Like Melanie, I noticed that Paddy is unable to say anything coherent at all up to this point in Loving. I view this primarily as a function of the "language as a function of class" aspect of Green's writings that Dr. Stuber has mentioned several times in class. In addition to Paddy's lack of speech, it seems that Michael, the only other Irish servant, also never vocalizes his thoughts in a manner that the reader can understand.
Of course there are other Irish characters within the story, most significantly Mr. Mathewson the insurance agent. Mathewson speaks, but he always does so with a lisp (134) -- a condition ostensibly linked with a dental operation but possibly more deeply connected to his Irish identity. I wonder if Green is setting up a stratification among the Irish similarly to the one that exists between the British servants and their masters; specifically, I wonder if the upper-class Irish, still considered "second-class" by the Brits, have trouble speaking English clearly while the lower-class Irish can barely speak at all.
He speaks with a lisp some of the time, and blames this on a tooth he just had extracted. Also, he is able to overcome the lisp (there are several examples) to project authority, and this effect is always unnerving -- which is to say, the lisp is disarming, and concealing.
ReplyDelete