APPROPRIATELY for Mothers' Day weekend, obnoxious children and absent mothers figured large at the Elizabeth Bowen conference which took place in UCC on Friday and Saturday. The conference, now in its second year, celebrates a writer who, though born in Dublin and educated in England, will always be associated with Bowenscourt her family home in Cork.
In the opening paper of the weekend, Hermione Lee, biographer of both Bowen and more recently Virginia Woolf, examined just how well both authors had succeeded in re-entering the eye of the usually rude and precocious child. Lee, whose witty lecture was probably the highlight of the weekend for most, was not afraid to end her talk on a chilling but compelling note.
Referring to Blake Morrison's new work concerning the Bulger case, As If, she suggested it was perhaps the novelist more than social workers, psychoanalysts or even parents who could re-imagine childhood, seeming to advocate a social role for the author.
This idea of the usefulness of Bowen's work and also of fiction as social document - was just one of the ideas taken up the following day in The Granary Theatre when Ingrid Thowsen, Dr Jean Radford, conference founder Dr Eibhear Walshe and Dr Antoinette Quinn, gave their papers.
As always at literary conferences, some interesting facts, well-known to some and new to others, emerged. Prof Lee highlighted the often-overlooked fact that although their early lives were quite different, the biographies of Woolfen bear quite striking similarity not least the fact that both their mothers died when they were 13.
Another interesting comparison was that made by Dr Walshe, when he noted that both Bowen and her fellow Irish writer Kate O'Brien worked secretly for the British Ministry of Defence during the second World War. Bowen wrote to Woolf that her task was to attend meetings in Ireland and then "sort the talk into shape" for the British government. Not all her friends and associates were aware of her role; Archbishop McQuaid thought he was present at one meeting to talk of Bowen's interest in domestic science.
Portraying rude children and espionage is not part of the usual "Big House" image of Elizabeth Bowen, which sometimes causes her work to be dismissed. It was fitting then that the final panel discussion in which the five speakers were joined by Bowen biographer Victoria Glendinning and, with TCD's Prof Terence Brown in the chair, was entitled "Violence in the Novels of Elizabeth Bowen".
The conference concluded on Saturday night with readings from their own and Bowen's work by poets Eilean Ni Chuileanain, writer and Irish Times columnist, Nuala O'Faolain and novelist, Colm Toibin.
