ANALYSIS OF ENGLAND,ENGLAND
Julian Barnes' novels like to get the whole world in their hands. This is what we actually find in his last novel, where we can see different features that we are going to analyse on this article.
England, England makes a lovely addition to this grappling match with our cravings for make-believe. A merry dystopia indeed, it deals with a gang of entrepreneurs whose latest money-spinning dodge is to turn the Isle of Wight into an Essence of England theme park. Compliant historians, docile corporate sidekicks, the sharp-minded England-lover Martha Cochrane: all fall in with this wheeze of coarse and wily Sir Jack Pitman. So do the King, and denise his queen-House of Windsor icing on a tourisic retro-dream of old England in one fast-forward, easy-listening go. Boadicea, Big Ben, Anne Hathway's Cottage, White Cliffs, Nell Gwynne, Man United, The Last Night of the Proms: here they are all on a plate, convenient to Tennyson Airport, a plasticated visitor's joy for ever. All, naturally, for glorious profit: England, England, the pure market state.
Barnes' satiric relish for Sir jack's history scam runs at glorious full tilt. The ironies set in very pleasingly indeed. And they do not just involve what the great money-bags gets up to at Aunty May's brothel for sexual retards. The mess of the human has a most discomfiting way of unsettling heritage fictions. So the actors playing Robin Hood and his Merrie Men quickly get a real taste for real poaching and real violence; Dr Johnson turns genuinely smelly and morose.
All delightful stuff, as entertaining a set of footnotes as could be to Lucky Jim's aborted Merrie England lecture. Still more arresting is what happens to Martha Cochrane. She appears in the wonderful opening section of the novel, remembering herself as a little girl playing with a Counties of England jijsaw. Her daddy hides Stafforshire, say, in his pocket; then deserts her, leaving her to make up plausible first memories, and invent spry blasphemies about father-figures and paternosters.("Alfalfa, who farts in Devon,"she recites,"For this is the wigwam, the flowers, and the story...").
Martha seems a representative seeker for truths about origins, her own and England's. Instructively, she doesn't last long as Sir Jack's Henchwoman. She prefers lighting out for the run-down mainland. Anglia, as it is known, is a dustier Portugal, demoted to the fringe of Europe. But it proves a kind of paradise, some kind of genuine old England, whre tourism and new technology are banned. You write with a fountain pen, dial 0 for operator, and go to the village church.
Julian Barnes' cautionary tales run with fine eagerness towards the essay: think of Flaubert's Parrot and A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters. This latest venture will delight his huge European following as surely as those novels did. Deservedly so, even if here the essayistic enticements are firmly subdued to the regular pleasures of narrative.
Not, though, that Barnes' scathing eye for the follies and mistakings of story ever falters. To be sure, Martha, settles for a low-key village existence, but she and her author still go on staunchly resisting the lures of the old credences. During yet another sermon in her village church, she reminds herself of the wigwam, the flowers and the story. It's "just another pretty verse," she thinks.
Written by Valentine Cunningham
©Copyright. Published by Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
England, England promises to be an elegant meditation on the nature of England and the Englishness- as well as history and authenticity- and the solvent for this is to be a dystopian fantasy about a spectacular new tourist state invented by an autocratic media magnate, sir jack Pitman.
Sir Jack buys up the Isle of Wight and transforms it into a scaled-down cyber-England with scale replicas of each and every English landmark worht seeing: a Tower of London, a Sherwood Forest complete with actors playing Merrie Men, a Buckingham Palace, with real Royals waving from the balcony; all within easy reach of each other with a proper modern infrastructure of transport, hotels, air conditioning, double-glazing,etc. But far from being a heritage resort, England, England becomes a thriving and dynamic state with full membership of the EU. It exemplifies the nationhood of the future, while the mother country, politically marginalised and deprived of trade and tourist income, regresses into disrepair.
This fable is informed by the life of Martha Cochrane, a woman who is whimsically appointed by Sir Jack Pitman as the project's Official Cynic at the design stage: who also overthrows Sir Jack to gain control of the island after a passionate affair with another of his executives.
The first part shows Martha's childhood in the idyllic rural England of her memory, in which she remembers a Counties of England jijsaw puzzle, and a beloved father who deserts her. The third section shows an ageing Martha returning to a neglected Old England which has become a tatty and parodic Arcady.
Those sections are charming and deft. But the middle part- the vision of England, England itself presided over by the buffoonish Brother Sir Jack-is heavy- handed satire, with dull and derivative Baudrillardian musings on simulacra, and, frankly, some pretty disappointing writing. It is as if Barnes' sensibility is bored by the naff heritage theme-park it has forced itself to inhabit.
And once again, Barnes breaks Kingsley Amis' modest and sensible rule about never allowing one character to laugh at another character's jokes. Here, Martha's lover Paul delights her by doing an impression of a mallard:"'Quack quack 'Paul, stop it.' 'Quack. Quack.Quack' He saw Martha on the cusp of laughter.", Earlier, in bed together, Paul's raillery has the same happy effect:"'Don't. You're killing me.'Laughing on her back felt almost unhealthy."
The dénouement comes when Martha is able to blackmail Sir Jack for visiting a brothel catering for specialised requirements- a moment of Rabelaisian comedy that the cool and fastidious Barnes cannot plausibly bring off.
