Psychological resilience and rebirth in Emma Donoghue's "Room"
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(2) 84. M.M. LADRÓN. Considering the relevance of this concept to the development of the plot, the aim of the present essay is to analyse the mother-son dyad as the pillar upon which the child's eventual hardiness is erected, thereby converting the novel into a celebration of life rather than a dramatic story of the human struggle and agony of survival. Told entirely from the perspective of a 5-year old boy, Jade, Room is divided into five parts, which follow his developmental stages as he per ceives his surroundings, during and after confinement and also outside and within society, with the effect of challenging the meanings culture has ascribed to such roles as parenthood and education. Believing that his world is the only one that exists, the first part of the narration focuses on their daily routines and on the delight that mother (Ma) and child share in each other's company throughout their horrifying incarceration, while their eventual freedom from their captor (Old Nick) in the second part will be the subject of debatable issues regarding their psychic well-being and alienation from the social arder. Transformed into a monstrous Other by a society overflowing with contradictions that showed as much rejec tion as curiosity and even sympathy, Jack will turn into the repository of communal unresolved wrongs. Jack's nai'veté and often humorous de familiarizing approach to a reality that cannot be taken for granted will therefore enable Donoghue to satirize shared mores and given assump tions. In the course of their painful adjustment to 'real' life, resilience will empower and protect them against the expected psychological imbalance. Thus, by the end of the novel, received interpretations of child bearing, parenting, social values, the manipulation of the media, regular schooling and even the limits of mental stability will be challenged. Pleased with the labels 'Irish woman', 'Irish writer', 'Canadian writer' or even in later years 'Irish-Canadian writer', Donoghue is a multilay ered author capable of comfortably placing her characters and setting her novels in Ireland, the UK or the USA, as well as making them belong to modern times or to the eighteenth or nineteenth century, not to men tion her ability to explore different literary genres that range from nov els, short stories and plays, to poetry, critica! essays and even screenplays. Throughout her prolific career, she has escaped easy labelling and has succeeded in delving into universal themes, rather than gaudy national issues. She has lived in countries as different as Ireland, the UK, France and Ganada, which, according to her, 'has basically weakened my regional ties, giving me a more free-floating imagination' (Ue 102). Even though her place within the canon of contemporary Irish literature is indisputable,. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN EMMA DONOGHUE'S ROOM. 85. in recent years she has been pegged as an Irish-Canadian writer. Similarly to Brian Moore, she holds a liminal position that places her between two literary traditions. As she herself asserts: 'I'm seen as Irish sometimes Canadian sometimes, even vaguely British sometimes, and I'm probabl; assumed to be American by the Americans who make up the majority of my readership. But that's just how it is. I grew up reading books from just about anywhere and I still do; I believe a writer's imagination carries no passport' (Donoghue, 'Dancing'). The fact that Room is set in the USA3 and that it was conceived as a universal story with a fairy tale quality,4 <loes not make Donoghue or her novel less Irish, since similar arguments could be applied to other contemporary authors, such as Deirdre Madden, Claire Keegan, John Banville, Lia Milis, Julia O'Faolain and Colm Tóibín, whose novels are often set in places outside Ireland and present non-Irish characters. What most of these writers have in common is an interest in transcending domestic boundaries, which allows them to go beyond sorne identitarian root grounded on a nationalist agenda. As Jennifer M. Jeffers has explained, Donoghue, together with Tom Lennon, Robert McLiam Wilson, Laura Harte and Joseph O'Connor, among others, belongs to a generation oflrish writers who, in the 1990s,5 carne to the fore to create an entirely new agenda for the genre of the novel ... For severa! of [ their] novels the demarcating line of identity-that peren nial Irish problem-can be gauged at the basic leve! of sexual and gender identity in contrast to or in alliance with política!, social, religious, or cul tural norms ... Perhaps one distinguishing characteristic of these novelists is their departure from themes long considered 'Irish'. (1). One of Room's main achievements is Donoghue's exploration of the capac ity human beings experiencing dreadful conditions might develop to over come distress and perhaps even to benefit from it. During their Jifetime, people can go through severe stressful circumstances that might lead them to experience unbearable pain, intense strain and trauma. Although these extreme incidents might trigger post-traumatic stress disorder or sorne other pathology in sorne individuals, many others not only learn how to confront and come to terms with adversity, but they also bounce back from it (Masten 'Resilience' and 'Ordinary Magic'; Vera, Carbelo and Vecina 41). The word resilience comes from the Latín resilio, which means to go baclc, to abandon a previous state, to recover. In the sciences it has been used to refer to the property of matter to resist breakage or to recover its original.
