Characterization

Characterization is quite simply the study of characters in the novel. In AW, the main characters are members of the same family, the Morans. The novel can be considered as a saga since there are very few characters outside the family except Jimmy McQuaid (1), Rose's family, Jimmy Lynch, the postman (24), Ryan, the "observer" (163), Mr Rodden, the Protestant neighbour (163) or Annie and Lizzie (25), the only characters whose patronym is not known. Concerning names, some clues are given gradually : they enable the reader to understand that Moran, the pater familias is called Michael (Cf. p.11). Father and son are both called Michael Moran and, interestingly enough, the son looks like his father and gradually becomes his alter ego : about Michael, the narrative has it that "some gestures and mannerisms were clearly taken from the father but his nature was not dark" (170) and Michael is in love with a girl, because (he said) : "I never met anybody before who made me feel important" (171). His ego needs to be flattered. Love is, for him, a matter of pride and self-conceit. Likewise, in his relationship with Nell, "he was fifteen years of age and commanded the world" (103). In this, he looks like his father. On Moran's funeral, Michael speaks "combatively" (182) which has something aggressive, like his father's tone when he spoke. With his father, he spoke "resentfully" (94). Several clashes are noticeable either between father and children or between husband and wife but, in any case, Moran always takes part in it. The atmosphere of the house depends on his mood and he's really at the centre of the family circle. The subject of the very first sentence is "Moran", which is quite symptomatic of the part he is to play in the novel. Repeatedly, he shows an interest in anyone but himself : he had never been able to go out from his shell of self (12) ; p.56, his "self-absorption" is mentioned, and through various details that may pass unnoticed, the narrator underlines the same defects in his children who, again, look like their father : Michael and Nell talk together and Nell "looked at his childish egotism" (110). Likewise, Sheila is "self-centered" too (8) and ironically, Moran blames his elder son, Luke, for having no thought for anybody except himself (35). This same page is relevant concerning Moran's self-importance : his narcissistic behaviour is obvious a few lines above :

Moran ate alone in front of the big sideboard mirror (35), and p.40 : he went back to the shaving mirror. Don't forget that when he dies, the family covers every mirror (180). The mirror is clearly assimilated to Moran. Moran is a hubristic characterand this pride is at the source of his quarrel with McQuaid. The latter's remark : some people just cannot bear to come in second (22) is quite explicit and echoed by the narrator's remark later : he would not take a lesser place (37). This narcissistic behaviour is to be paralleled with the relationship he has with his double, the reproduction of himself, that is his son : there is something insane about it. As a widower, Moran sleeps with Michael, strokes him and tries to relieve his own sexual needs with him : this incestuous homosexual relationship is alluded to p.39 :

the boy was always more uncomfortable with these essays in tenderness than any sudden harshness. He sat up immediately in the bed to listen.

"They're up", he announced. "They're all up. Do you want me to draw the curtain, Daddy ?"

- "No. Not yet", Moran said but the boy had already drawn free from the kneading hand and was struggling into his clothes (39).

This is reminiscent of similar scenes in The Dark. These attempts make Michael loathsome about any physical movement towards his father : the boy touched the stubble more than the lips before backing away (118). For boys, it seems to be impossible to live with Moran ; that is why they leave. Luke sums it up clearly : only women could live with Daddy (133).

Narcissism is obviously linked to homosexuality and it is because Moran suffers from loneliness that he does so (he is not homosexual otherwise), he simply uses his son as an ersatz. Once he is married, he no longer sleeps in his son's bed and no longer looks at himself in the mirror. As Laplanche puts it in Vie et Mort en Psychanalyse :

Le narcissisme est un investissement libidinal de soi, un amour de soi - thèse qui apparemment n'a rien pour étonner - ; mais cet investissement libidinal de soi passe nécessairement chez l'homme par un investissement libidinal du moi ; et, troisième thèse, cet investissement libidinal du moi est inséparable de la constitution même du moi humain (...) Le narcissisme est vite repéré par les sexologues et par les analystes comme élément constitutif des perversions et d'abord de la perversion homosexuelle (...) <il s'agit d'un> repli de la libido : un repli sur la vie fantasmatique - ce que Jung dénomme "introversion" - et un repli sur cet objet privilégié qu'est le moi. (107, 109).

