A Vampire’s Kiss-metaphor of repressed sexuality

by Theodora-Eva Stâncel

What is it with the human mind? For years now it has been the subject of continuous study wrapped in bewilderment, mystery and great expectations. Beginning with the last century onto the present, humankind has been preoccupied with the exploration of unknown spaces, such as the Moon, the Sun, the Universe, but the truth is we don’t really know what is going on in our own yard, so to say.
        A few hundred years ago people used to think that the heart was the most important organ, the center of the body, the keeper of the human spirit. Later the scales tipped and researchers were proud to give notice to the world about the great importance of the human brain, the generator of the Consciousness. Since then psychologists, psychiatrists, and biologists had tried to unfold the mystery that lies within the convoluted layers of neural tissue.
        The truth is that no matter how much we have evolved and learned until now, we don’t really know much about the workings of the cerebrum and even less about the Consciousness and the Unconsciousness. The terms themselves are difficult to define as they can embody various things such as thoughts, self-awareness, mental state, emotions and ways of perceiving. Although various philosophical, phenomenal and psychological approaches to the human mind have been expressed, the raw facts are that one may never know when it can turn against you and stab you in the back. As still waters run deep so do the most remote corners of the mind.

“The Mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one seventh of its bulk above water”

Sigmund Freud

        Sigmund Freud says that hidden thoughts, impulses and desires accompany us throughout our lives as shadows that we cannot shake. They reside in the back of our minds and when least expected they come back to haunt us, and not only as they return in a distorted, pathological shape, amplified in their very essence. He is talking about repression, the basic pillar on which psychoanalysis is build.
        Whenever one does something against his will, there shall occur a process of mortification. Repression generates guilt ( as consequence of the act of betrayal against ones own self) and the latter boomerangs back under the former of  ‘demons’. It is a condition that forces out of the ego, or it arises from social practices regarding drives that are considered shameful, dishonorable or simply inappropriate.
        Considering Freud’s belief, the individual behavior is influenced by the two main drives: the libido (the life drive)-( basic instincts such as: self conservation, hunger, thirst and sex), and Thanatos (the death instinct). When the life drive is reduced to silence, the pleasure of being in a state of tranquility, increases pleasure by decreasing stimuli and thus sliding slowly into death. Meaning that, by deafening ones fantasies, cravings and pleasures one experiences mortification and eventually death of the spirit.
        The most problematic consequences of repression occur when it concerns the primary motivational life governing energy, the sexual desire.
        Freud states that human beings are programmed to pursue pleasure. In his opinion humans are born “polymorphous perverse”, as since childhood they see in the proximal object to themselves a source of pleasure. As children develop, their sexuality entered the path that society labeled as “ normal”, meaning heterosexuality. During the process of psycho-sexual development, people may come to the situation where certain limitations imposed by society, oblige them to repress feelings and sexual desires, all this may lead to psychological and physical disturbances.


         SEXand the norms of sexuality have been reinvented over and over again along time in concordance with socially accepted attitudes. Sexuality has always been a taboo issue that fell under various classifications starting with social deviance (directed towards a potential subculture with certain peculiarities), a threat to traditional institutions regarding education and religious morality. Today, sex is used to transcend the constraints and limitations placed on sexuality by society. Diversified expressions of sexuality undermine many of the scales on which “normality” is measured. Any sexual countenance is concurrent an expression of a consciousness that has reproductive, religious, and cultural significance. Therefore sex is turned into the perfect way to make an existential statement.
        Constraints and limitations have been imposed for acting upon the pleasure drive and those who mostly had to suffer were the women. In many countries the image of the woman was distanced from that of a sexual being. But this, was not the case of ancient times, take Ireland for example.
        A few hundred years ago, in times of “legends and myths” (a la Kevin Sorbo) sexuality was sacred, and openly expressed as it was considered one of the most important aspects of life.  The Celtic universe was constructed to be essentially feminine, and the women were sexual goddesses, rulers of the earth that governed all aspects of life, including the most important one, fertility. They not only had power over death, but they were able to create life. Therefore sexual intercourse was ‘sacred’. The pictures and carvings dating from that era presented women, naked, exposing their genitals.
        But everything changed when the British Empire conquered Ireland. The British rule brought Ireland's independent legal system to an end and the Irish women lost most of their rights. It brought also sexual prudery, which hadn't previously been part of the Irish culture. The entire social structure suffered a strong process of Anglicization , that generated a strict and rigid, patriarchal order within which the man represented authority and the woman adopted a submissive attitude, and became ‘the < asexual> other’.
        The expression of sexuality revolves around the heterosexual traditional family cell (women were restricted to the domestic area, and even as part of a couple the woman was obliged to quench any sort of bodily pleasure). Unmarried women were supposed to embrace God and lead a submissive, obedient, sexually devoid life inside the walls of the convent. Sex was associated with fear, guilt and sin. The concept of nudity was practically non-existent.
        Freud influenced many personalities, one of them was Herbert Marcuse. He militated in favor of the pleasure principle, and against the repression of instincts. Primitive drives are the strongest, by repressing them one may make a breach in the consciousness and unleash the inner demons, that have been kept under pressure. Marcuse demands an inward liberation, and this is exactly what has happened with the Irish women, beginning with fiction and ending in raw factual events.

The unleashing of the beast

        Moto:
        ‘From my grave to wander I am forced
        Still to seek the God's long server'd link,
        Still to love the bridegroom I have lost,
        And the lifeblood of his heart to drink.’

         The celebration of the liberated libido, represents the central theme of the genre that came to be known as vampire literature.  Its expression is lesbian vampirism as connected to the awakening of the female sexuality.
        Many authors appeared to be interested in the idea of the woman-beast, who enforces herself upon men or women, some with the purpose of sucking their blood, other seeking to steal their life force. The woman was transformed into a supernatural being as if it were an attempt to regain the loss of the female supremacy from the pre-colonial times. The ‘vampyresse’ is everything that traditional Ireland refuses to the common woman, namely she is sexual up to perversion, powerful, dangerous, and the idea itself is why not, passionate although very elegant, attractive and charming:

          The repressed sexual drives, come back to take revenge under the form of demons. And women represent the demons. Beliefs in the incarnation of supernatural creatures in the force of women exist everywhere. Most frequently ,though, in certain areas of the world where religion and superstition as derivation from mass-organized ideology are more prominent. Ireland is one of those places. Here are some examples of such supposed aparitions:
         -leanhaum-shee,more,  a psychic vampire, a deadly Irish seductress that lures men to her side where her irresistible charms place them under her spell. The fairy maiden drains her victim slowly of life, the latter’s very essence being consumed by his demonic lover.
         -Lilith is the first woman, created before Eve to be the wife of Adam. But she had too much spirit to stay by his side. She wanted equality in the couple therefore she was cast out of Paradise, and became the 'Queen of the Night', Queen of the ‘succubi’ and leader of all the creatures who roam the darkness. She appears as a tall, beautiful woman with an abundance of long black or red hair, and sharp blue eyes, with wings similar to those of a bat, reminiscence of her kinship to the Devil.
        -vjeshitza, a female spirit with wings of fire, who climbs on top of a sleeper's chest, suffocating her victim or rendering him totally insane with her lusty embrace.
        -Zmeu, in Transylvania, the ‘zmeu’ appeared in the shape of a young girl, a maiden of the woods who tempted shepherds by offering to lead them and their sheep to greener pastures if they would make love to her.