(3) 86. M.M. LADRÓN. form in spite of being deformed under pressure. In psychology, the result of being posítively transformed by an apparently unbearable experíence requires the conjunction of severa! components: the facing of risk, trauma, maltreatment or threat to human development; an individual display of competence to cope with this; resistance to and recovery from the inci dent; and positive adaptation through the confident use of the individu al's own psychological resources to overcome further hardships (Masten, Best and Garmezy). Most research conducted in this area has followed the Positive Psychology approach, which emerged in the 1990s as an alterna tive to the mainstream psychological framework that largely focused on the identification and classification of pathological forms of behavior. As Vera, Carbelo and Vecina have explained: 'Concentration exclusively on the potential pathological effect of the traumatic experience has contributed to the development of a "culture of victimhood", which has seriously biased psychological research and theory and led to a pessimistic view of human nature' (41). In contrast, Positive Psychology explores the conditions and circumstances that lead human beings to develop their strongholds, posi tive emotions and affirmative traits (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi; Walsh 130; Peterson and Seligman). The concept of resilience carne into common use back in the 1970s to refer to a certain protection against stressors that only certain personalities developed (Kobasa). As a subject of study, a decade later it was widespread, and the tendency was to believe that there were 'invulnerable' children who manifested individual resistance to adversity (Anthony). However, further investigation has shown that this psychological construct is not merely innate but rather tl1e result of an interaction between the individual and the environ ment involving both social and psychological mechanisms (Patterson 354; Walsh 130; Vera, Carbelo and Vecina; Rutter; Zautra, Hall and Murray).6 The dynarnics that lie behind emotional, cognitive and socio-cultural fac tors influencing human development are the result of temperament, farnily upbringing and social ambience (Rutter; Zautra, Hall and Murray).7 As such, the conditions that can prompt a resilient response range from personality features such as self-esteem and self-confidence, to social support, the per ception of life as meaningful or the capacity to discríminate between positive and negative experiences (Vera, Carbelo and Vecina 44). Bearing these points in mind, my contention is that in Donoghue's novel, and in spite of the apparent restrictive and appalling lives of mother and child while in captivity, most of these features will be activated as the result of the combination of competent parenting with the absence of societal expectations.. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN EMMA DONOGHUE'S ROOM 87. Although most reviews of Donoghue's Room have pivoted on the traumatic sources of the novel, maínly the cases of Elisabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch in Austria, Sabine Dardenne in Belgium, or Jaycee Lee Dugard in California (Burns; Barr; Derbyshire; Landau), the author has been at pains to correct this view and to explain that she was initially inspired by these stories,8 but that her intention was to look at child devel opment and parent !ove in such a way that 'it would not be a horror or sob story, but a journey from one world to another' (Burns). Her research included reading about feral children, family psychology, children born in captivity and conceived through rape, child development, children raised in abusive households, resilience and even life in Nazi concentration camps (Donoghue, 'Writing Room'). In addition, the author's interest in telling the story from the limited but blissful perspective of the child, rather tl1an from the mother's dreadful endurance of her 7-year incarceration, clearly directs the narration into a more hopeful reading. 9 It will consequently be Jack's naYve and fresh look at reality that serves as the device through which Donoghue will introduce a process of de-familiarization that will allow readers to maintain a distance from the horrors and to perceive a more bearable reality, while at the same time his perspective will question received assumptions about education and etbics. Tbroughout the novel, Donogbue seems to be suggesting that Ma's ability to meet Jack's developmental needs as he grows springs from innate mothering skills, which are presented as a combination of natural instinct and intuition. In spite of tbe absence of social training, Jack's upbringing is notably rich in stimuli and affection, two key components of positive cbild development. Altbougb bis microcosm in confinement is literally reduced to an eleven-by-eleven foot room, bis mother fuels his imagination witb stories, rhymes and songs, and creatively enricbes his mind by inventing a hundred uses for inanimate disposable objects. She protects him from the excesses of TV, that 'rot[s] our brains', letting bim watcb only one show at a time, and sbe keeps bim away from tbe damage tbat tbe awareness of an alternative existence could cause bim, 'mut[ing] commercials because they musb our brains even faster' (11). In spite of tbe adverse circum stances-and surprisingly considering that sbe was only nineteen wben she was kidnapped-she is depicted as a sensible motber capable of fulfill ing Jack's needs giving meaning to everything tbey do through a daily routine that will contribute to their physical and mental well-being. Her concerns about his education go from teaching him to read and write at a precocious age and developing his imagination through recycling things.