 Moran is so proud of himself that when Mr Rodden fixes the broken pins, he drives the tractor very fast "as if he was determined to put Rodden's adjustments to the test" (164). Not only is he self-absorbed, but he also strives to underestimate the others' gifts and successes.

He really takes himself for some kind of god, Jupiter for example, since the different images used by the narrator in his description of Moran's fits of anger are similar to claps of thunder : p.94, Moran has just spoken with Sheila about Michael ; he said "I may need your help to bring him to his senses" and the narrative goes on : "'to bring him once and for all to his senses' was like far-off thunder that could promise any sort of weather (94). He is a tyrannical father whose house is described as his realm on which he reigns as a despot, without sharing his power. When he is not working in his fields, he is sitting as "a king" (the term is to be found p.12 & 37) in the middle of the room on a car chair, a preposterous throne well-adapted to a miserly man who does not miss anything but who lives as a destitute. Around him, his subjects are busy, worrying about his comfort, fearing his dreadful changes moods and his uncontroled violence. Order reigns in Great Meadow and the tyrant keeps on reminding his subjects of their duties of obedience and the central place he owns. He is really the center of the family circle. Their family is described as a "closed circle" (101 & 171) and in its middle, the father acts like a magnet, attracting all that turns around him :

No matter how far in talk the sisters ventured, they kept returning, as if to a magnet, to what Daddy would like or dislike, approve of or disapprove of (131). Furthermore, the title of the novel is quite relevant and symptomatic : who is amongst women but Moran himself ? Dying, Moran is still at the center of the circle : they were all gathered around him (180). But once dead, Rose becomes the center of the circle : Rose, surrounded by the girls , left the graveside (183). Nevertheless, he had always been at the very living center of all parts of their lives (183). In fact, Moran's power on his family was so great that his family has become the extension of his self :

All his dealings had been with himself and that larger self of family which had been thrown together by marriage or accident (12). You can also read p.22 : That larger version of himself - his family. This is reminiscent of Spinoza's theory (Ethique) which has it that any substance can not be divided : Les parties dans lesquelles la substance serait divisée retiendront la nature de la substance (children look like their father and retain his nature, to a certain extent) ... d'une seule substance, plusieurs substances pourront être formées. Family is some kind of unity divided into several parts. It is to maintain this unity that Moran compels his family to say the rosary every day : they say the family that prays together stays together (137).

Family is to be seen as a jigsaw puzzle which is nonsensical and meaningless if it is not a whole ; the parts alone are quite useless :

Beneath all differences was the belief that the whole house was essentially one. Together they were one world and could take on the world. Deprived of this sense they were nothing, scattered, individual things (145).

Strength lies in union and unity whereas multiplicity is no good. It is because Moran has always strived to create deep unity in his family - and he is quite angry with Luke precisely because he destroys this unity - that at the end of his life, his daughters feel that he is "such an integral part of their lives" (177). Moreover, the fusion is so deep that at the end of the novel, it was as if each of them in their different ways had become Daddy (183). Communion entails metamorphosis. This man is really the protagonist of the novel. There is a huge number of examples illustrating his authority, his aggressivity, and this authority is strengthened by the framework of the novel which is nearly always located in Great Meadow. His daughters are never depicted in their own houses. The closed universe of the Morans spreads on the whole book and even when they are far from home, the children are motivated either by desire or refusal to go back to their father's house. As adults, they spend their lives coming and going between their houses and their father's home : the girls need their father's agreement before marrying, before buying a house and they hope for his blessing when they show him their own children : they began to be in Great Meadow more than in their own homes (178). That is why we do not know anything about Luke, except his obstinacy never to come back ; Michael, whose love affairs are minutely described, is nothing but a silhouette once he leaves home. But his destiny is different from his brother's in so far as he reconciles with his father. As for the three girls, they are mostly defined by their comings and goings to their father's house : pp.77, 93, 130, 142, 168, 169, 177... To quote a sentence from The Barracks, the road away becomes the road back. So, in spite of the tyranny of a father who bullied them in their childhood, who violently expelled one of his sons, threatened the second one with a weapon, prevented one of his daughters from becoming a doctor as she wished, reduced his wife to a slave, the Morans prefer to forget these bad memories to go on being led by the nostalgia of original home:

