The Wren, the Wren

“He said, I always thought I would be in Montana or someplace. Big country. Not living in a box. I grew up in the open air, he said. Makes it hard to fit in small. I always thought I would be my own man.

When he turned to me, there were tears in his eyes and we moved towards each other so simply, My heart, I thought. Oh, my heart. This second bout was sad and then a bit frantic. An emptiness in the middle stretch, like he was running the wrong race. Afterwards, I felt we had achieved something difficult.”

This passage captures the moment that Nell falls in love with Felim. Felim opens up about the tension between his past and present life, showing how his pastoral childhood has left him unprepared for the claustrophobia of city life. Though Nell feels deeply connected to Felim, this moment is necessary for setting up the frustration she will later feel with him when he starts to demonstrate abusive behaviors.

“The poems were so gentle and clear, I could hear his voice speaking, just to me. Other girls had fathers, uncles, I had good old Phil, who made things lovely with words.

Sometimes, I look at my mother and wonder where all that went, how the family declined, father to daughter—from subtle to stupid in a single generation. Phil’s work is, above all, tactful. A girl needs tact—this was not, from Carmel, what a girl was ever going to get. When things were bad, I would curl up with Phil and sweeten the hurt.”

Because she has no father figure in her life, Nell looks to Phil as the closest surrogate. Even then, she relies not on the person of her grandfather, since he has already died, but on the poetry he left behind. This creates an idealized version of Phil in Nell’s mind, one characterized by tact. The rest of the novel partly focuses on underlining the discrepancy between Phil as a poet and Phil as a father. In this way, the passage contributes to the theme of The Attempt to Define the World Through Language.

“You never saw him write. Carmel thought of his poetry as entirely private. She opened her father’s slim books with the same furtive, blanked-out pleasure as she might pull open his sock drawer.

This was the magic that made women kiss you, in their nighties, in the street.”

Though Carmel lives in the same house as Phil during her early years, she already notices the distance he creates between his family life and his life as a poet. Carmel’s access to the latter is restricted, which initially gives it the air of magic. Later, she will realize that Phil’s poetic life was the platform to pursue illicit romances. This passage finds resonance in Carmel’s association with wrens later in the novel, thinking Phil’s love for “The Wren Song” fanciful at first before realizing Phil’s violence, which this song hints at.

“The world was full of people who did not know him, except in a public kind of way. And the people who did know him—herself and her sister, especially—could not agree.”

This passage drives The Private Lives of Public Personalities as a theme, showing the discrepancy between the fans who champion Phil and the people in his life who see a side of him they find difficult to speak about. This puts Carmel and Imelda in a complicated position, unable to reconcile their father’s contribution to literature with his terrible moral character.

“The woman was—Carmel discovered this over hotel sandwiches—Phil’s first girlfriend, the subject of one of his earliest poems, ‘The Twining.’ She turned up again for the funeral the next morning in the same old raincoat. An ordinary country woman with her grey hair firmly set under a Mass-going scarf. This was Phil’s ‘virgin ploughing.’ Half the county could read as much in the local library, on a page that fell open at a single touch.”

Once again, this passage supports The Private Lives of Public Personalities as a theme, showing how Phil’s poetic legacy extends to the people in his life, sometimes to a negative effect. Phil’s first girlfriend is not known in the wider public except as Phil’s first sexual partner, which reduces her identity to an object in Phil’s life. Describing her as Phil’s “virgin ploughing,” which anyone could easily consume in his poems, demonstrates his ability to turn her into this objectified state. This greatly disadvantages her—as well as the other women in Phil’s life—because they cannot assert their identities apart from Phil unless they can match him in poetic skill, which Selma Karras later does.

“The whole episode was not a love affair so much as a falling-out with a woman who made her feel wanted or unwanted—and it would be many years and some dust-ups later before she could state it as a truth about herself: Carmel liked men—you might even say she preferred them—but she seemed to have trouble sleeping with them, and her emotional life was filled with women with whom she did not get along.”

