Irish University Review

Irish University Review

Otherworldly Women and Neurotic Fairies: The Cultural Construction of Women in Angela Bourke's Writing Author(s): Tudor Balinisteanu Source: Irish University Review, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Autumn - Winter, 2007), pp. 492-516 Published by: Irish University Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25505053 . Accessed: 19/02/2011 15:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iur. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Tudor Balinisteanu

Women

Otherworldly Fairies:

The Cultural

in Angela

Women

and Neurotic of

Construction

Bourke's Writing

This essay is concerned with the relationship between stories and social a short story Bourke has written Bourke's writing. reality in Angela on subjects collection entitled By Salt Water and is an academic working related to Irish folklore and the mythological tradition.1 Iwill analyse the interconnections between Bourke's work as a cultural historian and as an author of short stories in order to show that her assessment of the and disciplining the way in effects of narratives emphasizes a are with and imbricated bodies physical landscapes or me to official body politic. This will allow community's body-social as those of the in how drawn the such narratives, corpuses upon explore folk and fairy-tale tradition, but also those derived from Enlightenment social value

which

audiences while myths, discipline social order and dictating patterns In The Burning of Bridget Cleary

time

legitimating

the

to what (1999), Bourke investigates are the social world stories scripted through various and folk-tales the 'by disentangling

extent

the events

derived

from myths of narrative which

of

at the same of socialization.

survive about the death of Bridget Cleary/2 focus of her between women's important study is the relationship in Irish folk-tales and in metropolitan bodies and nature represented strands

An

and nationalist

discourses

derived

from Enlightenment myths. as major undercurrents of discourses

We may

regard these three kinds shaping feminine Irish culture. Their echoes are identity in nineteenth-century Irish writers concerned with the constructions of explored by many women's

social

personae.3

case, 'A True Story', study of the Clearys' is the relationship critical what for reflection: suggests points stories and reality? How does a story become between true? How do answer I to in stories shape social personae? these questions shall seek The

subtitle

to Bourke's

several

and with reference to wider Irish cultural writing In answering Iwill treat Michael these questions Cleary as a in Bourke's character text, even though it is an academic study. This will help me to distinguish between Bourke's Cleary and the historical in order to add my own analysis of is necessary Cleary. This distinction relation

to Bourke's

contexts.

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OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

of the social persona of the historical Michael Cleary. a with examination brief of the opening story of Bourke's begin in order to explain her critical By Salt Water, entitled 'Deep Down', vision shows 'Deep Down' through one of its literary manifestations. us that a narrative can serve constitute to stories different pattern the constitution

Iwill

carrying different meanings, related to cultural contexts

to the ways according and traditions.

in which

they are

I. Identities In 'Deep Down' text drawn the narrator recalls a medieval from a in Ireland.4 from the Clonmacnois The manuscript monastery event in which text tells of a supernatural medieval people gathered around for Mass one day saw 'a boat up there in the sky. An ordinary boat, like you'd see on the sea or on a lake, but itwas up above the roof of the church.... They were looking at the bottom of it.'5 Its anchor had it and, been caught in the church door. A man swam down to untangle by the people, he asked them to let go because they a him. the narrator's with tale Liam, collocutor, rejoins drowning a fisherman who had once 'fished' a young boy from his grandfather, from the sea 'a live baby, fit and well, with clothes on it.'6 In this tale 'a woman came up beside the boat in the water and cursed them up and

when were

restrained

down

for hooking the child out of its cradle down below.'7 to conceive higher realms that tale helps its audience The medieval Part of the network the human world. mirror of Christian religious the tale corroborates the authority of the Father. Our world discourses, is made in the semblance of the higher world of Godly authority. On the other hand, in Liam's version of the tale, the fact that the lost baby is reclaimed by awoman makes possible the reading of the seascape as a womb. The child had been hooked up from the womb's cradle. This a feminine our too is lodged within tale suggests that perhaps world of a symbiotic for the possibility body of nature, allowing relationship between this world and the body of nature. in 'Deep Down' offer two ways of reading the The two stories narrated same narrative the pattern: one reading corroborates through the masculine the of Father, the other maternal authority authority.8 reiterations that of the same narrative 'Deep Down' suggests pattern norms. The tale throws exclusive may engender mutually ontological of knowledge naturalized into relief the fact that frameworks through on their cannot the reiteration of a narrative hold pattern meaning world

own, but only in relation to the norms of other texts. Every narrative of a series of events is always part of a contextual network instantiation or in which the meanings of tales are assimilated, repudiated,

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IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

In 'Deep Down', the version of the fabula that corroborates conflicting. can of religious the authority of the Father be installed in the network that the texts that 'fill in', even saturate, the possibilities of expression of the available. But in narrative makes so, pattern doing possibility is to norms narrative of maternal the convey pattern authority using text the latter possibility In Bourke's is recuperated, but repudiated. a to in with show that such of the order pattern meaning only loading not definitive. is competitive, To paraphrase Jacques Derrida, Bourke's is also a that a tale achieves story shows that every semiotic marking of signification.9 possibilities remarking of (repudiated) In 'Deep Down', the first story uses the image of the sea metaphorically to represent a body holding God's creation; this body is also a body of people sharing common beliefs. The world hosted social, a community in the sea-womb in the second story appears impenetrable by comparison of the first story. The fisherman is alone at sea, aloof from a feminine the social community; the child here. We figure reclaims nature such themes of the of and of women's recognize impenetrability bodies and of their threatening reclamation of authority in Bourke's study to the sea-world

of the Cleary case. We may also read its arguments through Adriana the thesis on the exclusionary Cavarero's relationship through which is (masculine) (feminine) bodies: logos legitimated by repudiating female. terrifying nature of the banished body is substantially ... a In It could not be otherwise within the polis. polis, logocentric reserve free males of the logos for themselves, the power themselves from a carnal existence uprooting perceived only as to a life that is prelogical, the disquieting attachment prehuman,

The

and nearly

animal:

therefore

female.10

Bourke's study points out that late nineteenth-century Irish metropolitan, in various ways and folklore discourses relations establish nationalist, of nature. Through women's bodies between and the body these in discourses different (but identity was ways) Bridget Cleary's in a 'prelogical, prehuman, existence by visions of her physical and nearly animal' organic of body and land. The Bridget integration us to to her husband and to her shown Bourke Cleary by appeared

marked

as somehow not yet fully born out peers in the rural Irish community on the other hand, of the body of nature, an otherworldly woman; of dominant the social institutions of the time, the representatives to be doctor and the priest who visited her, 'reported that she appeared in a very nervous state of mind and "possibly hysterical"'.11 in Caught these two different social strata the perceived association between

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OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

in different ways and nature is explained that transform an a a woman. is neurotic she and into other: Bridget fairy Inmetropolitan, and folklore discourses nationalist, Bridget Cleary's from logocentric is derived naturalized frameworks identity through cross. These citational citational chains that sometimes chains can be Bridget

seen as constitutive

of social myths. A social myth comes reiterations that yield consistently the framework Social myths, thus, provide

into existence

narrative

through

similar

imaginaries.12 an interpretative cultural code that fosters instituting over and over again, compelling its reiteration, in order the

story's

worldview

as norm.

However,

as Marina

social

of knowledge the same story

Warner

to naturalize points

out,

? perpetuated repetition through ... ... a variety of this does not mean through pathways set of images or tales.'13 that they cannot yield to another, more helpful on on focuses several points argued this vision, my analysis Developing an in Bourke's that of the possibilities of permit investigation study even

though transmission

subversion

'myths

... are

of social myths

cultural

that disempower

women's

identities.

