The Wren, the Wren

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Character Analysis

Nell McDaragh

Content Warning: This guide section depicts physical and emotional abuse.

Nell McDaragh is one of the two main protagonists in The Wren, The Wren. She is the daughter of Carmel McDaragh and the granddaughter of Phil McDaragh. She works as a content writer for an advertising agency, producing lifestyle and travel content for influencers.

Nell’s primary character motivation is to find ways to bridge the gap between the inner worlds of people. She is very perceptive and thoughtful about how the thought process differs from person to person. By testing her theory that connection consists in the act of translation, her narrative arc thus represents The Attempt to Define the World Through Language. It also explains her affinity for Phil because he is remembered for the way he heightened language in his poetry.

Nell’s relationship with Felim is one of the main sites of tension in her narrative arc. Nell cannot reconcile her feelings with Felim’s abusive behavior. Furthermore, Felim’s behavior challenges Nell’s belief in language by exposing every attempt to define their relationship as an attempt to reassert control in their dynamic. Because Felim holds power over her, Nell has little room to steer the relationship in a direction that gives her agency. Consequently, Nell doesn’t realize the exclusively sexual nature of their relationship until much later when it becomes clear that Felim devoted his affections to his ex from Belfast.

Nell has a passively antagonistic relationship with her mother, Carmel, whose pragmatism clashes with Nell’s rosy perspective of the world. Nell tries to assert her perspective by defending the suffering of those in her life, but she ultimately resigns herself to the likelihood that Carmel cannot shirk her judgmental tendencies for her sake. This is why Nell is reticent to share details about her life with Carmel at the beginning of the novel. As the novel progresses, however, Nell comes to realize that her affinity for Phil makes way for her affinity for Carmel. She realizes this in a key scene, recognizing her mother in Phil in an archival interview video. She resolves The Fraught Love of Mother-Daughter Relationships between them by returning to her mother with her new boyfriend, David, in tow and stands up to Carmel when she senses Carmel being rude.

Nell is anxious about the loss of the natural world, which is, in part, what her attempt to define it through language seeks to resolve. This anxiety manifests primarily whenever Nell refers to the gradual disappearance of various bird species. Later in the novel, she clarifies that her anxiety is not a symptom of fear but of awe at the beauty that each natural object possesses. Nell’s concerns about preserving the world through language are resolved by the end of the novel when she realizes that language obscures the true nature of things. She resigns herself to the notion that nature and beauty are great enough to outlast her on their own, allowing her to let go of the anxiety that fills her with both love and dread.

Carmel McDaragh

Carmel McDaragh is the second main protagonist of The Wren, The Wren. Her perspective clashes with Nell’s, allowing Enright to generate tension from the braided narrative structure of the novel. Carmel is defined by her relationship with her father, Phil McDaragh, because of the unresolved abuse he inflicted upon her before and after he departs from their family. The failure to resolve these issues before his death makes Carmel feel that his behavior is normal, which pushes her to take on a pragmatic approach to life.

Carmel makes the active choice to reject the need for a romantic partner and lives in quiet opposition to Phil, even as she reckons with the claim that Carmel was the prime object of his affection. Carmel initially worked as an English language teacher in continental Europe before returning to Ireland to start her own English language school. Carmel’s choice of career is one manifestation of her resistance against Phil. Since Phil’s poetry highlights the tensions of ambiguous language, Carmel helps people express themselves clearly through direct language. However, this does little to prevent Carmel from replicating the cycle of violence that she experienced when she became a mother to Nell.

Carmel’s relationship with Ronan complicates her relationship with Nell by driving her frustrations with herself and her father to the fore. Carmel sees Nell as a rival for Ronan’s attention, which makes her jealous and angry whenever Ronan appears to show a preference with Nell. When Carmel decides that she does not want to be responsible for Ronan during his recovery from surgery, she quietly abandons him, echoing Phil’s decision to abandon Carmel’s mother, Terry, when she was sick. Carmel’s frustration builds up in the following days, which she focuses into the issue of a malfunctioning lightbulb in her kitchen. Carmel ultimately takes her frustration out on Nell, who mocks her emotions. When she realizes her abusive behavior, Carmel understands that she can never fully distance herself from her father. Ironically, she continues to reckon with this relationship when Nell displays an affinity for Phil’s poetry. She cannot forbid Nell from reading his work, and it is only when she tries to look at Phil’s books from Nell’s perspective that she remembers her flaws as a mother.

Carmel’s older sister, Imelda, also antagonizes her, who envies Carmel for the preference she receives from Phil. Carmel tries to shun Phil’s preference, suggesting that Imelda is better off for having Terry’s favor. She attacks Imelda in their childhood home when she feels that Imelda is pressuring her to settle their mother’s debts with her share of the inheritance. Carmel and Imelda quietly resolve their issues after Nell is born, suggesting that they are willing to look past their resentments of one another for the sake of Nell’s upbringing.

Carmel’s story ends with her decision to compromise for Nell, who has fallen in love with David. Though David is an easy target for Carmel’s criticism, she realizes that David is the only person who can make Nell feel safe the way Carmel used to when Nell was a child. Feeding into The Fraught Love of Mother-Daughter Relationships, Carmel comes to understand that Nell doesn’t need her the way she used to. This will not prevent them from forging a better relationship with one another so long as they continue to love each other despite their faults.

Phil McDaragh

Phil McDaragh is the father of Carmel and the grandfather of Nell McDaragh. He plays a complex role in the novel, functioning largely as an antagonist in Carmel’s narrative arc. For Nell, however, Phil functions as a surrogate father figure, guiding her through the poetry that defines his public legacy on the world. The complicated nature of Phil’s character speaks to The Private Lives of Public Personalities as a theme.

Phil realizes his ambition for poetry early on in life. His idyllic childhood provides a foreground for the pastoral scenes he often depicts in his work. After his death, his contemporaries champion him for his ability to represent the pilgrim soul through scenes of nature. Phil’s talent for writing relies, however, on his devotion to beauty, which also becomes his fatal flaw. Initially, he is drawn to a local girl named Hanorah Casey because she is beautiful. When Hanorah’s father strips her of her beauty as punishment for walking with Phil, Phil doesn’t hesitate to join in Hanorah’s public mockery. He successfully divorces Hanorah from her beauty, which foreshadows his willingness to abandon later romantic partners when his attraction to them fades away.

Enright deliberately keeps Phil’s motivations ambiguous to emphasize the gap between his inner life and those of Carmel and Nell. Because the novel closely follows the thoughts and feelings of the two women, the narrative establishes the sense of distance that they feel from Phil as a person. He hangs over the narrative like a spectral presence, often appearing through the sudden inclusion of his poems in the text. Just as the world better knows him through his public personality, he appears more frequently in the novel through his work than through the stories of his life.

The text implies that the mythology surrounding Phil will eventually undergo reassessment, especially as the world’s cultural values shift to uplift the agency of women. Connie writes to Nell to say that she, too, is reckoning with the complexity of her feelings about her relationship with Phil, considering the abuse he inflicted upon an earlier partner, Selma Karras. Because he isn’t around to speak up or defend himself, the only ways left to engage with Phil are the artifacts he has left of his presence, such as the television interview that Nell and Carmel watch toward the end of the novel.