"The Children Act" by Ian McEwan, analysis

“The Children Act”, by Ian McEwan (2014), an analysis:

   « Wealth mostly failed to bring extended happiness », (l.65). It is indeed a universal truth, and with one sentence, Ian McEwan summarized the essence of “The Children Act”’s incipit. This novel centers almost completely on Fiona Maye, a wealthy, successful and respected High Court judge in the Family Division. Her professional life is dedicated to resolving the problems thrown up by family breakdowns and childcare disputes. But as the novel begins, it is her own marriage that seems under threat. Indeed, if Fiona appears as efficient and successful in her job from the outside, the cases she deals with may have an overwhelming impact on her private life, and the reverse causality is also true. From High Court Judge to the European Court of Human Rights, passing through Family Division and Youth, if there is one unique principle that guides law’s interpretation and its application when a minor is concerned, is the children’s well-being. But what is the definition of this well-being? How it is possible to conceal the application of law and humanism? Is it even possible? Through this incipit, we meet the point of view of a writer concerning law, and the complexity of taking a judicial decision.

   To tackle these issues, the analysis will be split into two parts: the first part will present the concept of both private and public personae, and the interactions between both of them through the character of Fiona Maye. Secondly, we will see how the tension between law and religious belief is at the center of Fiona Maye’s decisions, and at the center of McEwan’s novel.

I – An analysis of the private and public personae:

   Fiona Maye is the late-middle-aged High Court judge protagonist of The Children’s Act, she has a demanding job that have life-and-death implications for those concerned. Therefore, the power of the decisions she takes makes her a respectful, almost an intimidating women. She also seems to take care of herself and to belong to the upper-class: “staring past her stockinged feet” (l.3-4), “staring […] towards the end of the room” (l.3-4) the room she is staring at seems wide and big, “round walnut table” (l.8), “Bokhara rug” (l.13), “wide polished floorboards” (l.13) “baby grand piano” (l.14). These telling little details inform the writer about the protagonist’s tastes and social status. Fiona is beautifully drawn: from the outside, she seems to have succeeded in her life: owning a big and chic flat in London and having a fulfilling professional life (“Fiona Maye, a high court judge” (l.2).  All these elements constitute the public persona of Maye, or how she appears from an external point of view. It is one side of the protagonist’s character: the disciplined and law-oriented side, the side that does not let anything threatens its stability. Indeed, the description of the scene is static: Fiona is sitting in her chaise longue and is staring at the other part of the room. This public persona seems intimidating, prestigious. She is a judge, therefore she decides of other person’s fate on a regular basis. She represents the highest form of authority and she has the last word, which will make some happy and others not so much. 

   However, this public persona is a window, and this incipit is not only a static description: “Fiona was on her back, wishing all this stuff at the bottom of the sea”(l. 17-18). Indeed, even though the text is written in the third person, it is narrated inside Fiona’s head. The narrator is omniscient, he is the voice of the judge when she looks at the environment surrounding her: after every description comes a comment from the narrator, which is Fiona’s mind “Tiny Renoir lithograph”(l. 6) and right after it “probably a fake one” (l.8), “centered walnut table” (l.8) -“no memory of how she came by it” (l.9). “The fireplace not lit in a year”. The reader can feel the coldness embracing Fiona’s private persona, the other side of her character: this part of her feels is not at peace with its environment. Moreover, the comments made by Fiona after every description given of the objects around her can be interpretated as judgments, and this process corresponds much to a law-oriented perception: after the description of the case comes the judgment. Here, Fiona is the judge of her own private case, but does not seem to reach a decision. She is a High Court judge at the Family Division and yet, she fails to find a solution to her own conjugal problems, which is ironical. As the novel begins, it is her own marriage that seems under threat, as her husband of thirty years tries to explain his sudden urge to have an extra-marital affair with a young woman before he gets too old to enjoy “one last fling”. Apparently he has already set everything in motion, but before taking any action, he asks her first for permission, which appears to be very strange. Since she is a High Court judge, and has probably a better job than him, he comes to her before doing anything so that Fiona does not take any justice-related measure after what we can call adultery. The fact that Jack confesses to his wife about the impact their missing sex life has on him resembles very much to a session at a psychologist: however, the private case that is being formed in Fiona’s apartment demands a judgment that is different, a more emotional kind of judgment. “I need it. I’m fifty-nine. This is my last shot. I’ve yet to hear evidence for an afterlife,” (l.37-38) her husband Jack tells her. This type of judgment confuses Fiona “she had been lost for a reply” (l.39), as she is not used to let her emotions influence her decision. As a judge (public personae), and her role is by definition, to say what is right, not what is moral, nor expressing her personal feelings. Jack’s prospective affair with is partly a reaction to living with a person who feels she needs to be perfectly selfless to do her job right, her meticulous attention on her cases consumes her on many levels: “When did we last make love?” (l.46) At one level, sex is treated here as an emblem of freedom and innocence, as a destructive passion, and as the troubling vehicle by which children, and the conflicts attending them that Fiona oversees in court, come into the world. Fiona’s professional commitments have led her to disassociate sex from children, which leads to regrets about her childlessness. In other words, this incipit describes the interaction between the vulnerable private body and the public persona: on the one hand, Fiona’s engagements in her jobs take such a place inside her that she is left with very little energy to deal with her private crisis. On the other hand, the domestic crisis Fiona suffers from drives her to hide inside the judgment drafts, leaving her with nothing but her upcoming cases for company.

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