II. Stories

and Reality series of events to which

Bourke's study of the Cleary case refers of a chronology her analysis. preceding a relatively the wife of is cooper, Michael Bridget Cleary wealthy ill and to bed. In the On 5 1895 is she falls confined March Cleary. to summon father and her husband attempt days Bridget's following the doctor, who finally arrives on 13 March. On the same day a priest The

is presented

in the

form

to administer

the last rites for Bridget. After that, Michael is a changeling.14 convinced that his wife increasingly Cleary to get his He resorts to fairy-lore, using herbs and rituals to attempt after an argument about wife back from the fairies. On 15 March, was the Michael 'knocks his wife fire, fairies, while Bridget sitting by visits

them

becomes

to the floor; she burns to death.'15 a story collected can in 1937, which Bourke's study is prefaced with of Irish Folklore, University be found in the archives of the Department 'taken by thefairies'; In this story, amarried woman was College Dublin. went to 'afairyman' in 'another old The husband left her yoke'. they place to seek advice: told him that they [the fairies] would be passing by the end Thefairyman on a certain night and that he'd see them - he gave him some his house of ? and that his wife would be riding on a herbs so that he could see them and when she'd be passing him to seize and hold on to grand grey horse; never see her her he'd that he missed her, if again.16

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IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

to gain his wife back. When they 'the other yoke was gone off with the story outlines an imaginary world. However, to of such fairy stories are connected the elements

The husband obeys and manages return to their house together, herself'.17 Obviously, as Bourke indicates, ways: reality inmanifold

as a system of interlocking units of narrative, practice and a can be compared to a database: belief, fairy-legend pre-modern culture's way of storing and retrieving information and knowledge of every kind .... Highly images like that charged and memorable a fairy are a on of a woman horse from white emerging dwelling about of stored information retrieval codes for a whole complex

Viewed

land and

landscape,

relations,

community

gender

roles.18

In this perspective, folk-tales can be seen as offering an imaginary grid for mapping realms of sociality, as well as a stock of social imaginaries and individual human communities, interconnecting landscape, to the social bodies. These social imaginaries personae imagine help that individuals adopt in social interaction. As Jack Zipes puts it, 'tales do not only speak to us, they inhabit us'.19 can be seen as the vehicle of social The tale prefacing Bourke's study and gender hierarchies imaginaries through which male-dominated are of alternative possibilities regimes by repudiating legitimated the The tale condones of women's identities.20 envisaging empowering a woman the husband's effort to recuperate 'gone astray', whom we a a more as at in least achieved, may fantasy world, imagine having status than that of wife. When the tale relates that 'his empowering wife would be riding on a grand grey horse,' the reader/audience may a confident as the But and her woman.21 imagine independent in the tale reflects the desired resolution of the events offered restoration

of the male-dominated social order. The legitimating roles as wives involves the othering of the woman, who must have forgotten herself, by blaming her lapse of reason on fairy woman is cast The away, and, to use Judith magic. otherworldly in this context, of cultural Butler's words domains the 'alternative are that the had tale foreclosed.22 possibilities' momentarily opened female

of

social

as Bourke

of the fairy 'the overwhelming observes, message the be may against by careful legends unexpected guarded of observance of society's establish 'the boundaries rules'; the stories ... an in out which the ways behaviour normal, acceptable spelling In the individual who breaches them may forfeit his or her position.'23 who tale opening it is the husband Bourke's study, significantly, restores the legitimate he is cunning and clear social hierarchy. While Indeed,

is that

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OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

the woman

appears easily flimsy, spellbound by such as in the to and have been attributed the world passions fairy pleasures the husband between and a male Irish tradition.24 The collaboration sage ensures the stability of the legitimate social world defined, against

headed,

The fairy otherworld of fairy, as a realm of masculinity. the otherworld a as sense that it is a realm where realm of fancy, both in the appears a sense that whatever woman may think she caprice reigns, and in the In such tales, the fantasy of is in that realm, it is only an illusion. or helplessly, in the activities of women's willingly participation, it with to define moodiness, fairies, is used femininity by equating and even an irresponsible flimsiness, craving of luxury. But I am wary Imust emphasize that it is the world of fairy depicted of generalizing. as a realm of in late nineteenth-century rural Ireland that is perceived And

even

find

that various

for that temporal and socio-cultural configuration about discourses fairy creatures made in some claims about the nature of this 'other'. Indeed, competing a which male is the realm of masculine realm from stories, figures fairy exercise tremendous powers over the people of the 'real' world.25 the social rituals through which Thus, stories fictionalize society's

femininity. one may

consecrate

members

socialization are derived

a

social

order,

serving

that order. Their

to

communicate

narrative

the

structures

scripts required by what that determine from privileged systems meaning is counts as human. Butler argues that 'the construction of the human a differential more that the and the less "human", operation produces This has the inhuman, the humanly unthinkable.'26 argument resonance in context Irish where the the of folk-tales, particular is world construction of the human, real social, materially pitched and of fairy, inhabited by immaterial shadows against the otherworld men and women. in the folk-tale prefacing The wife less-than-human Bourke's study is less 'human' due to being in league with the fairies, woman. As with Bridget Cleary, but also because she is an independent woman inhuman powers this conjured through words may acquire nature. her alliance with the of She is an body through powerful in the corner of the rational eye. Thus, other caught impenetrable are the work is stories of the imagination, but the imagination a range of social imaginaries to producing harnessed that, if legitimate, imbue the subject with realness; and if not, the subject they create is imbued with unreality, irrational, perhaps even abject. appearing a Story Become True? to the ill Bridget Cleary of people attending of the meeting the night before her death would have been one of 'talking and swapping the import of such occasions, and the stories'.27 Gerry Smyth emphasizes III. How

Does

The occasion

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IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW ... event the narrative of performativity informing an a active part of [the story], employing is wide the tale and the the borders between range of skills to collapse in the audience's investment telling, while all the time maintaining the world of the story.28

strong element The story-teller

was partly the result Bridget Cleary's death, as Bourke demonstrates, a of the belief that she was a changeling, left body by the fairies instead of the real woman Stories corroborating this the fairies had abducted. had been told and between her of peers 'reading' Bridget swapped the time preceding her death. throughout to regard the that it is misleading Bourke's study suggests However, an enactment of the folk as events surrounding death Bridget's merely tales' 'changeling scenario'. Indeed, such strict tying up of the folk-tales' in the social world would that occurred scenarios with the events as mere construct of the rural Irish community the members actors, are an to which condemned their destiny fulfilling they by inescapable In folk-tales irrational selves.29 culture, metropolitan superstitious, functioned as vehicles by which rational men could express the otherness social goals and programmes.30 Folk-tales against which they defined threatened to open up a realm of alterity that would have unmasked the master consciousness to field of of the inability wholly Enlightenment or cast away to of this had be tamed The alterity possibility meaning.31 as a realm of the unthinkable, if reality was to remain and foreclosed reason. In Victorian these culture, governable metropolitan through translated into notions of social government. axioms about consciousness Bourke points out that the interpretation of the events leading to Bridget's death through folk-tale scenarios served British political interests: as was the legislation being discussed, regarding Home Rule for Ireland to folk-tale scenarios and the events between relationship leading was in to the of the Irish death used highlight Bridget's ungovernability the absence of a strong civilizing authority.32 critical insight here, we can say that Bourke's To adapt Derrida's reveals the story, which study implies iterability of Bridget Cleary's that the story can always be detached it is inserted or from the chain in which ... One can all of without losing given possibility functioning come to in it other it recognise perhaps possibilities by inscribing or grafting it onto other chains.33 To the extent in the context

study points out the iterability of the story different cultural discourses each structured by

that Bourke's of widely

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OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

in showing that the story can disrupt, code, it also succeeds 'in the last analysis', 'the authority of the code as a finite system of rules', at the same time subverting 'any context as the protocol of the code'.34 'when does a true story end?'35 Perhaps Bourke poses the question we may answer by saying that stories pass as true only with the a different

the stories set up, adopt the subject positions them into social imaginaries through which they fantasize as individuals and as members of a social group, nation,

of those who

consent

incorporating their identity or of a legitimate

politic.

