At Work and at Play 47
when he characterizes the artists as ‘a party of young gentlefolk at play – play-
ing at work, playing at love, self-absorbed, with an occasional glance of amused
incomprehension at the herd of watching rustics’.^27 Th e text is playful with both
the artists’ attitude towards themselves and towards the local fi sherfolk, allowing
their unconscious irony to be unmasked by the reader. It mocks their conceptu-
alization of their lifestyle as work when, for example, Jack Gibbs, identifi ed as
‘one of the idler folk of the colony’, bemoans how the hot weather is tiring him
when he has been seen to do nothing all day.^28 His work, which the novel sees as
play, is contrasted with the work of the fi shermen and women which is identi-
fi ed as ‘a real world, a world of toil’.^29 As can be seen from the quotation which
opens this chapter, Forrester, through his unique position as a local painter with
connections to both groups, is the one to identify the full implications of this
for the artists, and so for himself. Cynthia, through him, comes to understand
too – ‘He is right’, she says, ‘they live and we only play at living’.^30 It is a melan-
choly revelation for them both. Th e position of the text is that work connects the
fi sherfolk to the world around them, making it and their lives real, even though
that relation to the surrounding natural environment in is the form of ‘one long
fi ght with her’.^31 Whereas, peering at that world from around the edges of an art-
ist’s canvas, or when in repose, is both a failure to access the realism of the scene
which they paint, the rural environment which they occupy, and the reality of
their own lives. Th e classed positions of the two groups, therefore, determines
how they create the space around them.
Cynthia
It is possible to read the relationship between gender and space in a similar way.
Like class, the novel off ers a reading of gender as two opposing categories of
fi xed meaning within the rural space which are created through traditional and
universally understood gender codes. For example, Cynthia’s name invites the
reader to make a specifi c association between her and the moon which is based
on her gender. It is a connection that is continually referred to in the novel.
Before we meet Cynthia, Sampy sets up the importance of the moon to the nar-
rative: ‘she’ve got authority’, he says. ‘Rules the tides, she do, and the weather, and
the hearts av young folks’. He advises Robert to ‘shteer out av moonlight so much
as you can, young chap’.^32 Th e moon’s power to control the tides determines the
fi sherfolk’s ability to make their living from the sea and, as Sampy believes, the
weather, and so the moon is also believed to pose a continual threat to life for
those at sea. Th e moon’s power draws the sea into the shore and pushes it away
again. As a doubling of the moon Cynthia has the power over men’s hearts
within the artist colony. She draws them near her, attracted by her beauty, and
sends them away with her rejection of their advances, even if she does not wish to