Carmel’s relationship with her family shapes her relationship with men and women. Because she despises Phil, she sees no problem in engaging with men on a short-term basis, withholding emotion and attachment from the encounter. On the other hand, her frustrations with Imelda and the confusion that surrounds Terry’s attitudes toward Phil make her tense around other women. This informs the tenor of Carmel’s later relationship with Nell.

“It was evident to Carmel they had not moved, in a year when she had moved so much: there had been so many fallings-in and fallings-out, so many people and farewells. These two seemed, to each other, to be sufficient.”

This passage emphasizes the loneliness that Carmel feels in her family. After a year abroad, Carmel finds Terry and Imelda in the same places she had left them in. This draws a contrast between them, especially since Carmel has spent the last year in a restless state, moving around to determine the next step in her life. Carmel would have found a familial companion in Phil, who favored her over Imelda. Instead, Phil’s absence merely sharpens the sting of her isolation.

“And Carmel bellowed right back at her: ‘She loved me just as much as she ever loved you.’

Though that was not, strictly speaking, accurate. It was their father who had loved Carmel best. The wren poem was written for her. Her name was right there on the page. ‘For Carmel.’

And, oh, / my life, my daughter.”

Carmel’s primary character dilemma revolves around the complicated nature of her relationship with Phil. She cannot reconcile his admiration for her with his abusive behavior. This extends into her sibling rivalry with Imelda, who resents Carmel for being Phil’s favorite. His preference explains why Imelda is so intent on bullying Carmel.

“It was a storm. And the eyes that looked at her from the centre of it were exactly right. Carmel had been alone all her life. Did I mention that? She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. The baby carried the whole black universe with her, in the pupil of her eye. She brought it through a gap that life itself had punched through Carmel’s body. They looked at each other, and all of time was there. The baby knew how vast her mother’s loneliness had been.”

When Carmel gives birth to Nell, she has a moment of communion with her daughter. This resonates with Phil’s encounter with the badger cub and Nell’s encounter with the bullfinch. The turbulent descriptions that accompany Nell’s birth foreshadow the turbulence of her relationship with Carmel, particularly the way they contradict each other in their regard for other people. This dynamic contributes to the theme of The Fraught Love of Mother-Daughter Relationships.

“If I had a house, if I had a proper place to live, if I had what used to be called ‘a job’, would it have been a proper relationship? That is one question, I ask myself. I was a throwaway thing, not only for him, but for the people who paid me and, you know yourself, the infosphere, the nation state, the companies that brewed all my fun alcohol. For Meg-the-influencer, with her six, differently coloured chairs.

And even saying that about her makes me feel sad, because Meg-the-influencer got pregnant and lost the baby famously—which is one way to two and a half million views. I had to write some of that for her, and it was pure heartbreak. But then Meg said I had the wrong voice for it, I was all wrong, she actually said I was toxic, she needed someone new.”

This passage speaks to The Private Lives of Public Personalities by critiquing fame and transparency in the digital age. Unlike Phil, who could hide behind his poetry and obscure his personal life, Meg must perform her personal life in ways that align with her brand. Nell lends her voice to Meg’s endeavors, but Meg rejects it when it does not meet her branding requirements. This has the effect of nullifying Nell’s work, even though she speaks to Meg’s experience with total sincerity.

“Maybe that was it. A bastard of a father. That might be enough to do whatever had been done to this unclaimed man of thirty-five, who spoke of this or that ex-girlfriend without rancour. He dressed like a stockbroker on holiday and was constantly, regretfully intelligent. Ronan did nothing but muse aloud and apologise.”

Carmel is drawn to Ronan because she recognizes that he has experienced a difficult childhood because of his father. This mirrors her own experience. What makes Ronan a compelling match for Carmel is the lack of resentment he has toward his past romances and his humility. These qualities contrast with Phil’s attachment to romances past and present, as well as his failure to apologize for his abusive behavior.

“Carmel did not know what was written beside her name—partner, girlfriend—but it seemed that she was in charge of Ronan, now.

Was it because they’d slept together? Was that enough?