body

in Shaping Social Personae case of seeks to point out the partiality study Bridget Cleary's inways that and historical specificity of the identities of those involved a critique of the Enlightenment claim to offer 'true' and also mount Part of this critique into is laws of nature'. 'the insight privileged IV. The Role

of Stories

Bourke's

with what Jane Flax refers to as 'widely shared that associate women of and social explanation' categories meaning of femininity, such as were with nature.36 Enlightenment constructions are on in Victorian notions of founded culture, metropolitan deployed concerned

crucially

nature

the laws of reason.37 In her study, through governable to cultural discourses reminds us that metropolitan served of self-government. Ireland as a feminine realm incapable envision of Helene Cixous's words, we may Borrowing regard the discourses 'from the power relation culture as stemming Victorian metropolitan made

Bourke

a fantasized

to invade, to colonize, virility meant as a "dark continent" woman to and the consequential of phantasm and nature are 'pieced back to the and to "pacify."' Women penetrate

between

string

leads

which

obligatory

...

back

to

the Name-of-the-Father'.38

in a and nature also served, of women hand, notions in whose the interests of Irish nationalist different manner, circles, an idealized in need feminine of discourses Ireland became body, the the in and If British culture of defence envisioning protection.39 On

the other

masculine

positing paradigms, entitled the colonizer nationalists nature

of nature

governance

remained

an

connected

between

to Enlightenment 'Nature', which

'Man' and

opposition to civilize dark, ungovernable realms, for Irish to the legitimacy the body of of the male's govern right

depended

on

an

uneasy

These two ways of envisioning in the two cultures of women

alliance

nature and

between

'Man'

and

'Nature'.

as other affected representations can be seen in the their influence

of Bridget Cleary's relationship representation can be seen to support Both discourses in nationalist discourses abjection. Although

499

with

the outside

world.

and Bridget's othering the virility and paternal

IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

authority

of the colonizer one manifestation

replacing whose legitimacy

were

in this only resulted challenged, with of masculine another authority on women and of repudiations depended

likewise as nature were pieced back 'to the this time, women except use to in this context.40 the of Cixous's words place phallic-mother', Ireland's sons are one with her land. This investment of phallic power in the earthly mother in Irish nationalists this instance, regarded by is, an as beneficial it provides because origin story for the sons' eventual a new will out to construct and set they separation: individuality the for the of the Celtic mother. Often, history primeval phallic power to a daughter not from the is transmitted mother fully separated figure, nature;

but who

must in order to be features acquire masculine to women's into existence in the social realm. Referring

mother,

brought fully Edna Longley identities discourses, generated through nationalist comments that 'while Virgin-Ireland gets raped and pitied, Mother To apply Ireland translates pity into a call for arms and vengeance/41 from Cixous's the sons' the here, argument separation primeval of nature that sublimates is only possible mother through a repudiation

the female body into a female figure endowed with masculine power: a and Irish nationalist discourses, virago.42 In both British metropolitan the feminization of Ireland produces the fantasy of an elite brotherhood capable of privileged insight into the Taws of nature'. are also conveyed Fantasies of a masculine brotherhood through the of albeit inflections folk folk-tales, patriarchal differently. Examining tale fantasies based on the image of the fairy ring-fort, Bourke explains: of oral storytelling, function as maps ring-forts to places of human habitation and alternative reference points ... serve as areas can for silence and of activity. metaphors [T]hey in the life of the society which circumvention tells stories about In the narrative

them. All the ambivalence attaching common assertion that forts are where

to them

is contained

the fairies

in the

live.43

that the folk-tales' her study Bourke suggests referencing Throughout can sometimes serve to corroborate a tolerant of otherworldliness at other times social order, open and respectful towards alterity, while the tales may

endorse practices of silencing are founded upon a dichotomous possibilities the body of nature to the body-social. opposes Bourke

shows

Irish folk-tales wells,

that the fantasies are correlated

with

associating a

fairy raths, and burial mounds

and exclusion. reading women

Yet both

of reality with

nature

that in

inwhich holy mythical geography represent metaphorically points

500

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

of access

of the body of nature. The body of nature feminine body, credited with the ability to tales contain many warnings against

to the inner realms as a powerful is represented illicit

punish

penetration:

and speak of severe punishments that transgressing 'fairy grounds', are not to An who welcome enter. of the afflict those may example connections of the between bodies and women's folkloric rendering the body of nature is offered by examining which refers to a kind of black fairy magic. as folklorist to indicate that is a diminutive

piseog

magic,

sympathetic on

rot

within

the orderly

Such

Bridget's rekindled Ireland

when

not

controlled

and pregnancy,

was

powerful.44

beliefs

bodies

Bridget seems, and when

nature

sexuality,

of marriage

nature and between posit an organic relationship threatens to wreak havoc on the that, if not governed, spaces of human culture. In this context, Bourke points out that 'had accumulated and sexual, it power, both economic Cleary far in excess of what was due to a woman of her age and class,

folkloric

orderly

... women's

progressions

seen as horrifically

women's

for the vulva, pis or of malevolent specific meaning and left to is hidden organic something

the very

when land

another's

of the piseog, her expertise

form of the Irish word

can also have

pit. Piseog

the concept Bourke uses

tipped, all the anger flowed towards her.'45 Thus, status was read as illicit. Her undue empowerment about the resurrection of a powerful suspicions body of

the balance social

upon was

the patriarchal body-social folk-tale of the fantasies Although in nineteenth-century nature can be enabling,

whose

repudiation

founded. with

of rural female's

rural relationship would have been eccentric and therefore Ireland such empowerment a communal reassert in to order of required discipline repudiation women who deviated from domestic roles.46 concern with

the relationship between human societies in her short story 'Le soleil et le vent', emerges in By Salt Water. The tale is a reflection on the interaction first published and nature and thus on the inscription of the between human technology in material culture and nature The between practices. dichotomy Bourke's wider

and

the body

of nature

in the tale is observed by the narrator in process described technological a coastal French town, where a system of canals is used to collect sea water and then its salt. But the narrator describes the technique inwords to sweat, like a slave that make us think of a body of nature that ismade means: tamed and harnessed through technological

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IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

us were

the salt pans: hundreds of them, maybe thousands, in with rounded corners, flatness, perfect rectangular, lying of clay and linked tortuously by channels that brought the moulded sea in twice a day and trapped it there, making it give up its salt.47 Behind

of this short story and the critical voice of the study of case share an interest in the importance of the written Bridget Cleary's a as nature with mark human features: word that endows bodily ... oeillet. Little 'Annick wrote the word for the salt-pans eye. Eyelet. can build banks and make basins so The local clay is watertight, they ... that will contain the ocean, and each little salt-rimmed eye gazes features to back at the blue sky'.48 The attribution of anthropomorphic to harness its power the body of nature by the people using technology nature and human between the metaphorical relationships betrays The narrator

bodies.

