THE SEA INSIDE1

(Metaphoric images of the sea in Mary Lavins short stories At Salygap and The Great Wave)

Mary Lavin (10 June 1912 25 March 1992) was a noted Irish short story writer and novelist. She is regarded as a pioneering female author in the traditionally male-dominated world of Irish letters. Mary Lavin was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts, in 1912, the only child of Tom and Nora Lavin, an immigrant Irish couple. She attended primary school in East Walpole until the age of ten, when her mother decided to go back to Ireland. Initially, Mary and Nora lived with Nora's family in Athenry in County Galway. Afterwards, they bought a house in Dublin, and Mary's father too came back from America to join them. Mary attended Loreto College, a convent school in Dublin, before going on to study English and French at University College Dublin (UCD). She taught French at Loreto College for a while. As a postgraduate student, she published her first short story, 'Miss Holland', which appeared in the Dublin Magazine in 1938. Tom Lavin then approached Lord Dunsany, the wellknown Irish writer, on behalf of his daughter and asked him to read some of Mary's unpublished work. Suitably impressed, Lord Dunsany became Mary's literary mentor. In1942, Mary Lavin published her first book. Tales from Bective Bridge, a volume of ten short stories about life in rural Ireland, was a critical success and went on to win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. That same year, Lavin married William Walsh, a Dublin lawyer. Over the next decade, the couple had three daughters and moved to a farm they purchased in County Meath. Lavin's literary career flourished; she published several novels and collections of short stories during this period. Her first novel The House in Clewe Street was serialized in the Atlantic Monthly before its publication in book form in 1945.

Paraphrasing an Amenabar movie title Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside)

In 1954, William Walsh died. Lavin, her reputation as a major writer already wellestablished, was left to confront her responsibilities alone. She raised her three daughters and kept the family farm going at the same time. She also managed to keep her literary career on track, continuing to publish short stories and winning several awards for her work, including the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1961 and an honorary doctorate from UCD in 1968.Some of her stories written during this period, dealing with the topic of widowhood, are acknowledged to be among her finest. Lavin remarried in 1969. Michael Scott was an old friend from Mary's student days in University College. He had been a Jesuit priest in Australia, but had obtained release from his vows from Rome and returned to Ireland. The two remained together until Scott's death in 1991. In 1992, Lavin, by now retired, was elected Saoi by the members of Aosdana for achieving 'singular and sustained distinction' in literature. Aosdna is an affiliation of creative artists in Ireland, and the title of Saoi one of the highest honours in Irish culture. Mary Lavin died in a Dublin nursing home on March 25, 1996.1 The short-stories, that we are going to tackle, are the leading stories of her volumes: At Sallygap and Other Stories (1947) and The Great Wave and Other Stories (1961): At Sallygap and The Great Wave. The stories line is built on the same principle: there are two central characters whose story is being told through flashbacks from the past. The central character of At Sallygap is Manny Ryan. Considered one of the authors most complex characters, Mannys evolution of discontent can be noticed throughout the story: Take the story At Sallygap. It is on the old Irish theme of saying goodbye, of leaving for a better life abroad. A weak young man who belongs to a band is off to Paris on the Dublin mail boat with his friends, but at last moment cannot bear to leave his girl waving on the quay. He scrambles back down the gangway. His palls throw his violin to him [] Henceforth he is the girls prisoner and we shall see him turn into a meek dealer whose only freedom is to go to farms on Dublin mountains to collect eggs every now and then. Up to Sallygap he goes and one day makes a mild, but, for him, ecstatic gesture, by missing the buss and walking back home four hours late.( his

Apud Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

wife is waiting for him) She despises her husband for having given up his freedom for her. She is bored with him1 The other character building up a story is an ecclesiastical figure: a Bishop. He is on the sea, on his way to visit the diocese of his birth place village. The Bishop, described as an almost narcissistic person, rememorizes an event from the past, when the young boy called then Jimeen makes his first journey on the sea. His fishing partner is another young man, future priest, called Seoineen. He returns in the little fishing village, and exactly before the storm takes the boat on the sea. The experience is described as traumatic; the sea swallows a few fishermen lives, but the two, young, inexperienced boys survive. But Seoineens mental health seems forever damaged. He becomes alienated. A central, repeating, motif in both of these short-stories is the sea. The life of those who live by the sea is influenced by it. The sea, as Ireland itself, becomes a mother, a protector but also a lover that requires certain sacrifices. In the dictionary of symbols the sea is closely connected to the symbols of the water and the ocean. The sea represents the dynamics of life itself because of the continuous movement of advance and withdrawal (flux-reflux). It is the place of birth (see Venus), of conceiving, of becoming, of revival. Psychologically, the symbol of the sea is associated with the images of the subconscious, an intermediary state between formal and informal realities. Thats why the sea stands between uncertainty and doubt, life and death. The ancient Jewish writers say that the sea is Christs creation. The third day of the genesis is dedicated to the creation of the earth and of the sea. So, as one of its creation it must obey to its creator, which the sea does: in a biblical episode from the New Testament Jesus Christ goes sailing on the sea with his apostles. He falls asleep, a storm begins and they ate afraid for their life. When Jesus wakes up peace is restored, because its creator can walk on the sea like on the ground. Only Peter does not have faith that he can do that and falls in the sea. The sea, in this way, becomes the symbol of faith.

