Abstract
'The Last September', Elizabeth Bowen's second novel, describes the Anglo-Irish life of the provincial aristocracy during the turbulent times of 1920, and deals directly with the crisis of being Anglo-Irish. In this particular context, Bowen makes a combination between social comedy and private tragedy and between the interior need of the characters and their relation to the outside world, through the figure of the ‘big house'.
The big house can be considered as a literary movement during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, initiated by Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, published in 1800. It has set enduring conventions in Anglo-Irish literature, symbolized by a decaying house and declining gentry, the improvident, often absent, landlord; and the rise of a predatory middle class.
In Ireland, where families stayed in one place, and often in one house for generations, an individual was known not only for himself, but in the context of his family house. In this period of troubles, the collapse of the Anglo-Irish society is therefore symbolized by the collapse of the big house. ‘The Last September' assesses the constraints of belonging to a house and people from whom it is impossible to escape. The subject of the novel is the twilight of Anglo-Ireland and the fate of the younger people, born to inherit the myth of the ancestral home.