[…]

Did the nurse think she loved Ronan? And did love mean all that?

Carmel couldn’t figure it out. How had she ended up with this job, for which she had never applied? […] Carmel wanted to laugh, but actually there was an inner shrieking in her head going, I have a daughter. I have a daughter, you bitch, she is only nine.”

Carmel begins to reassess her relationship with Ronan when she realizes the implication that she must be responsible for him. On one hand, Carmel does not want to lock herself down to a man who will inevitably rely on her, especially when she already has Nell to look after. On the other hand, her later actions—choosing to leave Ronan quietly—accidentally echo Phil’s traumatic behavior from her childhood.

“She was not a person anymore, she was not something else either.

She was just not. The feeling was worse than horror, because she could not gather the horror in. She was a painting by a man whose name she could not remember, a thing with the head of a cat. And her father, her father. He was. Her father was. Right there. Her father was bigger than the world and a lot less wonderful. He was vast, like a wall.”

Despite her attempts to distance herself from her father and the impact his abusive behavior had on her as a child, Carmel realizes how she has perpetuated the cycle of violence for Nell. Enright uses defamiliarization to heighten Carmel’s sense of mortification at the moment, visualizing her feelings through surreal images. This ends with the overwhelming image of her father, which stresses his inescapability.

“I don’t recall how I made it back to the cottage door, though the ruckus I caused when I got there went down in lore as the night I went off with the fairies.

‘And sometimes I think,’ my mother used to add, ‘that we never got him back again.’

I had always been a dreamy child. After this night, I began to think I might be a cruel one, as though the fairy laughter had implicated me in all that was sinister in this world.”

Phil’s chapter narrows the line between reality and fantasy. This feeds into the mythology that has been built around his character up until this point. Notably, the fairy tale magic that opens the chapter also provokes Phil into admitting the inherent cruelty that will guide his actions in later life. This is consistent with the dark undertones that normally appear in traditional fairy tales.

“The whole business of sinning, once you were in it, could only get worse, I said. There was always a bigger one behind the little one, if you had a mind to look.”

As a child, Phil is a devout Catholic, regularly attending confession to lighten the moral burden of his soul. This passage reflects his early perspective on confession, but it also illuminates the paradigm of guilt that extends to Carmel when she becomes a mother. While revisiting Phil’s poetry, Carmel realizes both the small and great indignities she has wrought upon Nell.

“I looked into the animal’s eyes and he into mine and we understood each other completely. Brock knew me as well as he knew his own death. We were, in that moment, as intimate as living creatures ever could be. The shovel came down again, even as I looked away.”

The key moment of Phil’s chapter is his encounter with the badger cub, which he describes as a moment of absolute communion and intimacy. When Phil recognizes himself in the badger cub, he displays complex self-awareness of the direction of his life. He knows that despite his innocence as a young man, he will grow into something the world will treat with hostility. This makes the cub’s death even more tragic, emboldening Phil to pursue the inclinations of his soul before the world destroys him.

“What I wanted, more than anything, was some uninterrupted crying time. I had a screaming need to be alone. I did not say this to Lily, I told her I needed to write a book. Which, when you think about it, is probably code for the same thing.”

Nell makes the humorous comparison between writing and private anguish, which undermines the seriousness of her narrative conflict. Nell understands that her suffering belongs to her, but this t makes her reticent to impose it on others like Lily for fear of being a burden to her. In writing, one often feels less shame in speaking honestly about their suffering because literature allows audiences to engage with characters at the height of their suffering.

“I don’t know if I suffer from claustrophobia or vertigo, a fear of towers, a fear of spiral staircases (why is anxiety always described as a spiral?). I have body dysmorphia, I have panic, I have issues. But I also think that beauty is to blame, because without beauty there can be no fear.

How do I phrase this? The machine of the tower has tipped me into another place. The fear I have is the fear of angels. It is not terror, but awe.”