Pritchett, Introduction to Mary Lavin Collected Stories, p.x

In the same spirit, in all Irish texts the water is an element submitted to the druids, which have the power to bind and to unbind. In Strabons opinion, the druids pointed out that, at the end of the world there shall be the Kingdom of fire and water. So the circularity of the world is clear.1 In the story of the trip at Sallygap, the reader is faced with the image of Dublin as a protected space. The original Irish name is dubl linn meaning the black pool. The citys image is associated to the vicinity of the Irish Sea: Dublin was all exposed [] the sea that half circled this indistinct city seemed as gray, as motionless as air.
2

The Gothic architecture of Dublin

brings back the image of faith itself, because of the spires and steeples that rose up out of the blue pools of distance below looked little better then dark thistles rising up defiantly in a pale pasture3 This is interpreted in a neo-Baroque way. Modern man, that has lost his faith, cannot have peace so he builds up these huge shrines, arching towards the sky. This becomes his sacrificial gesture, his atonement. There are three images of reflection in the water. The first is a chain reflection: sky, city, sea. The city is an axis mundi between the sea and the sky: the dark hills and the pale sky and the city pricking out of its shape upon the sea with starry lights filled him with strangely mingled feelings of sadness and joy.4 The next images both rely on the eyes metaphorical mirroring. Mannys eyes suffer a mutation from light to dark: Only the eyes were different. The eyes of the photograph were light in color; [] The eyes of the older Manny were dark. They had a depth that might have come from sadness5 Annies eyes are daring, threatening, and static: Her eyes were greener than ever. They used to remind him of the Sea at Howth They were the same color still, but now they reminded him suddenly of the green water under the landing stage at Dunlaoghaire. And as the sticky sea had that day been flecked with splinters of a broken fiddle, Annies eyes above him were flecked with malevolence.6 The most representative image is that of the sea and the music that is fiddle or violin. The two merge together in an everlasting symphony: I get to thinking of the sea and the way it was that day, with all the dirt lapping up and down on it and the bits of the fiddle looking like bits
1 2

Chevalier, James, Gheerbrant, Alain, Dicionar de simboluri,p.115 Mary Lavin Collected Stories, p. 16 3 Id:ib 4 Idem,p.26 5 Idem,p.18 6 Idem,p.36

of an old box.7 The fiddle and Manny look almost the same because of their delicacy. The day the fiddle dies; Mannys spirit seems to go with it: His palls on the boat throw his violin to him. Farcically but with what symbolism- it smashes on a stanchion. There he is. The question of escape is over.2 The Great Wave starts with the same artistic image, of the landscape- the island: Its familiar shapes were coming into focus; the great high promontory throwing its purple shade over the shallow fields by the shore, the sparse white cottages, the cheap cement pier, constantly in need of repairs. And again the gothic architecture: the plain cement church, its spire standing alone standing out against the sky, bleak as a cranes neck and head.3 The sea is not seen as a calm entity as it was at the beginning. Jimeen is the son of a woman widowed by the sea. His father was killed by the sea: That was the worst of being an only child, and the child of a sea widow into bargain.4 Seoineen recognises the sea as a familiar ground, because the people on the island were fishermen, therefore sea people: God! Isnt it good to be out on the water! 5 The sea becomes agitated and the storm gradually takes in. The other boats begin to withdraw, but the boys remain. That is the moment when the disaster begins. The whole scenery is described as apocalypticalsee the druids opinion- : As Jimeen rose up to its full height to throw the net wide out, there was a sudden terrible sound in the sky over him, and the next minute a bold of thunder went volleying overhead, and with it, in the same instant it seemed, the sky was knifed from end to end with a lightning flashGods Cross!...Its maybe the end of the world6 There is another moment that can be compared to a biblical one: Moses Sea splitting. It wasnt the others Jimeen saw through, when he raised his eyes from the torn hands in the mashes. All he saw was a great wall, a great, green wall of water. No currachs anywhere. It was as if the whole sea had been stood up on its edge, like a plate on a dresser. And down that wall of water there slid a multitude of dead fish.7

1 2

Idem,p.22 Pritchett, Introduction to Mary Lavin Collected Stories, p.x 3 Mary Lavin, op.cit, .p. 314 4 Mary Lavin, op.cit, .p. 315 5 Idem,p.320 6 Idem,p.325 7 Idem,p.328

