The Wren, the Wren

The novel interrupts its braided pattern by introducing Phil as a perspective character. This is the only time the novel offers a glimpse into his interiority, though Enright makes the choice to focus that glimpse exclusively on the incidents of Phil’s youth. This suggests that Phil’s early life is meant to illuminate his actions as an adult, obscuring the precise motivations behind his choice to abandon his family and remain devoted to Carmel for the sake of ambiguity. The author never reveals how Phil might have reckoned with his choices. Instead, she leaves it open-ended how Phil could have reached this conclusion by way of seeing what shaped his perspective of the world. Phil’s childhood thoughts are ostensibly unknown to the world that will champion him in his later years, making the entire fifth chapter thematically develop The Private Lives of Public Personalities.

Three elements of Phil’s narrative stand out: first, his relationship with Hanorah Casey; second, his relationship with the mystical, which the text represents both by the Catholic Church and Phil’s belief in the fairy world that exists in nature; and finally, Phil’s experience with the badger cub. Phil’s relationship begins as a typical idyllic romance. Phil is drawn to her beauty and wants to spend time with her. His story almost begins with Phil declaring this desire as a mission statement. That romance quickly turns sour when Hanorah’s father punishes her, which is ironically the result of Phil’s actions. Hanorah is stripped of her hair, which is considered the source of her beauty, and Phil’s participation in her mockery reveals that his fidelity is to beauty, not necessarily to Hanorah. This resonates with the cruel impulsiveness of Phil’s spirit in his later years, as he moves away from Terry during her illness in pursuit of other women.

The author continues to develop the theme of The Attempt to Define the World Through Language through Phil’s characterization. Phil is devoted to beauty to an almost religious degree, which is why he recognizes his vocation for poetry through his engagements with Father Madden. The priest gives Phil the means to practice higher-level thinking, but this only endears him more to language and his affinity for the natural world. Phil bends away from the priesthood because he is not interested in the morality of the world but rather in the satisfaction and communion that come from engaging with its ephemeral form. This is made evident in Phil’s experience with the badger cub, with whom he reaches a form of communion before it is killed. The scene centers on the cruelty of killing a cub that may one day become like the badger they are hunting. That does not erase its innocence, which Phil identifies with at that moment. As someone who has a capacity for cruelty but remains entrenched in innocence, he cannot deny the feeling that the badger cub understands him. Phil balances the hostility of the world against its beauty, which resonates directly with Nell’s reflections in the next chapter.

Nell’s meditations on the nature of love and beauty are filtered through her travels and her conversations with Malachy. Malachy functions as a foil for Nell, revealing the way she values love by contrasting her with his love for sex. Nell emphasizes this contrast by discerning their differing levels of vulnerability. Nell is direct about her vulnerability, while Malachy does his best to obscure it. Nell’s vulnerability becomes the target of two emotional experiences, both related to art. First, her panic attack in the cathedral tower drives her to realize that she panics not because of fear but because of awe. Earlier in the chapter, while Nell is in Norfolk, she becomes so moved by the beauty of the countryside that she briefly considers death. The second emotional experience happens in the Uffizi, bringing Nell down the same path her mother and her grandfather took years earlier. Their differing reactions to the art speak volumes to their differences in thinking. Phil is reminded of his daughters. Carmel is indifferent but is moved to think of what she will miss in Italy. Nell, on the other hand, runs away when she beholds an “unbeautiful” self-portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn. Her reaction speaks to her emotional state, in which she is weighing the beauty of the inner world against the cruelty she has experienced, both in her relationship with Felim and with Carmel.