Forgotten was the fearful nail - biting exercise Monaghan Day had always been for the whole house ; with distance it had become large, heroic, blood-mystical, somthing from which the impossible could be snatched (2).

As G. Bachelard writes in Poétique de l'Espace : Les souvenirs du monde extérieur n'auront jamais la même tonalité que les souvenirs de la maison (26). What is the profit for these characters who, instead of blossoming far from the tyrannical violence of their father, come back joyfully to submit themselves to his power ? Why does the text insist on their incapacity to exist outside their birthplace ? Great Meadow is a bubble that prevents them from growing but in which they feel safe. Characters find their identities only in their connection with Great Meadow : the repetition of "but together" (2) highlights this question of unity (Cf. p.2). As adults, they idealize this family connection and are completely blind about their father's personality. Yet he always acts or speaks sharply (18), tersely (125), drily (138), aggressively (49), fiercely (39), acidly (54), angrily (163). By the same token, he is always denying, refusing and is really assimilated to negativity : you often have short negative sentences about Moran at the beginning of the novel :

p.18 : Moran did not answer,

p.19 : Moran did not laugh,

p.20 : Moran did not protest.

You also have many examples during the barn dances (36-38). In this, his son Luke resembles him since he keeps on refusing to go to Great Meadow.

His miserliness and his relation with money on the whole is also one of his major defects : he refuses to give money to his son, reproaches his wife with spending too much, bears in mind the sum he had to spend for his daughter's wedding and, when he visits her house, just says : It must have all come to money (151). Ironically enough, Rose chooses the most expensive coffin, which brings about someone's remark. In any reaction or word by Moran, there seems to be an absence of feeling, something mechanical. Besides, he liked mechanical things (46) and by dint of working with machines, he is absorbed by them and nearly becomes one of them : "you'd think the tractor and Daddy were parts of one another", Rose said (161). In his relation with people, he is very harsh : he breaks with McQuaid, beats his children. When Rose's mother tells them : "People say he used to beat ye" (34), they answer : "No... now and again when we were bold, but like any house". Shame as much as love prompted the denial (34). This word "denial", introduced by the narrator, gives reason to the old woman and implies that they are beaten indeed. Furthermore, this is clearly illustrated in Moran's clash with Michael : "he seized him and struck him violently about the head" (92). Last, when he tells him : "I want you to go to your room, take off your clothes and I'll see you there in a few minutes" (112), it is to whip him, a scene which is paralleled with the opening one in The Dark. Interestingly enough, Moran often uses ironical, sarcastic phrases or words when he speaks about Luke. Indeed, at the beginning, Luke is referred to as "that gentleman's body" (51), "his lordship" or "your man" (66) as if Moran implied that his son suffered from superiority complex. But what is interesting is that Michael, the second son, repeats his brother's story, since he becomes rebellious in his turn and is called "that gentleman" (93) by his father too, a term he uses again five pages after (98), but this time, talking about Luke and then, "that gentleman" which is to be picked up twice (112 & 120) again deal with Michael. Here again, his two sons are like one and people seem to go by pairs in the book. The father is the only unique element that resists any union and avoids binarity.

The relationship he has with his daughters seems to be much better, but it is described as being "one way" :

Then, in a sudden flash that he was sometimes capable of, he acknowledged his daughters' continuing goodwill and love, love that usually he seemed inherently unable to return (6).

Furthermore, he does not seem to be warmer as a grandfather than as a father since Sheila finally decides not to take her children with her to Great Meadow any more. It must be noticed that it is the first time in McG's fiction that there is a third generation.

