Raksha Manjunath

12/11/2014

Final Paper

Internal Neutrality in Loving and Fortunes of War

Henry Green’s Loving and Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War

both narrate the lives of British citizens living outside of

England. In Loving, citizens of different classes live

together in a house in rural Ireland. In Fortunes of War, a

young couple travels through several countries and settles

in Bucharest. Both novels were written on the onset of World

War II, in which Ireland and Romania assumed neutral stances

and so the characters in both stories live shielded from the

war. However, the British characters are not comfortable

living in neutral countries. Both Green and Manning

juxtapose their British characters with the neutral

environment they are placed in to suggest that people can

never be internally neutral in the face of worldwide

conflict.

Ireland remained neutral throughout World War II, but

had several internal conflicts about that status. Prior to

the war, Ireland didn’t want to be influenced by British

policies. As the war began, it emphasized its wish for

“benevolent neutrality” and was reluctant to help the

British armies (Cole 47). Ireland’s neutrality meant that,

because of their small army, they were vulnerable to the

Axis powers. However, Ireland wished for a stance not

influenced by either power and focused on employing schemes

that stimulated “national pride, honor, courage and

cohesion” (Cole 47). Irish society was conflicted about the

idea of neutrality and expressed this in politics and

literature. One of the key politicians was Eamon de Valera,

who urged the Irish to realize that they were in danger.

Ireland’s neutrality, he said, was something “they had to

defend with arms” (Cole 47). Neutrality was an unstable

concept for the country during the war. Ireland’s political

and social attitude at the time gave rise to literature that

“struggled against the conservative cultural dictates of

mainstream discourse” (Matthew 3). For example, The Bell sold

out every copy of its initial printing in 1940. Neutrality

was one of the concepts heavily debated by many authors such

as Kavenagh, Bowen and Johnston.

In Loving, the characters are situated in an old manor

house in rural Ireland. They are divided into two social

classes, the upper class who owns the house and the lower

class who maintain it. The entire novel takes place within

the house and when the characters do leave the house, they

leave the story. The house itself is a castle with “tall

Gothic windows” and “pointed iron-studded doors” (52). The

roof is steep and made of slate. The architecture creates a

sense of isolation as the iron doors resemble a cage, which

also has doors made of metal. The house in Ireland is a

microcosm of British society as most of the characters are

British. The various characters have to assume their social

places in close proximity to each other while they are cut

off from the rest of the world. This causes conflict and

tension as the characters try to do things outside their

social role, for example when Edith and Raunce sit in the

living room next to the fire. Green was interested in the

idea of social class, and even though he was a “member of a

dying breed, the British aristocracy” he enjoyed living and

working as the common man (Hitchcock 7). In the novel, the

war heightens this social tension as the British servants

don’t have other options for work and they all live together

in the same house.

The novel focuses on everyday life. The novel

begins with the phrase “Once upon a day” (1). As the reader,

we start to believe that the day is very important but as

the story continues we see that nothing dramatic happens and

the characters remain unchanged in their microcosmic world.

This is because the house creates a physical bubble in which

the characters can remain shielded from the world. The

actual war remains at the backdrop of the storyline. John

Updike explains, “Green’s events are consistently trivial

and therein resides their great level beauty” (Brauner 191).

This focus on the trivial emphasizes how shielded the

characters are from the actual war. However, the war

heightens the consequences of trivial actions – like losing

a ring. When Edith misplaces the ring, she puts herself at

risk of being evicted and she would have limited options.

Like this, trivial actions have larger consequences because

of the war.

During World War II, Romania had initially maintained a

neutral stance. France and Britain, who had pledged to

ensure that Romania retained its independence, backed this

stance. However, as the war continued the German armies

overthrew France and Romania was coerced into alliance with

the Axis powers. Romania’s neutrality lasted only for a

couple of months with the Germans closing in on it. While

Ireland was economically secure because of it’s economy,

Romania’s neutral position was threatened by its failing

economy. Here, neutrality was unstable because of the lack

of political and economical means to maintain it. Poverty is

constantly set as a backdrop for the British characters in

Loving, and adds to their internal displacement in the novel.

Poverty is seen at the very beginning of Fortunes of War

when Harriet looks out the window and watches the landscape

as they move further away from Britain. She finds that

“[she] is among friends” in France, but as she moves closer

to Bucharest she is unable to connect with the sight of

peasants outside her window (11). She tries to smile but

their faces remain “weathered and withered with a fixed

desolation” (11). Although, at this point the reader hasn’t

met the Romanians yet, the changing landscape implies that

they are rural and poor. It foreshadows how displaced the

Pringles will be when they arrive at Bucharest.