Carmilla

        In 1872 Sheridan LeFanu wrote “Carmilla” the first vampire novel that opened the doors towards vampirism, demonic literature and it representes Bram Stoker’s inspiration for his later and very famous ”Dracula” story. The vampire character has certain features and displays a specific physics and psychology. From its early days the character is endowed with special powers that develop with the evolution of the idea of vampire itself. The ways of acting and conduct, as well as the descriptions of the “vampirisation” and its effects; represent the basis from which the myth starts.

        “Carmilla” features a female creature in between the land of the dead and the land of the living ( the “  dead un-dead”, as Stoker later called it) , with lesbian inclinations who seduces the heroine Laura whilst draining her of her vital fluids. The fascinating erotic fixations are obvious and promissing for something more than just a traditional plot.
        Le Fanu's story is set in the Duchy of Styria , as the world has always been divided between the civilized, familiar West, and the dark, barbarian, unknown East. Especially Eastern Europe has been  associated with the crib of the savage, of the beast. 
        The savage element has always been considered to be exotic, identified with the primordial sexuality, distorted but supported by supernatural powers leading  to love as sadistic treatment. This is why Carmilla, the character, is the uncontrolled, wild, unpredictable, sensual and sexual creature of the night.
        She represents the archetype of the heathen woman, controlled from the inside by an evil spirit that enhances her sexual hunger. As she openly expresses her sexuality, male supremacy of willpower and judgment fail to prevail and thus men become emasculated. The “vampyresse” operates in parallel and outside the male universe. Therefore in order for the power structure to return to its initial state, the vampire woman’s death must always be triggered by a man’s hand.
        The vampire may take various forms, she can appear as the vampire bride that kills her own husband, a monstrous creature with no humanity in it,  as a child slayer and ultimately as the “vamp” (with fair complexion, dressed all in black, wearing clothing that is decorated with spiders or snakes > something like cartoon character Morticia Adams from the ‘Adams Family’).
        Carmilla is not the classical bride/ vamp -vampire, she is not interested in pursuing men. But the beautiful predator is interested in a young woman, Laura. The story depicts a kind of forced seduction of presumably straight women or girls by lesbian vampires:         During the entire novel Laura speaks about Carmilla as a sister, but their relationship suggests a lesbian relation connection between the two. They become more than intimate as Carmilla invades, Laura’s thoughts, her mind, her spirit. It as if the vampire slides beneath the girl’s skin and flesh, while trying to intrude and seize her essence, take it into possession. There are intense feelings of passion, love and hate in the same time. The vampire tastes its victim, by traveling its lips on Laura’s body.
        The lips have multiple functions, food intake, tactile organ, articulation and as erogenous zone. They become main actors in foreplay, as in many cultures they are closely associated by structure with the female vulva. They represent the borders of another opening to be penetrated on the female body.
        Touching someone with ones lips expresses affection, sexual desire, or a process of premastication. Anthropologists still don’t know whether kissing is learned or based on instinctual behavior.
        The woman beast may be affectionate towards Laura, she may asses biological compatibility, (by smelling its mate’s pheromones), or she may simply taste its food as preparing to feed. By drinking Laura’s blood Carmilla takes her into possession. She  says: ‘you are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one foreever”. Laura’s essence flows within Carmilla’s veins and in this way they become one forever.

        The vampire presents itself into a constant languid state of being that emanates sexuality by every pore, and in the same time it is as a fragile child that needs protection. This encourages Laura to embrace mixed feelings of sisterhood, motherly love and feverish passion.
        Carmilla’s ghastly, languid appearance will transform itself, in Bram Stoker’s novel into voluptuousness, its most representative examples being the three sister- vampires (I will come back to them later) which Jonathan Harker encounters in the Count’s  castle.
        The love of the vampire is governed by duality, as Laura also feels it. As she says: ‘ I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence’. There is the sense of passion, and the need of possession, a mixture of pain and pleasure, of the horrible and the sublime.
        Carmilla is not your ordinary beast. She is of noble origin, Countess Mircalla von Karnstein. Most vampires are of noble origin and they are proud to show it. Interesting enough the character appears a to be a sensitive person, a late sleeper, who wakes up only in the afternoon when the sun is weak and going down.
        She is a child of the night who rejects the idea of having a master, a supreme authority such as the one imposed by the Church. She doesn’t join the others for prayers; she displays a total disgust for Christian objects and rituals. Considering the Irish context in which the character was born, one may consider Carmilla’s attitude towards the Church and its practices as road opening, pioneering and rebellious. And it is most valuable as a female protagonist, a woman, who in Irish society was regarded as the keeper of faith, initiated it.
        If Carmilla is to be associated with the expression of female resentment towards society than she is in fact an epiphany. She embraces nature, the Celtic heritage as she often appear in the form of a feline:         The cat is a very important element in the occult sciences. It is said to be the creature that lives half in this world and half in the next one. It emanates sensuality through its movement, and its eyes can at times be mesmerizing. In Celtic Ireland the universe was revolving around the natural, cats symbolized the powerful-goddesses.
        Cats were also beloved pets and tools for the witches. The latter were initially by definition female. There were the witches of the air, the witches of the Earth, the witches of the crossroads and of wells. They all were creations of the masculine psyche that feared the mysticism and power of their counterparts.

        An important feature of the vampire is its ability to infiltrate in its victims minds. Carmilla makes use of a psychological power; she interferes with the victim’s dreams and sometimes uses hypnotism to overpower her victims. This ability allows the vampire to weaken the subject’s mind, and to control it at its will. Laura has a series of nightmares in which the figure of Carmilla plays an important role. The modern vampire is almost all-powerful in this domain: he can command the victims and in some basic form, he can torture the psychic of the victim, weakening it, and taking over easily. This capacity of the vampire is just in a basic form in Carmilla, as the two girls experience dream interference in the same way.
        Carmilla dominates Laura mentally and spiritually. She had visited her since she was a little girl, filling her nights with misty incomprehensible dreams. It is as if their love is foreknown and waited for as the supreme act of possession.

        The moment of the ‘feeding’ is of outmost importance as it is confusing for the victims who do not know whether things happen or if they dream. They fall in a state of hypnoses and relaxation.         Laura feels that two needles have pierced her breast. It is the process of feeding of the vampire. The incipient form of “vampirisation” focuses on the breast rather than the neck.
        Basically the kiss of the vampire is centered on two very erotic places, the breast and the neck. Both are soft tissue areas that can be “manipulated”/ massaged physically, but also can be used for psychological purposes. The former has a more sensual power than the latter, and in the story Carmilla it emphasizes the lesbian side of vampirism.  The “Touch” in general may have the function of awakening the bodily sensations, and / or to dominate. It is if in the middle of an intercourse session, one of the lovers embraces the other passionately, biting her/him by the neck or breast as a sex hungry beast that yearns for fresh meat.
        The “feeding” spots were not hazardously chosen as the neck and the breast are erogenous zones with heightened sensitivity, that stimulated usually generate a sexual response. The neck and the clavicle can be very arousing to many individuals. The neck is a spot prone to broken blood vessels, this is why licking, kissing or caressing can bruise and cause what is known today as hickies (American style) or lovebites.
        .
        A modern, representation of the old way of feeding appears in the movie Interview with a vampire. Lestat and Louis choose two prostitutes for their evening entertainment. Lestat bites one of them by the nipple. The woman moans in pleasure as his fangs pierce her flesh, she feels no pain. Her worm blood, stains her lace lingerie, as Lestat gives her his immortal kiss.
        The nipple and the areola contain various nerve endings that enhance pleasure. The breast plays a leading role during intercourse; it is the second female characteristic after the vagina.
        It is interesting to notice that the woman is the only mammal that grows breasts beyond the proportions needed for their biological purposes of feeding offsprings. More even, during sexual arousal the breasts increase in size, the nipples harden, as a blooming flower’s pistil, an invitation for a honey-hungry bumblebee.
        In sex-inclined civilizations it was believed that scratching or biting the breast and especially the nipple have definite erotic implications. Some women argued that they were able to experience a sort of breast orgasm. The explanation resides in the fact that stimulating the breast and the nipples encourages the release of oxytocin, the “hormone of happiness”. Having this in mind, there are two possible reasons why the prostitute in Interview with a vampire, expresses such intense physical pleasure. She either exceptionally displays her theatrical competences or she is indeed experiencing a breast orgasm.