With women now and with his wives, his power is always shown : it is interesting to notice that you cannot find the least clue or track from the dead mother in the house. She seems to be forgotten, to have passed unnoticed, silently, without leaving any tracks but children. With Rose, Moran argues twice in the book (54-56 & 69-71), two passages which will be explained in TD ; one of the disputes ends with when he got into bed he turned his back energetically to Rose (56). Yet, unlike Moran, Rose is quite a positive character. She seems to be easy-going, helpful and loving. She is clever and careful: for example, she understands that it is better to attract children in her mother's house before accepting to go to Great Meadow. But, once in the family, Moran still contests the legitimacy of her place in the house : we managed well enough before you ever came round the place (69). It is by slavish submission, through restless activities and a total resistance to her own desires and personality that she gradually manages to acquire recognition in the house. It would never be over but Rose's place in the house could never be attacked or threatened again (73). Waking up before others, Rose is the perfect home-maker, who is described lighting the fire, rubbing and painting, making the walls clearer, planting a pleasant garden where there was nothing but grass. She paints the house several times (Cf p.48 & 77). She embodies change. Nevertheless, Moran soon disrupts her enthusiasm : he cannot bear her going to her mother's house : Any constant going out to another house was a threat (68). Of course, he fears that Rose might give things from Great Meadow to her family, he is also afraid of her telling them about what happens in his house and he is afraid that she shuns his grasp, for leaving the house means to deny the father's sovereignty ; it is illustrated by Moran's reaction to Luke's departure. In fact, Moran's power on Rose is so strong that she gradually loses ground and is forced to submit to his will. This is conspicuous when she integartes his words and repeats them : when they discuss about their wedding, she uses with her family the same arguments as those he had used with her. By the same token, when Moran says about Maggie : She'll have a roof over her head as long as I'm above ground (49), Rose, who does not want to thwart him, says the same thing : this place will always be here for her to come home to as long as I breathe (50).

By dint of annihilating herself in front of her husband, Rose becomes "free of all self-assertiveness" (55), that is a real slave who acts "abjectly" (54) : they were mastered, can be read p.46 concerning Rose and Moran's daughters. This deliberate slavery is reminiscent of an old French treaty written by Etienne de la Boétie : le Discours de la Servitude Volontaire (you have the phrase "voluntary slavery" p.65) in which he said - he was a friend of Montaigne's, lived in the 16th century, so his language has something obsolete - :

A parler à bon escient, c'est un extrême malheur d'être sujet à un maître, duquel on ne se peut jamais assurer qu'il soit bon, puisqu'il est toujours en sa puissance d'être mauvais quand il voudra (...) je ne voudrais sinon entendre comme il se peut faire que tant d'hommes (...) endurent quelquefois un tyran seul, qui n'a puissance que celle qu'ils lui donnent ; qui n'a pouvoir de leur nuire, sinon qu'ils ont pouvoir de l'endurer ; qui ne saurait leur faire mal aucun, sinon lorsqu'ils aiment mieux le souffrir que lui contredire (...) voir un million d'hommes servir misérablement, ayant le col sous le joug, non pas contraints par une plus grande force, mais aucunement enchantés et charmés par le nom seul d'un, duquel ils ne doivent ni craindre la puissance, puisqu'il est seul, ni aimer les qualités, puisqu'il est en leur endroit inhumain et sauvage (...) Mais, ô bon Dieu ! que peut être cela ? Comment dirons-nous que cela s'appelle ? Quel malheur est celui-là ? Quel vice, ou plutôt quel malheureux vice ? Voir un nombre infini de personnes non pas obéir, mais servir ; non pas être gouvernés mais tyrannisés (DSV 131-134).

