‘We get all sealed up’: An essay in five deaths

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorCoughlan, Patriciaen
dc.date.accessioned2023-08-28T15:21:51Z
dc.date.available2023-08-28T15:21:51Z
dc.date.issued2021-05en
dc.description.abstractIn January 1941 Elizabeth Bowen, struggling to complete Bowen's Court, wrote to Virginia Woolf: ‘the last chapter seems to, or ought to re-write retrospectively all the rest of the book’, and also that she felt ‘despair about my own generation … we don't really suffer much but we get all sealed up’. I approach these two remarks as structuring ideas and as connected. Drawing on recent research on the affective dimensions of history, I examine the management of emotion in Bowen's elite class and period, entailing the systematic blockage of conscious suffering and outward displays of feeling. In this frozen war midwinter, she saw that the conclusion of her family history must decisively reject the trajectory of what had gone before. Would this painfully break the ‘seal’ of this last Bowen's tacit acceptance of settler values? The essay is in five episodes, four about a death in or near Bowen's experience, one in her fiction. Each adds a layer to my analysis of these associated questions and their significanceen
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationCoughlan, P. (2021) ‘“We get all sealed up”: an essay in five deaths’, Irish University Review, 51(1), pp. 9–23. https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2021.0492.en
dc.identifier.doi10.3366/iur.2021.0492en
dc.identifier.eissn2047-2153en
dc.identifier.endpage23en
dc.identifier.issn0021-1427en
dc.identifier.issued1en
dc.identifier.journaltitleIrish University Reviewen
dc.identifier.startpage9en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/14882
dc.identifier.volume51en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherEdinburgh University Pressen
dc.relation.urihttps://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2021.0492en
dc.rights© Edinburgh University Press. This is an Author’s Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in Irish University Review. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2021.0492en
dc.subjectIrish literatureen
dc.subjectElizabeth Bowenen
dc.subjectBiographyen
dc.subjectMourningen
dc.subjectAnglo-Irishen
dc.subjectEmotionen
dc.subjectIrelanden
dc.subjectWomenen
dc.title‘We get all sealed up’: An essay in five deathsen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Coughlan Bowen five deaths IUR 2021.pdf
Size:
90.78 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Accepted version
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
license.txt
Size:
2.71 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download
Collections
English - Journal Articles