The Pringles spend most of their time with their

friends at the English Bar. The bar is always filled with

journalists and upper class people. As in Loving, this novel

also gives an account of everyday life. Most of the novel

is spent watching the Pringles and their friends converse

about the war and their social lives. The bar creates both a

physical and social bubble. The Pringles settle into their

new home and are surrounded with similar company in an

unfamiliar territory. They hear about the war through

whispers and gossip and dismiss it as rumors. The war

however, has no external influence in them and remains only

in their minds because of the daily gossip. The bar itself,

is “smoky and stifling” (92). Harriet prefers to sit in the

garden but it is “small, high walled, and only accessible

through the French-Window doors of the breakfast room” (92).

The high walls and cramped space imply that the bar

frequenters are trapped in the very place they are

comfortable in.

Therefore, the bubbles that protect them from the war

also cause an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. In

Loving, the peacocks emphasize this sense of claustrophobia

as they walk around the man-made environment that, by

nature, they are not part of. The birds are “sheltered in

winter, nested in spring,” where they “die in the end of

natural causes” (55). Their lives are represented with

seasons, which create an image of life being a repetitive

circle rather than a linear journey. The birds further

resemble the British characters in that they are aliens in

the world they are currently in. They are secluded from the

outside world and are subjected to the events of the

household when they could be roaming in the outside country.

These birds seem as though “stuffed in a dusty case” and

were bought to give the manor house a sense of grandeur

(55). The war, however, has stopped any upper-class social

gatherings: Mrs. Jack and Ms. Tennant do not show off the

manor to friends anymore. Like the characters, the peacocks

have lost their social and natural place because of the war.

The war seems to cause not only a physical threat of

invasion, but also an invasion of an individual’s sense of

internal structure.

Similarly, in Fortunes of War, the claustrophobia is

emphasized by the presence of a wild animal in a man-made

environment. Harriet adopts a kitten to feel less alone and

the kitten takes on an important role. It is “her baby, her

totem, her alter ego” (207). The kitten is Harriet herself,

and its journey within the apartment reflects onto Harriet’s

journey in Bucharest. Both are unsettled in their new

environment. The kitten possesses a social role as her

confidant, and Harriet pours all her unused love into it. It

emphasizes Harriet’s displacement by showing the reader that

she has no one to trust and turn to. The red kitten seems to

be the only creature truly alive in the house. Its wildness

juxtaposes the sedentary apartment it lives in. The kitten

dies as it runs onto the outside balcony and tries to climb

into the next-door apartment. The kitten’s curiosity about

the outside world suggests that it could never be locked in

the apartment forever. Harriet loses her alter ego by

trapping it inside an alien environment. The idea of the

bubble is both nurturing and claustrophobic and the kitten’s

death implies that the Pringles cannot remain loyal to their

identities by living in their bubble. Eve Patten describes

how Harriet “is allowed no space in the theatre of world war

in which to construct her identity of self-expression”

(Patten 53). Here, the word theatre again creates an idea of

artificial reality, and emphasizes how Harriet’s life in

Romania is a performance. There is no space for her to

construct an identity for herself and so a theatre,

originally a place of expression and creativity, is now a

facade. Any natural and ‘wild’ expression in Romania is

destroyed by the events in the narrative and Harriet, like

the kitten, will never be able to express herself within the

confines of a physical bubble.

In both novels, the social bubbles also show how close-

minded the characters can be. In Loving, there are only two

significant characters that are Irish – Paddy and Thompson.

Paddy is treated with indifference and no one can understand

what he says. Thompson is treated with extreme distaste

because of his accent and the company he represents. In

Fortunes of War, none of the British characters fraternize with

the common Romanian citizen. At the beginning of the novel,

the narrator shows us that Harriet walks frequently. In

Romania however, “only peasants and servants are seen

walking the road” (27). Harriet walks on the same land as

these peasants and in that, there could be some recognition

that both she and the peasants are human beings in the same

neutral country. The reader never finds that moment of

recognition. In both novels, although the British citizens

and the natives share a common space, they never truly

connect with each other. Manning intentionally creates this

distancing by creating a “highly conventional reading of the

country, emphasizing its primitive Oriental decrepitude”

(Patten 57). The British characters are emotionally secluded

from anyone who is not like them. However, by juxtaposing

the natives and the foreigners so repeatedly the narrator

shows how displaced they are simply because they will never

be able to own the identity of the country they are in.

