The Forgotten Waltz Response

The Forgotten Waltz (2007) details the progressing love affair between Gina Moynihan and Séan Valelly, set during the boom and bust of Ireland’s economy and is told from the perspective of Gina. There is a strong, background focus on the relationship between mothers and daughters, but this focus is quite minor and can be, at times, glossed over by the main plot of the adultery.

There are several different outlooks and approaches to the mother-daughter relationship shown by a few characters throughout the book. A prevalent relationship of this type would be that of Gina and Joan, this is one of the only mother-daughter relationships where both women are adults, so it has its obvious contrasts against the other relationships represented. Another link of this sort would be Gina’s sister Fiona and her daughter Megan, this connection is also how Gina comes into meeting Séan. In this essay I will focus on the relationships between Gina and Joan and Fiona and Megan to demonstrate these contrasting natures. There seems to be a distance and coldness in Gina and Joan’s relationship as mother and daughter. We are first introduced to Joan at Gina’s wedding in the second chapter. This makes her one of the last characters to be introduced to us, which shows to me that Gina’s relationship with her mother isn’t as important to her as some of the other relationships in her life, like her affair with Séan.

A contributing factor to this distance could be the lack of similar interests that they share, an example being Joan’s obsession with her appearance. At Gina’s wedding she focuses a huge amount on how her mother appeared but not on herself. The fact that Gina, the bride, doesn’t describe her own appearance highlights how image and beauty was of main importance to Joan. Gina never once speaks about her own beauty in the same manner which, in my opinion, amplifies the disinterest and the disapproval that she has for this form of materialism. I also got the impression that Gina could possibly envy her mother for this exact beauty that she disapprovingly focuses on. I see this jealousy through her because of the way she almost mocks Joan for spending so much on appearances and how she doesn’t once in the book speak of her own beauty in the same way. I think that this could possibly leave a distance between Gina and Joan as it would mean that they don’t have similar interests or priorities. We are also told that “appearances were important to [Joan]” (Enright 38) but we are never told that family is important to her. This could be a constant thought in Gina’s mind, that she would never be as important to Joan as beauty and appearances were. Joan’s depression seems to have a destructive impact on her relationship with her daughter.

Gina describes herself to have been jealous of people outside of her family because it appears Joan would only ever be happy around them while “it seemed as though we only got the downside to the despair” (Enright 38). This jealousy could create a distance between Gina and Joan where Gina doesn’t feel protected by her mother. It’s also clear that image is much more important to Joan than maintaining a good mental health. This could have an impact on Gina and the type of woman that she grew into. This influence that Joan had on her daughter could be interpreted to have made Gina quite passive in a sense, which is shown when Gina is aware of Joan’s depression but “it never occurred to her, or to any of us, to do anything about it except mope” (Enright 30). This idea of illnesses being unattractive possibly means that Gina wouldn’t allow herself to be open with others or make herself vulnerable as she thought this would be unattractive. This contributed to one of the flaws in her relationship with Conor because she couldn’t tell him how she truly felt and how she was anticipating the downfall of their marriage.

This yearning that Gina has for her mother to be happy seems to be a huge unspoken part of their relationship, but it never gets truly dealt with. She seems to get some condolence when Joan falls asleep because her “mother did not look lonely in her sleep”. Yet, again, this is only an appearance and the true damaging factors in their relationship are still there. Joan’s influence on her daughters seems to have taught them that it is better and easier to be in denial rather than to deal with your problems. This is shown by one of Gina’s last thoughts as she is sitting by her mother’s death bed, “she had been frightened, and we had not seen it” (Enright 114). Even after Joan has passed away there still seems to be a distance between her and her daughter because of these unspoken fears. In contrast, Fiona’s relationship with her daughter Megan is much more based off unconditional love and trust. Fiona seems to be overly protective of her children. She wants to block them off from all harmful things, this is shown when she refuses to let them even see a cigarette. This shows how she coddles Megan too much and how this relationship, while completely positive, could negatively impact Megan to be unprepared for the real world, like how “Megan burst into tears when an electrician lit up in the house” (Enright 8).

This protective nature of Fiona’s is also shown by Gina’s fear to have certain interactions with Megan. When Conor is playing with the children and pretending that they are dogs Gina says, “it wasn’t the children I was worried about, it was their mother” (Enright 21). This fear may also be in Megan and could possibly impact their relationship to be more distant when she’s older because she would feel that she can’t be completely open with her mother. Gina describes the relationship as “locked in something that wasn’t quite love, and not quite war” (Enright 45),but this might just be her non-maternal perspective looking in. Yet, it is very evident that there is a huge amount of love in Fiona and Megan’s relationship and that they are very close as mother and daughter. Fiona may be very protective of her daughter, but she also has pure, requited love for Megan. Therefore, the relationships shown in The Forgotten Waltz represent the contrasting nature of different mother-daughter relationships. Just as Gina and Joan’s relationship is widely different to Fiona and Megan’s relationship.