mercifully, the shards embedded in her torso had not cut too deep. Her face went unscathed too. But the doctors told her there’d be some scarring to her limbs and belly. Three of her ribs were broken.
At night she silently cried herself to sleep. She couldn’t believe she’d let him humiliate her for so long. Through the pale blue glow of successive morns her resolve slowly strengthened. She took her revenge soon after discharge. Poured sugar into the petrol tanks of his Black Shadow and Bonneville and sand into the oil. A court injunction and a beating from her brothers ensured no recrimination. It was less than two years since he’d first introduced himself.
The bronze liquid trickled down the back of her throat as she took another hit. There was a defibrillaric shock that coursed through her body, jolting her senses. What was that odour? It had been there a while now and was getting stronger. The stench was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
For a decade after she'd drifted. One job after another. One home after another. Falling into the next relationship before the previous one had ended. She swore no one would ever get the better of her again.
Time and space thawed her relationship with her parents. Eventually she could be in the same room as her mother with only the occasional shouting match. It could still turn nasty in a moment though. Like the morning her mother gave her a lift to work and such a row had ensued, she letting loose a torrent of four letter words, that she’d found herself abandoned by the roadside. But at least she’d got the last word in.
It was while they were both temping for Perma-temp that she met Paul. They’d both been sent to some generic law firm to work on a ‘special project’. It meant the crap the permanent staff got paid too much to do. However, they had an office to themselves and little supervision.
Paul had recently finished a degree in photography. He was a few months younger than her, had come to education late and was working to pay off some debts. They were fast friends. Paul possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of comedy and kept her in hysterics, reeling off any number of routines and sketches he’d memorised. They shared a love of music. She brought in a stereo, taking it in turns to play their favourite albums.
There was also a mutual love of the bizarre. They spent an entire afternoon inventing ridiculous superheroes. There was the shorthand typist with the gift of precognition. And Why?Boy, a prepubescent crime fighter who defeated bad guys through the power of incessant questioning. Why?Boy kept her giggling for days.
Most lunchtimes, they’d take a stroll. She just wanted him to push her against a wall and kiss her passionately. Sometimes they’d hold hands as they worked or he’d massage her neck to relieve her cramps. Once, she caught him looking down her dress and wasn’t shy about confronting him.
It was Jan the Perm's birthday and they’d been invited out for drinks. So deeply engrossed were they in conversation that it was hours before they noticed the party had long since moved on. An excess of alcohol lent her courage and as they stepped out into the night air she swooned with intent. He caught her by the elbow and drew her close. A flicker of understanding passed silently between them and he pressed his lips against hers. Through the drunken haze it felt right. Without a word she hailed a taxi and took him back to hers. It was two days before either of them got dressed.
They barely left each other’s company from that moment on. He was staying with his parents to save some money, but increasingly only went home for fresh clothes. They’d stay up ‘til dawn, talking and laughing and making love. He convinced her to show him some of her artwork and they discussed working on a project together. A combination of forms. Photographs with sections cut away, drawn in in pencil. Or watercolours, cut out in shapes to reveal black and white prints beneath. She spoke passionately about the life of Ian Curtis and he of his love of sailing. He told her he loved her and she said she loved him too. She’d never said it and meant it before. He asked about her scars. She tried to tell him. The words got stuck in her throat.
With a few days off, Paul took her to stay with his old flat mate. Ben was also a photographer and had moved to London to set up his own business. He asked Paul to be his partner. Paul said he needed time to mull it over, but talked of little else on the train back north. It was a wonderful opportunity. Ben’s parents were fairly well off and the capital Paul would have to invest would be minimal. A graduate loan would more than cover it. She knew the question that was looming:
"Why don’t you move down with me?"