The

that change geography Bourke's endowment

accompany story shows that these inscriptions practices of the landscape and the social both the geography of its inhabitants. a view case permits of the study of Bridget Cleary's of the body of nature with feminine features both as the

discourse that, to use Donna Haraway's as an in terms of the 'structured the world words, object of knowledge resources of and of the pre culture of the nature'49 by appropriation in modern that folklore inscribed rural patriarchal meanings result

of colonialist

Western

natural and social living tied up with practices us in et le of nature's 'Le soleil vent' images reminding ungovernability help the narrator to explore her feelings after the loss at the end of the tale the narrator realizes that her of her lover. When the conversion sadness has begun to subside, we are not sure whether agricultural cycles. The

work

of an unmanageable, oceanic emotion into calm is after all beneficial, as we are sure in not story that her association just Bridget Cleary's with a wild body of nature should be celebrated. By comparison with in the short story, Bridget appears wild, the 'calmed' woman shown eccentric, and passionate. that 'all around me' was

In 'Le soleil

the narrator

remarks

'the industrious

its salt'.50 Bourke's

delivering was punished incommensurable

et le vent'

sea, calmed and regulated, that Bridget Cleary's body suggests an to become it threatened because book

precisely otherness, government, by masculine unregulated and thus upsetting the social myths that welded the community together in its work and social practices. that the folk-tale The above analyses show that we may suspect and the tradition of Irish nationalism, the mythologizing tradition,

metropolitan

rationalist

tradition,

although

502

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with

different

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

in its ungovernability of nature, share an investment and a means as cultural of the of tropes necessity conveying the world. These cultural affect practices harnessing phenomenal as in general bodies and of the body of women's representations Elizabeth Grosz argues realms of the organic that must be rationalized. that bodies 'are the centres of perspective, desire, insight, reflection, ... act and and function agency They they interactively productively. concepts conceive

In Irish react. They generate what is new, surprising, unpredictable.'51 are on notion the of feminine bodies centred folk-tales, representations the of a common ground between them and nature's body. However, to regulate the perspectives, reflections, attempt insights, in the socialization of women's and agency that may emerge fantasies of this relationship that can take 'new, through Iwill use this In and forms. the unpredictable' following, surprising tales

also

desires, bodies

to analyze in Bourke's the events examined study. I will as well as that metropolitan and rural folk-tale discourses, on discourses derived from them, rely bodies as readings of women's in order and that they in turn repudiate such unruliness ungovernable framework show

to legitimate male-dominated gender regimes.52 Michael of the relationship between interpretation Cleary's Bridget a and world the folk-tales rendered Cleary fairy through Bridget to eat of refusal his offered territories. signifier impenetrable Bridget's on the night of her death, making him food, which enraged Michael capable of murder, may have been read by him as a refusal of sexual as Bourke underlines. this obduracy might Furthermore, intercourse, an explanation for the fact that his marriage have provided forMichael was

childless, casting doubt on his fertility53 and thus metaphorically an and thus master, nature's resources revealing inability to inseminate, feared that his Michael have (signified by Bridget's might body). an was and ungovernable becoming impenetrable territory conjugal of nature under Bridget's the legitimacy dominion rule, undermining

as head of the household. His vision would have been a correlative at in the the round enclosure underpinned landscape: by an as a to is that known the community Kylenagranagh fairy mound, realm inhabited by fairy women, with whom Bridget might otherworldly have been in alliance. had reasons to believe that his wife had been unfaithful; and Michael of his position

she was a capable administrator of various to Bourke: her own money. According People were talking and strong-minded

small enterprises,

and earned

she was an attractive Bridget Cleary; a higher who level of woman, enjoyed about

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IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

personal stories

than most of her peers independence fairies have been abduction could by

and economic about

her

... a

activities. Michael way of noting her extra-marital euphemistic a cooper, and his economic success as prosperity, would Cleary's be of very little use to him if he could not convince his neighbours and his wife's even

to control

relatives

that he was man

enough

to keep

her, and

her.54

as a partner in household a convenient have to find administration Michael helped might as in folk-tale for repudiating the correlative imagery illegitimate woman had of his assumed. The wife identity fantasy of independent on a the stately woman have read horse could been riding grand grey or as an of the not, usurper consciously representing by Michael, as a to his wife he rules masculine worldview nature, govern right in both metropolitan and rural Irish (in different ways) conveyed His

wife's

independence

as

lover

and

a corpus used of narratives derived from to to his his wife. Several attempt discipline mythology legitimate inMichael's fantasies about his identity and that myths were at work of his wife. Examining these will help to establish how myths deployed discourses.

Michael

in social discourses

in complex ways to determine function one's acts in reality. the period of time after Bridget's Bourke points out that throughout 'two competing narratives were death, until her body was discovered, as some people at work in the countryside around Ballyvadlea, stuck to their story of fairy abduction while its methodical the RIC conducted between the two world views, migration the British metropolitan which perspectives, a is indicative of these narratives endorsed, larger jostling of cultural norms. Their power lines are in some respects overlapping, yet in other search.'55 Michael's

confused

the Irish traditional

and

fantasizes that his wife Thus, when Michael disjunctive.56 a at be the fort, might riding grand grey horse, he Kylenagranagh in official and vernacular invests her with the otherness associated respects

discourses to a zone

with

of nature, consigning her In and the illegitimate.57 discourses the colluding with

the ungovernable landscape of the abnormal, the uninhabitable,

the meaning

of metropolitan of folk-tales, the systems patriarchal meaning legitimate femininity, a ever a is but her 'woman', 'wife'; hardly recognizable Bridget, always be permanently available for masculine penetration, body must or metaphorically. to Michael's Bourke notes, physically referring to take the medicine attempt to force his wife prescribed by the 'fairy doctor',

systems

that

504

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

to Bridget Cleary before her death has an sexual character. On Thursday when he used ametal unmistakeably spoon, and again on Friday, when his weapon was a burning stump to a kind of oral rape. of wood, Michael Cleary's actions amounted ... The violence used ... would have been enough to terrify her, and was to show anyone watching who the master.58 just meted

the violence

out

in to eat 'was not so very different forcing Bridget of suffragists and other prisoners from the force-feeding significance state in authorities later by years.'59 Bridget's body, like the body of available for the masculine nature, had to be made staking of claims to For

Bourke,

a requirement

possession,

of both

Enlightenment British/Anglo-Irish underlines Bourke insistently

the Irish patriarchal culture.

order

and

the

the

of the cultural significance narratives and investment Irish, British, through which Anglo-Irish interpret the landscape of the Kylenagranagh fairy fort differently: as of oral tradition marked legends Kylenagranagh in but The RIC the both territory differently, important. mapped a was the reference systems Kylenagranagh point: significant

The

fairy

vernacular designation legitimate being

up to no good;

indicates in

full' Shires,

anyone

the fact that various

desiring

privacy

might

seek

it out.60

about the Kylenagranagh sometimes norms, conflicting, colluding a space. It also study shows Irish culture to be heteroglossic between these discourses is 'stress that the cross-pollination of Steven Cohan and Linda the sense that, to use the words

Highlighting ring-fort Bourke's

narrative of traditional the police map agreed with as a and of the hill place apart from normal habitation seen there could be suspected of interests. Anyone

reassert

discourses

sometimes

their

markings emphasise seemingly signifieds; ask, what

... [T]he marks stresses the text with various over others; they put pressure on the signifiers and 'natural' and closed relations between signifiers and they can strain understanding, causing a reader to does this word, phrase, sentence mean?61 inscribe certain

The discourses Cleary through which Michael interpreted his identity are In order to achieve stress-full of such cross-pollination. examples to had which he the bourgeois metropolitan identity aspired, Michael was to show that he was capable of governing his wife. His conviction

