National and psychological aspects of the corporeality in the novella “On Chesil Beach” by I. McEwan

Abstract

This article studies the national and psychological aspects of corporeality in the novella “On Chesil Beach” (2007) by I. McEwan. The research identifies the existence of national specificity of the bodily and finds ways to convey this in literature. The main themes of the novella are the prohibition of a frank conversation about sexual anxieties, the difference of temperaments and the motif of shame. The novella presents the “borderline” era of English society in the 1960s, the time when ignorance of one’s body and naïveté negatively affected human destinies. The awareness of one’s own physicality due to contact with the body of the Other is an essential aspect of the novella. We have established that I. McEwan demonstrates the impact of the national and psychological aspects on the bodily relationships of the characters in his novella “On Chesil Beach”. The characters’ isolation, their inability to interact with the Other, is part of the national character: I. McEwan’s characters live their lives “from within”, each of them is focused only on themselves and on their own feelings. Due to the Puritanical upbringing and the entire English system of values, the characters are unable to interact with the body of the Other, which entails difficulties in their relationships.