(4) 88. M.M. LADRÓN. into useful tools and toys, to setting meals at a regular time, maintaining personal hygiene, practicing physical exercise, doing the cleaning, sing ing nursery rhymes, laughing together and praying every night.10 As the author has explained, it can seem a bit absurd and sad, like they are prisoners passing the time, but it has actually given Jack the mental tools he'll need when he's out there in the real world. She's managed to create the sense in him that there is a meaning and a pattern to their days. Basically, I think, if she didn't have sorne kind of faith that one of these days they'll get out, she would have curled up in the comer long ago. ('Donoghue. Benevolent') From the very beginning of the novel, reality is presented as a construc tion, whose validity relies on the point of view of the onlooker and not on shared common perceptions. The secluded experience is thus conversely comprehended by mother and child. But the fact that his joyful igno rance contrasts with her woeful submission does not make such reality any less authentic for either of the pair. While the mother's view is deliber ately limited and mediated by that of Jack, who has the agency to tell the story-and it is only the adult reader who is privileged to read through her emotional states-the child has been made to believe that the place where they live is the real world. Jack is convinced that reality is only con stituted by the tangible things they possess, while unreal things only exist in an 'Outer Space' (8), on television or in their imagination: 'Boys are TV but they kind of look like me, the me in Mirror that isn't real either, just a picture' (54). However, as his mind matures, his musings about the boundaries between these two realms also grow. At one point in the novel, he realizes that the pain killers his mother takes are announced on television, and he becomes utterly confused because this causes reality and non-reality to coincide. Although Ma explains that television is made of 'pictures of real things', this astonishing discovery leads him to wonder whether people on the television are then 'real for real' (59). This blurring of boundaries is essential for the development of the plot inasmuch as Jack's world is informed by the fantasy of the fairy tales Ma tells him and by the cartoons he watches on television. In fact, initially, he does not dare to be part ofhis mother's plan to escape and only decides to save her when he adopts the role of a fairy tale hero: 'l'm Prince JackerJack, I have to be JackerJack or the worms crawl in ... I wish Dora [the Explorer] could see me, she'd sing the "We Did It" song' (139).. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN EMMA DONOGHUE'S ROOM 89. When Ma decides that it is time to tell Jack the story ofher life, she uses Atice in Wonderland to explain to him that there is an alternative reality. But as she uses fiction to mimic reality, he then thinks that his mum 'lived in TV one time' (84). When she devises the second plan to escape, she again tells Jack that it will be an emulation of how the Count of Monte Cristo escaped from the dungeon passing for his dead friend, which is what he finally does. However, his first contact with 'real' life shocks him: Thing sliding in the sky that I think they're trees. And houses and lights on giant poles and sorne cars everything zooming. lt's like a cartoon l'm inside but messier. I'm holding on to the edge of the truck, it's ali hard and cold. The sky is the most enormous, over there there's a pink orange bit but the rest is gray... My eyes aren'tworking right, I'm too scared to be scave. (139-140) Although he wants to ask for help, his lack of experience in talking to any other human being silences him. When the police finally find his mother, the only thing he wants to do is go back to Room, the place where he feels comfort and solace. Their escape, which marks the ending oftheir nightmare, is only appar ent since they will now have to face the no less stressful experience of adapting to society and of being accepted by it. Jack's first contact with the 'real' world is, consequently, more traumatic than his incarceration. His physical looks are different, his gender is misread because he has long hair and wears a ponytail, he looks extremely weak and under-sized, he is still being breastfed and he has been home-schooled. The puzzlement in the eyes of the onlookers symbolizes the ambivalence of a society that has to face difference and imperfection. Due to his public exposure, Jack has now to face responses that oscillate from severe judgementalism to sympathy, from horror to pity and from curiosity to morbidity. People find Ma and Jack's bond unsettling because Jack is the grotesque son of a rapist, no matter how much Ma insists that the boy only belongs to her, that he is 'the dead spit of me' (7). He is cruelly described by the media as a 'pint-sized hero', as a 'bonsai boy' who is expected to have long-term developmental delay who 'goes up and clown stairs on ali fours like a mon key' (215). Dehumanized by both his biological father and by his grand father, who both address him with the impersonal 'it' (36, 226), Jack is transformed into a weird thing that can be scrutinized, judged, used and abused at society's own convenience. As Donoghue has explained with regard to the writing of the second half of the novel, her intention was to.
