By Charlotte Stevenson
This summer, the York St John Literature programme is inviting students and staff to read Colm Tóibín’s 2012 novella The Testament of Mary, a study of the mother of Jesus of Nazareth as she comes to terms with her son’s crucifixion at hands of the Roman Empire.
Tóibín is an Irish writer who has published nine novels and novellas, two short story collections and numerous works of non-fiction. His early work was preoccupied with the relationship between north and south, Ireland and Spain. It went on to incorporate novels about South America and the Irish diaspora in the USA.
More recently, he has turned his attention to reworkings of major Western figures – his most recent publication, House of Names (2017), recounts the fall of the House of Atreus – and The Testament of Mary can be thought of as belonging to this stage of his career. Searing in its attack on the ‘Cult of Mary’, and complex in its understanding of grief, the novella belongs to a rich tradition of texts that seek to rework, complicate and sometimes undermine received narratives concerning the roots of Western culture.
This first post, by YSJU student Charlotte Stevenson, introduces the book and addresses many of the questions it raises. We will be publishing further posts during Welcome Week in the 2017-18 academic year, with students and staff voicing their responses to the texts and suggesting intertexts that may help us in understanding its contemporary relevance. If you would like to contribute, please contact Alex Beaumont.
Thoughts on Tóibín: Ireland, Grief and The Testament of Mary
Here at Point Zero over the summer we will be reading and exploring the ideas presented in the short novel The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (2012). My initial thoughts going into the novel were ones of excitement and intrigue. My interest in Irish literature is always looking to be broadened as there is such a wealth to the stories. They seem always to share in common a little magic as well as themes focusing upon the history of Ireland, religion and the matter of identity. Additionally, I’ve been a Tóibín fan ever since I first read one of his most popular books, Brooklyn (2009). He has a natural capability for creating an intricate, still, beautiful scene that is somehow simultaneously overflowing with a million thoughts and emotions. For instance, you might come across a scene depicting what appears to be just a beach and yet suddenly you find yourself awash with everything the protagonist is feeling. In the Pinteresque silences there is more said than most authors could utter in 20 pages.
However, I digress. The Testament of Mary begins in Nazareth as Mary, the mother of Jesus, laments her son and speaks of her grief. In those first few pages, it becomes apparent that a period of time has passed because there is a constant questioning of the order of events or actions from that most infamous of days. What if she could have somehow prevented his crucifixion? What if she was to blame? How could she have saved him? These are all questions which fit with the traditional stories we look back to which are known around the world. But as her voice continues to develop and delve deeper into the questions proposed, something very interesting indeed begins to happen. For as Mary continues to speak to this unidentified ‘you’, she becomes so much more complex than she ever does in those moments of the Bible where she is present. The two-dimensional questions stop focusing purely upon her most famous son and develop into realistic perceptions of grief, love and loneliness. The moments in which she remembers and questions show also the trauma of the violence she has witnessed. This is not Mary mourning Jesus but instead something much more comprehensible to a modern audience: a mother mourning her son; a woman attempting to gain control over the memories which are difficult for her to hold.
The theme of grief is never an easy one to write about. Grief is sticky, always moving, hidden in shadow, fidgety and dark. Grief is messy. It isn’t something which can be pinned down to a page in the form of a definition. Though we try, because we are human and our best way of comprehending things is to write them down that we might step back for a while and try to understand what is going on inside our heads where there is no easy route to finding a light switch in the dark. For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary describes grief as:
Intense sorrow, especially caused by someone’s death. (‘She was overcome with grief’)
Yet Tóibín explores grief so well through the figure of Mary because he takes a grief that is well-known and explores it in an entirely new way. Most importantly, he explores this grief from the individual perspective of Mary herself, instead of discussing it as a collective feeling via the third person or something akin to this. And the product is something which forces readers to question too – to put ourselves into the position Mary and to wonder how we might deal with this. There are moments when the protagonist is speaking which merge with the modern, when she leaps from the page in her anger and confusion to mourn with those who mourn every day for their loved ones. It is easy to feel what she is feeling because of the vague nature maintained throughout this first-person narrative. The man is simply the man, and the son is simply the son. This can be consuming as it is confusing and feeds straight into blurring boundaries. Is it Mary speaking, or us? Is it our neighbour? Could it be our own mother? Whilst significant in the ideas it is exploring, it is even more significant in pushing boundaries to explore these complicated thoughts and feelings in a manner that remains true to context yet allows the present day to contribute to this discussion also. All of this essentially leads to a somewhat transformed outlook with regard to individual thoughts on something that previously seemed set in stone and in the past. But this is a tale still living and breathing, the water of the past undergoing Tóibín’s miracle and becoming modern wine.
