Zatvoreni prostori nacije, roda i depresije u romanu Janice Galloway The Trick is to Keep Breathing
CLOSED SPACES OF NATION, GENDER AND DEPRESSION IN JANICE GALLOWAY’S THE TRICK IS TO KEEP BREATHING

Summary/Abstract: The eruption of discourses of devolution and independence in Scotland since the late 1970s has called for an equally passionate discussion and mapping of the Scottish novel as a vibrant representation of an emerging nation. However, when applied uniformly, this approach results in a rather homogeneous concept of Scottishness, thus clearly denying the possibility of individual literary voices. In view of the dynamic coexistence of politics and literature, the first section of this paper examines landmarks in the narrative of Britishness from World War II to the present day, in order to elucidate the cracks in the narrative which have given rise to the growth of distinct identities such as the Scottish one. The second section focuses on various attempts to politicise and nationalise the Scottish novel of the 1980s and 1990s, which often resulted in limiting the horizons of Scottish literary voices. It is at the intersection of these political and cultural contexts that the paper discusses the closed spaces of gender and depression in Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing, published in 1989. These closed spaces are read as reflections of the closed space of national identity. As the final section of the paper suggests, Janice Galloway resists the label of political advocate for Scottish independence or the equally seductive label of feminism, though not always consistently, thereby pointing towards new roads and open spaces for both Scottish identity and the Scottish novel. In order to understand the complexities of both Britishness and Scottishness, the paper looks back at the period following World War II when Britain declined to join the European Economic Community, preferring to stand alone and demanding to be acknowledged as one of the leading world powers, comparable to the USA. However, the ensuing gradual dissolution of the British Empire revealed an identity crisis which eventually made Britain a very reluctant European, constantly negotiating its different identities and allegiances (Oliver, Understanding Brexit). Although Brexit was supposed to provide the appropriate closure for this troubled relationship, it only revealed more fissures in the national narrative, as Scotland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of remaining in the EU, while England and Wales voted to leave. Linda Colley traces the origins of Britishness back to the 1707 Act of Union of Scotland and England, when British identity was superimposed on the existing Englishness, Welshness and Scottishness, in this way creating a shield against external challenges such as the Catholicism of continental Europe and the rebelliousness of overseas colonies. Britishness, with its notion of greatness, proved to be an ideologically effective protective armour against the Other, while it still allowed for the existence of distinct identities such as Scottish, Welsh and English. The glue that held together different aspects of Britishness in the past has long lost its strength, with the dismantling of the British Empire and the weakening of the influence of religion in European affairs and, more specifically, the decline of the role of Protestantism in the idea of national identity (Colley, 6). Furthermore, Colley emphasizes that since nations are man-made constructs and since the making of any nation, not to mention empire, is always accompanied by aggression towards and the oppression of minorities, it is not fully justified to speak of intrinsically good or evil nations. Likewise, the concept of Britishness today is seriously challenged, not because it embodies some sort of injustice (towards other nations within the UK), but because it can no longer fulfil its original purpose. It is, therefore, understandable that many people instinctively resort to narrower concepts of national identity as a way of dealing with the challenges of our rapidly changing world (xiv-xviii). Drawing on the studies by Deacon and Sundry, Devine and McCrone, the paper develops this idea further by explaining the advance of the discourses of devolution and independence in Scotland throughout the late 20th and early 21st century. It identifies Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies, such as the deindustrialisation of Scotland (without a proper alternative) or the introduction of the Poll Tax, and the discovery of oil and gas in Scottish waters, as well the rise in the popularity of the Scottish National Party (SNP), as the driving forces behind the devolution and independence campaigns. With the Labour Party becoming increasingly alienated from its leftist origins in the late 20th century and thus unable to respond to the needs of the Scottish people, many of whom still depended on social security benefits, the SNP successfully filled the political vacuum by promising to lead Scotland along the road of independence. What followed was a conflict between two narratives – one based on the myth of much-needed radical social change, which is possible only in an independent Scotland and another, somewhat ominously warning against the atavistic call of nationalism and ethnic belonging, while trying to soberly point out the economic consequences of leaving the UK. This paper attempts to challenge the above-mentioned binary model, both in the context of politics and literature, by arguing the pitfalls of uncritically endorsing either of the two sides or readings, and trying instead to look at the scaffolding behind this binary opposition. In the second section of the paper entitled The Scottish Novel and the Issue of National Identity several examples of the interplay between politics and lit- erature in the 1980s and 1990s are explored. It was commonly claimed that, in the absence of an elected parliament, the