The native characters further juxtapose the British

citizens by appearing at ease in the setting. In Loving,

Paddy doesn’t engage in meaningless conversation with the

other members of the household but goes about his daily

tasks as the gardener. In one scene, Edith finds Paddy

asleep in the saddleroom. Paddy is bathed in sunlight and

the cobweb stuck in his hair “looks to be made of gold”

(54). Paddy, in his environment, seems to be a reflection of

“an old king’s treasure from the bog.” From these lines, it

can be inferred that Paddy is comfortable in his

environment. His comfort adds to the serenity of the scene

and to the working girls, he seems bathed in warm gold. The

serenity itself becomes priceless like the molten gold, and

Paddy unknowingly possesses this treasure. Unlike the other

characters, he is at home. The feeling of home here becomes

something of value and something that the British characters

can never have. The girls stare “transfixed” at the image

before them though in reality they are just staring at a

sleeping man. Something about this tranquility unnerves them

and they flee from the scene. In that moment, it appears

that they have been excluded from this tranquility and have

no choice to back away (55).

In Fortunes of War, Bella is the only character that fits

in with both the members of the English Bar and upper class

Romanian society. This is something that Harriet notices

when they eat together. Harriet sees that she “reverts to

refinement” in the company of wealthy Rumanians by her way

of condemning the lower class Romanians (165). For example,

Bella uses phrases like “you don’t give them an inch” (165).

While this reversion may be just in the presence of wealthy

Rumanians, Bella clearly enjoys being part of the wealthy

Romanian society. She is more assimilated as she is married

to a Romanian man and she relishes that her societal

position allows her to be haughty and refined. As Bella and

Harriet have lunch, they seem to at the same societal

position even if they are two different people. They are

wealthy enough to dine at good places and can afford to take

the trasura to avoid walking. As Bella speaks, Harriet feels

an “odd sense of helplessness” (165). She feels awkward

talking about the Romanian peasants and feels out of place,

even if she economically in the same societal position.

Harriet doesn’t acknowledge the fact that she herself treats

the peasants poorly as doesn’t see them as human beings.

However, unlike Bella, she remains uncomfortable outwardly

expressing her inner thoughts. Although Harriet has the same

thoughts as Bella, she is displaced from the society she

lives in because she doesn’t wish to join in and embody her

societal status.

The British characters in both novels not only are

displaced from the worlds they are in, but also from the

comfort that neutrality provides them. They are all obsessed

with the war. In Loving, Edith panics that the German armies

will invade the country and they will have nowhere to go.

This is similar to Harriet’s feelings in Fortunes of War.

Having no outlet to resolve the external threat of the war,

their feelings are limited to the internal conflicts of

their everyday life. The characters are threatened by the

company of someone who they feel invade their private lives.

In Fortunes of War, Yakimov and Sophie evolve into threats in

Harriet’s personal life. While the main storyline narrates

the Pringles’ lives in Bucharest, a minor storyline is

Harriet’s journey towards accepting these foreign people

into her life without feeling threatened. The reader sees

how invasive Yakimov is to Harriet when he stays at her

house. Harriet says to Guy “It costs me more than you could

ever guess” suggesting that this invasion affects her deeply

(225). An ongoing tension in the novel is that Harriet and

Guy expect different things out of their marriage. Harriet

wishes for singular devotion and home that she and Guy could

have for themselves but as Guy socializes with everyone she

turns to her kitten as something to dote on. Now that the

kitten is dead, she loses that object of affection. In her

mind, Yakimov has not only physically taken over her house

but also her wish for a sanctuary. Her home is a physical

representation of her marriage as she lives in it with her

husband. Yakimov has taken her private home and has turned

it into a public space with his unwelcome presence. Since

Guy does not understand all this, Harriet has lost

everything she had control over. Yakimov becomes more than a

person, but a threat who has invaded her private life. She

cannot remain internally neutral against this threat.

Similarly, in Loving, people become invasive threats in

the household as they creep into the private lives of

others. Edith walks in on Mrs. Jack and her lover. When Mrs.

Jack realizes that Edith has caught her in her secret love

affair, she gives “a sort of cry and [crosses] her lovely

arms” over her body (80). At this moment, Mrs. Jack is

physically and emotionally naked. The physical nakedness

emphasizes how invasive Edith’s presence in the room is.

