The Red and the Green

The Red and the Green

First edition
Author	Iris Murdoch
Cover artist	Margaret Benyon[1]
Language	English
Publisher	Chatto & Windus
Publication date	1965
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	319

The Red and the Green is a 1965 novel by Iris Murdoch that covers the events leading up to and during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. It is written in a different style from Murdoch's other fiction, but like the other novels deals with complex family relationships, which has some relationship to the author's own family.

It is interesting for Murdoch's use of existentialism in the actions of its protagonist Andrew Chase-White, an Anglo-Irishman who has volunteered and become a young officer in the King Edward's Horse regiment, leading to a conflict with the other, Catholic side of his family.

Plot

The novel is set in Dublin during the week leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916. All the characters are members of a complexly interrelated Anglo-Irish family, some of whom are Protestant and some Roman Catholic.

Andrew Chase-White grew up in England, the only child of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents. His recently widowed mother Hilda has decided to move to Ireland, where her family lives. Andrew's paternal grandfather was his grandmother's second husband. With her first husband she had two children, Brian and Millicent Dumay. Millicent married Sir Arthur Kinnard, inherited his property when he died young, and became a rebellious eccentric. Brian, who converted to Catholicism as a young man, married Arthur Kinnard's sister Kathleen, who also converted. They had two sons, Pat (Andrew's contemporary) and Cathal Dumay, both ardent supporters of independence for Ireland. After Brian's death Kathleen married Andrew's Roman Catholic uncle Barnabas Drumm, Hilda's brother. A third Kinnard sibling, Heather, married Christopher Bellman and died young. Christopher's only child is Frances, whom Andrew has known all his life and plans to marry.

As the story begins Andrew is a young Second Lieutenant in King Edward's Horse, spending a leave in Ireland before accompanying his regiment to France. He and his mother, Hilda, are staying at Christopher's house in Sandycove. During the course of the week Andrew has encounters with various members of his extended family.

When Andrew and Frances visit Kathleen, Pat and Cathal in their house in Dublin, Andrew is goaded into taunting Pat with his failure to enlist in the British Army. The tense situation is interrupted by the arrival of Barnabas, who drunkenly falls on the stairs and breaks a bottle of whiskey that he had been trying to smuggle into the house, and a remorseful Andrew leaves without apologizing to Pat. The following day Andrew, Hilda, and Christopher call on Millicent in her Dublin house. Andrew retrieves one of Millie's earrings from a pool in the garden, where she has dropped it apparently to test him. After Andrew and Hilda leave, Christopher returns secretly to visit Millie in her boudoir, which she also uses as a shooting gallery. Unknown to his family, Christopher is in love with Millie, whom he has been helping financially for several years, and has been trying to convince her to marry him. This is complicated by the fact that Frances dislikes Millie, but he is encouraged by the expectation that Andrew and Frances will soon marry. Millie promises to come to Christopher's house later in the week to give him her answer.

Millie has allowed her cellar to be used as an arms depository by the Irish Volunteers. Pat Dumay, an officer in the organization, has been informed that an armed insurrection is planned for Easter Sunday, and comes to inspect the weapons. As he leaves he meets Millie, who tries to get him to tell her the plans, but he refuses.

Another of Millie's admirers is Pat's stepfather Barnabas Drumm. Years before his passion for Millie had led to his leaving the seminary where he was training for the priesthood. His marriage to Kathleen proving unhappy, he reconnected with Millie by chance and became a frequent visitor at her house, where he has the status of a tolerated relation. Barnabas is also a member of the Volunteers and has in his possession a Lee–Enfield rifle. When Millie goes to Christopher's house to tell him she will accept his marriage proposal, their conversation is overheard by Barnabas.

Andrew asks Frances to marry him, and is surprised and devastated when she refuses. They agree to keep the breaking of their presumed engagement a secret until she has had a chance to tell her father, who, like all their relations, had expected them to marry.

On a second visit to check the arms cache, Pat again encounters Millie, who invites him to her boudoir and informs him that she is in love with him. Pat is shocked and disgusted by her invitation to visit her at Rathblane, her country house in the Wicklow Mountains, and runs away. Later Andrew bicycles alone to Rathblane, having been invited with Frances to have tea, and confides in Millie that he is not engaged to Frances and that he is a virgin. Millie kisses him and offers to initiate him sexually, but he refuses her offer and leaves.

Pat and Cathal are bitterly disappointed on Saturday, when the insurrection in cancelled. In despair, Pat goes to Millie's Rathblane house on Saturday night, and finds that she is already in bed with Andrew. He rushes out of the house, just as Christopher is arriving unexpectedly. Millie tells Christopher that she won't marry him after all, and that she has seduced Andrew and is in love with Pat.

On Monday morning Andrew goes to Pat's house, unaware of the rising rescheduled for that day. Pat takes him prisoner and leaves him handcuffed to Cathal in order to keep Cathal out of the fighting. They are freed just as the insurrection is beginning by Christopher and Frances Bellman, who arrive looking for Barnabas in an attempt to find out what is going on. The novel ends with Andrew and Cathal observing the beginning of the rising in front of the General Post Office. An epilogue set in 1938 briefly describes the later lives and deaths of several of the protagonists.

References