Professional Documents
Culture Documents
“The high windows were curtainless [...] exhausted by Sunshine, the backs of the crimson chairs were a thin light
orange; a smell of camphor and animals drawn from skins on the floor by the glare of morning still hung like dust on
the evening chill” (p.9-10)
• Characters are portrayed as Anglo Irish landowners who tried to
maintain their accustomed behaviour patterns in the midst of a
threatening political situation. They do not take sides about politics,
but comment on the acts of violence and restriction around them.
• They see themselves as different from the English but also apart from
the local Irish cottagers and Catholics. They attempt to be friendly
with both sides. The girls all dance with the British soldiers and worry
over being seen as too Irish (and old fashioned) or maybe not Irish
(and charming) enough and wonder what being Irish means at all,
especially in the eyes of the English.
• Generation gap between those born in the 19th century and those in
the 20th mingling with the Irish tensions:
“Driving home… Lady Naylor told them of a discovery she had made. Mrs. Carey, also, did not understand modern young
people. They seemed, Mrs. Carey had said, to have no idealism, no sense of adventure, they thought so much of their own
comfort… since the War they had never ceased mouching. She herself had had a deep sense of poetry; she remembered going
to sleep with Shelley under her pillow”. (p. xx)