“Violence and the Constitution of the Novel”

Hello everybody and welcome to my first official Irish related blog. Wow, what an essay, and by that I mean, Holy Confusing! After completing reading “Violence and the Constitution of the Novel” by David Lloyd, a very long and arduous article I might add, to say that I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. I felt like the author purposefully used vocabulary that only about ten people in the world understand to make it way more ambiguous than it needed to be. I am not going to lie; I looked up at least fifty words and still had no idea what he was talking about. I felt like the essay was in another language with all the deciphering I had to do!

Now that I got all of that ranting out of my system I can get to my interpretation of the essay, which focused on the stereotype of violence in Ireland.

The one thing that really stuck out to me when reading the essay was the first line. “With the possible exception of greenness, no quality has more frequently and repetitiously been attributed to Ireland than violence.”(125) This line really surprised me and confirmed by prior confession of knowing absolutely nothing about Ireland because I, like the line states, attribute greenness to Ireland almost instinctively when I think about the country, while on the other hand I would have never guessed to attribute Ireland to violence. To read that violence is attributed to Ireland almost as frequently as the color green really changed my perspective and opened my eyes to the history of Ireland. Reading further I found that this perceived connection between Ireland and violence is one of the biggest stereotypes attributed to Ireland, historically as well as in its literature.

“…while traditional accounts of Irish history, historical as well as literary, constantly stress the endemic and excessive violence of the culture, the more detailed studies of agrarian disturbances tend to suggest that actual levels of violence were far lower than such representations imply.” (141) Understanding the true level of violence in Ireland compared to that in other countries is based on your perception of violence in general.

Tom Bartlett, writer of “An End to Moral Economy,” sheds light on the distinction between agrarian disturbances and disturbances stemming from military intervention. This distinction between the two types of violence showcases the inconsistency of representation. Even though neither type of violence can be said to be more violent than the other, disturbances stemming from military intervention were seen as state-sanctioned and so it “ceases to be violence insofar as bloodshed is subordinated to the founding of the state,”(126) while agrarian disturbances, also known as local outrages, were seen as savage. This brings to light the double standard that is held in differentiating violence in Ireland compared to that in other countries. Violence in Ireland was caused more by land than by food, which in the eyes of the British, made them archaic.

Accounts of violence in Ireland were not only exaggerated in its history, but also in its writing. The volatility of Irish society, and the stereotype of its violence, plays a major role in one of the reasons that Irish literature is characterized as inadequate. The continual eruption of violence in Ireland prevented writers from providing compelling resolutions, which were very much apparent in English literature at the time.

After reading “Violence and the Constitution of the Novel” and acquiring a better understanding of violence in Ireland and its stereotype, I really feel like I grasped a greater knowledge of Irish history and writing. And although I will never fully understand all that I read, or half of it for that matter, I feel that what I have taken away from the essay will really help me in understanding the backgrounds of the novels that we will be reading this semester.