Nell makes a distinction between fear and awe, referring to the latter as “the fear of angels.” This clarifies Nell’s anxiety as a heightened sense of wonder for the richness of the world around her. She wants to behold that beauty but is easily overwhelmed by it, which triggers her panic. The loss of bird species, discussed earlier in the novel, represents Nell’s fear of losing access to that beauty.

“It was so easy to hate this man—the facts spoke for themselves—but it was still hard to dislike him. And it was devastatingly easy to love him. To flock around and keen when he died, because all the words died with him.”

By watching the video of her father’s television interview, Carmel finally reckons with Phil after avoiding him for so long. Her avoidance was largely practical; she did not see the point in engaging with someone who chose to distance himself from her. However, this late encounter reveals what she was missing by choosing to ignore him. Carmel acknowledges the complexity of Phil’s allure, both likable and repulsive at the same time.

“The man in the other chair opens his mouth and my entire family comes out of it. Phil has a more stilted style, certainly. He is surrounded by a different time. He will get up when this interview is done and walk out into a world where Princess Diana is wearing huge frilly collars, where phones can’t leave the house, the bread he eats is always white. But he is so familiar to me, I feel I have met him already. There’s my aunt Imelda’s wry, sour little aside. Carmel’s hunchy way of sitting forward, the same emphatic finger. He has my quick twist of a smirk at the end of a sentence—like maybe we got away with saying that. The McDaraghs are all jumbled up inside him, and we sound so honeyed and warm coming out of Phil. We sound just lovely.”

Contrasted against Carmel’s reaction to the video, Nell’s reaction is one of familiarity and admiration. She recognizes her family in Phil’s mannerisms, removing him from his place and time to find him in the present. This shows how Nell does not root her relationship with Phil in his poetry but in her relationships with his daughters.

“All poems, Phil says, are of love unrequited. I am not sure there is any other kind of poem. And you know, I am not sure there is any other kind of love.

The guy in the droopy glasses looks both amused and deeply serious.

Dante and his Beatrice?

It is not the girl, it is not one girl or another girl, it is the fact that she is not there. And when she’s gone, there is none like her.”

When Phil suggests that unrequited love might be the only kind of love that exists, it highlights the question of how one might apply this insight to the various loves that appear throughout the novel, not just the romantic ones. Phil’s love for Carmel is certainly unrequited, as evidenced by his letters to her during his absence. His elaboration at the end of this passage directly compares to the text of his letter to Carmel on her 16th birthday.

“We who loved Phil knew, on some level, that we loved him not despite, but because of his ‘badness’—in those days, that was quite the thing. It loosed something in our psyches, I think, which was not always a force for good. This is why I set up the Karras bursary scheme. I cannot absolve myself completely of Phil’s poor behavior. I adored him—certainly for the first while—and this may have contributed to his slightly distorted sense of himself. I thought I had no choice but to adore him, but of course I did have a choice, that goes without saying.”

In this passage, Connie tries to reconcile her feelings for Phil with his history of abuse. She admits that she had been drawn to his cruelty, which echoes Nell’s attraction to Felim early in the novel. Later in life, Connie realizes that her adoration signaled her complicity in his abuse, evidenced by describing her actions contributing to his distorted sense of sense. This highlights the necessity of working toward restoring those who have been affected by Phil’s bad behavior.

“When she got up to go to the loo one last time before sleep, she heard the two of them talking in there. Nell’s voice was so close and relaxed, her mother paused outside—not to eavesdrop, she did not care about the words, it was the tone that held her. She had not heard this version of Nell in many years. This was the girl who climbed into her mother’s bed on a Sunday morning to have the chats, her voice full of complexity and fun. Carmel might have felt jealous of the intimacy between the two young people, but she really didn’t. She felt that her daughter had come back to her true self. She was grown.”

The end of Carmel’s last chapter represents a resolution of her arc with Nell. She has spent the entire novel longing for Nell’s reliance on her, signaled by the recurring memory of Nell climbing into her bed. When she learns that David can evoke this aspect of Nell, she does not act jealously, as she might have done when Ronan fulfilled Nell’s need for a father figure. Instead, she accepts that David has helped to fulfill her desire to see her daughter again.