The Last September

“Behind the trees, pressing in from the open and empty country like an invasion, the orange bright sky crept and smouldered.”

This is an early moment of visual foreshadowing. The demesne surrounding Danielstown “burns” with the orange of the sunset, foreshadowing the actual burning of Danielstown at the end of the novel.

“Are you sure we will not be shot at if we sit out late on the steps?”

Francie’s question provides one of the first glimpses into the real danger around Danielstown and in Ireland more broadly. Although the Naylors and Hugo dismiss her concerns, those concerns turn out to be appropriate later in the novel.

“[E]ach so enisled and distant that a remark at random, falling short of a neighbour, seemed a cry of appeal.”

This is Lois’s view of the Naylors and their guests at dinner the night of the Montmorency’s arrival at Danielstown. Lois reveals her keen awareness of the distance between not only the Anglo Irish and the war but also between each member of Anglo Irish society. This distance heightens Lois’s feelings of isolation.

“If it wouldn’t be taken in some absurd kind of way as a demonstration, I should ask the poor fellows in to have coffee.”

Lady Naylor’s words provide a real, if veiled, look into the dangers of the time. They see the lights of patrolling English soldiers, but she knows that if they extended their hospitality to those soldiers, IRA soldiers might take it the wrong way and target Danielstown.

“In her life—deprived as she saw it—there was no occasion for courage, which like an unused muscle slackened and slept.”

Lois dreams of being able to exercise courage. Her life of superficialities wearies her, and she feels a desire to relate to the events of the war more deeply.

“She could not conceive of her country emotionally: it was a way of living, abstract of several countrysides, or an oblique, frayed island moored at the north but with an air of being detached and drawn out west from the British coast.”

Lois’s emotional distance from her Ireland symbolizes both her own distance from her sense of self and Anglo Irish society’s distance from their so-called country. Although the Anglo Irish have lived in Ireland for centuries, they are still considered outsiders by many of the Catholic Irish who were displaced by English occupation. Instead, Lois’s experience of Ireland is geographical, not political.

“Betty Vermont was not disappointed in Ireland. She had never before been to so many large houses with so small sense of her smallness. Of course they were all very shabby and not artistic at all.”

Mrs. Vermont’s perspective when viewing Irish Big Houses is quite revealing when it comes to the English sensibility, as the Anglo Irish characters see it. Although she herself is of a lower class – the wife of an officer, but not part of the aristocracy or landed gentry – she looks down on the Irish houses as shabby. This reveals her very “English” sense of superiority.

“But I should like something else to happen, some crude intrusion of the actual. I feel all gassy inside from yawning. I should like to be here when this house burns. […] Of course, it will, though. And we shall all be so careful not to notice.”

These are Laurence’s words to Hugo Montmorency during the tennis party. Laurence longs for more action, and he reveals utter disinterest in the safety of his family or his family’s home. His words skewer the pervading willfully ignorant attitude of the Anglo Irish population: If they do not “notice” their homes burning, they can pretend nothing bad is happening.

“All this is terrible for you all, isn’t it? I do think you’re so sporting the way you just stay where you are and keep going on. Who would ever have thought of the Irish turning out so disloyal—I mean, of course, the lower classes!”

These are Mrs. Vermont’s words to Mrs. Carey, a local Anglo Irish woman. Mrs. Vermont’s words again reveal the condescending view of the English empire and those enforcing and benefitting from its rule.

“But the party would indeed have been dull without them, there would have been no young men. Nobody wished them elsewhere.”

These words reflect the view of many Anglo Irish characters in the novel. Although they often complain of the interference of the English army, they also appreciate the society they bring. They try to ignore the dangerous war happening around them, and having parties and gatherings with the English soldiers helps them pretend as if life has not changed.

“She didn’t want to know what she was, she couldn’t bear it: knowledge of this would stop, seal, finish one. Was she now to be clapped down under an adjective, to crawl round life-long inside some quality like a fly in a tumbler?”

Lois purposefully interrupts Francie’s near-definition of Lois to Lady Naylor while trying to convince Lady Naylor of the relationship going on between Lois and Gerald. The reaction reveals the contradictory emotions within Lois. She has longed for a “definite” identity, but when someone else comes close to defining her, she retreats, wishing not to be trapped by others’ views of her.

“He was delighted when he heard from the postman, and was able to pass on, how three young women in the Clonmore direction had had their hair cut off by masked men for walking out with the soldiers. And indeed they had got no sympathy from the priest either, the postman said, for the priest knew that English soldiers were most immoral. ‘And how would you like,’ Sir Richard said to his niece indignantly, ‘if a thing like that were to happen to you?’ ‘I should be bobbed,’ said Lois. ‘I should take it as a sign. But I have never walked an inch with anyone, not what you would call out, Uncle Richard.’”