Mrs. Jack’s body shakes and she slides back under the

blanket to protect herself. This is an important moment in

the novel as it explains the claustrophobia and lack of

privacy caused by the house and the war. The war is the

reason that Mrs. Jack’s husband is away and why she chooses

to turn to the Captain. Edith upsets the idea that she can

lead two different lives and becomes more than just a

servant: a threat. In response, Mrs. Jack chooses to abandon

the comfort of her home and physically leaves the manor

house. Edith shatters her romantic bubble.

The characters in both novels realize they have to

leave as a result of their displacement, claustrophobia and

internal conflicts. In Loving, Albert is the first one to

make this revelation. Throughout the novel, Albert is the

meek character who never gets to confess his true feelings

for Edith. Towards the end, Albert blurts out to Mrs.

Tennant that he wants to be an air gunner. While Mrs.

Tennant begins to question him about the ring Albert

responds, “It’s the uncertainty” (186). In that moment,

Albert isn’t just afraid that Edith is going to be blamed

for the mishap over the ring. Albert, in that moment, is

uncertain about his future in the bubble and his position as

an Englishman. He blurts out “I want to be a air gunner’m”

and this is the first time the reader sees him blatantly

explaining his wishes (187). In that moment, he is changed.

He sees his purpose outside the manor house. Albert accepts

his role as a British citizen and chooses to fight in a

dangerous position for his country. His response sets off

reactions in the other characters, primarily Raunce. After

Albert’s confession, Raunce recognizes that Ireland is “too

bloody neutral” (237). At this moment, he is talking to

Edith about their future plans and his stomach is upset. His

health is deteriorating from the cook’s food and also from

the coldness of the house. He finally realizes that he wants

to escape, and asks Edith to come with him. The characters

make the bold move of leaving their sanctuary for England.

Although realistically, they have a greater chance of

starting a life and family in Ireland, the reader perceives

that this is a happy conclusion as the characters have

finally escaped the cage that both protected and trapped

them.

In Fortunes of War, The Pringles have to move because they

face a real threat. The German armies have just conquered

France and Romania’s neutrality is threatened. However, the

book ends on a hopeful note. For the first time, Guy and

Harriet agree on their next move. This is also the first

time that Guy recognizes the real threat of the war and

gives up the façade of a normal life in Romania. Guy mimics

her phrase of wanting to “get away” and the repetition of

that word in the next few phrases show how unified the

Pringles are and how Romania is not the place for them

(287). The falling of France seems to be a victory in that

it bought the two main protagonists together. They are

unsure of where they are heading to, but the reader

perceives that moving out of the bubble is positive. As in

Loving, the act of moving on physically and emotionally seems

cathartic. The idea of taking action against the war is

cathartic for the characters.

In conclusion, both novels create British characters

who are unable to remain neutral even in their neutral

environment. This is reflective of writers and citizens in

Ireland in Romania at the time. As mentioned before, many

Irish writers defied neutrality by writing against it even

while residing in the neutral country itself. Romanian

citizens viewed the poverty around them and neutrality put

them at a physical disadvantage in the war. The war has an

internal effect on them and remaining in their social and

physical bubbles proves to be stifling and claustrophobic.

The authors create this overwhelming sense of isolation and

vulnerability by presenting personal accounts of everyday

people who are not on the battlefield. As readers, it urges

us to view their lives as individuals and to consider how

the war affects every single person. The novels challenge

the idea of neutrality because although the country may take

an official stance its residents cannot since they are

personally affected by worldwide conflict. They cannot

remain indifferent about it, whether or not they choose to

actively accept their position.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Green, Henry. Loving. New York: Viking, 1949. Print.

Manning, Olivia. The Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy. New York:

New York Review, 2010. Print.

Secondary Sources:

Brauner, David. “Much Ado about Nothing: Boredom, Banality,

and Bathos in Late Henry Green and Early John Updike.”

Yearbook of English Studies 42 (2012) 186-203. Web.

Cole, Robert. "The Hazards of Neutrality." Propaganda,

Censorship and Irish Neutrality in the Second World War. Edinburgh:

Edinburgh UP (2006) 46-67. Print.

Hitchcock, Peter. "Passing: Henry Green and Working-Class

Identity." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 40.1 (1994): 1-31. Web.

Matthews, Kelly. “Something Solid to Put Your Heels On:

Representation and Transformation in The Bell.” Eire-Ireland 46

(2011) 106-127. Web.

Patten, Eve. "The Balkan Trilogy: Romania and the Far End of

Europe." Imperial Refugee: Olivia Manning's Fictions of War. Cork: Cork

University Press (2012) 47-78. Print.

"Romania." World War II. U.S Library of Congress, n.d. Web.