505

IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

'stressed'

the local folklore tradition. both Furthermore, through in and folklore intersected Irish nationalist Irish metropolitan to create a discourses. The latter hijacked the Irish folklore tradition as to of Irish, British, making. Thus, the bourgeois identity opposed can of Irish culture be further aspect heteroglossic by investigated between of Irish intersections the discursive examining registers folklore and Anglo-Irish culture that yielded Irish nationalist stories.62 case Bourke points out that in the first reports of the Cleary by the ... of the The 'the used Nationalist, newspaper, correspondent language is borrowed from romantic nationalism.'63 She also notes that 'the first account

in the paper offered at its height... books on to satisfy the appetite of a

of Bridget Cleary's disappearance' us that in 1895 the Irish Revival was

'reminds ...

fairies

the 1890s throughout appeared was and industrialization against reading reacting public which W. and B. Yeats had urbanization.'64 Lady Augusta Gregory begun their literary careers and contributed to the philosophy that insisted on the reclamation

Irish land by the Irish.65 in which, Bourke notes, the RIC atmosphere in hill with connection the [at Kylenagranagh] 'patrolled was set The National activities.'66 up by League League

regularly National Charles Home

of the feminized

is the cultural

This

Stewart Rule

O'Callaghan,

in the wake

Parnell

of nationalist

agitation regarding Irish historian, According Margaret the local branches of the League devised that regulations

for Ireland.

to the

drew upon the informal regulatory rituals inherent in the society ? or the brutal to put it if one wishes cruelties of control ? so to set and formalised them. In differently doing it attempted a the law of land official the separate, against intimately sanctioned behavioural code which defined self and other within rural society. Itwas a text of inclusion and exclusion, of community and pariah.67 The National nature.

Their

League assertion

on

staked their own claims a even of right to governance, from the British administration, had

the body of though aimed at issued similar

wresting authority claims, only this time in the terms of the local culture. At the same time, Bourke Irish Republican Brotherhood indicates, volunteers trained at the Kylenagranagh fort. Allied with the body of a as sons read sacred who her rallies /lovers nature, mother/queen would have found spiritual against the foreign invader, the volunteers sustenance Speaking

in the of

tales

the need,

associated of fairy power in Irish nationalist circles,

506

with of

ring-forts.68 'an

identifying

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

an original text from which all Celtic mythology derived', comments that the land itself indeed, 'sometimes, Smyth Gerry an ideal image of the epic - in the words of the poet Seamus becomes a sort of manuscript which Irish people have lost the skill to Heaney, we a that to be skill nationalist culture pretends read'; but, may add, not that ideas of forget, however, capable of restoring.69 We should are kind the modern ideas, Republicanism Enlightenment Ur-epic,

reassembled by the colonizer, although creatively by the Irish The nationalist elite glorified nationalist scholarly organisations.70 and between bodies women's the body of the perceived relationship at same in but the the of nature, time, ideals, they spirit Enlightenment disseminated

and idealized it.71 sanitized, purified, between women and nature of the relationship Thus, representations in late nineteenth-century Ireland intertwine folk-tales with colonial of colonial surveillance of the and nationalist discourses. Strategies landscape

and

'the informal

inmaintaining

regulatory the otherness

rituals

in the society'72 and thus of women's women and nature

inherent

of nature

co-operate between bodies. Alternatively the relationship in the Irish folkloric tradition was used in British and Irish envisioned circles to reinforce a vision of Ireland as an abject or as an idealized a otherworld, sense) of legitimate (in the Derridean supplement cultural spaces. Folk-tales, nationalist tales, and colonial tales share the of regulating women's desideratum bodies which may 'generate what and be potentially is new, surprising, unpredictable'73 and social order. the masculine regime In order

subversive

of

to contain

colonial discourse such illegitimate transgressions, set up superstitious that extended beliefs in fairies as signs of neuroses from individual Irish people to Ireland as a body-politic. Bridget Cleary a becomes of a neurotic society for the colonizer: her symbol/symptom dead body stands as proof of a mindless nation; yet in court she is rescued as the pure angelic victim.74 Her pure soul is rescued by the a monstrous a severance of its ties with of nature, body body for instance, with the 'body' of the Kylenagranagh contiguous, ring secrets from the masculine gaze of the RIC. can now available be seen as the site for autopsy, Bridget's body, of an ideal spirit, because, unlike the rest of the 'living' Irish, it permits to resurrect ungovernable foreclosure (it is dead and not threatening can mind that nature remains and be satisfied nature) (the inspection fort

that withholds dead

the metropolis, for probing and surveillance).75 yet available in the discourse Irish beliefs, anchored the other hand, traditional of fairy-legends, also repudiate the feminine body of nature in order to of the community. the shape of the patriarchal legitimate body-politic outside On

507

IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

The mound

at Kylenagranagh otherworld, yet it is desirable of the mortals. arrangements bodies readings of women's seem to offer unique nature

of new

limits

study is an impetus and possibilities

purpose

of Bourke's

feature

them as are often

that is, by viewing social imaginaries, or domestic labourers, these possibilities from the 'normal' course of community

through empowering other than just wives evoked as deviations In his

as a feminine is feared and respected that its power does not interfere with the in that of the fact folklore Thus, spite associated with through the symbolism women for constructing opportunities

Irish fiction Gerry Smyth to 'challenge established

life.

that its defining notions the regarding seems to be also the This

of Irish

finds

identity.'76 and the vision of her short stories.

study of the Cleary case documentary that represent women's possible

indicates

Bourke's are imaginaries their bodies and their

that social

control

of

in the governance social spaces. The of the communities' sharing source of these social imaginaries can be traced to the ethos of women's alliance with an ungovernable realm of nature. Bridget Cleary was able or social to use this ethos to her advantage, without being less rational than the husband

her for her independence. eventually punished in fairy-lore, that 'Bridget Cleary, well versed to resist her would have found in its stories a language which through ... [A] wife who could husband's assessment of her persuade negative a violent husband a that she was a fairy changeling' could exercise over more so all the in Bridget's his behaviour; case, degree of control Bourke

since

offers

she

'may

of esoteric

who

evidence

have

Fairies belong and metaphors underground the

secret

on

some

in a way

knowledge, to Bourke:

According

for

taken

of

her

mother's

that made

role,

her husband

as

possessor

nervous.'77

to the margins, and so can serve as reference points in human for all that is marginal life. Their existence allows them to stand for the unconscious, or

the

....78

unspeakable

In a sense, folk-tales

then, it can be said that Bridget Cleary used the ethos of Irish as 'a place to speak from which about [her] own on to Marina comments Warner's the role of speechlessness', apply in general.79 Such use of the Irish fairy-tales a of the dominance involves of the challenging masculine who the truths that ward off the unspeakable subject speaks to both deeds of the body. Because of that, it also involves a challenge Irish nationalist and colonial discourses that idealize or abject, and thus women

in transmitting tradition mythological

variously

other,

the fantasy of the body permitted

508

in folk-tales,

inwhich

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

women's

associations

with

nature may

be envisioned

in empowering,

ways.

