Just a little introduction. This topic is a real international topic, because the subject was suggested by Ana Romão Alves and the work made by Marta Mankowski and Filippo Bernardi with skyping.
In looking at childhood memories, it is interesting to start from Aleida Assmann’s claim that total recall is impossible: ‘Memory, including cultural memory, is always permeated and shot through with forgetting. In order to remember anything one has to forget; but what is forgotten need not necessarily be lost forever.’ (Aleida Assmann, Canon and Archive, pp.105-106). This quote is important in our investigation, as it highlights the significance of forgetting in the discourse of memory, and thus demonstrates the subjectivity of it. In connection to that the first chapter of Julian Barnes’ novel England, England presents an interesting picture: in Martha’s attachment to the England jigsaw puzzle, and in particular to the county of Nottinghamshire, which she associates with her father. In her memory the little game she played with her father, in which he first hid Nottinghamshire and than later gave it back to her, gains in importance after he leaves. The object of the puzzle becomes a symbol of their relationship and her memory of him. So much so, that when her mother warns her that women had to be strong and could not rely on anybody else, she embarks on what can be seen as a symbolical act of forgetting: each day she leaves one piece of the puzzle in the bus. ‘She did not know whether she was meant to remember or to forget the past.’ (Julian Barnes, England, England, p. 17)
The most significant moment of the Nottinghamshire plot line, however, occurs when she confronts her memory with her father’s. He does not recall their little ritual that played such an important role for her at all, which demonstrates what an important role the notions of perspective and perception play in the formation of memories. ‘While knowledge has no form and is endlessly progressive, memory involves forgetting. It is only by forgetting what lies outside the horizont of the relevant that it performs an identity function.’ ( Jan Assmann, Communicative and Cultural Memory, p. 113) Thus, by forming memories (remembering one thing and forgetting another) we establish our identities, but this mechanism also works in the other direction: because of who we are, one moment is more important to us than to others, and, therefore, this moment will become incorporated in our memory, while forgotten by others. This is exemplified in her father not being able to recall the connection through the piece of Nottinghamshire and her reaction to it: ‘She would always blame him for that [forgetting about Nottinghamshire]. She was over twenty-five, and she would go on getting older than twenty-five […] and she would be on her own; but she would always blame him for that.’ (Julian Barnes, England, England, p. 25)
Nottinghamshire will never come back, just as her relation with her father.
It is interesting to provide a contrast between this, her memory of the puzzle pieces, to her remembering the agricultural show. Even though there are some traumatic memories linked to the show, particularly when she entered into the competition and did not win, she still remembers Mr A. Jones's beans throughout her life. Upon her return to Anglia and the quiet village life, she retains the booklet and knows the item list almost by heart. However, when the leaf that she originally picked up to remember her father falls out of the leaflet, she no longer knows its significance.
ReplyDeleteIt really captures my curiosity that she didn’t remember the leaf, which was placed there for a particular reason. Had she found a county she would connect it immediately with a memory.
ReplyDeleteDoes the forgetting about the leaf represents the letting go of the pain her father caused her? In the first chapter of the book it is said that “She would always blame him for that” (page 25), “that” being forgetting about Nottinghamshire. So in the end, when she forgets about the reason she stored that leaf and the meaning of it does she finally stopped blaming him?
I think the puzzle can be related to memory, if we think of memory using what rigney called "plenitude and loss" model.
ReplyDeleteWe can compare Marta's jigsaw with her memories, something that must be organized. Of course making the jigsaw is much more simpler - you have a limited number of pieces - than trying to recollect all of your memories. Sometimes, when she was a child, Marta tried to force some pieces into the wrong holes, she was trying to find the right place to put them. It's something similar to what happens with her memories, which are all messed up - "in the resulting amalgamation the distinguishing marks of each separate time had been lost" (p.6).
In the first chapter, when Marta's father gives her "Staffordshire", which was in his pocket, it is said "she would smile (...) because Staffordshire had been found, and her jigsaw, her England and her heart had been made whole again" (p.6). The pieces of the jigsaw are really important to her. She thinks of memory as "a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel" (p.6). So she considers it to be very far from what had happened, like if the past was lost, like the jigsaw pieces. She talks a lot about the missing pieces of her puzzle and she also mistrust her own and also other people memories, because she thinks they may be lies, something coloured, something that is probably wrong. Nottinghamshire is important because it is the missing piece, the one her father, who had completely forgotten Marta's jigsaw, took.
She has not a godd relation with remembering. She is always suspicious about it. "She did not know whether she was meant to remember or to forget the past"; "She hoped there was nothing wrong with thinking so much about the Show" (p.17) .
And also the attempt to get rid of all the jigsaw's pieces became part of what she considered "building her character", so forgetting became part of her identity formation.