At first she accepted. Even gave notice on her flat and stashed her stuff at her parents' place while Paul took care of the formalities. But over the weeks, the doubts seeped in. At night she’d lie awake, staring at the ceiling hour after hour, her shins aching from the tension. And when sleep did claim her, the darkness came pouring in. She dreamt she was small. A panther treaded the pavement at the end of the driveway. It snarled.
A paw tentatively touched the concrete path, body low, back arched. The creature stared deep into her soul as it stalked her. With a hiss, it pounced. Paul twitched in his sleep and she emerged, as a diver from the depths, gasping for air. She was disoriented and sweating. Paul slept contentedly on. She resented him for that.
She could neither avoid nor delay the inevitable any longer. With the lion share of two bottles of wine inside her, she became hysterical and told him how she'd end up living in a bedsit, surrounded by cats. Then she calmly told him she wouldn’t be coming to London. An explanation was demanded, but she felt one was unnecessary. Her mind was made up. She left him red eyed on the doorstep and drove home, well over the limit.
A year went by. She was in the newsagents one day when something caught her eye. It was a copy of the Financial Times. There was a photo of a power station on the front page. Something made her bow her head to read the strap line. It was Paul’s name attached to the picture. She smiled. He’d made it. Surreptitiously, she slipped the pink sheets into her bag and made her escape.
Before she was caught and banned for theft of library property, she’d scour copies of the dailies looking for more of Paul’s photographs. Over the years his work was more and more in evidence. For a while he continued in partnership with Ben, snapping the great and the good. But, as she’d read in an interview years later, he found the whole experience soul destroying.
What it did do was enable him to build a reputation for himself. He was offered the opportunity to fly out to Uganda with Oxfam. Their latest campaign was focussing on the street children there. The original photographer had been stricken with a bout of malaria during a previous assignment and Paul was approached as a possible replacement. Apparently someone at head office had seen his portfolio and liked his style.
"That experience galvanised my whole approach to photography. It made me accept something I had known all along: That I was for the underdog."
He never looked back, cementing his reputation by portraying the darker corners of the world in grainy black and white. Whether it was the Palestinians or Romanies; the Aboriginal slums of Australia or Death Row, Texas, there was an intimacy in the portraits Paul framed that seemed to draw the viewer in.
Those who worked with him spoke in eulogy about Paul's ability to blend seamlessly into his environment. At times he seemed invisible, always refusing any kind of body armour that might draw attention to his presence, even when there was a very real danger of being shot at or blown up.
His reputation was such that the Barbican was about to host a major retrospective of his work. He was thirty-seven. Paul flew out to Corfu and joined the crew of a yacht for a few days relaxation, navigating the islands. They were caught in a storm, a freak wave hit the boat and Paul was swept overboard. His bloated body washed up on shore several days later, camera still slung about his neck. He’d discarded his life jacket for a better shot.
The news devastated her. There was a memorial service held at the Barbican, surrounded by the images taken in his short life. Open to a select few, she slipped in and stood, unnoticed, at the back, hiding her face from those who might recognise her. His body was buried at sea. Returned to the waters he loved.
It had been years since that night on his parent’s doorstep, but she felt his death acutely. Not long after, she moved away. Home held too many memories, some good, some bad; all painful. She told no one she was leaving. Broke all ties with everyone and everything she knew.
Little changes when you live for the past.
The scrapbook sat, propped against the side of the armchair, the outside covered in scratches. The room stood empty. All except Freya. She lay still on the window ledge; hadn’t moved in some time. What was that smell?
Her eyes flickered, a yawn broke lose and she succumb to the gloom. The drained tumbler slipped from her fingers and came to rest in her lap. Her head lolled forward, gave a start and settled on the back of the chair. And after a few minutes, there was the gentle purr of a drunken, numbing sleep. The fire in her belly would hold the darkness at bay ‘til dawn. Snowblind, the TV kept its peace. The rain lashed down, unabated.