productive

concerns

These

are reflected

in Bourke's

collection

of short

stories, the metaphorical valences that tie experiments to the body of nature. In her literary writing, individuals' bodies is concerned that mythologize with cultural Bourke sites the women can be the setting nature. sites between and These relationship activities casual of the most from material practices deriving she

where

with

In 'Dreams of regimes. gender summer whose of a young woman of her sexual initiation, the narrator are instilled in the most how hierarchies shows gender simple as a is such boat for leisure: while her lover, Kevin, sailing practices, or out to balance us',80 woman's in the to the is role 'lean boat, guiding be expected to do as wife. Kevin refers to the boat as just as she would characteristic

of male-dominated

the thoughts Sailing', exploring is the occasion love adventure

a 'she' and finds

it 'so responsive', He reads the body of governable.81 on one of their his about boats. When through fantasy forays woman to is into about the sea, and, as if the boat the falls capsize, aware of the phallic geometry from a spell, she becomes awakened of scene is connotations: The with Kevin's loaded sexual fantasy. his

lover

to do something with his feet ... and up she came. Kevin managed The mast and the sail came swinging up against the blue sky, with the sun shining on all the drops of water as they poured off. It looked so beautiful and geometric, very high and white and far away.82 after Kevin abandons her at the end of the summer, the Eventually, woman realizes that the boat 'was really only made for one person'.83 We may that 'the body argument interpret this story using Foucault's a useful a force only if it is both a productive becomes body and as a Foucault labour speaks here of the body subjected body.'84 resource. In the situation in Bourke's the young narrated story woman's

body

read

is seen as a source an association with

of pleasure. However, her body is nature that we glimpse indirectly of Irish tales concerning fishing labour that

through through the rich tradition to the practice has lent its worldview of leisure sailing. Regarding as a nature tradition the Irish cultural of fishing productive body, control of nature practices endorses nature's subjection. This masculine

the appropriation of women's bodies. legitimates entitled 'Pinkeens' also Bourke's story explores how the masculine in socialization of nature dominance is reflected skills and leads to also

forms

of

eroticism

in which

women

are

509

abused.

The

narrator,

a

pre

IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

she sees the groups of young men whom summer. is the When her older cousin going fishing every day during sent over for the holidays, to go fishing the two girls are finally allowed on their own. One of the boys offers to show them a place themselves, sexual

where girls

is puzzled

girl,

there would to the edge

by

be more of the water

fish. When

the three get there, he leads the

saying

'You have to be very quiet and not move.' ... put his hand on my shoulder and made at the water but I couldn't He was pointing

... He

stood behind

us

me

lean against him. anything. He kept and are!' but he was rubbing 'Ssh!' then he said 'There saying they at with thumb. It his rubbed first, but then really my leg softly ... was I to move.85 inside shorts. afraid hard, right up my see

The passage that the male reads the girl's body as he reads suggests nature: a body in which to fish. The story emphasizes the symbolic to and value of apparently show how gestures insignificant phrases as resources the disciplining of women's bodies for they reflect a as resource nature masculine sexual pleasure, is for the just practice of masculine skills. Later, when the two girls return home they carry ... full of fish' but 'jamjars they 'had to walk very slowly so the water that the girls are 'training' for splash out.'86 The text suggests a pregnancy, by the narrator's relating the two reading strengthened the discomfort experiences through underlining they caused: Tt was time I couldn't move the second because of the stupid pinkeens.'87

wouldn't

to empty the jar on the ground and kill the the girl decides in the evening her parents ask what she had caught, the a rejection of social norms that confine women foreshadows girl's reply as fertile nature to domestic maternal roles: '"What about you, Una? "I did," I said, "I got a whole Did you not catch any pinkeens?" lot, but Eventually, fish. When

I didn't want

to carry them.'"88 in her short stories as well

as in her study of Bridget Cleary's as well as is preoccupied Bourke with the empowering case, Angela in with the disempowering which the association between ways women and nature is represented. Bourke's critical vision conceives of Thus,

culture

as a continuum

in which

notions

of the body,

body politic are continuously renegotiated.89 In the story closing Bourke's collection, two women, and nature. femininity

nature,

and

the

to the Hills', 'Mayonnaise women and discuss the between Eithne, Lucy relationship Eithne initiates Lucy into the intimate connection between

and nature

thus:

510

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

is a woman,

are breasts, and the earth the earth and all that crap.' Tt's a bit pathetic though, isn't it?' 'Yes. Hills

and a woman

is

I'm trying to say is I think landscape turns 'Well, it is. But what ? but men think sex ... But on. can it Or to them everyone belongs the thing is, it's me with the land, not me as the land. ... I just feel alive when I come down here. Iwalk along the road and smell the turf smoke and the salty air and Iwant to open my mouth and my nose wider

and wider

to take it in. And

clean. You feel if you could open wide sex is about the stars. That's what everything

waking

then at night the sky is so enough you could swallow after

all,

isn't

it? Feeling

up?'90

The relationship between is one of re-appropriation

women's

and nature

bodies

envisioned

here

rather than of incorporation. Eithne is allied with nature; she is not taken over by it. In using the Irish folklore an alliance of to her advantage, tradition Bridget Cleary envisioned women with the land, through which she could oppose her husband's vision of her as a territory to which he could stake a claim. incorporative Irish folkloric discourses offer at least these two possible ways of envisioning

women's

relationship

Bourke's

possibilities, which the discourses norms

with

nature.

underscores

writing can accommodate.

This

In highlighting these the heteroglossic play that the social suggests

on which aspects of the by the discourses depend women nature are and until they between reiterated relationship being become naturalized features of bodies and landscapes. Bourke's study established

case points out that the patriarchal the Cleary impetus of male in Ireland from social resulted myths nineteenth-century generated

of

in the interaction and disjunctive discourses that emerged overlapping between Irish rural, Irish nationalist, and British metropolitan cultures. can be seen as an important concern of In this context, heteroglossia Irish women's It can be used to open up various mutually writing. social

bodies

myths

that

corroborate

male-dominated and of women

gender the otherness regimes landscape. through reiterating case serves as an example The analysis of Bridget Cleary's of how contexts voices of Irish from the past are inflected by the specific to examine how women's the opportunity culture, as well as offering reinforcing

are

affected discourses by the disciplinary like a prism that reflects The body functions myths through which nature and society are constituted uninhabitable places. traditions.

511

of intersecting and refracts the as habitable or

IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW NOTES 1.

Angela

Bourke,

2.

Angela

Bourke,

3.

p.24. See Eilis

Island Books, (Dublin: New 1996). By Salt Water The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (London:

Pimlico,

1999),

Ni

The Dancers Dhuibhne, (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1999); Kathleen Dancing The Maid's Tale (Dublin: Poolbeg, 1995); Lia Mills, Another Alice (Dublin: Hood (Harmondsworth: 1996); Emma Donoghue, 1996). Poolbeg, Penguin, out that the choice of this story was Bourke pointed influenced by Seamus Heaney's viii'. Personal with conversation Bourke, poem 'Lightenings Angela University 17 January 2007. Seamus Ehiblin, viii', Seeing Things Heaney, College 'Lightenings Ferguson,

4.

(London: 5. 6.

Angela Bourke,

7.

Bourke,

Faber,

1991), p.62. 'Deep Down', By Salt Water, 'Deep Down', p.16. 'Deep Down', p.17. Liam's narration

Bourke,

John Henry. John Henry, Comhairle Bhealoideas 8.

9.