(5) 90. M.M. LADRÓN. let Ma and Jack be seen as freaks, as 'a lost tribe' with their own 'strange kind of island culture, island religion, and a pidgin form of English. I found that if I used these anthropological concepts, it stopped me from seeing them as being stunted' (Landau). In turning them into the reposi tory of fears, wrongs and other kinds of deviations that epitomize the idea of the Other, the author ultimately challenges the success of any society at perpetuating its own set of normative ethical assumptions about the self. Nevertheless, in spite ofthe gulfthat separates Ma and Jack from soci ety, their mental equilibrium is not shattered because they have developed mechanisms that protect them against a hostile environment. In the case ofJack, although he is physically weak and appears to be vulnerable to the demands of society, his fresh and nai've outlook on reality frees him from being critica! about cultural mores that are taken far granted. One of the most obvious instances of this is revealed the very first day of their free dom, when Ma and Jack are sent to hospital. Jade is amazed at everything he sees but he longs to go back to Room because he is not the centre of his mother's attention any more, he cannot be rocked and breastfed in front of people, and has to wear a mask since he is not immune to germs that could kili him. As he has never interacted with people befare, he can not read social behaviours or emotions, takes everything literally and feels utterly confused. Ironically enough, to keep him entertained, the nurses let him watch television while they check bis mother over, but what he sees on screen is far more brutal than anything he has experienced during their confinement. He watches how they are both in the news, and the description offered by the media is as disproportionate as it is malign: 'The despot's victims have an eerie pallar and appear to be in a border line catatonic state after the long nightmare of their incarceration ... The malnourished boy, unable to walk, is seen here lashing out convulsively at sorne of his rescuers' ( 165). The predominantly negative way society welcomes them can be read as the result of a normative construction of childhood and motherhood. Jack, who had never experienced anxiety or sleep problems befare, is now troubled by nightmares at the hospital and insists to the doctor that he needs to go back to Room because 'actually he's got it backwards. In Room I was safe and Outside is the scary' (219). Viewed strictly in medica! terms, Jack has grown up in an unhealthy environment that has damaged his physical and psychological development. As the doctor tells his motl1er, in many ways he is like a newborn in spite of bis brightness in 'literacy and numeracy' (182). Therefore, his immune system and. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESJLIENCE IN EMMA DONOGHUE'S ROOM 91. his sensory and spatial perception need to readjust before he can fully integrate into society. Nevertheless, his (un)natural developmental pro cess outside society and under appalling circumstances, together witl1 his singular upbringing, both protective and encouraging, have triggered bis resilient competence. Ma's definition of a child-care centre as 'a building where parents send kids when they're busy doing other stuff' (213) seems most appropriate here since Jack's close monitoring by his mother has in fact provided him with invaluable personal strength, high self-esteem and psychological well-being. The complexities and ambivalences of mothering are other motifs that run throughout the novel. Donoghue has explained tl1at 'motherhood "even under ideal circumstances" has elements of nightmare as well as fai rytale, sci-fi as well as realism. It's a trip like no other, and it can occasion ally feel (let's admit it, shall we, mothers ofthe world?) like a locked room. And so can childhood, as I recall: kids are stuck with the parents they get, just as we are stuck with them' ('Writing Room'). 11 In the novel, Ma per forms no other role and is not even seen as a young woman until halfway through the narration, when she recovers her name, Sharon, and with it the need to reclaim an identity ofher own. In spite ofher continuous failed attempts over the years to escape, ofher fantasies ofbeing rescued, such as digging a hole, flashing lights, screaming and leaving notes in trash bags, she acknowledges that she only felt saved when she found herself pregnant and began to be polite to her captor with the sole purpose of keeping the baby safe. It is not until the end ofthe novel when she confesses that Jack was her second child but that she had lost her first baby, a girl, after Old Nick had refused to provide medica! assistance when the baby got tangled in the umbilical cord. Thus, motherhood is not presented as an antidote to the horrors and the regular sexual abuse she had to endure. At night, Ma hides Jack away in the wardrobe when Old Nick comes in order to protect him from realizing what is going on although he always hears the 'creales' of the bed: 'tonight it's 273 creaks. I always have to count till he malees that gaspy sound and stops' (37). Por this reason, the author's delving into maternal !ove, as she has indicated, includes the positive emotion of 'life-saving' as much as the pain that appears when the room is 'actually too restrictive far both ofthem' ('Donoghue. Benevolent'; emphasis in the original). When Ma's occasional depressive mood forces her to stay in bed ali <lay, Jack feels that 'Ma is Gone' (60). He then watches television ali day, prepares bis own meals and wonders what would happen if Ma were away for more than one day. Such unusual precocious behaviour in.
