John Bull's Other Island by George Bernard Shaw

John Bull's Other Island by George Bernard Shaw (1904)
"John Bull's Other Islander" -chapter three of Inventing Ireland:  The Literature of the Modern Nation by Declan Kiberd (1995)

Inventing Ireland

An Irish Quarter Event

"Ireland is the only spot on earth which still produces the ideal Englishman of Irish history"-George Bernard Shaw

As soon as I began to read Inventing Ireland:  The Literature of the Modern Nation by Declan Kiberd I knew it was the volume I needed to begin my real education in the literature of Ireland.  I  am very interested in the post colonial approach to literature and have posted on many Asian works from that perspective.   Like everyone, my basic guide in this is Edward Said and as soon as I saw Kiberd was looking at Irish literature in the same way I at once bought an Ebook. I previously posted on his chapter of Edith Somerville and Ross Martin (Violet Martin) and it did change my understanding of their work.   I will soon read also their The Real Charlotte as it is the primary work Kiberd writes on and will reread his chapter also.   I have decided I will try to read all of the  works (or at least all I can download for free) Kiberd makes reference to in Inventing Ireland and post on them in the light of what I learned from him.   Kiberd's book is beautifully written and deeply learned.  He sets things in the historical and cultural context.  This will be an on going Irish Quarter event.  

John Bull's Other Island is George Bernard Shaw's (1856 to 1950, Dublin, Ireland-there is some background information on Shaw in my prior posts on him) only play that takes place at all in Ireland.   One of the things I have learned of since I began the Irish Quarter:  A Celebration of The Irish Short Story on March 11 was that the English constructed their own vision of the Irishman, the stage Irishman as it is often called.   Like any colonizer there is a need to see the people in the country you rule as in need of your care and protection. The English cast the Irishman as comic figures given to wild emotions, not inclined to work very hard, unable to stick to a project without falling into drink, given to trickery and full of superstition.   They treated Catholicism as one step above a pagan form of religion.  The Irish were basically cast as children in need of  the steady hand of the English.

I would love to have been in the audience in London and then in Dublin when this play opened so I could have seen the differing reactions to Shaw's actually quite funny characterization of the  Irish.   The play brings on stage in the opening act an Irishman who offers to go along as guide for an Englishman who is going to Ireland.    The man is the very epitome of the stage Irish Paddy figure, a complete liar, a fluid talker who speaks half in riddles in a sing song kind of way, loves whiskey and a complete suck up to the English.  Kibard tells us that because Ireland has lost so many of the most enterprising people of the country to emigration a new class of landowner has risen in Ireland.   These Irish landowners are not at all concerned with bettering the country.   There is also a cultural movement in Ireland at this time, called now The Irish Renaissance, which Kiberd says in part plays into the hands of the English as it was more concerned with mummifying Irish culture than reviving it.  The Irish in this movement basically played up to the liberal university educated Englishman's romantic view of Ireland.  "John Bull's Other Island" was per Kiberd Shaw's warning that Ireland was in danger of being turned into "a tourist's landscape of colourful, non-threatening characters, who mark off their "interesting" cultural differences from the London visitor, even as they become more tractable to his economic design".     The play shows us how both the English and the Irish were often playing out roles that they thought the other expected of them... The Irish acted the fool and the sycophant in order to deal with the English who in turned played at nobility.   Many of the English in Ireland in fact had problems of various sorts that were easier for them to deal with in a colony.  Just like in India, the locals long ago learned that an Englishman in a colony is there seeking something he cannot find at home and that he often has things wrong with him.     One of the things any colonizer wants is women.  In the character of Nora we see an idealized, in the minds of the English visitors, version of the Irish woman, a woman forced to become strong by a race of weak good for nothing more than versifying and drinking men.   The Englishman fancies himself in love with her and sees her as better than the women at home.   

"John Bull's Other Island" was really a lot of fun to read.  I would love to see it acted on the stage one day but somehow I know I never will.




