Universität Duisburg-Essen

Campus Essen

Wintersemester 2008/2009

Hauptseminar: Fiction and Film

Dozentin:

Sister, Mother And Lover:

The family roles of Julie in Ian McEwan′s The

Cement Garden

Ismail Durgut

Table of Content:

1. INTRODUCTION 3

2. JACK′S DESCRIPTION OF JULIE 3

3. THE FAMILY ROLES OF JULIE 5

3.1 JULIE AS THE SISTER 5

3.2 JULIE AS THE MOTHER 5

3.3 JULIE AS THE LOVER 7

4. SUMMARY 10

5. SOURCES 12

2

1. Introduction

In [Ian McEwan′s]

The Cement Garden

a prominent interpretative signpost is bestowed by the

literary allusion to the story tradition in which children are put into a situation in which they

must fend for themselves. The key reference here is to William Golding′s

Lord of the Flies

, a

pessimistic tale of savage that emerges within the child when free of social controls.1

However, the children in McEwan′s novel are not entirely cut from society. They try to keep

their sense of family together by entombing their dead mother in concrete in the cellar of their

isolated house. Moreover, all of them are influenced by adult codes of familial behavior.

These codes become distorted in their independent existence, a process that culminates in the

incestuous involvement of the eldest siblings.2

While Sue, the younger sister of the first-person narrator Jack, does not change visibly,

Jack himself runs through a metamorphosis in terms of hygiene and outward appearance as

such. Tom, the youngest, starts dressing up as a girl and later on behaves like a toddler and

Julie, the eldest, takes over the responsibility for the others and turns from sister to mother. At

the end of the story, she even becomes Jack′s lover.

The following paper will discuss the different family roles of Julie. First, there will be

a chapter on how Jack views his elder sister. This shall function as an overview of Julie′s

character. The main part of this paper will present Julie′s changing family roles from sister to

mother and finally to lover. The oedipal theme linked to that, will not be made a subject of

discussion in this paper. A conclusion will follow the summary in the final chapter.

2. Jack′s description of Julie

In chapter two of the novel, the first-person narrator and one year younger brother Jack

describes Julie two times. The first is a general description of her talent for sports, her habits

and her outward appearance:

During the following year Julie trained for the school athletics team. She already held the local

under-eighteen records for the 100- and 220-yard sprint. She could run faster than anyone I

knew... He [father] missed the pale-brown, slim legs flickering across the green like blades, or

me, Tom, Mother and Sue running across the enclosure to cover Julie with kisses when she

took her third race. In the evenings she often stayed at home to wash her hair and iron the

pleats in her navy-blue school skirt. She was one of a handful of daring girls at school who

wore starched white petticoats beneath their skirts to fill them out and make them swirl when

they turned on their heel. She wore stockings and black knickers, strictly forbidden. She had a

clean white blouse five days a week. Some mornings she gathered her hair at the nape of her

neck with a brilliant white ribbon. All this took considerable preparation each evening... She

had boyfriends at school, but she never really let them get near her... Her closest friends were

1 Dominic Head,

Ian McEwan

, p. 47.

2 Cp.

ibid.

3