The wind ripped up Georgia Street West. It was early. She stood in the doorway, caressing the locket about her neck. Her mother was wittering away in the background. Something about goals. She regarded the box on the driveway in front of her. Through the holes in the cardboard the black mass of the creature could be seen pacing within. It mewed gently. Oh you bastard.
An envelope protruded from the side of the box. Maybe a forwarding address. She could drive down this weekend and tell him she'd made a mistake. She tore the back open and removed a card. Typically tacky. No address, only a message:
You embrace old age too soon. Still, here’s a start to your collection. Perhaps you should call her Fatalistic!
Why?Boy
She smiled thinly and nodded. Her resolve strengthened by the note of bitterness.
"Will you come in. You’re letting the cold in."
Back arched, she yawned. He would of tired of her eventually. Grown bored and gone off with someone else. His camera will protect him. It wasn’t meant to be. Que sera sera.
"Did you hear me young lady? You’re letting the cold in."
She picked at a fleck of lipstick at the corner of her mouth. I hear. Tore the card to pieces and offered it to the air in sacrifice. She gripped the box by its handle, rough against her skin, and carried it inside. The door slammed shut behind her.
Showing posts with label Eden Stir Her Laceless Veil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eden Stir Her Laceless Veil. Show all posts
Saturday 23 October 2010
The Legend of Jason and Medea
So the story goes (or at least a version of it) that in the land of Magnesia, to the north of Athens and south of Mount Olympus, there was kingdom called Iolcus. King Pelias had usurped his half-brother, Aeson, and taken up the crown. Now Aeson’s wife, who was known by many names, bore him a son. Aeson, knowing of his brother’s fear of a true and rightful heir, told Pelias his son had died at birth, sending him to be raised in the mountains.
Years passed and the King’s reign continued. An oracle warned him, beware of a man entering Iolcus wearing only one sandal, for this man will be your downfall.
And so one afternoon Pelias was in the market place when he spied a stranger among the familiar faces of his subjects. The stranger was tall and handsome, with long flowing locks, dressed in leopard skin and carrying a pair of spears. He wore but a single sandal.
Pelias approached the man and enquired as to his heritage. The man told him that he was a member of the Magnesian tribe, but had been raised by the Centaur, Cheiron, on Mount Pelion. Cheiron had called him Jason, but he had been born Diomedes, son to Aeson and rightful heir to the throne of Iolcus. Pelias held both his tongue and identity.
"Among the holiday makers he watched a remarkable stranger - young and tall and handsome with features that he seemed to recall from a dream, armed with two bronze plated spears. To judge from his close fitting tunic and breeches and leopardskin cape, he was a Magnesian of the leopard fraternity." Robert Graves, The Golden Fleece
"Among the holiday makers he watched a remarkable stranger - young and tall and handsome with features that he seemed to recall from a dream, armed with two bronze plated spears. To judge from his close fitting tunic and breeches and leopardskin cape, he was a Magnesian of the leopard fraternity." Robert Graves, The Golden Fleece
Pelias asked Jason what he would do were he to meet a man whom he had been told by an oracle would slay him. Jason replied that he would send this man to Colchis to rescue the Golden Fleece, an impossible task that would seal his fate. There was good reason for him saying this. On his decent down Mount Pelion, Jason had encountered an old women at the banks of a river. She begged strangers to bare her across on their back, but her cries for help went unanswered. Jason offered his services. Unbeknownst to him the old woman was the goddess Hera in disguise. Her great weight bore him down and his sandal was lost in the muddy bank of the river.
Hera had put the idea of the Golden Fleece in Jason’s head, for she had a grudge against Pelias. The king had dishonoured Hera by refusing to make sacrificial offerings at her temple and she was determined to be appeased by his death.
Pelias now revealed himself to be the king. Jason demanded that Pelias make way for his ascension to the throne. Pelias stated that he was weary of power and wished to retire, but there was a curse upon the land which could only be lifted by the retrieval of the Golden Fleece. If Jason could retrieve the fleece for the good of Iolcus, Pelias would relinquish the crown and live out his days in peace.