This exchange reveals how Sir Richard acknowledges the dangers of the war only when it is convenient to achieving his purposes. In this case, he wants to scare Lois away from fraternizing with soldiers so he can protect, on one side, his family’s reputation (by avoiding an unequal marriage) and, on the other, their safety (by avoiding doing anything that might bring about retribution from the IRA). Lois shows her defiant streak by proudly saying she would accept the haircut and her obedience by insisting she has not spent time with the soldiers.

“[The house] seemed to huddle its trees close in fright and amazement at the wide light lovely unloving country, the unwilling bosom whereon it was set.”

This is another moment when Danielstown and its surroundings provide visual symbolism. The house huddles on “the unwilling bosom,” of its land just like the Anglo Irish aristocracy settled on the lands that originally belonged to Catholic Irish people. The house huddles “in fright” as the dangers of the war creep closer.

“Now I should not like him to think I had no heart at all. You know Irish girls in books are always made out so fascinating and heartless; I should not like him to think that of me.”

These are the words of Livvy, a local friend of Lois’s. She references the many exaggerated portrayals of Irish girls in Anglo Irish and English literature, wishing to avoid being painted with the same brush, even though she is Anglo Irish rather than Irish.

“They looked at each other. The words had a solemn echo, as though among high dark arches in a church where they were standing and being married. She thought of death and glanced at his body, quick, lovely, present and yet destructible. Something passed sensation and touched her consciousness with a kind of weight and warmth; she glimpsed a quiet beyond experience, as though for many nights he had been sleeping beside her.”

This is the moment following Gerald’s assertion that he would die for Lois. The sense of being in a church foreshadows their engagement, while Lois’s thought of death in the very same moment foreshadows both the breaking of their engagement and Gerald’s death.

“And she hoped that instead of bleaching to dust in summers of empty sunshine, the carpet would burn with the house in a scarlet night to make one flaming call upon Marda’s memory.”

Like Laurence, Lois longs for something more “exciting” to happen, not truly understanding the dangers of the war around her. Her inner description of a “scarlet night” and a “flaming call upon Marda’s memory” foreshadows the burning of Danielstown.

“With a kind of fatedness, a passivity, they resumed the operation of living.”

This is a description of Sir Richard and Lady Naylor, who sleep soundly the same night that the Montmorencys, Laurence, and Lois all struggle to sleep. They represent the ignorance of the Anglo Irish who stubbornly cling to their pre-war lives and who believe English might well prevail and protect their status in Ireland. They are unbothered and continue to live with the same passivity as before.

“He was set on transgressing decencies. […] She thought how the very suggestion of death brought this awful unprivacy.”

Lois’s thoughts describe Hugo Montmorency’s behavior when he hears the gunshot and rushes to find Lois and Marda. He uses Marda’s first name, demands to see the man who shot her, and tells Lois she should have been shot. His “awful unprivacy” is unsettling to Lois and Marda, and his transgression of normal decencies makes Lois realize his feelings for Marda.

“The wind came, knife-like, down through the lines of huts from the mountain, over a gulf of land where the farms were dark—apprehensive, the young girls patted the whorls of their hair.”

The cold wind running through the barracks the night of the dance foreshadows the end of the novel and the end of the Irish War of Independence. Gerald’s death is a cold wind through village society and Lois’s youth, and the knife-like wind also foreshadows the defeat of English imperial rule in Ireland.

“All your life I am going to keep you and wrap you up and protect you and never let you be cold again.”

Gerald’s words in a letter to Lois echo British imperial paternalism. The English often claimed to be a “civilizing” force that cared for its subjects, despite its abuses. Gerald represents that veneer of British paternalism through his obsession with taking care of Lois.

“They brought over another friend, this time from County Clare, to whom still more had happened. […] the Trents’ friend curdled the tea in one’s mouth with tales of assault and cattle-driving.”

This moment describes the Naylors’ meeting with a neighbor’s friend, whose home was destroyed. This brings the realities of war ever closer, foreshadowing the destruction of Danielstown and building a sense of danger.

“’There’s a future for girls nowadays, outside marriage,’ said Lady Naylor inspiringly. ‘Careers—how I should have loved one.’”

It’s uncertain if Lady Naylor truly believes in girls having more opportunities in the modern era or if this is yet another excuse to prevent Lois’s marriage to Gerald. She does, however, seem to feel a sense of envy. Her words reveal that times are changing in many ways – it’s not just Irish politics that are changing, but gender expectations and more.

“At least Gerald is definite. […] At least it might get one somewhere.”

Lois’s words reveal one of the primary reasons for her desire to marry Gerald. More than believing she loves him, she longs to feel something “definite” in her life. She longs for security and a sense of where she is going with her life.