task of empowering and representing Scottishness was devolved to Scotland’s writers, such as James Kelman, Alisdair Gray, Janice Galloway and A. L. Kennedy. This entailed a distinctly monoperspectival approach to literature, with allegories of a struggling nation read into a wide range of disparate novels. Likewise, in order to establish Scottish literature as an academic discipline, critical theory was avoided in favour of a more biographical approach to literature which took a keen interest in the Scottish origins of both authors and characters as a way of legitimising the new academic discipline (Gardiner 192). It should also be noted that politicians such as Alex Salmond used the Scottish novel as a political tool during the independence campaign in the 2010s to endorse their thesis of the presence of fundamental differences between English and Scottish values and worldviews. In line with the paper’s dominant metaphor of closed space, the third section of the paper explores the closed spaces of gender and depression in Janice Galloway’s novel The Trick is to Keep Breathing in order to elucidate the similarities between attempts to discipline and classify fluid experiences such as gender, national identity and mental stability. As a female writer born and bred in the west of Scotland, Galloway is doubly marginalised, being a woman in the male-dominated world of Scottish literature, which itself was for a long time colonised by England’s dominant cultural norms. Furthermore, even her Scottishness falls short of the horizon of expectations central to Scottish culture and embodied in the recognisable identity of the rough Highlands, the cultured Edinburgh and the newly admitted though unclassifiable symbol of Scottishness – Glasgow. Galloway’s peripheral position enabled her to feel keenly “that creeping fear it’s somehow self-indulgent to be more concerned for one’s femininity instead of one’s Scottishness, one’s working-class heritage, whatever. Guilt here comes strong from the notion we’re not backing up our menfolk and their “real” concerns. Female concerns, like meat on mother’s plate, are extras after the men and weans have been served” (“Introduction” 5-6). It appears that the male concern with national and class identity has the effect of creating a closed space. Regardless of how much they try to break through the norms of the dominant English culture, they mimic the same principles of subjugation by consistently trying to depoliticise female concerns. Galloway revisits these issues through the story of Joy Stone whose experience of being a woman suffering from severe depression in 1980s Glasgow suburbia is far more important than her Scottishness, although these seemingly disparate aspects of Joy’s life seem to reflect each other in a somewhat uncanny way. Body-mind dichotomy, in which a woman is traditionally associated with the body, as well as cooking and nourishing the bodies of her family members, as is implied in the previous quotation, is a position exploited by Galloway in The Trick is to Keep Breathing. Joy’s narrative is refracted through her bodily experience of pain, discomfort, beauty routines, anorexia and bulimia, all of which allows Galloway to expose the limits of that closed space, but also to use its subversive potential. Joy’s depression is triggered, though not caused, by the death of her lover Michael and worsened by the fact that, as a mistress, she is not allowed to mourn him publicly, whereby her status and sorrow are entirely delegitimised within the dominant social norms. She stops working, communicating, eating and menstruating, hence turning into a shell of her former material self. The closed space of her body assumes control over the narrative and the reader intensely feels Joy’s desperate banging against the walls of her body and mind as she struggles to process other men’s and women’s comments about her body and the meanings it produces. The experience of depression and the mental health care created by the welfare state policies of the 1980s is also deconstructed as a closed, self-referential space. Uniform treatment for all patients at the psychiatric clinic, where Joy is voluntarily admitted, betrays the limitations of welfare state programmes, but it also anticipates Margaret Thatcher’s unflinching concern with individual rights and responsibilities, which shows no empathy for either depressed people or depressed industrial areas. The novel subverts the Enlightenment concepts of reason and proactive individuality and every time its protagonist feels forced within the boundaries of a certain social role, her narration diverts from the conventions of a realist novel. Accordingly, unconventional narrative techniques enact Joy’s rebellion against the sedative disciplining impact of a realist narrative mode. The last section of the paper discusses Galloway’s views on national identity and her own writing. Looking at her interviews and articles over a longer period, we witness a process of self-fashioning and a genuine search for her own identity in the midst of the clichés of Scottishness, the forced dichotomies of Anglo-Scottish incompatibility, condescending and oversimplifying readings of her fiction, as well as her deep commitment to exploring the lives of women. All of these are powerfully silenced by Galloway’s authentic voice as she refuses the labels of nationalism and feminism, considering them equally limiting. Looking towards the diversity of European cultural influences rather than looking forever inwards in search of an imagined national past and imagined community, she embodies a new, open and ever-changing Scottishness. Most importantly, she does not lose her way in the ethereal heights of the national question and literature. That is why she invokes both the necessity and scarcity of love in our lives, while subtly reminding us to keep breathing, and maybe even consider learning to swim.

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