But why did he want to bring it off in the first place? Why did he want to bring his formidable talents to writing what is essentially a middlebrow romp? It is a mystery.
Written by Peter Bradshaw
©Associated Newspapers Ltd.,24 August 1998
England, England
Here I´m going to analyse the whole novel, paying attention on the more relevant aspects that, in some way, can be easily identify when talking about the novel.
1: ENGLAND
This is the first part of the novel. The first picture we find in the novel is that of Martha Cochranes' childhood and also childhood's memories.
This Chapter is a kind of elegy, it's a moan from the present as it has been lost a happy past, so that the protagonist prefers to look back to her past which constitutes her present.
An important image that appears in the novel is that of Martha Cochrane playing with a Counties of England jijsaw. This is important because this is what, in some way, determines the apearance of her father, her beloved father who deserts her. Her father hides Staffordshire in his pocket. When he appears when the piece missing it becomes vey significative, because he has given her something she thought it was lost. This also provoks that Martha could find her sense of life.
She also reminds her ages at a Christian school and her friend Jessica James. We can see many references to her believes.
Then her father betrays her. She think that her father, not having the piece of Stafforshire in his pocket, would annoy her. So his father goes to look for the piece but he never returns. So in a way she feels guilty for the disappearance of his father and of her mother's misery.
She also makes some references to the Agricultural Show at the same time that she reminds her tather.
Martha asks her mother about his father, if he was wicked or weak. And she also makes the question general to other men.
We also can poit out one idea that became part of Martha's creed: " after the age of twenty-five, you are not allowed to blame anything on your parents."
At the end of this first part, she becomes older and she receives a call from her father who wondered if they could meet. She accepts and she asks her father for the missing piece of the jijsaw. Her father doesn't remember what she's talking about. So she would always blame him for that.
2 : ENGLAND, ENGLAND
This is the second part of the novel: Here we meet, Sir Jack Pitman. So we have, abruptly moved somewhere into the next century whare Martha, grown up, fourty in fact, is taken on by the powerful but grotesque Sir Jack Piman.
We are presented some other characters that contribute to the development of the "project" which is to create a theme park in the Isle of Wight.
At the beginning pof this second part we find that Martha is being interviewed by sir Jack Piman forthe post of Special Consultant. She is finally contracted. We have a description of her, her application.
We also find here a brief history of the sexuality of Martha Cochrane, which is an element that is not extremely important in order to understand the whole novel.
Later we find that the French Comitee is analysing the Project, and accapts it. It is also described here the problem of the relatioship between the original and the replica, a question that we will find in the course of the novel.
Then we find different opinions about Sir Jack Pitman and also about his Project of building a theme park of England. They also thought about a suitable place to situate the park and the most appropiate they find is , as we have said before, the Isle of Wight.
Afterwards they analyse what to include in the park. a castle, monarchs, Roman villas, Tennyson (the poet), a vineyard, a prison with prisoners...etc.
Martha cochrane and Paul Harrison, the Ideas Catcher, star to go out together, a relationship which later will be discussed as we would see.
In order to employ people in the theme park, they are interviewed, and we can see what are the questions asked to this people. Normally, are questions related to English History: the Battle of Hastings, William the conqueror, the Saxons.
Here, it is given a list of fifty topics which all people consider properly English. This list is the result of a survey made in twenty-five countries about the virtues or characteristics that the word England Suggested to them . The result of this was The Fifty Quintessences of Englishness.
The different topics had been analysed by Sir Jack Pitman. He feels offended because the topics that had been given to his beloved England.
In this chapter, ii appears again the image ofthe Counties of England jijsaw, when Martha is talking with Paul about herslf.
Later, we find ourselves in the park, or better in the final preparation of the park: they talk about gastronomy, sex, the relationship between the British and the sex, about Nell Gwynn...etc
As happened with Martha's sexuality, the turn now corresponds to Paul.
In the second chapter of this second part, we find that the story is moved to the Isle of Wight, so we deduce taht the park is going to be opened. They talk about the price of the sovereignity, that they have to buy the island that has to be sold by the government.We can see that they are also looking for an appropiate logo for the park, thay also analyse the monarchy, and It´s here where we find again the question of the importance of the replica versus the original.
Afterwards we finf that Sir Jack infantile sexual gratification is spied on by a gossip columnist, what later would be used as weapon by Martha when he intends to sack her.
Sir Jack is proclamed Island Gevernor, although it is only a purely honorific position.
And finally, it's at the end of the second chapter of this part when Sir Jack has the idea to sack her, but he fails due to the fact that Martha knows something about him that could be used against him.
On the third chapter of this part we find that Martha continues in the park, and moreover, she is the CEO (Chief Executive Officer). For the first time,we have here that the thematic park has been named England, England.
Afterwards we find that Marth has finally been sacked from her job, and Paul has become the new CEO, and Sir Jack gives her only six months to abandon the Isle. She is aldo declared "persona non grata". They analyse what have happened in Old England.
3: ANGLIA
This is the last part of the novel, where we find that Pitman has died and that he had a mausoleum in the Island. On the other hand we have that Martha being sacked from the Island, returns to England, which now is called Anglia.