        Coming back to Le Fanu, Laura’s symptoms appear similar to those that were attributed in Romanian folklore to those young women visited by the ‘zburător’:          The supernatural beings exhaust their victims with their lovemaking. The girls feel drained, and weak but there is no mentioning of actual pain involved in the process. The turmoil is mostly psychical and emotional. The same symptoms appear to Stoker’s characters in “Dracula”:         The victim finds himself in a submissive position with no means of fighting back. The vampire immobilizes him with his imposing presence and as in a dream the character witnesses his own near death struggle in a sort of out of  body experience.

        The female vampires in Stoker’s Dracula have similar roles to Le Fanu’s Carmilla, except their intended prey is always male.  The power of the female sex kneels the man, Harker is overpowered by the temptation and seduction of the ‘vamps’. Man are attracted to this kind of women having in sight their own physical satisfaction, but prefers to maintain the woman under the auspices of chastity for pure territorial reasons.
        The three sisters are the zenith of the female erotic apparition. They possess a strong sexual power of seduction. The traditional blood –sucking vampire behavior is a obviously a sexual symbol, allusions are made to the exchange of bodily fluids during sex.  Drinking ones blood is an act of taking into possession.
        Inside Dracula’s castle, three women who come to him in the night seduce Harker. He remains passive and submissive as:
        While in the Count’s Castle, Harker has a nightmare or so it appears at the time. He lies in his bed and barely sees through his eyelashes three figures approaching him with sparkling, hungry eyes. The creatures are characterized by extraordinary beauty that mesmerize the men who remains silent while imagining possible scenarios about what is to happen. Harker experiences an ardent lust mingled with anxiety. Although ill-at –ease, he desperately desires to be kissed by those red lips.

        One of the women climbs on top of him, thrilling and gloating. She licks her full, moist lips like a sexual predator, gazing at the wonderful display of helplessness on the face of the man waiting to be seized by his voluptuous mistress. Prey to a delicious but agonizing feeling he senses her salty-sweet breath that has a bloody-like flavor

        Her lustful red tong (“red” not because of the normal order of things but symbolically, as it represents sin, anger, crime, blood and sex) teases Harker down his body , going from his mouth and chin, just pausing on his neck and then going lower and lower while his expectations rose together with his excitement. The allusions are obvious, his beating heart awaits the glorious moment of the climax: the soft, sweet lips and hungry mouth touching his penis.

        Oral sex (stimulation of the genitalia by kissing and licking) is view as a tremendous ego-boost it gives an thrilling rush of power and domination over ones partner.  As Samantha Jones explains to her friend Charlotte in the worldwide known Sex and the city: “you may be on your knees but you are holding them by the balls”.

        The scene is suddenly interrupted by the apparition of the Count who appears to be in rage because of the women’s audacity. He makes it clear to them that the man (Harker ) belongs only to him, and gives the woman as a consolation prize a newly born to feast upon. The question here is whether Dracula reacts violently because he himself desires Harker. Is Count Dracula gay? Could be, but certainly he uses Harker to attain his interests that of arriving safely to London.

        The three sisters use their sensuality and voluptuousness as weapons against male judgment.  When Van Helsing sought to destroy them, he hesitated because:         The sisters sexual liberty come to affect even the symbol of reason, the powerful doctor. They use the ‘power of three’( superstition) of the pagan mythology as source of their force.  Christian redemption claim s their destruction. Embracing sexuality means freedom, sexuality is power.  The power balance is tilted when a women assumes the power. In this way she takes hold of the dominating role that is ‘normally’ bestowed unto man. The latter thus becomes submissive and weak.

        The women in Stoker’s novel are in the beginning sexual in a very subtle way, but after Dracula transforms them , they become untamable, driven by an insatiable desire to devour their victims/lovers. As Jean Baptiste Grenouille in Suskind’s ‘The perfume’ is torn apart and devoured by the crowd. The people fall under the powerful spell of his fragrance and kill him because of too much love and desire.
        Lucy becomes a highly sexualized vampire while Mina, although increasingly more affectionate, is more affected by her appetites for knowledge than for sex or blood. The vampire sisters lurk as symbols of the uncontrollable woman. Mina becomes central to the novel after coming into contact with Dracula, who is truly secondary to the five daughters of darkness he creates.
        Mina and Lucy represent the opposing poles of the female typology. Both these women are inexplicably feminine (pure, naïve and almost dependant on their husbands) but each with her own, with one exception. Mina is a secretary, activity area very much reserved to the man side. Lucy had three suitors, suggesting her subtle promiscuity and desire to break social confines. In spite of all this they were still embodiments of the Victorian type. Their real counterparts, who expressed a deviated social behavior, would come to be the three ‘vampiresses’.         Lesbian vampirism appeared as a central literary theme in a time when society rejected and abhorred any display of sexuality. Sex was to remain behind the walls of marriage, and even in those conditions it was regarded as sinful , dirty and unacceptable. The concept of the  “Vampire” was an open door towards talking about ones sexuality and hidden desires.
        Freud himself wrote about the pleasure principle and sexual drives in the Victorian times when such occupations were regarded with distrust. Concepts as lesbianism and homosexuality were inconceivable.

How things stand today

        Modern society simulates the acceptance of different sexual options. In fact children who are born with lesbian and homosexual inclinations are forced to learn to fight against their instincts. They are thought how not to be lesbian and how not to be gay. This situation creates modern “Carmillas”and”Draculas”. They spend most of their childhood and specially their adolescence trying to conform to the societal norms. As adults, most of them develop pathological conditions such as depression leading towards suicide, sexual harassment or even sexual abuse. There are cases where boys fulfill their childhood dreams of killing their over controlling mothers, who punished their sons when they appeared to have girlish occupations (playing with dolls and other girls ). These boys are humiliated for not acting as boys.
        Sexual drives must be freely expressed (be they lesbian or gay) or if not, the subjects suffer a process of estrangement from themselves and of developing psychological demons reflected in their actions against the external world.

In real life their revenge will be a metaphorical fang thrust into society’s carotid.