Many tales are told of the journey of the Argo and the fates which befell it. There were the women of the isle of Lemnos, who delayed the Argonaughts on their journey for many years and bore them many heirs. And the Clashing or Wandering Rocks, which Captain Jason tricked and navigated, as retold in Homer’s Odyssey. Some even say that Jason spied Odysseus on his way home to his beloved Penelope.
But these obstacles need not delay us, for our heroine awaits us in Colchis, to the East.
"The only vessel that ever sailed and got through, was the famous Argo on her way from the house of Aetes, and she too would have gone against these great rocks, only that Hera piloted her past them for the love she bore to Jason." Homer, The Odyssey
"The only vessel that ever sailed and got through, was the famous Argo on her way from the house of Aetes, and she too would have gone against these great rocks, only that Hera piloted her past them for the love she bore to Jason." Homer, The Odyssey
King Aeetes, Medea’s father, challenged Jason to complete three tasks in order to prove himself worthy of the Fleece. First he was to tame and harness a plough to two khalakotauroi, fire breathing bulls, with hooves of bronze, and then to sow a field of dragons teeth. Medea gave Jason a heat resistant ointment to protect him from the bulls’ breath and the creatures were soon tamed. He sewed the dragon’s teeth and from them skeletons grew. These too Medea had shown him how to defeat. He threw a rock into their midst and, being unable to tell from where it came, the skeletons destroyed each other. Jason picked off the last few with one of their own swords.
The Golden Fleece hung from a tree on a hillside. A two headed Hydra stood guard. Some say that Medea gave Jason a potion to spray at the Hydra, others that it was Orpheus who lulled the monster to sleep with his lyre. Either way, the Hydra soon fell into slumber and the Golden Fleece into Jason’s arms. But before the Argonauts could celebrate a famous victory, they were forced to flee for their lives.
King Aeetes suspected trickery and decreed that the Argonauts be captured and put to death. To distract her father, Medea had her brother, Apsyrtus, killed and mutilated and his limbs thrown into the Black Sea. While the weeping King slowed to retrieve the remains of his son from the water, Medea, Jason and the Argonauts made their escape.
"I shall become acquainted with all the art and culture of such cities, and I shall have Jason, for whom I would barter all the wealth the world holds. With him as my husband, men will call me the fortunate favourite of heaven, and my head will touch the stars." Ovid, Metamorphoses
"I shall become acquainted with all the art and culture of such cities, and I shall have Jason, for whom I would barter all the wealth the world holds. With him as my husband, men will call me the fortunate favourite of heaven, and my head will touch the stars." Ovid, Metamorphoses
On its return to Iolcus, the Argo stopped at the island of Circe, aunt to Medea, and Medea cleansed herself of her brother’s death. The Argo rowed off and at length returned to home.
The next morning, Jason arrived with his Argonauts, proudly displaying the Golden Fleece and demanded the throne. But Pelias betrayed him. Jason and his crew were imprisoned and the king held aloft the Golden Fleece from the battlements for all to see. The people praised him in gratitude. Now will the crops grow, no will the rains come. But Medea told the king that if he wished to reign for a thousand years, his daughters must cut his body to pieces and boil it that a reborn king may, as the phoenix, arise anew.
They fled to Corinth, where Medea bore Jason two sons. However, he forged a friendship with Creon, king of Corinth, and the king persuaded Jason to leave Medea for his daughter, Glauce, and so be heir to his kingdom.
Enraged, Medea sent Glauce a poisoned robe, which killed her the instant it touched her shoulders. She then killed the king by a bewitched crown. Finally, Medea slew her own children in a rage and preyed to her grandfather, Helios, the sun god, to rescue her. Helios sent his own chariot, which draws the sun across the sky, to carry his granddaughter to safety.