When you read p. 161 : Before the marriage Maggie had been little more than a drudge round the house. Rose set her free. It clearly implies that, after marriage, Rose has become the drudge. This book is really an interesting sociological document concerning the female condition of the time. You can also read somewhere else that the narrator speaks of their acceptance of human servitude (79). Once Rose and Moran are retired, the narrative has it clear about their working conditions before : they did not need to slave at land any longer (172). Anyway, it must be borne in mind that Moran does not marry out of love, unlike Rose, but just to avoid loneliness and have a slave at home. A passage makes it clear :

he saw each individual member gradually slipping away out of his reach. Yes, they would eventually all go. He would be alone. That he could not stand. He saw with bitter lucidity that he would marry Rose Brady now. As with so many things, no sooner had he taken the idea to himself than he began to resent it passionately (22).

Anyway, the charcters are far from an equal relationship between man and woman. The short description of McQuaid with his wife (p.13) is a good illustration. You see the husband is at home to sleep, eat and yell and his speech is strewn with imperative forms. I remind you that Moran, on his death bed, still gives an order to his family : "Shut up !" (180) and often acts with Rose as McQuaid with his wife :

God, O God, O God, did she not know anything ? Look at the holes in these socks. "Where, O God, is that woman now ? Has a whole army to be sent out to search for you whenever you're needed ?" She did not try to defend herself. "Coming, Daddy. Coming", she would call, often arriving breathless. Not once did she protest at the unfairness (68-69).

Likewise, Moran's wedding is as he wants it to be and the problem is that the wife does not have a say : she is as silent as children. During disputes, Rose prefers to shut up and go away rather than arguing. She assumes her slavish role : She was glad to do whatever he wished (31). Yet, Moran despises women, but materially depends on them : that is why he remarries. In this, Michael resembles him : From Moran he inherited a certain contempt for women as well as a dependence on them (91).

The image of woman in this society is really contemptible. Another example : <Moran> did not respect Sean. Now he despised him for running to a woman with his story (158). Anyway, Moran's sons-in-law are two good-for-nothings : the first one, Mark O'Donoghue does not assume his responsibility as a father. He is an alcoholic and spends his money in bottles. Maggie, as her own father, is then obliged to be more authoritative and will probably assume the role her father had in Great Meadow. The second one, Sean Flynn, Sheila's husband, seems to be a lazy guy who benefits from the civil service because he earns money without doing any work. His laziness is conspicuous p.157 : Sean expected to be liked without effort. He answered Moran lazily. His answers are very short, laconic (as if it was tiring to speak more and find arguments). The sentence "Flynn defended as well as he was able" (157) implies he is not able of doing much... and here again, it is his wife, a worthy daughter of her father, who takes his defence and argues with Moran. The third girl, who remains a spinster, Mona, shows her authority too. The five children really look like their father. It is visible in the description of girls p.66 :

<Mona> was extremely stubborn (...) once she took up a position - or got caught in one - she was obstinately immovable and this had often brought her into conflict with Moran (66).

As for Luke, as I said before, we hardly know anything about him, except his conflict with Moran. His sentimental life is not described. His professional one is hazy and he effectively appears for the first time in the novel at its end (p.143). Michael seems to be much more open ; he is frank, natural, laughs easily and often cries too. He always shows his feelings. His evolution is clearly presented :

- His father beats him when he comes back late and he reacts as a child : "he hit me", the boy sobbed (93).

- Then, as a teenager, there is something ambivalent about him : he is both a man and a child : He was poised on the blurred height, as eager to come down and be cradled and fussed over as to swagger and tomcat it out into the wild (95) or Michael suffered keenly the incongruity of his position - a man with a woman by the sea in the early day and now a boy on his knees on the floor (109). His liaison with Nell is precisely a way of giving up his childhood : she received him as if he were both man and child (114).

- And then we can guess that he has grown mature and a man when his father orders him to go up to his room to be flogged : So quiet and authoritative was Moran's voice that Michael actually moved to go to the room ; suddenly he realised what he was being asked to do and stopped.

"No !" the boy shouted in fear and outrage (112).

The evolution of his maturity is clearly and progressively depicted in the novel.

The other characters are not really described, except a few lines such as those concerning the protestant man, Mr Rodden (163), because Moran's family lives on its own in a closed circle. They do not welcome or visit anyone. That is why the real characters are just members of the same family. The reader is not allowed to get out of the house either, to a certain extent.