Stories

p.9.

pp.9-18,

on a folk story collected from 6 Cathain (Dublin:

is based

of Sea and Shore, edited

by Seamas

Eireann, 1983), pp.55-6. tale may well have been derived from an older folklore tradition. Jack out that the Christian Church stories Zipes points 'magic and miraculous exploited ... to be acceptable for its own interests'. Jack Zipes, Why Fairy codify what would Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance 2006), p.53. of a Genre (New York: Routledge, Ximited Inc a b c...', Limited Inc, edited by Gerald Graff (Evanston, Jacques Derrida, The Christian

Illinois: Northwestern

Press, 1988), pp.29-160, University Cavarero, Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy The University of Michigan (2002; Ann Arbor, Michigan: 11. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.69. 10. Adriana

12. The

p.70. and the Question Press,

2005),

of Gender

p.x.

was developed of imaginaries' by Jacques Lacan. The version is here derived from Moira Gatens. See Moira Gatens, concept using (London: Routledge, 1996). Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality concept

of

13. Marina 14.

'social

I am

the

Warner,

Managing

Monsters:

Six Myths

of Our

Time.

(The 1994 Reith

Lectures).

(London: Vintage, 1994), p.xiv. In her study, Bourke offers a specialist

of folk-tales involving changelings. appraisal in their stead. As and leave a changeling children) (usually Bourke points such cases exist in Ireland in which rituals were out, records of many on children to in to be order back the 'real' performed thought bring changelings Fairies

steal

humans

on adults of such rituals being performed one in which fate is the is involved. Bridget Cleary's only burning See 'The Wag Chats with Angela 31 March, 2006: ; Bourke, The Burning Bourke', of account For another folklorist's of the narrative Bridget Cleary, p.4 and pp.32-4. see Katharine of and stories, patterns Briggs, fairy abduction 'Changelings children

from

the fairy world.

Instances

are less numerous.

Midwives',

The

Fairies

in Tradition

and

See also 2002), pp.136-45. Routledge, 15. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 16. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, 17. Bourke, 18. Bourke,

The Burning The Burning

of Bridget

Cleary,

of Bridget Cleary, 19. Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick, p.39. 20. The concept of 'gender used regime'

Literature

'Fairy Wives

and New York: (1967; London and Fairy Lovers', pp.146-54.

p.x. italics and brackets. original italics. original unpaginated, and p.60. p. 29. See also p.31, pp.34-6, unpaginated,

here

is derived

from

(London: Routledge, 1997), p.6. Transformations 21. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.38. 22. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion 1990), p.145. Routledge, 23. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary,

p.30.

512

Sylvia

Walby,

of Identity

(New

Gender

York:

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

Ancient Francesca Wilde, See, for instance, Charms, and Superstitions Legends, Mystic O'Gorman, 1971), p.38. of Ireland (1888; Galway: in Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's of the later case is offered short story 25. A literary rendering to the Fairies'. to the Fairies', 'Midwife See Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, 'Midwife Blood and 24.

Water 26.

(Dublin:

Judith Butler,

Attic Press, 1988), pp.25-34. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive

1993), p.8. 27. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.3. 28. Gerry Smyth, The Novel and the Nation: Studies 29. 30.

Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge,

in the New

1997), p.39. The Burning Bourke, of Bridget Cleary, p.34, p.135. See Jack Zipes, Breaking theMagic Spell: Radical Theories and expanded edition (Lexington, Kentucky: Kentucky

Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick, p.82. 31. This perspective is derived from Derrida, pp.1-21, 32. Bourke,

Irish Fiction

Pluto,

(London:

of Folk and Fairy Tales, revised Press, 2002), p.3; University

'Signature

Event

Limited

Context',

Inc,

p.8. The Burning

The reconstruction of the events of Bridget Cleary, pp.121-2. death and Marian Yates favours this Bridget Cleary's by Joan Hoff case. thesis as an encompassing framework of interpretation for the Cleary particular See Joan Hoff and Marian isMissing: The Trials of Bridget Yates, The Cooper's Wife The Savage Within: Kuklick, 2000). See also Henrika Cleary (New York: Basic Books, surrounding

The

Social

University 33. Derrida,

1885-1945 History of British Anthropology, Press, 1991). Event Context', italics. 'Signature p.9, original

Event Context', 'Signature p.8. The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.203. and Gender 36. Jane Flax, 'Postmodernism Relations edited Linda Nicholson Postmodernism, (New by

Cambridge

(Cambridge:

34. Derrida, 35.

Bourke,

in Feminist York:

in Feminism/

Theory',

1990),

Routledge,

pp.39-62,

p.41, p.43, p.44. 37. See Evelyn Fox Keller, Yale University Press,

on Gender and Science Connecticut: (New Haven, Reflections in Feminism The Science Question 1985); Sandra Harding, Sex and Hartsock, Press, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University 1986); Nancy Money, Power (New York: Longman, 1983). 38. Helene in Feminisms: An Anthology 'The Laugh of the Medusa', Cixous, of Literary

39.

R. Warhol edited Theory and Criticism, by Robin New Brunswick, Press, Jersey: Rutgers University Catherine See, for instance, Innes, Woman Lynette Society

1880-1935

Stream:

Georgia: University Revolutionaries Unmamangeable

pp.173-95, 42.

Longley

Literature p.190. points

and Revisionism

Anorexia', 43.

Bourke,

44.

Bourke,

45.

Bourke, Bourke

46.

p. 189. The Burning The Burning The Burning

notes, '"cross" women

for ?

Price

Herndl

(New

The

Breakdown

of

Irelands',

and and

The Living

in Ireland

Longley's examples out that 'to characterise

nineteenth-century) it from exonerates

Diane

of Georgia Press, 1993), p.10 (London: Pluto, 1983), p.152.

(Athens,

Ward, Margaret 40. Cixous, 'The Laugh of the Medusa', p.360. 41. Edna Longley, to Anorexia: 'From Cathleen

and

1997), pp.347-62, p.362. in Irish Literature and Nation

as

archetypally and aggressive

Bloodaxe, 1994), (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: are Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz.

oppressive

of Bridget Cleary,

p.48.

of Bridget

pp.92-3.

Cleary,

in the (only constructed it a mythic and gives pedigree intent.' Longley, 'From Cathleen to

Irish nationalism female

both

of Bridget Cleary, p.136. in Irish the recurrent theme of 'cross' women instance, or assertiveness those whose made them difficult anger

513

folklore: for men

IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW ?

to deal with

were

to be away with the fairies, as were those The apart.' Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.175. women is between and nature associations

the ones

often

ones whose

"clever"

skills

said

set them

special treatment of ambiguous in the banshee tradition. encountered

A more

Patricia traces the banshee Lysaght figure of are one with to the figures of the sovereignty who goddesses out the land, and to the fairy women points figures inhabiting fairy mounds. Lysaght be vengeful, and therefore it that the tradition teaches that insulted banshees may out late hours 'warns against and indecorous behaviour towards women/ being Irish folklore

tradition

women protects is often (the banshee the Irish war goddess in Celtic Badb, All has not been preserved. tradition, a family the idea that tradition is goddess The Banshee: The Irish See Patricia Lysaght,

to say to what extent it is difficult However, to while their confinement also legitimating at the river). The tradition found beetling of in the banshee discernible Ireland, although that has been who

of the sovereignty preserved a banshee is an illustrious family.

has

the banshee domestic

tradition

tasks

Death Messenger Reinhart, 1996), p.186, pp.191-218. (Boulder, Colorado: 47. Angela 'Le Soleil et le Vent', By Salt Water, pp.90-8, Bourke, pp.91-2. 48. Bourke, 'Le Soleil', p.94. The Sexual Politics of aWord', 49. Donna Haraway, '"Gender" for a Marxist Dictionary: and Women: Free Association The Reinvention Simians, Cyborgs (London: of Nature Books, 50. 51.