Mel u

Fox Hunting with Somerville and Ross with some help from Declan Kibard

"The Pug-Nosed Fox" by Edith Sommerville and Martin Ross (1908, 22 pages)


"Somerville and Ross-Tragedies of Manors" from Inventing Ireland:  The Literature of the Modern Nation by Declan Kiberd (1995)

The Irish Quarter:  A Celebration of the Irish Short Story

March 11 to July 1

Resources and Ideas 

Please consider participating in The Irish Quarter.  All you need do is to post on an Irish short story or a related matter and let me know about it.    Guest posts are very welcome.

I have recently begun slowly working my way through what I think, based on my limited research, is the highest regarded history of modern Irish literature, Imaging Ireland:  The Literature of the Modern Nation by Declan Kibard.  Kibard's book has been praised to the sky by Roy Foster, Edward Said and countless others.   I really appreciate that Kibard treats Irish literature in the context of post-colonial writings.    It is not just a  literary history but places Irish literature squarely on the world stage.   One think that really struck home with me in the context of the Irish Quarter was when he said that the  great longer works of Irish fiction such as Gulliver's Travels, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, and Ulysses are at least in part narrated as if they were someone telling someone else a story.   To the extent possible I plan to read all of the works referenced by Kibard.   I will also reread the works I read long ago.  

When I first began to read the stories of Somervile and Ross (there is some background information on them in my prior posts)  I tried to determine if there is an undercurrent of irony in the manner in which the authors treat the Irish.   It almost seems like they convert them to figures of fun for the amusement of their Irish readers.   Kiberd tells us that "Irish Irelander" refused to read them for decades for this very reason.   There was a popular BBC TV series based on the stories (you can watch a lot of episodes on You Tube-just search for Irish R.M.).  I watched a couple of the episodes and it does appear that the English man who is the R. M. (registered magistrate) and his wife Priscilla are the only sensible people in the programs.  The servants in the story are pure stereotypes.   The popular notion among many modern readers of Somerville and Ross was that they were creating stage-Irish rogues and buffoons for consumption in England.   Kibard teaches us that they were doing something far deeper and more subtle than that, something lost on most of their readers that says a lot about Irish literature as a post colonial experience.    The Irish learned, as did colonized people throughout the British empire that it was often easier and safer for Irish country people to intentionally play the role of Paddy or Biddy as it disarmed their rulers.   The Irish, just as did the Indians, learned that the British who came to live in their countries often had something a bit wrong with them and often felt their own need to play "stage Englishmen" for those they ruled.   Kiberd explains that Somerville and Ross knew what they were doing and when asked to write plays for the Abbey theater in which the Irish were irascible drunken fools they refused.   The work Kiberd talks most about in this chapter is their famous Big House novel, The Real Charlotte.  I downloaded a copy of this and will read it fairly soon and will come back to this chapter in Kiberd again.   

As "The Pug Nosed Fox" begins the R. M. has just been given the highly honored position of Deputy M. F. H., deputy master of the fox hunt.   Fox hunting by its very nature was an activity for the rich, which usually meant the Anglo-Irish.   Fox hunting, leaving aside its cruelty to animals, required that very large chucks of land be kept from the production of food, required large resources of meat to feed the dogs and seems in the context of the poverty of the common people to be completely callous.  To the Irish R. M, it is annoying to have been given this position, one he cannot refuse without insulting the Irish gentry who tolerated his authority.  It was a big expense and a lot of trouble and he was not raised to the hunt anyway and his wife did not like fox hunting at all.   This is  very well done story.  Kiberd says no one does a better job detailing the lives of the Irish country gentry, and their servants, than Somerville and Ross.   You really feel like you are along for the fox hunts.   You feel you are bounding along on your favorite horse and you grow impatient with some ill disciplined dogs while admiring others.   I admit I was cheering for the fox to get away.   The ending is a lot of fun.  

I can see how these stories would make good TV programs.   

This story is in Further Experiences of an Irish R. M. which can be downloaded from Manybooks.

I will be drawing on the thoughts of Kibard often.   He has a very good chapter on Oscar Wilde and I will probably post again on one of his short stories in the light of his teachings   He also has a chapter on Elizabeth Bowen I am looking forward to reading.   I hope my project of reading through the works in his book will increase my understanding of Irish literature.  

Mel u