Now she faced Jason. He swore revenge, but Medea prophesised that they would never meet again. She rose into the night, the corpses of her slain children at her feet, that Jason may not even perform the rites of burial.
"Medea [to Jason]: You grieve too soon. Old age is coming." Medea, Euripides
There are many versions of what happened next. Some say Medea fled to Athens and became mistress to the king, baring him a son, Medus. One day, the young Theseus came in search of his father. Only Medea recognised him and, fearing for her son’s claim to the throne, she convinced Aegus that the boy was dangerous. The king brought Theseus to the palace and gave him a cup of poisoned wine, but at the last possible moment he recognised the sword Theseus wore as the same he had given to the boy’s mother . Aegus embraced Theseus as his son. Medea took Medus and fled home to Colchis.
Not much is known of what happened to Medea upon her return. It is said that she never died, her grandfather descended from the heavens and carried her to the Elysian Fields. She is said to have married Achilles and resides with him still, having finally found a man worthy of her.
And what of Jason? Well he lived out his miserable days in Corinth and was killed one day when a falling beam from the aging Argo crushed him to death. But he never forgot what it is to be revenged by a woman scorned.
Best Things Ever #4 Eveline
James Joyce: An Introduction Through ‘Eveline’
The only demand I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.
James Joyce
To the uninitiated, the cannon of James Joyce is a daunting prospect with dubious reward for those who immerse themselves in it. The first half of this statement, at least, is correct. We should not delude ourselves: Joyce is a difficult writer. Yet for those who have the dedication and the patience to peer through his often willful obscurity, the rewards are all too obvious. As with all true masterpieces, his works only give up their secrets after years of careful study.There is much to admire in Joyce; beauty and humanity, passages as poetic as any found in Shakespeare or Milton. In short, there is much to steal in Joyce. ‘Finnegans Wake’ and ‘Ulysses’ are literary supernovas, throwing core matter out into the cosmos that new life might be formed. Any author with ambitions of immortality would do well to take Joyce’s advice and study his novels in detail, for to read him is to open a linguistic third eye to literature’s glorious potential.
The fifteen short stories that make up ‘Dubliners’ (D) are a gentler introduction to Joyce’s world, but still require the reader to peer beyond their mere physicality. To examine why this is so, we will look in detail at the book’s fourth episode, ‘Eveline’.
As with all his major works, the plot of ‘Eveline’ is subordinate to the devices that Joyce employs to narrate it. The story conforms to ‘Dubliners’ general theme of inertia and futility in turn of the century Dublin. Eveline is nineteen. Her mother has died years before, leaving her to raise two young siblings and keep the family home in order. Her father is a drunk, prone to bouts of violence. She has a menial job in the ‘Stores’ and is demeaned by her superior, Miss Gavan. Her life is an unending cycle of servitude and drudgery, where each day varies only incrementally from the one which preceded it.
Into this scene steps Frank. Frank is ‘very kind, manly, open-hearted’. He has run away to sea and ‘fallen on his feet in Buenos Ares’. He is the antithesis of Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’, with a ‘face of bronze’ to identify him, like the bronze spears brandished by the Jason1 of Greek legend, as the embodiment of the new age, in opposition to the stone age mentality of the Old Country. Frank wants Eveline to be his wife in Argentina, ‘where he [has] a home waiting for her’. As the story opens, we find her sitting by the window, trying to decide whether or not to leave. Despite one brief burst of action, where she fears only Frank can rescue her from suffering the same fate as her mother, she finds herself paralysed at the quayside as Frank boards the boat alone.
Joyce uses a range of techniques to express both Eveline’s passivity and the oppressive weight of those around her. Firstly, there is her absence of voice. Although we are privy to Eveline’s train of thought, as she tries to ‘weigh each side of the question’, we never actually hear her speak. Her persecutors, on the other hand, are frequently vocal. Her father, Miss Gavin, even the deathbed gibberish of her mother, all are heard in ‘Eveline’, while she herself remains forever silent. Of course Frank also has a speaking part, but we will examine the significance of this later on.
