Tuesday 28 August 2012

Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach

It is the summer of 1962 on Chesil Beach, in the south coast of England. Two young people have just got married and seem to be ready to enjoy their wedding night. They are at a small hotel, just having their special dinner or trying to. Surely it will be a sleepless night. The time of the story, those early 1960s, is a remarkable one in the history of the Western World: The first stage of some most relevant social and cultural changes which would consolidate in the following years and decades and were to define our present age. A "revolution" in human relations. Language itself would acquire new potential, a new capacity for expression: new words will spring, new concepts will find a name. From then on, it will be able to put into words (in a direct and non encapsulated "jamesian" way so to speak) those inner things whose impact in emotions has always been there, but have been kept secret. Or simply they have been hard or embarrassing to express. Sex and its implications in a couple´s life is an immediate example.

1962 is the year chosen by McEwan to represent the turning point in western society as far as intimate relations are concerned.The two protagonists, apparently ready to consummate their marriage in their hotel room are Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting. Edward is a fresh Oxford graduate in history and Florence is a girl of deep artistic and musical sensibility who seems to have an exciting musical career awaiting her. The two young people have different backgrounds: Edward is the son of a schoolmaster and was born in a rural household; Florence comes from a wealthy family, the daughter of a succesful industrialist (her father) and an intellectual Oxford lecturer (her mother), this last one not quite into applauding unreservedly the changing of the times.

Different backgrounds, deeply in love 

They come from different environments, but Edward and Florence seem to fit each other perfectly. They love each other or they are completely convinced that is so. In the years to come, after the conventional "wedding rite", they think, life is going to unfold promisingly to provide them with the most fulfilling experience, with enough intellectual and aesthetic touches, all in a wealthy environment. What is approaching in their horizon seems to be definitely inviting. They are both sensible and educated. Existence for the two seems to be a nice and sophisticated gift, just ready to be unwrapped. After the rite, that is.

The rite. But none of them have any "physical" experience. Well that is not a problem. Or it should not be, at least not for Edward. He has no experience, true, but he really cannot wait to make love to his beloved Florence. Well, the thing is something that every couple has to go through that first night, after all, and they will do fine, won´t they? Aside from the vivid emotions of quality, the sense of sharing and enjoying, that Florence inspires in him, Edward simply desires her. So he is really wishing to carry on with the "rite", and all the rites that delightfully would come after...

Well, 1962 will be about one of the last years in western history in which it was still "advisable", if you wanted to do the right thing, to wait until the wedding night before "consummation", at least among the upper-middle classes. And Edward, even if he would have been delighted to make love to Florence in "advance", he is determined to do the right thing. After the due rites, happiness will undoubtedly follow, so why forcing anything? Yes, let´s do the right thing. 

The trouble with Florence 

But Florence is a completely different case from Edward´s. She really loves him and is confident that they will be happy together, that she is most fortunate having met him, loving him, sharing the project to live together. But there is a problem, and not a minor one: at the same time, even if all that is true, Florence is disgusted by the perspective of that approaching physical act. She is disgusted by sex, but has kept this problem a secret from Edward, who thinks she is just shy or unexperienced. Something, Edward expects, easily to be sorted with patience or skill. But definitely, the thing proves to be more complicated than that.

1962. Sex is not yet the festive exploratory thing that is just about to become in the following years. So far, sex was something whose initiation was better to be left for the wedding night. But in the case of Edward and Florence, leaving the thing for the wedding night will drag them, to their astonishment, into disaster. Exploration and knowledge of some fundamental things about their natures (mainly in the case of Florence), should have been done first, before any attempt to share their lives. They stuck to the rule, and they will both pay for it a sad and definitive prize.

At some point a society goes through a big cultural change which historians do their best to date, to locate in time with as much precision as possible. Transformation of human relations in the 1960s: here is one such dramatic change. Transition from repression to license, to put it simple. The so called sexual revolution. And an author like Ian McEwan (probably the best one writing in Europe today) can help to our understanding of that change, in a sapiential and aesthetic way, like only great writers can do. McEwan puts a magnifying lens on the tragedy of two people, turned into symbols of a larger reality, on the very instant chosen to represent a new world, enlarging it for us to view it, admire it and understand it; framing it like a little piece of art, a beautiful miniature, also full of meaning. The smart and painful testimony of a time about to vanish.