        But what exactly is the meaning of sex or gender?
        People tend not to fully understand the distinction. Starting with the last decade there were attempts to formulate a more appropriate definition for them. Before the 1960s ‘ gender’ were solely used to determine whether a word had masculine or feminine connotations. And as far as ‘sex ‘ was concerned the general belief was that it denoted those particular features that made a biological distinction between men and women, the body being seen as unchangeable. The two sides of the human species, men and women, were thought to behave differently on basis of sex differences. Roughly, we may give the following example : women are sensitive and have domestic abilities while men are tuff and  can’t iron clothes. As concept, ‘sex’ is related to the given, the biological, the bodily.
        Around the 1980s and 1990s feminists extended the meaning of the word  ‘ gender’ as variable, dictated by society so to describe types of behavior. The new perspective saw the differences between men and women as a social convention and the biological exchangeability of the body was now put to question. New hypothesis regarding the relationship sex-gender-identity occurred. People came out openly with declarations regarding their gender identity.  The public had to face realities as sex changing surgery, trans-sexuality, and all those aspects of human life that remained in shadow for so long. There was a change in mentalities, also, the biological body became  subject of change.         What is the factor that makes us men and women? We know that there are persons who posses a male body but behave as female, there are men attracted to male , and females attracted to females, there are females who feel that they are men. Gender identity is a very delicate and actual problem.
        .At a close analysis one may clearly see what a complex issue is gender. It has so many implications, political, social, interpersonal and most important personal. Nowadays it has become so difficult to decide which factor is most important in the development of a person. What makes us be what we are? Is it the biological (genes, hormones, brain structure) or the socio-environmental factors (ethnicity, cultural evolution parental influence, and the roles that society imposes on us)? A doubtless and unmistakable conclusion cannot be drawn. We only know that at the moment there are two biological sexes and several genders.
        Repression is challenged by Acceptance-it is a big word that has not found much representation on what concerns sexual choices. Lebianism and homosexualism remain tabu issues in many parts of the world. The most difficult and obtuse are those countries where religion is strongly impregnated in the social consciousness.
         Representation of heterosexuality as the only acceptable sexual expression is directly linked to the wider relationships between the sexes in society. The family, based on marriage, is promoted as the only valid social unit. Homosexual men and lesbian women are seen as a threat, and are marginalized, ostracized, and discriminated against. Discrimination occurs on several levels and in different fields of activity, it may appear at the work place or on the street. Often enough parents lose their children to social care on the basis of their sexual orientation. As their life style is most of the times considered inappropriate and wrong they are not allowed to adopt children.
        They are the targets of pervasive social prejudice, often amounting to open hostility and physical assault. In Ireland, one would think that things should stand in a different manner considering the religious expectation to be good to your neighbor and not judge him as before God all people are equal. But this does not really happen.
The societal messages to which young people are exposed almost entirely omit the experiences, desires, and hopes of young lesbians and gay men, as they do with all minority groups. Sex education is almost nonexistent, but discriminatory actions are at home.
        Irish society defines healthy sexuality differently in many respects for men and women. Ireland reflects and reinforces cultural stereotypes of what is considered socially appropriate gender and sexual roles, therefore there is a obvious problem on what concerns their concept of what is sexually dysfunctional or unhealthy.
        Society considered that any sexual activity that place itself at the periphery or outside the boundaries of the religious acceptance, a threat to the cultural and moral institutions of the country.
        Irish people are outstandingly religious. Either Catholic or Protestant they express great trust in their Church. Being a more conservative nation there is not a very big gap between the older and younger generation, still there must be underlined the explosion of affirmative action that occurred in Ireland after the 1920s.
        So many years of living under the control of the harsh rules of ideology have degenerated into embracing the other in terms of statement. Influences from the continent have poured in.
        People who express openly their difference comprise the modern Ireland, they have fallen into the other extreme and it became almost fashionable so to say, to be bisexual, lesbian, or homosexual.
        Ireland has fallen from one extreme to another, from prudery to debauchery. Contemporary sex life is characterized by unconventional sexual behaviors. In traditional Ireland non-traditional family units are not recognized as legitimate. Ireland reflects and reinforces cultural stereotypes of what is considered socially appropriate gender and sexual roles, therefore there is an obvious problem on what concerns their concept of what is sexually dysfunctional or unhealthy.
The representation of heterosexuality as the only acceptable sexual expression was criticized by the European Court of Human Rights, in consequence, the Governement declared that lesbian and homosexual acts are given the same legal status as the heterosexual one.

Notes:         [1] Le Fanu, Sheridan, In a Glass Darkly, Wordsworth Editions,Wave,1995, p.249
        [2]  Ibid. p. 250
        [3]  Ibid. p.264
        [4]  Ibid. p.264
        [5]   Ibid. p.267
        [6]  Stoker, Bram, Dracula, with an introduction of David Rogers, Wordsworth classics, 1993, p.239
        [7]     Ibid. p. 98
        [8]    Stoker, Bram, Dracula, with an introduction of David Rogers, Wordsworth classics, 1993, p. 349
        [9]     Ibid. p. 175.
        [10]   taken from Professor Veronica Borbely’s unpublished course, mimeos
        [11]   taken from professor Veronica Borbely’s unpublished course, mimeos

Bibliography:

        1.   Bradly, Anthony and Valiulis G. Maryann, Gender and sexuality in modern Ireland, University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.
        2.   Haberstroh, B. Patricia, Women creating women, Contemporary Irish women poets, Attic Press Dublin, 1996.
        3.   Cullingford, Butler, Elisabeth, Gender, sexuality, and Englishness in Modern Irish Drama and Film, taken fromBradley, Anthony, and Valiulis Gialanella , Maryann, Gender and sexuality in modern Ireland, University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.
        4.   Ellis, Peter B., Celtic Women:  Women in Celtic Society and Literature. Grand Rapids, Michigan: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996
        5.   Hogle, Jerrold E., The Cambridge companion to Gothic fiction, Cambridge University Press,2002
        6.   Le Fanu, Sheridan, In a Glass Darkly, Wordsworth Editions,Wave,1995
        7.   Punter, David,  A Companoin to the Gothic , Blackwel Publishers,Oxford, 2000
        8.   Stoker, Bram, Dracula, with an introduction of David Rogers, Wordsworth classics, 1993
        10.  Dracula, the film (1931), with Bella Lugosi, by Bram Stoker adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, a Tod Browning Production , produced by  Carl Laemmle Jr., copyright MCM XXXI by Universal Pictures Corporation.
        

Internet sources:

1. http://www.kheper.net/topics/psychology/Freud.html
2. http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/scheff/14.html
3. http://rnjkings.googlepages.com/consciencefreud.pdf-
4. http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:ptXIPrcGm2YJ:www.wisegeek.com/
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5. .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud#Psychosexual_development

 