(6) 92. M.M. LADRÓN. a 5-year-old child was explained by Donoghue in an interview alluding to the capability of human beings to develop unexpected survival skills when faced with extreme situations: I remember a friend saying to me early on, 'oh, you know, any child in that situation would in fact be totally mentally crushed and sitting in a comer'. I thought 'well, okay, maybe sorne children would be, but I don't actually want to write about that!' Given that I wanted to tell this particular story, Jack and Ma both needed to have extremely strong qualities. I'm not saying that the typical child or mother would react this way. It's just that I wanted it to be plausible but maybe not quite the average. ('Donoghue. Benevolent'). Ma's attachment to her principies during her unrequested psychotherapy aft:er her rescue proves that, as psychologists have explained, '[i]n contrast to those who recover naturally aft:er a period of dysfunctionality, resilient individuals do not experience this dysfunctional period, but rather remain at functional levels in spite of the traumatic experience' (Vera, Carbelo and Vecina 42). However, her therapy at the clinic is defined in terms of psychological concepts such as separation anxiety, social reintegration or self-blame. The doctor also suggests that Jack is very fortunate to be only five since his mind will be able to forget. But ironically, there is little he needs to forget . As already explained, his memories from the incarceration are more positive than the socializing process and the menaces that he has to experience out in the real world: 'Why is it better out than in? Ma said we'd be free but this doesn't feel like free' (257), he wonders. In fact, noticing that he has exchanged one way of confinement for another, he very smartly announces his progress in adjusting to social norms: I'm learning lots more manners. When something tastes yucky we say it's interesting, Jike wild rice that bites like it hasn't been cooked. When I blow my nose I fold the tissue so nobody sees the snot, it's a secret. If I want Ma to listen to me not sorne person else I say, 'Excuse me', sometimes I say, 'Excuse me, Excuse me', for ages, then when she asks what is it I don't remember anymore. (204). It is the hope and, especially, the sense of direction that Ma had instilled in J ack, no matter how pointless it might have seemed given the cir cumstances, what acquires an invaluable significance that allows them to survive their torture psychologically unscathed . Not surprisingly, Ma insists that Jack does not need to go into therapy for, during 'these. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN EMMA DONOGHUE'S ROOM 93. years, I kept him safe' (167). In addition, Jack's final abandonment of the clinic at the grandmother's request, and in spite of the disapproval of the doctors, proves that having been untouched by trauma, he actually only needed what he had lacked: social interaction. And even though he didn't have contact with other children before, he had rehearsed socializing skills through talking to and caring for the inanimate objects in Room with which he related. During captivity Jack had learned not only to write and read, but he had also acquired the cognitive tools and resources that he would need for the outside world. In this regard, Ma's conviction of the rightness of Jack's upbringing is fundamental since once she is made to believe that society finds it deficient and wrong, she has a breakdown and collapses. Up until the moment she is interviewed for television it never occurred to her that she did not provide her son with the best education she could offer him, considering the circumstances. When the option of having given him up for adoption comes up -'Jack could have had a normal, happy childhood with a loving family' (237)-she insists that the only thing any child needs is love and protection, which is exactly what Jack received. However, the pressure of the media is such that she tries to com mit suicide. Significantly enough, it is Jack who saves her life a second time, and in doing so, inadvertently furthering his own progress towards autonomy. Forced to be separated from his mother, the bond between them is at this point securely stretched since, as the author has explained: 'In a way, the book is all about Ma discovering that the time has come to end this little bubble, and that now it is actually worth risking a lot, even risking their lives, to find a more open way of life' ('Donoghue. Benevolent'). Her eventual recovery, not so much from captivity, but from the restrictions of society, proves the rightness of her views on the rais ing of children and education. Not surprisingly, as empirical proof has demonstrated, competent parenting is the factor most closely linked to resiliency (Vera, Carbelo and Vecina 44). When the lawyer suggests to her to be wise and to take advantage of dreadful experience, she refuses to exploit her story and to spoil Jack, no matter how practica! she has to be now. As he says, 'I wouldn't put it like that. I'd imagine you've a lot to teach the world. The whole living-on-less thing, it couldn't be more zeit-geisty' (200). Even though she has developed a fan club of people that are raising money for them, she only lets Jack take five of the toys he has received and donates the rest to a child hospital. Both mother and child display resilient behaviours, but Jack is more socially responsive.