The ubiquitous dust of the family home is also stifling. “She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from.” Joyce reinforces threefold the sense of decay by the repetition of ‘dusted’, ‘earth’ and ‘dust’. The priest‘s yellowing photograph redoubles this effect, whereas the significance of the broken harmonium should be all too obvious.
Dust also serves as a metaphor for the oppressive weight of the past, which shackles Eveline to her servile life and keeps her inert at story’s end. The odour of dusty cretonne invades the senses, as the past haunting the present, a hand pressed against her shoulder preventing her from leaving. The evening’s impeding darkness is also an intruder here, symbolising the long march of time, as she hurtles towards the point at which she will be forced to make a decision.
We have seen how Eveline’s lack of voice is relevant to her sense of oppression, but the literary voice is also important to the story. Consider the sentence in the opening paragraph: “Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne.” Here, Joyce is using the passive voice to express Eveline’s passivity. She does not lean her head against the window curtains, her head is leaned against them, as if acting independently of her. Moreover, rather than breathing in the odour of dusty cretonne, it is the odour that is in her nostrils, forcing its way into her lungs, with all that this implies. Eveline is inactive, resigned to her fate, when all that is required of her is to board a boat and be free2.
Now, compare this to later in the story, as the evening deepens in the avenue. Eveline continues to sit, but now Joyce employs the active voice. She leans ‘her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne’, perfectly inverting the passage at the beginning of the story.
This section follows on from the statement that her father could be ‘very nice’, but it seems that in nineteen years, Eveline can only recall two instances where her father has showed anything like warmth towards his family. Here we see Eveline desperately trying to justify to herself why she should not leave Ireland, yet all that she can come up with is that her father once made her toast and read her a ghost story and had, years before, put on his wife’s bonnet and made the children laugh. Eveline has tried to ‘weigh each side of the question’, but it seems the pros for leaving vastly outweigh the cons. The shift from the passive to active voice signposts Eveline’s subconscious realisation that there really is little to keep her in Dublin. However, by actively inhaling the dust, with all its associations to the past, she can equally be argued to be consciously resigning herself to her fate. She may stand in terror, protesting that she must escape, but what little energy Eveline can muster is expended with this one defiant act and, her defences spent, the curse of all Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’ claims her.
All of the above techniques are further evidenced in Joyce’s description of Frank. Consider the paragraph in which we are first introduced to him, which it is worth quoting here in full:
“She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.”
Despite his name, there is nothing straightforward about Frank. Joyce’s genius is to extol Frank’s virtues, while allowing the syntax to convey the opposite view. Close reading of the above passage reveals that of nineteen sentences, eleven begin with, ‘Frank’ or ‘He’. Conversely only two begin with, ‘She’, both of which appear at the front of the paragraph. At no point is Eveline mentioned by name. Taking this exert out of context, it can be seen that Eveline begins by being active and independent. However, from Frank’s first introduction by name he comes to dominate her more and more, until, ‘He’, virtually begins every sentence. Partially, this can be thought of as conveying a young girl’s obsession with her paramour (My boyfriend took me to see the Bohemian Girl; my boyfriend is awfully fond of music; my boyfriend started as a deck boy at a pound a month). Yet in the main Joyce is trying to demonstrate how Eveline’s passivity is such that she is easily manipulated even by those who treat her with kindness. Frank’s total domination of Eveline in this passage also offers an insight into why she ultimately turns away from him.