THE CRYPTIC MESSAGE AT THOMAS KINSELLA
AND ION BARBU

by Marcela Iuga

        There will always be a gap between generations be those generations biological, be literary, there will always be a fight. But this is just one aspect of the problem we are going to have in mind in order to draw a parallel between two poets. We shall draw a line between two poets, two spaces, and two periods. Kristeva and Derrida would call it an intertextual line or genotext; Brian McHale calls it an intertexual zone: “an intertextual zone […] is constituted whenever we recognize the relations among two or more texts or between specific texts or larger categories such as genre, school, period”[1] But intertextuality can be defined simply as a disseminated idea from a text to another, the two gaining a kind of a twin relation.
        The two poets are Thomas Kinsella, an Irish poet and Ion Barbu, a Romanian poet. Kinsella and Barbu are separated by spaces: West (for Kinsella) and East (the Orient is pictured very well in one of Barbu’s poetic cycle Isarlîc). We seem to be caught in a kind of rushdian dilemma “East or West”. The good news is that both ménage to trespass spaces. Although Kinsella edited The Tàin and is familiarized with Irish mythology his poetry goes over Irish connotations, myths and legends, aiming to more general symbols. Barbu never expressed deep interest for traditional poetry. He extended his wings to the surrounding spaces (Turkey for example Isarlîc being in fact Troy so Barbu returns to legendary times also). Nevertheless his poetry belongs to a hermetic trend because the reader has to look for meaning deeper.
        If we are to make a reference to the period of writing we have to choose Modernism. But first, we have to make clear one thing: no literary current is pure. It will always be preceded by one current that shall stand as an enemy for the new, fresh current. Modernism goes into this pattern also. It is preceded by Symbolism does not deny it but it denies Classicism so all that is old and ancient and comes from that tradition: “The greatest triumph of the greatest poets is today” (W.Whitman) Modernism opens its way to Postmodernism, the most controversial of them all. Being characterized by crises, modernism has as a favourite literary genre the novel. That is because it can largely disseminate the idea of God’s death starting from Nietzsche. The narrator’s perspective changes from the third person to the first, the narrator is not omniscient anymore and the stream of consciousness technique is more and more acknowledged.
        Even though marginalized, poetry has the same ideas: imagism (poetry requires no ornament but a musical phrase); vorticism (many images in one image) and the best characteristic is personism (the poem is a dialogue between you and me): “A poem is best read in the light of every other poems that have been written” (Frank O’Henry).
        Modernism is popular at the beginning and middle of the twentieth century, and that is when Kinsella starts writing, the fifties. So his early poetry is marked by the influence of W.H. Auden and Patrick Kavanagh dealing with Irish landscape, traditional poetry. Of course he reached the heights in the seventies when he adopts American modernism from Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Robert Lowell. His most popular volumes are: Poems, Another September, Downstream, Nightwalker. In the seventies he started his own publishing house: Peppercanister. So, the Peppercanister poems are indeed modernist and contain poems like: Notes from the Land of the Dead (1973 Hen Woman is a part of this cycle), Her Vertical Smile, The Pen Shop, and Men of War from 2007 when Kinsella received the key to the city of Dublin.[2]
        Barbu’s case is a little different. He writes earlier in the century, in the thirties, and starts writing poetry following a bet. Ion Barbu is the penname of Dan Barbilian whose education is actually Mathematics, more specific Geometry. But he had for a friend Tudor Vianu, a literary critic, who said that no mathematician could write poetry. Barbu is the proof he was wrong. Nevertheless Barbu abandons fast the poetry, he returns to geometry inventing what are known today as Barbilian spaces. That’s why he did not evolve as Kinsella. But from a Felix Aderca interview we can discern four poetical cycles: Parnassian, Balcanic, Expressionist and Hermetic. The last is the most important because it stands for the volume Secondary Game (Joc secund) and Uvedenrode. The explication for the title comes from Plato who has started the world’s theory. There is the primarily world of ideas, which is pure. From this world comes our world that is a copy, an imitation. The third world imperfect as it is art’s world, the copy of the copy. The idea is that art has not a pure existence so at least its expression should be “a purer secondary game” (un joc secund mai pur)[3]. In this cycle, that has in centre the idea of wedding the metaphor is combined with mathematics. What results is the miracle of cosmogony itself.
        This miracle coexists in the two chosen poems: Hen Woman and The Dogmatic Egg (Oul Dogmatic).
        Hen Woman is a poetry that can be divided into four parts, each one of them being marked by a star. The first part describes the initial atmosphere. There is a combination of visual images and odorous ones. The time of day is “noon” so end of the day always requiring for a new beginning. The image is that of a still nature and in order to create this the lyrical voice uses a stylistic device and that is the oxymoron “smelled of stillness”[4] This silence is known always to be the calm preceding the storm, in fact the “thunder” which definitely brings to mind violence. The silence gets personified and gives out the expression of his own voice and that is “Hush…”[5] There are two following images that should get our attention: one is of the “black hole/ in a whitewash wall so bright” because it first starts the idea of contradiction, of two opposing powers, Good and Evil, black and white. The second image is that of the clock: “a clock murmured ‘Gong…”[6] that inspires temporality, time running away and implicitly death. And beside there are two adverbials of time/ mood” Too late. Too late”
        The poem introduces four instances that stand between presence and absence: the hen (it might be an ironical but at the same time philosophical problem: which appeared first, the hen or the egg?) the woman (feminine image that will always bring the maternal figure into mind) the lyrical voice ( there are deictic marks all over:” I” “me” “my”) and…the egg “a white egg”. It is insisted upon the image of stillness: “and time stood still/ Nothing moved bird or woman.”[7] Time standing still appears also in Goethe’s Faust where Faust asks time to stop for a moment of happiness. But that is disturbance of an internal order (past- present- future) and is not possible.
        In the second part we can appeal to another visual: that of the “beetle like a bronze leaf” This carries “a ball of dung bigger than its body”. More observations: the little creature that carries something bigger than itself brings to mind the myth of Atlas carrying the Earth on his shoulders but also of Sisyphus and the big rock. Anyway these are both acts of penitence, and Christ’s image while carrying  his cross is of the same order(Atlas, Sisyphus and Jesus are all heroes who sacrificed themselves in order mankind to receive its redemption ). We are also interested in the idea of the little world, the microcosm that lives in the macrocosm. Similar images are used by Medbh McGuckian and Tudor Arghezi (“Soul of mine, transform yourself into a child” – “Fa-te suflete copil”) 
        The lyrical voice is an observer of the whole process of the birth of the egg, he and the hen woman”she”: “I saw the egg has moved a fraction”[8] It’s for the fist time something moves in the picture, and time is “not quite stopped”[9]. The new egg is defined as being” a clean new world” this bringing back the idea of microcosm, and the egg is a whole different entity. The birth being not yet finished we have a whole moving image” It slowly turned and fell/ […] and began its drop to the shore”[10] The process of birth is considered, by the lyrical voice, to be a miracle: “As I watched the mystery completed” and because of that fall into the dream world “dreamlike” This is a Baroque motif “life as a dream” what I have lived could have not been real.
        The story has been apparently simple till now: in a still evening, on a clock signal a woman is late for egg laying. In the end, the lyrical voice and the woman assist the hen in the miracle. The third part is more difficult because we have reached the philosophical ground. The discourse becomes deeply subjective”I”. The lyrical voice rememorizes the moment of birth- romantic device:” I feed upon it still as you see”[11] The mystery of birth is endless for not even imagination can cover that territory: “there is no end to that which is/ not understood, may yet be noted/ and hoarded in the imagination/ in the yolk of being so to speak”[12] And that is a profound, internalised perspective.
        The potential mystery is an idea that also appears in Blaga’s poetry, in the Romanian space: “I do not crush the crown of mysteries of the world” (“Eu nu strivesc corola de minuni a lumii”) or, in the same tradition Nichita Stanescu says “I build the mystery” (eu construiesc misterul). The image of the egg internalizes too, because now we can see the dividing egg”dividing blindly”. Most significantly is that this egg is “twitched, packed with will” It becomes, in this manner, a cosmogony. Because in Indian, Vedish, tradition the universe had no will before starting to come together. But then, because of will, it started its formation. And the image of cosmogony continues with the transformation of the egg from non-being into being: “Something that had- clenched/ in its cave-not been/now was; an egg of being”[13] From this moment on the whole picture is moving, and it gains even a rhythmic, continuous pattern: “a whole year it fell/-as it still falls, for me […] as it will continue to fall, probably until I die”[14] From the non colorful image we pass to an explosion of colors: red, gold, silver, white, yellow. As we can see noble, pure colors: “the red gold beating/ in its silvery womb, /alive as the yolk and white of my eye”[15] Spatiality is abstract” the vast indifferent spaces/ whit which I am empty”, oxymoronic expression, because you cannot be empty with something.
        The first part announces a violent movement that comes into act only in the forth part, birth not being so violent. The egg falls on the ground and is destroyed: “It smashed against the grating/ and slipped down quickly out of sight”[16] The extended moment of birth is compensated by a quick end: “It was over in a comical flash”[17]  The hen woman gets angry at first but then gives out a comment of deep wisdom: “It’s all the one. / There is plenty more where that came from”[18] meaning that the sacrifice of one little life does not matter in the bigger picture, because the egg can recreate itself in the womb again, so life is always possible.
        The last distich is the lyrical voice’s part: “Hen to pan! / It is a simple world”[19] The basic idea is that the universe has internal simple laws that made it last so much time. The macrocosm assists each microcosm in development, mourns for each lost but continues its movement. Each act of existence presupposes sacrifice and suffering. That is how we come into being. The same lyrical voice states in The Messenger that “I am all egg” so this is my birth and maybe the poem is my ars poetica. (A metatexual message)
        Why does Thomas Kinsella belong to William Carlos Williams’ tradition? There is at least one poem that can be compared to Hen Woman: The Red Wheelbarrow. “So much depends/ upon/ a red wheel/ barrow/ gazed with rain/ water/ beside the white/ chickens”[20] Everything is familiar from the setting, stillness of the place to the colours. In fact the image seems to be an Expressionist painting. Still nature, the feeling of trap, lack of freedom:”depends”, interdependence, addiction. The colours are red and white. The geometrical element is “wheel” circle, round, perfection but also repeatability. Kinsella uses the mathematical number “zero” and Barbu a mathematical measurement” the plus pole” as opposed to the minus pole and the wheel too”roata”. Contradiction comes as a handy process. The wheelbarrow is associated with “rain water” and that is a natural element that stands at the basis of life: we, humans, are seventy percent water. It can also bring the idea of mirroring and that is recognition, is reason but is also doubling. The same image can be found in E. A. Poe in The Fall of the House Of Usher: “I reined my horse to the precipitous and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by to the dwelling, and gazed down- but with a shudder even more thrilling than before- upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tee-“[21]
        Romanian literature tried always to recover the losses it had in time. With Ion Barbu this is one step ahead. The poem, The Dogmatic Egg (Oul Dogmatic), can be found in the volume Uvedenrode. The poem starts with a motto trying to define the dogma itself: “The dogma: And the Holy Ghost walked on waters” (“Dogma: Si Duhul Sfânt se purta deasupra apelor”[22]). It develops in ten, blank verse, stanzas. The first stanza gets in translation the personal pronoun He: “He gave to this sad gathering (“A dat acestui trist norod”[23]). This is very important because what is omitted in Romanian is Jesus Christ’s figure itself. The quote states” He gave his apostles bread and vine and sad…” This is what the priest says when he blesses the holy gifts. So it’s a Christian expression. The gift of Jesus is creation itself. But there are two kinds of eggs: life giving “the living egg” (“oul viu”) and sterile” the sterile egg” (“oul sterp”). The egg that is to procreate is “made to be watched in the sun” (“făcut e sa-l privim la soare”[24]). The sun is not only a star that guarantees life, eggs that are to be chickens are kept in the heat, but also death, and Icarus stands as a proof.            
        The new innocent egg: “blameless, new egg” (“Nevinovatul, noul ou”[25]) has to undergo the basic three phases of life: birth, wedding and death “Wedding palace and vault” (“palat de nunta si cavou”[26]). The vault is very similar to the Kinsella”s “cave”, being both closed, protective spaces. The third stanza pictures exactly the image of the womb: the yolk and white are surrounded by the hard material, crusty. It is like a rammerserzälung. The Baroque motif “life as a dream” has in this stanza two traces: “sleeps” (“doarme”) and “dream” (“vis”). Once the setting is ready the egg can start its developing process: the little chicken comes to life thanks to a kiss of the white. The lyrical voice addresses for the first time the human being. He does that because humanity seems to forget that every miracle is worth seeing and appreciated: “om uitător, ireversibil, /Vezi Duhul Sfânt făcut sensibil? / Precum atunci, si azi - întocma/ Mărunte lumi păstrează dogma”[27] Man is a forgetting and irreversible creature. The cosmogony is out of reach since Adam’s fall because he cannot perceive such a miracle. The macrocosm is obvious but the microcosm “the little worlds” can be easily forgotten. So as a reconciliation gesture the lyrical voice offers man, the reader, a symbol- egg/ ou-simbol; symbol of continuous rebirth, of germination, of life.
        The chromatic factor is present here also: red “not the red egg” (‘nu oul roşu”[28]), white, “the developing white of the egg” (“spornicul albus”[29]), yellow “grows in the yolk” (“în gălbenuş/dă roade”. The image of the clock is dual: the clock is “ceasornic fără minutar”[30] / “clock lacking the minute line” but also a “yellow, necessary clock”/ “ceasul galben, necesar[31]” The first image of the clock reflects a timeless minute clock, time is present but is relative, subjective. It is because of that, that we have to fear time. Christian perathology speaks about the limitation of the human being, about time that erases the existence”tempus edax rerum” Time decides when it is the moment to leave”Ce singur scrie când să moară? Şi ou şi lume[32]” That is why man has to live the moment “ carpe diem” and to fear time. So what is man but a reckless creature” om uitător, ireversibil”, “ om şters, uituc”, “ om fără sat, om nerod”. Because of that man will never discover the miracle of life:”Durata-înscrie-în noi o roată/ Întocma dogma[33]”. The dogma is the mystery of life and death.
        There is a last part that stands for a revision: “Încă o dată”/” once again”. Both eggs are to be let enjoy the first moment of existence: “Îl lăsa-n pacea-ntâie a lui”[34]. The sterile egg could be eaten and the life giving egg could se given to the brood-hen. But neither of them would fulfill its beginning: “Ca vinovat e tot făcutul, / Şi sfânt, doar nunta, începutul”[35] The thesis is astonishing: from the first moment that we enter the doors of life we are subjected to permissibility”guilty is the coming into life”. The beginning is saint because the world’s evils haven’t touched us yet.      
        “I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that of his purchases will be life everlasting! –  Which it never can be”.[36] „Because human beings dream of life everlasting […] But most of them want it on earth and not in heaven”.[37] Both fragments belong to Tennessee Williams and they illustrate exactly the central issue discussed by both Kinsella and Barbu: we cannot live forever.