(7) 94 M.M. LADRÓN. and more competent in adjusting to bis new reality. This is so because, as experimental studies in developmental psychology have proved, children seem more capable ofbuilding resistance against hardiness than adults and of exhibiting less behavioural problems following bad experiences since they seem to interact more and because the symptoms decrease over time (Werner and Smith). Although Jack cannot conform to the expectations of society, and has to learn everything from scratch, his progress is based on a hardiness and confidence that will serve him as a protective shield against further pain and suffering. Besides, what Donoghue has described as a 'claustrophobic bond' that tied them both into 'a limit case of ordi nary motherhood' (Tonkin) needs to be reinscribed in the social order to prove its veracity. The novel, as I hope I have been able to demonstrate, rather than dra matizing the struggle to survive in concealment, celebrates life and, with it, the phenomenon of resilience. After the dreadful experience mother and child have undergone, we finally leave them ready to go back to func tioning 'normally' in a 'normal' society, even though the questioning of 'normalcy' will shatter expectations about parenting, traditional education and mental stability. 12 At the end ofthe book, Jack insists on going back to see Room and it is at this point that the reader realizes that he will adapt to the new order since he is seeing bis old home, the place he was completely attached to, in a different light: We step in through Door and it's all wrong. Smaller than Room and emptier and it smells weird ... Nothing says anything to me. 'I don't think this is it', I whisper to Ma. 'Yeath, it is'. Our voices sound not like us. 'Has it got shrunk?' 'No, it was always like this'. (319). The novel ends with mother and child saying goodbye to Room, sugges tively inducing readers to believe that despite their vulnerability in their new reality, the resilience they have developed in the face of their ordeal will offer them protection in the (sometimes) hostile ambience in which they now find themselves. Research data suggests that resilient people usu ally display a strong commitment to everything they do, feel they are in control of their lives, are open to new challenges and tend to interpret stressful and damaging events simply as part of existence (Park; Bonanno; O'Hanlon). These features are strikingly present in Ma and Jack, in their. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN EMMA DONOGHUE'S ROOM 95. commitment to create a meaningful existence, in the projection of their lives into a foreseeable future, in their adaptation to society and in their positive interaction with people. Thus, in spite of such de-stabilizing experience as that provided by living for years in captivity, they have been rebound by the experience. Ma and Jack's capability to rewrite their lives is the result of the enhancement of capacities that were latent in their lives and that include the search for their well-being, emotional strength and struggle to survive. At the same time, the story pays tribute to maternal !ove, both unconditional and socially biased, and mainly ambivalent in its nature . The novel's ultimare achievement in problematizing prevailing ethical assumptions about freedom, the raising of children, regular school ing and the normative developmental socializing process places Room at the centre of a debate on the nature of the functional family and on the role of the individual within society. NOTES 1. Months before the novel was published, an arride in The Sunday Times explained that 'a bidding war for the publishing rights has already earned it plenty of media attention. Picador paid .l200,000 (€224,000) for the UK rights, which include Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Little, Brown in America stumped up €800,000. The book is already being trans lated into French, Italian, Dutch and Hebrew' (Burns). Soon after Room carne out, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010, the Orange Prize, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, the Internacional Author of the Year (Galaxy Nacional Book Awards), the Trillium Book Award and the Governor General's Award. The novel has been the recipient of the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (for best Canadian novel), the Canadian Booksellers' Association and the Commonwealth Fiction Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region), to name only a few ofits awards. 2. Burns was quick to foresee that: 'As fearless as she may be in her writing, this latest literary <leal indicates that Donoghue is as much a captive ofthe marketplace as the average run-of-the-mill hack. After being inspired by the Fritzl case, the market has found in her favour'. 3. She deliberately placed her novel in the USA to distance her story from the Fritzl case, and she has also pointed out that it was after she finished Room that the Jaycee Dugard case carne out (Ue 102). 4. A remarkable aspect of Room is precisely that, although it is an extreme story, it could have happened to anyone in any society, at any given time: 'I would never have written Room if I hadn't glimpsed a way to make the.