To expand this point further, consider the third sentence. “She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her.” The first thing to note is that it contains no punctuation. This is open to interpretation, but one way to write this sentence might be: She was to go away with him by the night-boat, to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres, where he had a home waiting for her. I don’t think it is particularly controversial to say that this is probably deliberate, Joyce was famous for his rejection of punctuation where it suited his purposes3. The lack of punctuation is meant to convey the idea that Frank’s courtship and desire to take Eveline away with him has had happening at pace, overwhelming her, like a form of sensory overload. Moreover, ‘she was to go away with him’, ‘be his wife’ and ‘live with him’ in a place ‘where he had a home waiting for her’. Frank may be portrayed as a kind, open-hearted man, but the way Joyce structures his sentences shows Eveline to be as subservient to her lover as everyone else in her life. Agreeing to ‘go away with him’, it seems, is the nearest she ever comes to expressing anything approaching free will.
This theme is continued throughout the paragraph. Although, ‘they had come to know each other’, there is little equality in this relationship. ‘He used to meet her’; ‘He took her to see the Bohemian Girl’; He told her the names of the ships he had been on’, Frank is literally a man of action to Eveline’s passive doormat. He is the subject of almost every sentence; Eveline the eternal object. Joyce gives us no physical description of Eveline, but it can be assumed that she is a fairly plain creature, unaccustomed to receiving such attentions. The fact that she works at the ‘Stores’, where she must come into contact with male customers on a regular basis, coupled with her statement that it had firstly ‘been an excitement for her to have a fellow’, gives credence to this view. That she had then ‘begun to like him’, also suggests what a novelty it is for her to have a man interested in her, that an attraction to him has only begun after the fact. The motivation for Frank’s interest in her is unclear, but there is a sense that he is more drawn to her domestic skills than her personally, as if she could be anybody. The sentence we considered in the previous paragraph is evidence of this, but his calling of her, ‘Poppens out of fun’, also suggests that he thinks of her as some kind of joke.
Skipping forward, we see that even Eveline doubts Frank‘s motivations. “He would give her life, perhaps even love too.” As we have explored, she fears suffering the same fate as her mother, that she will live out the same pitiful life, ‘that life of commonplace sacrifices’, the menial mentality that has been imposed upon by religious indoctrination, which Eveline believes has ended her mother’s life prematurely. Frank is Eveline’s salvation, who will, ‘take her in his arms, fold her in his arms’. “Frank would save her.”
So, why does Eveline reject escape? Well, many commentators state that it is because of the promise she has made to her mother on her deathbed to, ‘keep the home together as long as she could’. There is also the suggestion that, having put on his wife’s bonnet all those years ago, Eveline’s father has associated himself with the nurturing instincts of the mother, triggering a maternal response from the daughter. However, I cannot see that there is any one reason which we can positively identify for her decision. In an important sense, Eveline is always destined to reject her one chance of escape. Not only does she review those ‘familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided’, foreshadowing her ultimate decision, but the phrase ‘familiar objects’ itself is used twice in quick succession, reinforcing this idea.
Joyce also embeds in ‘Eveline’ an idea of foreigners and foreign shores being associated with danger and misery. There is the Belfast man who has built strange houses on the field where Eveline and her friends once played as children. The Waters’ return to England is prefaced by mention of her mother and Tizzie Dunn being dead. There are also the ‘terrible Patagonians’ and the ‘damned Italians’ with their, ‘melancholy airs’. In comparison, Dublin seems relatively sedate. At face value, the pros for leaving outweigh the cons. However, Joyce is a master at narrative structure and with his syntactic description of Frank, he shifts the balance in the opposite direction, establishing an equilibrium between the two sides. Given two equally undesirable options, better the devil you know. The final nail comes when we finally hear Frank speak. ‘Come’ he repeats, effectively identifying himself with her tormentors, the only other voices that echo within ‘Eveline’.