        Notes:
        [1]  Brian McHale Postmodern  Fiction, p.57.
        [2]  From Wikipedia, Thomas Kinsella
        [3]  Ion Barbu, Poezii, p. 67.
        [4]  Patrick Crotty, Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology, p. 160. ( Thomas Kinsella)
        [5]  Op.cit,p.161
        [6]   Idem, p. 161 
        [7]   Idem, p. 161
        [8]   Op .cit, p.162
        [9]   Id:ib
        [10] Idem, p. 162
        [11] Idem, p. 162
        [12] Id:ib
        [13] Idem, p. 162
        [14] Op .cit, p.162       
        [15]  Id:ib
        [16]  Idem, p. 163
        [17]  Id:ib
        [18]  Idem, p. 163
        [19]   Id:ib
        [20]   George McMichael, Anthology of American Literature
        [21]   Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination,p.117
        [22]   Barbu, Ion, Poezii, p.99
        [23]    Op .cit, p.99
        [24]    Idem, p. 99
        [25]    Idem, p. 99
        [26]    Id:ib
        [27]    Op .cit, p.100
        [28]    Idem,p.100
        [29]    Id:ib
        [30]    Idem,p.100
        [31]    Id:ib
        [32]     Id:ib
        [33]     Idem,p.101
        [34]     Idem,p.101
        [35]     Id:ib
        [36]   Cred că motivul pentru care cumpără tot ce poate este că în subconştient are speranţa nebunească că unul dintre lucrurile cumpărate va fi indistructibil – ceea ce e imposibil, Tennessee Williams, op. cit., p. 59, [t.n.].
        [37]   Pentru că oamenii visează la nemurire […] însă majoritatea şi-o doresc pe pământ şi nu în ceruri, T. Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, p. 49, [t.n.]. Bibliography:

1. Barbu, Ion, Poezii, Editura Minerva, 1976.
2. Crotty, Patrick, Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology, Belfast, The Blackstaff Press, 1995.
3. McHale, Brian, Postmodern Fiction, RoutledgeLondon, New York, [s.a.]
4. McMichael, George, Anthology of America Literature,
5. Poe, Edgar, Allan, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Prietenii cărţii, Bucureşti, 1995
6. Williams, Tennessee, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Best American Plays, forth series 1951-1957,edited by John Gassner, Crown Publishers, [s.l], 1958.
7. Wikipedia, Thomas Kinsella

The Identitary Quest of Mary Lavelle

by Narcisa Braşoveanu

        Mary Lavelle (1936) is one of the most interesting novels written by Kate O’Brien, along with The Land of Spices (1942), Without My Cloak (1931), her first novel, The Ante-Room (1934) and Farewell Spain (1937), a travelogue which is highly infused with political aspects.

