was the symbol of beatnik dissent, and although as yet she lacked the philosophy that it represented , Maeve knew instinctively that what she wanted more than anything was a duffel coat. And all the time she was worrying about being an also-ran in the game of life, and considering how her chastity would be sorely tested by the blue version of the duffel coat as opposed to the fawn, she was lightly reading a French essay that had to be studied that week for Professor Louis Roche in the hope that he wouldn’t somehow single her out in class.
She could remember exactly where she was sitting – on a bench in St Stephen’s Green, the big park by the university – self-consciously worrying about what people were thinking about the fact that she was sitting there on her own, about what conclusions they would draw from how she looked, worrying that her coat didn’t look scruffy enough. Should she perhaps lie on the grass and roll about on it for a bit? You had to look scruffy if you were a bohemian student in those days.
Then, all of a sudden, something hit her between the eyes. The letters of the sentence she was reading caught fire. The line she was reading was something about a woman who spent her time trying to impress people, and hardly any time actually
living
her life. It was like she was always wishing away the present andliving in anticipation of some
dreadful
possibility which rarely, if ever, materialised.
Maeve saw herself, at that moment, for the very first time. It was ‘as if I had had a vision, that my whole twenty years had been spent running a futile race’. 31
She recalled later that it had been a lovely day on the green. The sun was shining. Students were massing. As she put down the book she was reading she said to herself, ‘Nobody is looking at me – it does not matter what I’m wearing. All these people walking through St Stephen’s Green are not looking at me, they are wondering how
they
look!’ 32 Life was not some kind of competition with everyone examining you. She knew she would never worry about what people were thinking ever again. Nor did she.
She described it as an incredible liberation. It was the first step towards taking control of her life and making it her own. ‘The secret of the universe is that we do have to take control of our own lives,’ she said years later. For years her mother had been saying to her that she was special, unique, that nobody had her personality, her mind, her history. Now she understood the responsibility that conferred: ‘My life is up to me alone. No one is going to ride in over the hill and change things for me.’
We do not know the book of French essays she was reading, but the message is that of the existentialists. In the 1950s and 1960s much of the philosophy that was underwriting the great change in attitudes was coming out of France, and from one couple in particular.
Jean-Paul Sartre was the principal exponent of existentialism in France and exercised a considerable influence on the thinkingof students and the ‘beat’ movement after the Second World War, in particular on the student rebellions of the 1960s. In 1953, Sartre’s wife, Simone de Beauvoir, kick-started the feminist revolution with
The Second Sex
, the book in which the phrase ‘women’s liberation’ was used for the first time.
If Maeve was reading French at UCD in the late 1950s there is no doubt that she would have been studying existential philosophy . Existentialism was in any case in the ether at this time and Maeve’s ‘return to self’ was precisely what existentialism is all about. Later I would have it confirmed that Sartre was indeed Maeve’s mentor and life guide. 33
His is a philosophy to which she would have taken naturally, for it holds that decisions important to the individual are not solved by painstaking intellectual exploration and dissection of the facts and the laws of thinking about them, but by
action
. It called upon Maeve’s passionate,
She could remember exactly where she was sitting – on a bench in St Stephen’s Green, the big park by the university – self-consciously worrying about what people were thinking about the fact that she was sitting there on her own, about what conclusions they would draw from how she looked, worrying that her coat didn’t look scruffy enough. Should she perhaps lie on the grass and roll about on it for a bit? You had to look scruffy if you were a bohemian student in those days.
Then, all of a sudden, something hit her between the eyes. The letters of the sentence she was reading caught fire. The line she was reading was something about a woman who spent her time trying to impress people, and hardly any time actually
living
her life. It was like she was always wishing away the present andliving in anticipation of some
dreadful
possibility which rarely, if ever, materialised.
Maeve saw herself, at that moment, for the very first time. It was ‘as if I had had a vision, that my whole twenty years had been spent running a futile race’. 31
She recalled later that it had been a lovely day on the green. The sun was shining. Students were massing. As she put down the book she was reading she said to herself, ‘Nobody is looking at me – it does not matter what I’m wearing. All these people walking through St Stephen’s Green are not looking at me, they are wondering how
they
look!’ 32 Life was not some kind of competition with everyone examining you. She knew she would never worry about what people were thinking ever again. Nor did she.
She described it as an incredible liberation. It was the first step towards taking control of her life and making it her own. ‘The secret of the universe is that we do have to take control of our own lives,’ she said years later. For years her mother had been saying to her that she was special, unique, that nobody had her personality, her mind, her history. Now she understood the responsibility that conferred: ‘My life is up to me alone. No one is going to ride in over the hill and change things for me.’
We do not know the book of French essays she was reading, but the message is that of the existentialists. In the 1950s and 1960s much of the philosophy that was underwriting the great change in attitudes was coming out of France, and from one couple in particular.
Jean-Paul Sartre was the principal exponent of existentialism in France and exercised a considerable influence on the thinkingof students and the ‘beat’ movement after the Second World War, in particular on the student rebellions of the 1960s. In 1953, Sartre’s wife, Simone de Beauvoir, kick-started the feminist revolution with
The Second Sex
, the book in which the phrase ‘women’s liberation’ was used for the first time.
If Maeve was reading French at UCD in the late 1950s there is no doubt that she would have been studying existential philosophy . Existentialism was in any case in the ether at this time and Maeve’s ‘return to self’ was precisely what existentialism is all about. Later I would have it confirmed that Sartre was indeed Maeve’s mentor and life guide. 33
His is a philosophy to which she would have taken naturally, for it holds that decisions important to the individual are not solved by painstaking intellectual exploration and dissection of the facts and the laws of thinking about them, but by
action
. It called upon Maeve’s passionate,
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