(8) 96 M.M. LADRÓN strangeness of Jack's Room somehow universal-a sort of microcosm of our world ... We all start in a very small place (the womb) and emerge into a bigger one, then again in childhood we gradually move from a narrow social setting to a bewilderingly complex, even internacional one. So Jack's journey is everyone's journey, just speeded up' (Tonkin). . . 5. Quoting Lionel Johnson, Jeffers concludes that: 'After ali, who 1s to deC1de what is, absolutely and definitely, the Celtic and Irish note? And now, hav ing fully entered into a new era of economic, cultural ethnic, and creative production, it is even more difficult to "decide," "absolutely and defini tively," what is or what should be "Irish" in the twenty-first century' (179). 6. However, as Patterson explains: 'Psychologists wanting to differentiate between resilience as a trait versus a process have recommended that the term resiliency be used to refer to an individual trait (much like ego-resil iency) and that resilience be used to describe the process of successfully overcoming adversity' (352). 7. The concept of resilience, as many other psychological constructs, is cul turally defined. Hence, nowadays there are two schools, the French and the North American, which understand the term differently. While the French associates resilience with post-traumatic thriving, since the concept includes not only the capacity to overcome hardship but also to learn something from it and to bounce back, the North American school is more restrictive in its meaning and considers it to refer only to the process of facing up to an adverse circumstance that leaves the person psychologically unscathed (Vera, Carbelo and Vecina 43). 8. In one interview, she clearly affirms: 'I wouldn't mind if they just men tioned it [the case of JosefFritzl]. I've been hounded by this! I keep saying "suggested by" or "triggered by", and then in the arride it will say "her novel about Josef Fritzl" ... Oh, God, it's been a curse' ('Donoghue. Benevolent'). In another, she explains that 'Room was only inspired by, not based on, any real-Jife case. I went out of my way to make Ma and Jack's circumstances different from ali the ones I was reading about; there is no case I encountered which features a grown woman (not a child or adoles cent) imprisoned by a stranger (not a family member) and raising a child. Which meant that I did not feel in any way burdened by the facts of those notorious cases. W hat I took from theFritzl case ... was simply the idea of living in confinement, and of a boy who thinks his small world is the only one there is' (Tonkin). 9. In her own words: 'Our culture is constantly telling stories about psychos who capture women. I deliberately kept my psycho out of the spotlight ... It was not Old Nick's evil that fascinated me, but the resilience of Ma and Jack: the nitty-gritties of their survival, their trick of more-or-less thriving under apparently unbearable conditions' (Donoghue, 'Writing Room').. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN EMMA DONOGHUE'S ROOM 97. 10. Interestingly, during the interview on television, Ma admits that she is not a religious person but that she felt that religion could give meaning to their lives. Donoghue has noted that while most reviewers have missed the reli gious overtones of the novel, the Irish reviewers have picked them up. To her, apart from the obvious Mary-Jesus connection, God's appearance should only be seen as part of a fairy tale, in connection to the hope Ma wants to invest in her son ('Donoghue. Benevolent'). 11. In fact, the novel is dedicated to her children, Finn and Una, 'my best works', and is followed by a poem that contrasts the usual concerns of parents with the blissful ignorance of children (Donoghue, Room v-vi). 12. As Walsh has explained, in recent decades the definition of the 'normal' family has been transformed due to social and economic advances that have brought different constructions of farruly functioning in diversity (131-132). WoRKS CITED. Anthony, Elwyn J. 'Risk, Vulnerability, and Resilience: An Overview'. The Invulnerable Child. Eds. Elwyn J. Anthony and Bertram J. Cohler. New York: Guilford, 1987. 3-48. Print. Barr, Nicola. 'Room by Emma Donoghue'. The Observer. 1 Aug. 2010. Web. 3 Aug. 2010. Bonanno, George A. 'Loss, Trauma and Human Resilience'. American Psychologist 59.1 (2004): 20-8. Print. Burns, John. 'Profile: Emma Donoghue'. The Sunday Times. 22 Nov. 2009. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. Derbyshire, Jonathan. 'The NS Books Interview: Emma Donoghue'. New Statesman. 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Donoghue, Emma. 'Dancing W ith Myself: Emma Donoghue Interviews Emma Donoghue'. Sea Minar. 20 Sept. 2010. Web. 21 Sept. 2010. ---. Room. London: Picador, 2010. Print. ---. 'Writing Room: Why and How'. HarperCollins Canada, 2010. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. 'Emma Donoghue. Sorne BenevolentForce'. Canadian Interviews. 29 Oct. 201O. Web. 19 Jan. 2011. Jeffers, Jennifer M. The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and Power. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Print. Kobasa, Suzanne C. 'Stressful Life Events, Personality, and Health: An Inquiry into Hardiness'. ]ournal ofPersonality and Social Psychology 37.1 (1979): 1-11. Print. Landau, Emily. 'Living Room'. The Walrus Blog. 25 Oct. 2010. Web. 28 Jan. 2011..