The miracles themselves act as a subplot to the tale which is quite relevant. Mary views them almost as magic tricks, stating that she doesn’t know if the crates really did hold water before they were transformed to wine. She hears about her son walking on water through a secondary source and speaks of it as something which she probably misheard. Instead she thinks it is the wind that he somehow managed to have control over. And often she disagrees with him and his actions, particularly when linking back to grief. The bringing back of Lazarus from the dead angers her because, despite the changeability of everything, surely the world should have one constant that is left alone? Additionally, it raises further questions for her. For if he could bring back Lazarus from the dead, why could he not bring himself back for her? Why could he not bring back her husband? It is not his power that she loves but Jesus himself, particularly when he behaves as a normal man and not as the son of God.
The role of miracle also ties into the Irish tradition of fairy tales, for they are presented in this fashion to a degree in The Testament of Mary. As opposed to focusing on the magic alone, Tóibín instead focuses on the repercussion of miracle in myth-like manner. For instance, though Lazarus has been brought back from the dead there is at first suspicion that it was a trick and there is certain discomfort surrounding it by the people who live nearby. This is further alluded to in that Lazarus never truly becomes himself again. The narrative of the past describes him as a golden figure, the picture of health and sound mind. Yet his resurrected form, much as the loved one in the tale of the three brothers from the Harry Potter books (1997-2007), is different. He cannot eat or drink properly and spends his time in a dark room, and the fact that he cannot eat fully of his own will connects again with fairy tales in that once the fairy fruit or drink has been consumed, nothing else can compare. Hence, we are presented once more with the question of miracles. Are they as simple as they first seem? What consequences will they have?
Other observations on this text centre on the context, and again on Mary’s voice. For whilst it is evident that this is long ago, it feels so relevant and present. Perhaps it is because it is Mary who is speaking. As opposed to being the traditional neutral or male perspective, there are constant comments upon who has the power in each situation. When she feels helpless, she is looking to see if there are others who feel this way in order to comprehend what has caused it. When someone else has power, she has a sharp sense of how they might be deceived or how this might be used to press an advantage. She sees Pilate’s compassion but knows that he will not use it to save her son because he is afraid, just as she resents the fear and need for survival she witnesses in the disciples. And there is also a constant sense of condescending in the way her male ‘guardians’ (disciples) care for her. When she dismisses a notion, they behave as though they know better. They tell her about the conception of her own son as though she was never present. They tell her that she was there to bury him, when in fact she frequently mentions her anger at running away before he was dead. Whilst she speaks back, the men do not seem to hear what she says but instead go on to spread the word that he has died to save all of man-kind. And yet despite the power of that male voice, it is the wisdom with which she speaks coupled with that of other female characters which invites modernity. She sees these men as children eager to believe in something of which they have no proof. On her journey, there is contrast to this superior male voice as Mary observes women speaking as much as men. She speaks with hope of ‘living in a new time’. Whether these observations are ones that Mary of Nazareth would have made in the first century AD, we will never know. But personally I think it is important to note that she does make them here and she does speak out with determination. Tóibín presents these observations on men and women from the perspective of a woman whose voice has never been directly heard. History has silenced her, but Tóibín uses elements of Mary to how strength, resilience and again this all-consuming grief are not things which can be gendered.
But sorer still to him was the grief
Which, for his sake,
Came upon his Mother
The Testament of Mary is certainly an eye-opening read. Coming out of it felt almost like time travel, opening my eyes only to suddenly find myself back in the present. And with so many questions. This read has only been the beginning of a new area to research for me. Now I am beginning to gain further insights into other similar perspectives, as well as remaining on the lookout for further interpretations of Mary. A further interpretation I would like to leave you with is a short piece by the contemporary composer Samuel Barber. In his Hermit Song cycle (1953), Barber included a piece named ‘The Crucifixion’. After observing the events of that infamous day, the closing lines provide a similar epiphany to Tóibín’s novella. For Barber has all along been voicing the perspective of Mary – of a mother mourning for her son.