The theme of the declining Big House in Bowen's The Last September

Résumé du document

'The Last September', Elizabeth Bowen's second novel, describes the Anglo-Irish life of the provincial aristocracy during the turbulent times of 1920, and deals directly with the crisis of being Anglo-Irish. In this particular context, Bowen makes a combination between social comedy and private tragedy and between the interior need of the characters and their relation to the outside world, through the figure of the ‘big house'.

The big house can be considered as a literary movement during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, initiated by Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, published in 1800. It has set enduring conventions in Anglo-Irish literature, symbolized by a decaying house and declining gentry, the improvident, often absent, landlord; and the rise of a predatory middle class.

In Ireland, where families stayed in one place, and often in one house for generations, an individual was known not only for himself, but in the context of his family house. In this period of troubles, the collapse of the Anglo-Irish society is therefore symbolized by the collapse of the big house. ‘The Last September' assesses the constraints of belonging to a house and people from whom it is impossible to escape. The subject of the novel is the twilight of Anglo-Ireland and the fate of the younger people, born to inherit the myth of the ancestral home.

Extraits

[...] Phyllis Lassner, Elizabeth Bowen, Barnes and Noble Books, Savage, Maryland p.200. Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September, p.116. Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September, p.129. Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September, p.25. Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September, p.12. Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September, p.30. Elizabeth Bowen, quoted in Maud Ellmann, Elizabeth Bowen, the shadow across the page, p.17. Elizabeth Bowen, Big House”, p.199 Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September, p.166. Elizabeth Bowen, Big House”. [...]

[...] Bowen presents it as the embodiment of the family's identity, as she will do later in the book Bowen's Court, which stands as a funerary monument for her own house. At the centre of Bowen's life too there was a big house in County Cork: Bowen's Court. The interior of Danielstown, its outside appearance and the way it lies within its demesne, sheltered by trees, backed by mountains, echoes the descriptions Bowen later wrote in Bowen's Court, a history of three centuries of continuous occupation by one family. Bowen writes of the strong rule of her family myth: Bowen, in the first place, made Bowen's Court. [...]

[...] For the young, life within the house is never experienced directly. The walls themselves appear to reverberate with secrets what people feel but never openly express. The individual becomes submerged in a rigid pattern and marriage replicates Danielstown's absorption of people by moulding one the bricks and wallpaper of a home”[9]. Moreover, Daniestown seems to vampirize its owners. Indeed, human qualities are attributed to the house and personalizations are often used in its descriptions: house seemed to be pressing down low in apprehension, hiding its face, as though it had her vision of where it was. [...]

[...] Bowen's narrative traces the link between the fall of the house and the fall of Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy. We can see the world of Danielstown as victim of its own design, and even of an original sin. Indeed, the novel comes to its close with the burning of the house which is to free Lois for the future of which she is still so unsure, while for the Naylors there is only the desolate destruction of a world which is both substance and symbol . [...]

[...] Since then, with a rather alarming sureness, Bowen's Court has made all the succeeding Bowens”[17]. She reflects how the emotional and political legacy of past inhabitants is felt to be part of its walls and atmosphere. Indeed, the big house seems to haunt and ultimately absorb lives that submerged here”[18]. In turn, the accumulated perceptions of those who live in Danielstown assume an implicit power, felt only by those who belong to the estate and tying then to each other, to the past, and to the house in mutually dependent relationships. [...]