Identity Loss And Restoration

From the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century,the Irish people carried out the national independence campaign vigorously,such as the Young Ireland movement,the Fenian movement,the Irish Home Rule,the Irish Literary Revival and the 1916 Easter uprising.In order to get rid of the British rule,an important part of the Irish national movement was to seek its own national identity.During the Irish Literary Revival,many artists were committed to shaping a brand new,unique,and real Irish identity.John Millington Synge was one of the representatives of the Irish Dramatic Movement,Synge’s source of creation came from the experience of life in western Ireland.The prototype of Synge’s female images are the young women on the Aran Island.They are the highlights of the plays,representing Synge’s deep insight and strong desire for freedom and equality.Synge cannot be labeled as feminists,but he advocated through his works for a more modern Irish woman,rather than the type of woman that was most common in 1900s’ Ireland.For a long time,Irishness has been confined to the nationalist’s paradigm as Gaelic,western countryside and Catholicism.Synge opposed to this narrow and onefold construction,and pointed out the inherent contradictions of the nationalist’s view of culture.His definition of Irishness was unrelated to the ancestry,religion and gender.Synge broke through the two popular images which prevailed in the twentieth century’s Irish stage: the pure and self-sacrificed “Colleen” and “the poor old woman”.Synge defined a diversified,independent and modern Irish woman through such females as the rural peasant Nora,the rural middle-class Pegeen and the mythic Deirdre.They are repressed,but they owned temperaments as indomitable,rebellious,wild,assertive and freedom-loving.Their marginalized identities as the “other” can be regarded as a historical metaphor for the long term colonization by the British Empire.The process of women’s pursuit of equality echoes the gradual process of Ireland’s pursuit of independence.These oppressed women symbolized the plight of Ireland and the hope to reconstruct the Irish identity.On one hand,Synge subverted the definition of “other” for Ireland by the imperial discourse,and reflected the characteristics of a resistance culture.On the other hand,he challenged the nationalists’ practice of excluding Protestants,Anglo-Irish and other minorities out of the Irish identity.The thesis will analyze women’s identity loss and restoration,their symbolic meanings and their relationships with Ireland.Synge choice of these marginalized people to represent Ireland and speaking for the “voiceless” groups shows that different thoughts are very important to shape and widen the true Irish identity.There are as various Irish identities as numerous Irish writings,so identity should include hybrid elements.One of Synge’s legacies is he has provided multiple ways to define the Irish identity,proved that the construction of the ethnic identity should be more inclusive and open.He also makes us to rethinking of the diversified national identity of our own in current times.