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The Green Road - Uses of Hom: by Lea Schäper

Matthew Ryan's reading of Anne Enright's novel The Green Road encompasses the inner cultural conflict of Irish people in the late stages of the Celtic Tiger period, symbolized by the distinction between having a home versus owning a house. Rosaleen, the matriarch of the family, is struggling with losing her emotional attachment to her family home as her dementia progresses. By inviting her estranged children to Christmas and considering selling the family house, Rosaleen presents an alternative to neoliberal ideology which values private property ownership above all else, though it is unclear if her family will choose to rekindle the home's past spirit or sell it.

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50 views

The Green Road - Uses of Hom: by Lea Schäper

Matthew Ryan's reading of Anne Enright's novel The Green Road encompasses the inner cultural conflict of Irish people in the late stages of the Celtic Tiger period, symbolized by the distinction between having a home versus owning a house. Rosaleen, the matriarch of the family, is struggling with losing her emotional attachment to her family home as her dementia progresses. By inviting her estranged children to Christmas and considering selling the family house, Rosaleen presents an alternative to neoliberal ideology which values private property ownership above all else, though it is unclear if her family will choose to rekindle the home's past spirit or sell it.

Uploaded by

Lea Schäper
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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THE GREEN ROAD –

Uses of hom

by Lea Schäper
Matthew Ryan’s reading of The Green Road encompasses the
inner cultural conflict of Irish people in the late stages of the
Celtic Tiger – symbolized by the distinction between having a
home and owning a house.
Neoliberalism

- Ideology that values free market competition


- laissez-faire economics
- businesses are owned by private owners
- minimal to zero state intervention in economic and social affairs
Irish property bubble

- Celtic Tiger in the 1990s → rapid growth in employment


- House prices were driven up

→ More houses built

Housing prices 1991: around 66.000€ → 2007: 322.000€

- House building costs doubled


- Fall in sales of new and secondhand homes in 2007

→ Many unsold and empty properties

→ Rising unemployment
The two sides of Ireland
have already been pointed
out by Enright before –
as home to
“tall young people with
good skin” but also “many
who have been left behind”.
Rosaleen as figuration of “Irishness”

– Many uses of stereotypes in the novel → especially in regards to Rosaleen


– Rosaleen as mother figure for her children, as well as Ireland as motherland for all of
them
– Link between Rosaleen and Ireland is specifically made by the use of two traditional
poems:

● James Madigan’s poem ‘Dark Rosaleen’ → also seen as a patriotic hymn

● ‘Fontenoy 1745’ by Emily Lawless → anti-national, contrasting ironic repositioning


of Rosaleen, underlining her ambiguity as abandoning but also abandoned mother
Personified by having a name (Ardeevin)

The house is animated by the memories of the past

Family heritage

Time and place compression in the house


“Rosaleen caught the sound of mischief upstairs and looked to the ceiling. But there
were no children up there anymore, she had chased them all away” (p.154)

The emotional value of home


- Rosaleen’s Parkinson’s seems to lead to dementia

Living alone for about 10 years (at the time of her chapter)

→ Losing the emotional attachment to a time long gone as dementia onsets

“It was as though she was wearing someone else’s coat […] she could tell it
wasn’t [hers]” (p.165)

Losing the emotional value


- Time compression as a review of the past
→ emotional value of home

Rosaleen can not live in the past anymore (has been long enough + dementia)

Inviting her children for christmas but also deciding on selling the house
→ rekindle the past spirit of the home or sell the husk that is the house

Possibly happened before but the rekindling was successful

Makes it seem like there is an alternative to neoliberalism

The choice of values


GROUP WORK

How/Where else are the impact of neoliberalism and the real


Group 1
estate boom made apparent in the setting of the book?

Group 2a Do Dan & Hanna want to keep the house? Why? / Why not?
(→ returned yank?)

Do Constance & Emmet want to keep the house? Why? / Why


Group 2b not?
Taking Enright’s quote into account, Ryan’s reading of The Green
Road does not seem as far-fetched as it might on the first read.
Based on his own analysis and fueled by Mary McGlynn’s
comparative analysis of Irish fiction, he concludes that Rosaleen is
presenting an alternative to neoliberalism, which is itself a critique
of neoliberalism as it is said to have no such alternative.
● https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/ima
ges/I/912lZse6HgL.jpg
● Matthew Ryan (2021) Uses for ruins: Anne Enright’s
The Green Road, Textual Practice, 35:1, 23-37, DOI:
10.1080/0950236X.2019.1652678
● Anne Enright, ‘The 00s: Anne Enright’ in Magnum
Ireland (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005)
● https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoliberalism

SOURCES ● 1. Kitchin R, O’Callaghan C, Boyle M, Gleeson J,


Keaveney K. Placing Neoliberalism: The Rise and Fall
of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger. Environment and Planning A:
Economy and Space. 2012;44(6):1302-1326.
doi:10.1068/a44349

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