The Forgotten Waltz By Anne Enright: The Impact Of Social And Economic Change On Gina
This essay will examine how throughout the novel, The Forgotten Waltz, we see the role of social and economic change impacting Gina. First, this essay will analyse how Gina’s life moves in tandem with the economic status in Ireland, rising and falling alongside the economy, and the effect that this has on the structure of the novel. Next, we will look at Gina as a social commentary on those during the boom, and the feminisation of capitalism. Finally, this essay looks at how it becomes a social norm to blame others for their own errors.
We first begin to notice the correlation between Gina’s life and the economic status of Ireland when she herself draws our attention to it. She comments on how her and her then boyfriend Connor are “Sat on the concrete floor and holding hands” while their house goes “up by seventy-five euro a day. ” This is a clever correlation for Enright to create, as when we read it, like Gina we are blissfully unaware about what is going to happen. In hindsight, however, it is clear that was Enright letting us know that by the end of the story, both the economy and Gina’s life will have collapsed. This is a peculiar thing to attach a character’s arc to, as her success and eventual downfall are predetermined, allowing little room for creativity and character development. We see Gina transformed from a woman who is impulsively taking out loans to get married and being bought expensive gifts by her paramour, to a woman who is unable to sell her family home, and is in the process of separating from her husband. This intertwining of the character’s fate and the economy in Ireland lead to the book not following the typical structure of a novel as a result.
Rather than the typical layout of introduction, then conflict followed by resolution, we see the story ends in the middle of the conflict. The economy has still not returned to it’s former glory, and it’s implied Gina never completely will either. There is clear crossover in this novel between the social and economic changes occurring in Ireland at the time. As the boom happened, people began to view the hedonistic and reckless spending that went on as a feminine trait. When people complained about money, they complained primarily about the “Yummy Mummies” spending horrific amounts on plastic surgery and other unnecessary items. These women were blamed by the public after the collapse too, and Gina is one of these women. From her callously telling Séan that she hoped he kept the receipt for a Hermes scarf he got her as a gift (I am not a hérmes kind of girl), to her complaining about how boring “the men in the garden look, ” in their “short-sleeved shirts and…their casual trousers” we see how vain and shallow Gina is, despite how she clearly feels that she is above all of that. This use of Gina as one of those “D4 girls” helps to not only deepen her character’s connection to the economic status in Ireland, but also the social view of that type of women. She is portrayed as selfish intentionally, with her not even noticing her mother was sick because she was so focused on herself and her affair.
Gina is a caricature of the shallow women in the boom, with Enright intentionally amplifying her most negative traits, like her lack of guilt over cheating on her husband, or her lack of remorse for tearing apart a family. It is supposed to be a social commentary on the people during the boom, showing us how ridiculously they behaved and how the bust was a direct result of that. Enright does this in order to hold a mirror up to society, and to remind us of how reckless that period of time was, so that we never repeat it. We are not supposed to like Gina, in fact, we are supposed to hate her. She is supposed to highlight the worst parts of us as a society during that time. The way Gina behaved was considered acceptable at that time, and to some people still is, and it is clear that Enright wrote this to keep those people in check, and to show them what would happen to such awful people, should we as a nation repeat our past mistakes.
Finally, we take a look at how this affair is, like Gina herself, mirroring the economic crash and the social behaviours that followed. Gina destroys Sean’s family the way that the population destroyed the economy. As previously mentioned, by this point in Ireland it is extremely common to find anyone to blame for any problem you are having, including the bust, and Gina is no different. She, like everyone around her, tries to blame anyone else for her errors. We see an example of this just before her and Connor’s marriage falls apart. They are in Youghal and she has decided to have a fight with Connor for seemingly no reason. When he leaves, clearly upset with her, she remarks that she ‘was quite happy, ” despite the fact that she was the one who had started the fight. On the page previous, we see Gina try to put Connor into a negative light, talking about how he went from “Conor at the cutting edge” to “Connor hanging out with a load of wasters”. This is a clear example of the social structure at the time. Gina decided a long time ago that she would begin to blame Connor for her cheating. She began the book by talking about how in love she was with him, and by this point she has slowly turned him into someone she loathes, just to make the reader side with her in her affair. Blaming people for problems you yourself caused was, and still is, a very prominent issue within Irish society, and Enright also draws our attention to this. However, in the last page of the novel, we see this social norm begin to be broken down by the ‘new generation’ as it were, symbolised by Evie. Gina insists “it could have been anyone, ” who broke apart Sean’s family, and it isn’t until she gets told by Evie it wasn’t anyone else, “it was her, ” that she has to fully accept responsibility.
In conclusion, throughout the novel, The Forgotten Waltz, there are clear connections forged between our narrator Gina, and the social and economic issues present in Ireland at the time.