The madness theme is not new in the Irish culture- see Sweeney. Seoineen goes mad after seeing the Great Wave: he and Seoineen, in the white dawn of the day after the Great Wave [Seoineen,] was a bit odd1

Dissemination
The theme of madness because of/ on the sea is recurrent in literature. There are at least three authors who develop this theme: Herman Melville Moby Dick (Captain Ahab grows obsessed with the White whale, tries to kill it on a storm like atmosphere, and dies doing this). The second is T.S. Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It is a rammerserzhlung told by an old sailor to a wedding guest. There is a ship that must cross an ocean and needs a good omen. The sailor kills a sea-gull. The luck of the ship runs out. They blame the sailor-see Jonahand put the dead gull at his neck. The sailor blesses the ocean and he achieves forgiveness, the gull falls in the ocean. The ship ultimately sinks, but the sailor survives, his curse remaining all his life to tell this story. A kind of life in death metaphor develops, the sailor, in an almost madness, telling his story: Water, water, everywhere/ and all the boards did shrink/Water, water, everywhere/ Nor any drop to drink The third isHeines Lorelei. The story is simple, following the mythology of the mermaid. Lorelei is this kind of vision, that, when seen by sailors, the sailors have a strange behavior and they even drown: The loveliest maiden [] She combs it with a golden comb/ And sing a song as she does/ A song with a peculiar/ powerful melody/ It sizes upon the boatman in/ his small boat/ With unrestramed woe/ He does not look below to/ the rocky severs / If Im not mistaken, the waves/ Finally swallowed up the fisher and boat/ and with her singing/ The Lorelei did this Mary Lavins PhD thesis is on Virginia Woolf. Lavin wrote her first short-story when finishing her thesis. From that moment, she writes: I have never written a single paragraph that had not had its source in the imagination. 2 Consequently, the woolfian style is adopted: the sea, the waves become characters themselves in Virginia Woolfs novels. She has an early childhood memory of the waves, from the time she sat in her cradle. She says she could hear the waves breaking on the shore.
1

Id:ib Mary Lavin, Brigid, p.329

In the synonymous novel The Waves she tries to recreate that atmosphere for the characters: Bernard, Neville, Louis, Jinny, Susan and Rhonda. When the narrators are children, the first thing they hear in the morning in the morning is the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. Each of them tries to tries to make sense of the rhythmic pounding Louis hears the roar of a chained beast- the sound becomes the background noise to their day. When in Spain, Rhonda has the vision of the ocean: Beneath us lie the lights of the herring feet. The cliffs vanish. Rippling small, rippling gray, innumerable waves spread beneath us. I touch nothing. I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will drum my ears. The white petals will darken with water. They will float for a moment and then sink Everything falls in a tremendous shower dissolving me. The rhythm of the waves is associated with the passage of time; therefore the novel ends with the image of the breaking waves.1 To the Lighthouse is the second novel that brings about the symbol of the sea. Reference to it appears throughout the novel. Broadly, the ever-changing, ever-moving waves parallel the constant forward movement of time and the changes it brings. Mr. Ramsey says that the wave eats away the ground we stand on, the sea becoming a powerful reminder of the impermanence and delicacy of human life.2 In the same modernist spirit, it is necessary a parallel with James Joyces novel Dubliners. In particular to one story, and that is Eveline. The pattern of the action is the same as in At Sallygap. The characters are different: Eveline is not Manny but she also wants to leave Dublin, and at the last moment she changes her mind: A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him size her hand. Come All the seas in the world tumbled upon her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with her both hands at the iron railing Come No! No! No! It was impossible. 3 The last intertext goes back to the title of the essay itself. The title of a movie was paraphrased and that is Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside). Alejandro Amenabar tells the story of Ramon Sempedro, a quadriplegic. In his youth, twenty years earlier, he made a jump into the sea at reflux. He fell into the sand and hurt hid spinal cord. In his opinion he should have died then. The movie raises many issues: love, death, pain, sickness, euthanasia. What stays in the viewers

1 2

Apud www.Sparknotes.com Idem 3 James Joyce, Dubliners. p.42

mind, after having seen the movie, is the image of the sea invading Ramons being in his moments of loneliness. And that is mar adentro.

Bibliography

1. Chevalier, James, Geerbrant, Alain, Dictionar de simboluri, mituri, vise, obiceiuri, gesturi, culori, numere. Editura Artemis, Bucuresti, 1994. 2. Joyce, James, Dubliners, Penguin Books, London, 1996. 3. Lavin, Mary, Collected Stories, Haughton Mifflin, Boston, 1971. 4. www.sparknotes.com 5. www.Wikipedia.com