        Biographical data – narrative universes
        Kate O’Brien is an Irish writer who explored the clash between the human being, more specifically the Irish feminine subjectivity, and the dogmatism of the Catholic religion. She was born in Limerick (the 3rd of December, 1897) within a Catholic family. Her mother, Catherine, died of cancer when Kate was five years old, this event being recorded by her as a dramatic one, an event which turned the course of her life as she was sent by her father to Laurel Hill convent school, joining her sisters. In 1916, when her father died, she won a scholarship to read French and English at University College Dublin wherefrom she graduated in 1919. Afterwards she moved to London where she became a journalist, also translating for The Manchester Guardian. Another important experience in her life was the year she spent in Bilbao, Spain, as the governess for the children of Areilza family. When returning home, in 1923, she married the Dutch journalist, Gustaaf Renier, a marriage which lasted less than a year.
        But Kate O’Brien managed to handle the dramatic experiences of her life in such way as to transform them into art, namely fiction. Thus, she used the above mentioned events in her narrative work, not only for creating a beautiful parallel universe (that of fiction), but also to generate a space of evasion, of escapism within which she could allow her thoughts to be highly subdued to her analytical mind. In other words, the novels represented for her ontological dimensions dedicated to externally stimulated thought and to its deep analysis within the borders of her own subjectivity. If she used the fourteen years spent in Laurel Hill convent school to create The Land of Spices (1942), the biographical elements which permeated Mary Lavelle (1936) are more numerous, connecting various moments of her life. Similarly to Kate’s mother, Mary’s mother also dies when she was very young. Moreover, Mary, as Kate, went to Spain as a governess, but, if the latter spent one year there, the former, due to her intense love experience, left after only several months. And, the most important thing about the Spanish episode is that both the real person and the narrative character spent the same year in this country, namely 1922. another biographical thread refer to the fact that almost all the Spanish that Mary gets to know consider her English accent to be the correct one, and also a very charming one; this may indirectly suggest her three years experience at University College Dublin. Another indirect biographical interference is that of the post–Spanish events, after their returning home: Kate marries Renier, while Mary, still torn between the adulterous, insecure love offered by Juanito and the stable, “rightful” love of her fiancé, John, leaves Spain with the intention of going home and fulfilling the marital plans. From this point of view, it is interesting that, whereas Kate’s destiny seems to be determined, Mary’s destiny is being placed under indeterminacy – the reader is not given Mary’s final choice, he is only presented with her emotional dilemma: Juanito or John.
        Therefore, one can easily see the importance of the biographical data within Kate O’Brien’s narrative work, data which beautifully enriched this novel, generating a fictional entity which seems to be intrinsically connected to the real world.

