ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the evolution of a distinct genre of Irish fiction of the Anglo-Irish Big House novel in relation to the notion of marriage. The failure or refusal of the Anglo-Irish daughter to marry affirms the decline of Anglo-Irish dominance in the twentieth century. The failure of the marriage plot illuminates the gendered, uneven aspects of modernization in Ireland. The Big House novel responds to key moments in Irish history, such as the unification in 1800, independence in the 1920s, and European Union integration since the 1970s. Two divergent articulations of the marriage plot index the continuity of the Big House novel: Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1929) and Molly Keane’s Good Behavior (1981). Bowen draws parallels between the impossibility of romantic marriage and the disintegration of the Anglo-Irish elite in the period leading to the Irish Free State. Much later, Keane radically subverts Bowen’s elegiac tone by offering a faux-nostalgic and postmodern rewriting of the genre. Despite their contrary perspectives Bowen and Keane interrogate in distinctive ways the limitations of an oppressive nostalgia.
