‘He Could See Her No Longer’: The Negation of Femininity Through Violence in Ian McEwan’s Fiction

Abstract

Ian McEwan’s 1997 novel, Enduring Love, charts the growing obsessive ‘love’ experienced by psychologically disturbed Jed for the protagonist Joe. Largely in consequence of her refusal to countenance Jed’s mounting instability, Joe’s relationship with his partner Clarissa falters and fails. McEwan opposes science writer Joe’s rationalism with the sensibilities of Keats scholar, Clarissa. This classic, rather too neat, dualism constructs a potentially potent sexual tension in the text. But rather than negotiating the masculine — feminine opposition, McEwan dissipates this heterosocial aspect by redirecting Joe’s attentions and passions to the third, initially peripheral figure of Jed. Where Joe represents rationalism, and Clarissa emotion, Jed embodies obsession: sexual, religious, and psychological. Ultimately, frustrated obsession engenders violence, and the novel climaxes with Joe shooting his phallic pistol at Jed, and concludes with Jed institutionalized but resiliently enamoured of Joe. Compelled by his own obsessed pursuit of his stalker’s condition, Joe and Jed enter into a strange parody of a love affair, and Clarissa’s role in the text is increasingly negated.