"The Opposite of History is Forgetfulness": Myth, History, and the New Dominion in Jane Urquhart's "Away"

The title of the final section, "The Trace of a Man on a Woman," suggests the romantic priorities of the narrative of [Brian, Eileen]'s relationship with Aidan Lanighan, but the romance is very much bound up with the broader fabric of Irish-Catholic nationalism and Fenian agitation in Canada and the reaction to D'Arcy McGee's "betrayal" of the cause. Eileen falls for [Aidan] as he "dances" the hopes and aspirations of the Irish Catholics in the Seaman's Inn in Port Hope, and later follows him to Montreal where she insists on participating in the patriot cause by concealing a pistol which Aidan intends to take "as a precaution" (323) when going to hear D'Arcy McGee speak in Parliament. By giving the pistol to Aidan's cohort [Patrick James Whelan], Eileen serves as unsuspecting accessory to the assassination of [McGee] and foils Aidan's attempt to prevent it. Thus when McGee is shot, Aidan accuses Eileen of killing him, of being in "some kind of dream ... some kind of goddamed otherworld island" (343). The spell (both romantic and political) is broken. "His dance was not a petition to McGee," Eilieen realizes; "it was an expression -- an affirmation -- of partnership. Whenever Aidan danced, the voice of D'Arcy McGee had been present, dancing with him in the room" (343). The departure of Aidan echoes the departure of [Mary]'s daemon lover, and Eileen returns home to Port Hope in a similarly enigmatic, spectral state, telling [Liam], "I've given up on outer words... I live on an otherworld island" (346). Thus Eileen's participation in the politics of a pivotal historical era -- the struggle for cultural cohesion and political consensus at the time of Confederation -- ultimately leads to a repetition of the mythic pattern that governs the history of the women of the O'Malley family. The relatively brief "trace" of Aidan on Eileen marks her for the rest of her life: "I can't, you see," she tells [Esther O'Malley], "get the face of a certain young man out of my mind" (351). Her commitment to the revolutionary cause, however, is catalysed, and compromised, by her relationship with Aidan Lanighan. After her first encounter with Aidan, Eileen becomes an avid reader of the polemical nationalist and Catholic newspaper The Irish Canadian; her mooning over Aidan is mixed with politics, and her perception of the cause is constructed as a naive romanticism. Evoking the Irish mythological hero Finn MacCool, she envisions Aidan as part of a band of gallant patriots, gallopi