(9) 98 M.M. LADRÓN Masten, Ann S. 'Ordinary Magic: Lessons from Research on Resilience in Human Development'. American Psychologist 56 (2001): 227-38. Print. ---. 'Resilience in Individual Development: Successful Adaptation despite Risk and Adversity'. Risk and Resilience in Inner-city America: Challenges and Prospects. Ecls. Margaret C. Wang and Edmund W. Gordon. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1994. 3-25. Print. Masten, Ann S., Karin M. Best, and Norman Garmezy. 'Resilience and Development: Contributions from the Study of Children who Overcome Adversity'. Development and Psychopathology 2 (1990): 425-44. Print. O'Hanlon, Bill. Thriving Through Crisis. Turn Tragedy and Trauma into Growth and Change. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print. Park, Crystal L. 'Stress-Related Growth and Thriving through Coping: The Roles of Personality and Cognitive Processes'. Journal of Social Issues 54.2 (1997): 267-77. Print. Patterson, Joan M. 'Integrating Family Resilience and Family Stress Theory'. ]ournal of Marriage and Family 64.2 (May 2002): 349-60. Print. Peterson, Christopher, and Martin Seligman. Character, Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classiftcation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. Print. Rutter, Michael. 'Developing Concepts in Developmental Psychopathology'. Developmental Psychopathology and Wellness: Genetic and Environmental Influences. Ed. James J. Hudziak. Washington: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2008. 3-22. Print. Seligman, Martin E. P., and Mihaly Csikszentrnihalyi. 'Positive Psychology: An Introduction'. American Psychologist 55 (2000): 5-14. Print. Tonkin, Boyd. 'Room with a Panoramic View: How Emma Donoghue's Latest Novel Aims to Tell a Universal Story'. The Independent. 6 Aug. 2010. Web. 6 Aug. 2010. Ue, Tom. 'An Extraordinary Act of Motherhood: A Conversation with Emma Donoghue'. Journal ofGender Studies 21.1 (2012): 101-6. Print. Vera Poseck, Beatriz, Begoña Carbelo Baquero, and María Luisa Vecina Jiménez. 'The Traumatic Experience from Positive Psychology: Resiliency and Post traumatic Growth'. Papeles del psic6logo 27.1 (2006): 40-9. Print. Walsh, Froma. 'A Family Resilience Framework: Innovative Practice Applications'. Family Relations 51.2 (Apr. 2002): 130-37. Print. Werner, Emmy E., and Ruth S. Smith. Vulnerable but Invincible: A Study of Resilient Children. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Print. Zautra, Alex J., John S. Hall, and Kate E. Murray. 'Resilience: A New Definition of Health for People and Communities'. Handbook of Adult Resilience. Eds. John W. Reich, Alex J. Zautra and John S. Hall. New York: Guilford, 2010. 3-34. Print.. CHAPTER 7. The Fallen Sex Revisited: Imperfect Celibacy in Mary Rose Callaghan' s A Bit of a Scandal Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides On an international scale and for nearly a century, the projection of Irish cultural difference rested chiefly on the island's unique attachment to reli gion. In the Republic, debates about the grip ofCatholic discourses upon the articulation of post-colonial and nationalist consciousness have taken place across the broad spectrum of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (Kenny; Fuller, Irish Catholicism and 'New Ireland'; Inglis, Global Ireland, Moral Monopoly and 'Religious Field'; Ferriter). Critics, artists and authors have widely stressed the imbrications of the Catholic Church and the State for the enactment of legislation and political sovereignty, thus raising troubling questions about the extent of Ireland's theocratic status. Yet, there is an added dimension of the monopoly of the Church in Ireland that is equally engaging, and it has to do with the collision between the institutional power artefacts of Catholicism and the personal encounters people have with them. The tension is by no meaos exclusive. The author wishes to acknowledge the funding provided by the Span.ish Min.istry ofEconomy and Competitiveness for the writing ofth.is essay (Research Project FEM2010-18142). A. Pérez-Vides (CBJ) Dpto. Filología Inglesa, University ofHuelva, Huelva, Spain © The Author(s) 2017 L.M. González-Arias (ed.), National Identities and Imperftctions in Contemporary Irish Literature, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-47630-2_7. 99.
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