G. Patterson I Am One of thePeople

Patterson I Am One

Explain the following quote adapted from Beard’s review of Fools of Fortune: All characters, ‘even minor ones fall victim to larger, historical forces they neither understand nor control, ‘fools of fortune’ to the end.’ By E. Bentivegna

Fools of Fortune is a novel written by William Trevor which expands from 1918 to 1983. It narrates the hardships suffered by the Quinton family as a result of the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). The novel shows how the violence and bloodshed of the public sphere trap good-hearted people and turn them into tragic figures. In the words of Mr. Quinton, the characters of the story are ‘fools of fortune,’ as they are bound by forces beyond their control, and, as a result, condemned to lead unhappy lives. This idea of predestination and doom is evidenced in the novel throughout the lives of the members of the Quinton family, mainly Mr. and Mrs. Quinton, Willie, his lover Marianne and their daughter Imelda.

The Quintons are affluent mill owners who belong to the landed upper class of Anglo-Irish origin, commonly known as the Ascendancy. In the context of the War of Independence, the Quintons, by birth and background, should side with the British. However, because of their deep Irish roots, they consider themselves truly Irish and favor the Republicans. Seen as traitors to their class, they become acquainted with one of the Republican leaders, Michael Collins, and support his cause financially.

Problems arise when one of Mr. Quinton’s mill employees, Doyle, is executed. On suspicion of his being an informer, his Republican co-workers hang him from a tree and cut his tongue to show he has betrayed his country. Mr. Quinton chooses to ignore this situation: he neither praises nor punishes his workers. This inaction raises suspicion among the British forces. Doyle informed to Sergeant Rudkin, a Black and Tan, who, in retaliation for his partner’s death, led the Tans to burn the Kilneagh estate. The fire causes the death of Mr. Quinton and his two daughters, while some members of the household are shot. This tragic event indicates how the difficult position held by the Anglo-Irish family during the War determines their fortune. If they had remained loyal to their class, they would have probably been murdered by the IRA. As they choose to uphold their Irish roots and support the Republicans, they are attacked by the Black and Tans. No matter which side they took, they are unable to escape their fate as members both of the Ascendancy and as Republican supporters. In this way, the historical events occurring in Ireland are juxtaposed with the domestic life at Kilneagh in such a way that private characters cannot escape their public pull.

After the tragedy at Kilneagh, Mrs. Quinton and Willie move to Cork to reconstruct their shattered lives. Mrs. Quinton suffers from a deep depression as she is unable to cope with her bereavement. She resorts to alcohol as a means to escape from her misery and eventually develops an obsession with Rudkin, the Tan responsible for the murders and suffering in her family. This fixation brings about more distress to her life, and it is because of her misery that she ends up committing suicide. Having endured more suffering than her husband and daughters, Mrs. Quinton becomes another tragic victim of the confrontations existing in the aftermath of the War of Independence, forces she can neither understand nor control.

In this sense, Willie is a fool of fortune himself as by these terrible quirks of fate, he loses all the members of his direct family. In Cork, Willie experiences his childhood and adolescence in great distress. Not only does he grieve the deaths of his father and sisters, but he also needs to take care of his depressed mother and cope with all his pain on his own. He finds some relief and happiness when he meets and eventually falls in love with his English cousin, Marianne. However, just when he is trying to reshape his life, his mother commits suicide. As Mrs. Quinton longed for revenge for the death of her loved ones, this episode revives Willie’s grief. Thus, in a way, he is forced to avenge the deaths of his family by killing Sergeant Rudkin. Revenge costs Willie his freedom, and he becomes a fugitive living in exile for more than forty years.