Bourke, Elizabeth

1991), pp.127-48, p.134. 'Le Soleil', p.96. Grosz,

Volatile

Bodies:

Toward

a

Corporeal

Feminism

Indiana:

(Bloomington,

Indiana

Press, 1994), p.xi. University in Irish folklore to Bourke, 52. According in late nineteenth-century rural with in metropolitan and bourgeois 'nature is engaged closely' while across a large chasm, distant'. Personal 'nature is perceived conversation Bourke, 53.

Bourke,

54.

Bourke,

55.

Bourke,

17 January, 2007. Dublin, University College The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.104. The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.86. See also p.96. The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.20. Bourke also highlights

communities rural with

Ireland Angela

the ambivalence

of

56.

and to bodily interaction. that could refer both to landscape surveillance expressions some of the hill's secrets'. For instance, that 'the RIC had penetrated See she notes 16. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, was Bourke that Michael from a town, and that he would have Cleary emphasized

57.

found enticing of joining the rural Irish bourgeois of the prospect class. Representatives rural Ireland would have emulated metropolitan bourgeois bourgeois identity. Personal 17 January, 2007. with Angela conversation Bourke, University College Dublin, In his appraisal in Irish writing, that madness of the theme of madness shows Smyth seems

resists and reinforces colonial This ideology'. 'simultaneously with to the cultural marking of zones of abnormality, regard p.51. illegitimacy. Smyth, The Novel and the Nation, 58. Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, pp.105-106. 59.

Bourke,

The Burning

of Bridget Cleary, in Ireland,

and nationalism suffragism 1889-1922 Suffrage Movement

See also Rosemary p.107. Smashing Times: A History Attic, 1984).

(Dublin: The Burning of Bridget Cleary, pp.17-18. Bourke, 61. Steven and Linda Cohan Shires, Telling Stories: Fiction (London: Routledge, 1988), p.21.

to be

true also

uninhabitability,

and

Owens' study of of the Irish Women's

60.

62. Hubert

Butler

civilisation'. 63.

p.157. Bourke,

notes

Hubert

The Burning

that Butler,

were

'the Anglo-Irish Escape from

of Bridget

Cleary,

the Anthill

p.20.

514

A Theoretical

Analysis

... the cruel

stepmothers

(Mullingar:

Lilliput

of Narrative of Gaelic Press,

1985),

OTHERWORLDLYWOMEN AND NEUROTIC FAIRIES

The Burning Bourke, of Bridget Cleary, p.20. The Burning of these events; Bourke, See Bourke's appraisal The Burning of Bridget Cleary, pp.16-17. 66. Bourke, British High Politics and a Nationalist 67. Margaret O'Callaghan,

64.

65.

and the Law under Forster 68.

out points Fionn MacCumhail.

that

Bourke

of Bridget

Cleary,

p.20.

Ireland: Criminality, Land and Balfour (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994), p.9. about the famous Fianna warrior, the area is rich in legends

'The Sense of The Novel and the Nation, p.ll, p.27. See also Seamus Heaney, Smyth, Selected Prose 1968-1978 Place', Preoccupations: (London: Faber, 1980), pp.131-149, p.132. ... can to ... forces to Joe Cleary, 'Irish modernity 70. According quite clearly be tracked ... is not a one-way that made Western however, [M]odernity, modernity generally. .... In an Irish context, the to benighted from metropole process issuing periphery 69.

to the universal adherents ideals of certainly though or French of American the crude importers simply and Modernity', The Cambridge 'Introduction: Ireland Joe Cleary, republicanism.' to Modern and Claire Irish Culture, edited Connolly Companion by Joe Cleary Fintan O'Toole Press, 2005), pp.1-22, pp.4-5. Cambridge University (Cambridge: in the second half of the in Ireland revival that had begun that the cultural argues

United

for instance, were not

Irishmen,

the Enlightenment,

a process which 'nationalised colonial attitudes, internalising nineteenth-century as a to the outside it back to the and world colonial mentality belonged selling the Country of Irish reality.' Fintan O'Toole, reflection 'Going West: The City Versus The Crane Bag, 9 (1985): p.113. See also Smyth, The Novel and the in Irish Writing', Ireland's Soul": Protestant Writers Nation, pp. 15-16; p.45; Edna Longley, '"Defending after Independence', The Living Stream, pp. 130-49, p. 130. See Ireland (London: Cape, Kiberd, 1995). Inventing on the comments of colonial ideals in nationalist Irish Suzanna Chan's transposition an how the of constructions of race, help us to understand culture through analysis as other were to the of of nature connected and purification idealization paradigms and

Irish Nationalism

also Declan

71.

or abjection / othering legitimation that the Irish were order to establish nationalists distinct

'In that informed Victorian cultural practices: a European culture worthy of self governance, as white and equal to, yet for the "Celt-Gael" identity ... the spirituality and artistry that the eulogising

a positive the "Anglo-Saxon", considered characteristics stressed

from

of the "feminine" (i.e. 'irrational') Celt.' Suzanna on Deconstructing Ireland's Whiteness: Immigrants, Emigrants and the Perils of Jazz', Variant 22 (2005): pp.20-21, p.20. See also Steve Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience 'Race, Class and (London: Pluto, 2004), p.31 and Kavita Philip Irish in India, Ireland and London, of Ethnography the Imperial Politics 1850-1910',

Victorians Chan

'Some Notes

Studies Review, 10 (2002): pp.297-9. 72. O'Callaghan, British High Politics, p.9. 73. Grosz, Volatile Bodies, p.xi. 74. Bourke's Michael's court sentence of the text accompanying reads: interpretation ... the in a last romantic and his sentence 'Before pronouncing judged indulged as bride. He compared reverie on the dead Bridget Cleary her implicitly chivalrous was to whom to the virgin martyrs of early Christianity, devotion such a significant feature of

of middle-class

a

representative discourses metropolitan

Irish Catholic of

culture

the Great

after

76.

Smyth,

Cavarero, The Novel

This

discourse

be

of women, representations The Burning class. Bourke, of Bridget Cleary, p.188. 75. This perspective from Cavarero's is derived study Adriana

Famine'.

seen as an of how authority example and abjected Ireland idealized sanitized through using to the feelings of the Irish bourgeois while also appealing can

British

'On the Body of Antigone', and the Nation, p.l.

515

Stately

of Sophocles's Antigone. Bodies, pp. 13-97.

See

IRISHUNIVERSITY REVIEW

77.

out to charms, Bourke The Burning Bourke, points of Bridget Cleary, p.67. Referring a form of were could that 'Like [fairy] stories, charms capital, which symbolic The Burning knew them.' Bourke, enhance of ... vulnerable the prestige people who

of Bridget Cleary, p.61. The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p.28. Bourke, 79. Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1994), p.xxv. 80. Angela 'Dreams of Sailing', Bourke, By Salt Water, pp.29-38, p.34. 78.

81.

Bourke,

'Dreams

82.

Bourke,

'Dreams

of Sailing', of Sailing',

pp.32-3.

p.35. 83. Bourke, 'Dreams of Sailing', p.38. 84. Michel and Punish Foucault, Lane, (London: Allen Discipline 85. Angela Bourke, 'Pinkeens', p.54. By Salt Water, pp.46-55, 86. Bourke, 'Pinkeens', pp.54-5. 87.

(New York:

1977), p.26.

Bourke,

'Pinkeens', p.55. Bourke, 'Pinkeens', p.55. 89. Other of feminist research adopting this view are Gatens, Imaginary examples and Elizabeth Lesbian Desire', Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: 'Refiguring on the Politics of Bodies (New York: 1995), pp.173-85. Routledge, 88.

90. Angela Bourke, in the original.

'Mayonnaise

to the Hills',

516

By Salt Water,

pp.159-68,

pp.166-7,

Bodies, Essays italics