J. M. Synge and Travel Writing of the Irish Revival by Bruna Giulia;

Author:Bruna, Giulia;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2017-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

The people keep no passbooks, so they have no check on the traders, and although direct fraud is probably rare it is likely that the prices charged are often exorbitant. What is worse, the shopkeeper in out-of-the-way places is usually the only buyer to be had for a number of home products, such as eggs, chickens, carragheen moss and sometimes even kelp; so that he can control the prices both of what he buys and what he sells, while as a creditor he has an authority that makes bargaining impossible. (TI, 86–87)

Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel reads Synge’s treatment of the shopocracy phenomenon in the Congested Districts as evidence of his “leftist” and “socialist” leanings as well as of his increasing antagonism toward the Irish nationalist middle class, which he lambasts in his plays.82 Furthermore, from a stylistic perspective, Synge’s strategy in tackling the districts’ economic problems also avoids racial and primitivist stereotyping but rather brings to light their possible causes as seen from the point of view of the people who are the victims of the unfair monopoly.

Another example of Synge’s groundbreaking attitude is evident when he tackles the governmental system of relief works in the article “Among the Relief Works.” This system had notoriously been implemented since the Famine and, according to Synge, was both diminishing for the farmers and unsuccessful in the long run. Farmers worked for one shilling a day and were taken from their households to join the relief system, therefore being subtracted from more remunerative and uplifting works such as farming and kelp making (TI, 51). Synge further points out that the relief-works system was not always economically strategic for the state—mentioning the case of a nearby district where a ganger, or foreman, had only two workers under his supervision (TI, 51–52). His treatment of relief works shares the same self-help ethos evident, for instance, in an article by Father T. A. Finlay, the editor of the New Ireland Review and an active sponsor of self-help ideas. Finlay’s article “The Economics of Carna,” published in April 1898, is based on his firsthand observation when he was part of the Carna Sub-Committee (connected with the Dublin Committee for the distribution of the Manchester Relief Fund) and on an unpatronizing analysis of the main factors that generated poverty and underdevelopment, including the shopocracy phenomenon. From the start, Finlay’s article refuses to comply with a rhetoric of pity, advanced by several other observers, such as E. Keogh: “I do not seek to stimulate sympathy for their condition by pictures of the misery which darkens and degrades human life on our Western Seabord. That has been abundantly and fruitfully done by Mr. Long and other observers.”83 Finlay’s endorsement of self-help and cooperation is evident in particular when he addresses the relief-works system:

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