        Mary’s quest/journey
        Mary, the main character of this eponymous novel is an intricate mixture of inner drives, beginning a journey of self-completion, of self-discovery, of finding an answer to her undefined tumult and restlessness. In fact, the reader is not immediately presented with a clear reason of this escape into Spain and only later does he/she find out, while being the silent witness of Mary’s confession, and experiences, for that matter, that she wanted to see the world, to know its wonders and, consequently, to transform herself from a “green” creature into a mature one. Although she undertakes this journey of acknowledgement with the purpose of being able to compare herself to John, her fiancé – the one who fought the war and saw the world – she actually starts a journey of self-acknowledgement. In fact, the sensation that the reader receives is that of a slow, yet profound immersion into the depths of a human being in search of her own identity made through small discoveries. Thus, the Spanish experience brings a new element into Mary’s existence, namely that of authentic, intense emotions. One can easily observe that, throughout the whole novel there is a gradual display of inner life and feelings, beginning with her arrival in Spain and ending with her hurried departure from this country. Moreover, due to Mary’s acute (self) analysis of thought the reader is, once again, an active witness of the process of transformation to which she is the subject, but also to a certain feature transfer that is oriented from “the Spaniards” towards Mary. If, at the beginning the fragments belonging to Mary’s inner world displayed a distant tone, a tone of estrangement both from herself and from the people she made contact with, trying not to directly express judgments, her thoughts retaining a kind of neutral quality, she gradually starts to behave and think as the Spanish, taking clear sides, where is the case, allowing herself to have opinions and to freely express them, be it inwardly or outwardly; she even gets into emotional conflicts/dilemmas that expose an ethical battle between her religious creed – or rather the creed that have been imposed to her without any direct chance of choosing – and her emotional drives and her subjective impulses.
        Thus, one can notice the differences between the following quotations that mark her transformation as registered by her thoughts: “She would be unobserved, uncherished and, she hoped, unreproved. She had in fact put on a cap of invisibility, from under which, however, she could use her unlearned eyes with circumspection and in peace” (O’Brien: 2006, p.37) – her project of conducting a peaceful existence, away from any type of intense/intensifying experience is contradictorily fulfilled as she discovers the world around and within her; although, before leaving Ireland she and John “agreed that, all things considered, she had better not distress herself by seeing one.” (O’Brien: 2006, p.106), the fact that the friendly and gentle Spaniards seem to attend this kind of traditional “spectacle” stirred her curiosity and made her attend one of these; but the emotional impact was tremendous, the bullfight scene being the one that encapsulates the key-event of her transformation by permitting herself the experience of lush feelings –
        “She was – perhaps this is the easiest phrase – outside herself. […] She was absent-minded as its enactor seemed. Death, so strangely approached, so grotesquely given and taken, under the summer sky, for the amusement of nonentities, death made into an elaborate play […] …all that she had known of herself was shocked, as she expected it to be, by its indefensibility, its utter, cynical cruelty. There was no escape from that...” (O’Brien: 2006, pp.115-116);
        after this freeing scene Mary indulges in feeling without any restrains: she is not shocked when Agatha Conlan declares her love for her and, to her own amazement, she fully understands her; she also understands Rosie O’Toole’s decision to marry a Spanish, Pepito; and, ultimately, she accepts the unethical, adulterous love of  Juanito, a love which contradicts social and religious norms, but a love to which she responds both spiritually and physically –
        “Moreover, there was love’s pure, immense and central delight, which while it did not dim in either brain awareness of past and future, of guilt, and responsibility, desolation and shoddy embarrassment, of the meanness of their own situation and of the world which made it mean, yet held.” (O’Brien: 2006, p.304);
        the final emotion that she experiences, though dramatically intense, is that of a complete acknowledgment of truths, authentic, subjective truths that defy any superimposed rule of society and religion –
        “Yes, like it or not, it was that. Milagros was right. There were truths that were indefensible, truths that changed and broke things, that exacted injustice and pain and savagery, truths that were sins and cruelties – but yet were true and had a value there was no use in defending.” (O’Brien: 2006, p.344).
        From another point of view, Mary’s quest also contains a historiographic element. But the history she presents is a personal one, involving absences and presences; if the former refers to episodes from her life in Ireland, the latter is constructed by her experiences in Spain, their mixture creating a pattern of circular movement (in the case of her past) combined with a linear, though distorted one ( in the case of her present). As a matter of fact, she uses her present contexts for relating to her life in Ireland, thus, creating a comparative narrative study (memoir-like) which acts as a constant anchor to her stable/settled, undisturbed and unproblematic realities. If these episodes of the past are scattered within the chapters of the novels, there is one important chapter that recounts the story of her family, namely The Children (the second one). This fragment is very important as it discloses the fact that the members of her family, supposedly strongly connected by inherent family ties, are wandering through the entire world, trying to make a destiny for themselves – Tom pursues in being a Jesuit, Daniel is a reporter in Leed, Jimmy, after arguing with his father, left for California and her sisters, Jenny and Sheila, were in a Belgian convent. Therefore, Mary seems to have been the exception, but through her travel to Spain, she managed to acquire a sense of self-authenticity.
        In addition to these, Mary’s (self) acknowledgement is also completed by the clash between two variants of the same religion, namely the Catholic religion: the Irish Catholicism, pure and dogmatic, and the Spanish Catholicism, mixed with pagan elements.
        It is interesting that the outcome of the Irish Catholicism is not presented directly, but indirectly, through its effects in building Mary’s consciousness and identity, of course, up to a certain point. Thus, the reader may only be involved into a reconstructive process of this Catholicism by analyzing Mary’s thoughts, ideas and conceptions about life with all that it includes – experiences, emotions, society, objective beliefs (generated by the religious institution) and subjective creeds. The general picture that emerges from this novel is that of a Catholicism of restrains, a harsh religion that did not admit any fault and that imposed to the human being a perfect moral and physical conduct, a religion that allowed no personal intimacy of oneself with his/her own self, that interfered into the most deep and hidden corners of one’s soul. And, the worst thing it was that it did this as an institution and not as an individual belief, disregarding the human being and worshipping the dogmas. From this type of authority Mary tries to escape not only physically, geographically, namely by fleeing from her country, but also spiritually, by discovering her unique ontological coordinates, authenticity of feelings and intensity of the act of living/experiencing life.
        Moreover, her own impulses towards individual freedom are reinforced by the Spanish Catholicism that can be characterized by its flexibility of beliefs, by its lack of strict dogmas, by a beautiful, and popular, symbiosis between the sacrifice of Jesus and the holiness of Saint Mary, on one hand, and the bull fights, an exquisite, aesthetic reunion of life and death, on the other hand.
        Therefore, what Mary turns out to be is a Catholic individual who is torn apart between the teachings of her family (especially aunt Ciccy’s docile behaviour, her submission to Mary’s father) and her drives towards self-assertion. In this context her love with Juanito, her reaction to Agatha’s love and to Rosie’s marriage are the result of this progressive assertion outside and beyond the boundaries of her innate Catholicism. In fact, if one considers at these matters, one may easily ascertain that they may signify a reversed trinity of dogmas, of forbidden emotions: the forbidden, but shared love (Mary and Juanito), the forbidden, but unshared love (Agatha and Mary) and the forbidden marriage, outside one’s national identity (the Irish Rosie O’Toole and the Spanish Pepito). Another symbolic issue that also sustains the individual’s belief over the institutionalized belief is the fact that the love between Mary and Juanito was publicly, though unconsciously, stated by their dance in San Martín market; it is symbolic because Saint Martin was a Peruan saint who also ignored the religious and social norms, defying them by marrying a native freed woman. The same gesture of defiance can be observed with Mary, but its declarative aspect is rather internalized than externalized: it is a declaration made to herself.
        Nevertheless, there is one more element that supports Mary’s subjective process of becoming, namely the narrative technique. This starts with an epistolary form, thus creating a distance between the narrative instances of the actor-narrator, Mary, and the implied reader (Lintvelt: 1994, pp.44-48), offering a triple perspective on her new status, using rather a neutral descriptive tone: she reassures her father that she is fine, she creates for mother Liguori a similar, but shorter version of her letter to her father and, finally, she constructs an extended letter for John within which she enlarges more upon the surroundings than upon her feelings toward him. Furthermore, the following chapters reveal a deeper immersion within her inner life which becomes more dramatic as it heads to its emotional pitch, her love for Juanito, an immersion which also implies the memories of an existence that, although left behind, is made visible/”actualized” for the reader. . From another standpoint, there is a constant shift of the narrative point of view from one character to the other, and from the outside world to the inside world. In the first case, one becomes the alternative confessor of Mary, Agatha, Don Pablo, Juanito and, occasionally, Doña Consuelo and her three daughters, whereas in the second case one witnesses the internal, analytical output of an external synthetic input; for instance, the episode of the corrida generates Mary’s reconsideration of her own self and of (her) religion within a larger frame; then the sight of San Geronimo church inflicts a melancholic pondering on religion and individual destiny; and another such reflexive scene also occurs when Don Pablo sees Mary for the first time, her beauty making him reconsider and review his life principles and the authenticity of his own feelings.
        “He had met beauty, mythical, innocent and shameless. As he thought now of what he saw he closed his eyes. […] Her hair, of goldish brown, was curly and clung to her head like a Greek boy’s. Her blue eyes, boyish too, androgynous, were wide and shy, […] and quite unconscious that her brilliant beauty ravished the evening and rendered a skeptical and easily mannered elderly man, her respectable employer, unable to utter more than one or two sentences before he hurried away in fear from his own sudden, senile folly.” (O’Brien: 2006, pp.66-67).
        Moreover, beside the use of the impersonal third person of the actors-narrators, one may discover, at the level of the succession of the chapters, an unfolding line of both the narrative and Mary’s identitary quest. Thus, the flow is the following: Three Letters – in which the tone is mostly descriptive; The Children, presenting the family of the past, the Lavelles, and of the present, the Areavagas – the new identitary community; Don Pablo and the view upon his liberal spirit; San Geronimo and the Irish perspective on religion; A Corrida, displaying an emotionally intensified pagan experience; A Walk With Milagros, externalizing Mary’s search of her own self; Juanito and the appearance of the forbidden emotion; The Poetry Lesson and the interference of literature within human feeling; Candles at Allera, rendering hints of sacrifice, love and solitude; In the Calle Major, presenting the urban experience of love and religion; A Hermitage and a new religion, that of the emotion; Romance, unveiling the spiritual and physical consumption of love; Good-Bye to Café Aleman and the departure from “the –Irishness-abroad”; The Good Basque Country, offering sights into the Spanish traditional code of values (honour); Anguish of the Breast and the anguish of leaving love behind; Hasta Luego – the hope of renewed feeling(s); A Matador’s Cape – the departure from an authentic existence.

        To conclude with, Mary Lavelle, along with “the strong and sophisticated nun” (Kiberd:1996, p.408) of The Land of Spices, seems to be one of the few heroines created by Kate O’Brien who escape “the introverted routines of family life” (Kiberd:1996, p.408): . she is the subject of a gradual, yet profound process of becoming an authentic individual who freely chooses her own ontological principles – the dramatic kinetic emotions overwhelm the stasis of her spirit.  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary bibliography

1. O’Brien, Kate, Mary Lavelle, Virago Press Ltd, London, 2006.

Secondary bibliography

1. Kiberd, Declan, Inventing Ireland. The Literature of the Modern Nation, Vintage Random House, London, 1996.
2. Lintvelt, Jaap, Încercare de tipologie narativă. Punctul de vedere. Teorie şi analiză, Univers, Bucureşti, 1994.