‘Eveline’ is not only deeply autobiographical, but contains motifs that appear again and again in Joyce’s work. Mary, Joyce’s mother, had died of cancer in 1903. She haunts the pages of Ulysses, causing Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego, to cry out, ‘No mother. Let me be and let me live.’ His father, John Joyce, was a Cork born man who squandered his inheritance and spent much of his time drinking. He appears in some form in all of Joyce’s novels, most notably as Simon Dedalus. And Frank and Eveline themselves are caricatures of Joyce and his girlfriend, eventually wife, Nora Barnacle. The two eloped to Europe in 1904 and it has been suggested that with ‘Eveline’, Joyce is demonstrating what Nora’s life may have been like had she not left Dublin. Joyce is identified as Frank by the peaked cap pushed back on his head4.
There is much more to say on the subject of ‘Eveline’ (thousands of words have been written on it, far exceeding the stories actual length), but I hope I have been able to give some insight into why this early piece is an important portal into James Joyce’s fascinating world. Without this insight, ‘Dubliners’ can appear boring. Indeed, Joyce purposefully gives the book a mundane veneer, which he uses to convey the tedious existence that his characters find themselves frozen within. Eveline’s name is well chosen in this regard. Middle class Dublin life is a form of purgatory, yet, despite everything, Buenos Ares offers a kind of return to the Garden of Eden.
As a critic once wrote, “James Joyce was and remains almost unique among novelists in that he published nothing but masterpieces.” I agree, and would urge all brave souls to scale his heights. Just be sure that you are well equipped before you do so.
Notes
1 Jason, of course, was also a sailor.
2 Incidentally, Eveline is the only character in ‘Dubliners’ for whom the opportunity of escape presents itself.
3 See the Penelope episode of ‘Ulysses’.
4 Cf: ‘Two Gallants’ (D): ‘A yachting cap was shoved far back from his forehead and the narrative to which he listened made constant waves of expression break forth over his face from the corners of his nose and eyes and mouth.’.
The Further Adventures of Why?Boy
Scene 23: Int. A room inside the Statue of Liberty’s torch
Super-villain, A’Po Strophe, is with his back to the camera. He works at a huge, old fashioned console, all flashing lights and spinning magnetic tapes. He pulls levers and twists dials. Why?Boy flies in through a window.
A’Po Strophe (spots Why?Boy and cackles):
You’re too late Why?Boy, one pull of this lever and the ten thermonuclear devices I have planted under Yellowstone Park will explode, causing the super volcano beneath to erupt in a cataclysmic blast that will decimate continental America and plunge the world into a nuclear winter from which it shall struggle to recover (more laughter).
Why?Boy:
Why?
A’Po Strophe (manically):
Why? Because my demands were not met. One billion dollars by noon today. Well the President has crossed me for the last time. Now he shall know my wrath.
Why?Boy:
Why?
A’Po Strophe:
Because the world shall pay attention to me.
Why?Boy:
Why?
A’Po Strophe:
Because I crave attention.
Why?Boy:
Why?
A’Po Strophe (less confidently):
Well because I was starved of it as a child, I guess.
Why?Boy:
Why?
A’Po Strophe (sitting down on a stool):
Well my father was quite aloof, you know.
Why?Boy:
Why?
A’Po Strophe:
Well it wasn’t his fault, it was just that men of his generation were brought up in a certain way.
Why?Boy:
Why?
The US Marines storm the room at this point, training their rifles on A’Po Strophe.
A’Po Strophe:
Curse you Why?Boy, foiled again. But remember, there is no prison in the world impenetrable to the great A’Po Strophe.
General Pause (removing a Havana cigar from his mouth):
That’s why we’re going to fry you in the electric chair. Take him away Sergeant. Well done Why?Boy, thanks to your incessant questioning the world is once again free to be exploited by the United States Government.
Why?Boy:
Why?
General Pause:
Because A’Po Strophe has been taken into our custody son. You just saw us do it.
Why?Boy:
Why?
General Pause:
Why, because he wanted to destroy the world.
Why?Boy:
Why?
General Pause:
Oh Sweet Holy Mother of Jesus, this is gonna go on all day. Clear the area men, he’s caught in a loop again.
End Scene
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)