In exile, Willie takes a long time to learn that Marianne has become pregnant during the first and only time they made love. She, for her part, feels abandoned and returns to Kilneagh to raise their child, Imelda, with the aid of Willie’s aunts. In this sense, Marianne is also a fool of fortune as she is victim of her innocence: she is disowned by her English family for bearing an illegitimate child and left alone to raise Imelda. The little girl, in turn, is caught up by the same forces beyond her grasp as she suffers both from her father’s absence and from the cruel information provided by her mother regarding their past. Marianne, distressed and abandoned, tells her daughter of the past atrocities at Kilneagh which eventually overwhelm the child and leave her traumatized to the point of muteness.

            In short, the novel narrates the lives of the Quintons as victims of the violence and suffering inherent to the War of Independence. The author chooses an intertextual reference to Shakespeare in the title to portray this view. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the lives of the homonymous characters are determined by a struggle that is beyond their control: the family feud between Montages and Capulets. In the same way, William Trevor chooses this reference as a means to narrate the story of an Anglo-Irish family who were doomed to suffer in the context of the birth of the Irish Republic.

In the light of these lines from W. H. Auden’s poem September 1, 1939 discuss cyclical and transgenerational violence in Fools of Fortune: ‘I and the public know what all school children learn, those to whom evil is done do evil in return.’ By E. Bentivegna

Fools of Fortune is a novel written by William Trevor which narrates the hardships experienced by the Quinton family in the context of the Irish War of Independence. This process was a struggle which brought about extensive violence, bloodshed and suffering to the Irish and British people alike. Through guerrilla warfare, the IRA killed British officers, G-men, and Irish informers in the Republic’s name. As IRA tactics were not those of traditional war, the imperialist forces could not suppress the Irish through conventional warfare. Therefore, they resorted to indiscriminated violence both towards Republican activists and civilians, as a means to crush rebellion. It was in this context that the Quintons, an affluent Anglo-Irish family, decided to ignore their English roots and side with the Republicans. As they supposedly sheltered the murderers of an Irish informer, the Black and Tans burned the Kilneagh estate. Thus, as a result of their commitment to the Republican cause and the widespread violence throughout the land, Mr. Quinton and his two daughters died in the fire and some members of the household were shot.

According to Auden’s quotation, the Quinton family suffered so much during the War, that they were bound to make others suffer in the future. This was mainly evidenced through the long-suffering lives of Willie and his cousin and lover Marianne, and the way in which they harmed their daughter Imelda. Willie and Marianne reproduced past horrors at Kilneagh: not only did they suffer for their tragedies and losses, but they also continued the cycle of violence in their own family.

On the one hand, Willie perpetrated violence by murdering Sergeant Rudkin, the Black and Tan responsible for the murder of his family. Mrs. Quinton’s suicide forced Willie to fill his mother’s thirst for revenge. By leaving to England to kill Rudkin, he became part of the cycle of violence in which a murder could only be avenged by another murder. After all the misfortunes he had experienced, Willie set to ‘do evil in return.’

On the other hand, Marianne reproduced the cycle of violence by her gory retellings of past atrocities at Kilneagh to Imelda. As a consequence of his crime, Willie had gone into exile as a fugitive, abandoning Marianne and his unknown daughter. This long, perverse absence was terribly harmful for Imelda, as she did not have any relation with her father. To make matters worse, Marianne drove her insane with cruel stories about her family and her land. The child felt overwhelmed by the traumatic events of the War and became obsessed, to the point of insanity and muteness. On several occasions, Imelda was disturbed by the vivid imaginings of the violence employed by the Tans at Kilneagh. Her agitated state of mind was evidenced by her odd behavior and her silent suffering. Moreover, Imelda’s curiosity helped worsen her obsession as she was constantly overhearing conversations and secretly reading her mother’s diary pages and newspaper accounts about her father’s murder of Rudkin. 

In short, violence travelled from generation to generation, and, as a result, the ultimate victim was Imelda, who became insane not because she underwent hardship in war time, but because of her entanglement in the historical cycles of violence which so tragically affected her family. This assertion suggests that moments of intense tragedy are hardly ever overcome, as Imelda, born in a time of peace, suffered the consequences of her parents’ traumatic past.