The Last Days of the National Costume
"As settlers here, even generations on … we still exist … in the dream of paradise." (Anne Kennedy, "Anne Kennedy Unravelled")
At first glance, The Last Days of the National Costume does not appear to be a mobility novel. The protagonist, Megan (GoGo) Sligo, spends most of the main action in the narrative
ensconced in her villa in Auckland suburb of Newton, where she lives with her spouse, Art (short for Arthur) Frome. In the narrative present, GoGo runs a home-based business, Megan Sligo Mending and Alterations. Most of her movements are localised and domesticated: she rarely leaves the villa, and when she does, it is either for quick errands or to visit her parents-in-law. She did once travel to a global metropolis – New York in the mid-1990s – but that was in a previous phase of her life and prior to the main action in the novel, thus narrated in retrospect. With that said, this outward journey to America becomes a first significant example of GoGo’s mobility as it is both a travel experience and a major change of direction for GoGo in her life. There is also another journey in the novel, although it is not GoGo who undertakes it. When the protagonist meets the Irish client, Shane
McGrath, she learns of his family’s forced migration to New Zealand during the Troubles in the
1980s. The story resonates with GoGo, whose own Irish ancestors immigrated to New Zealand during the famine. Being of Irish descent, GoGo becomes obsessed with the client’s past and,
latching onto the symbolism of Irish pride and struggle through his story, she embarks on a search for her own Irish roots. In some sense, the main setting in the novel – the Victorian villa – becomes a kind of locus for the stories of mobility to be brought to life, and yet it also provides a counterpoint to the dynamism and potential of real travel experience.
Caught within these two journeys is Pākehā settler identity. First of all, there is an echo of
the original settler dream in GoGo’s desire to migrate to America, although unlike the early settlers who came to New Zealand in search of a better life, GoGo moves in another direction, towards another land of dreams – America. For the young couple, Art’s opportunity to complete his
Doctorate at Columbia University becomes a prospect of success. In this sense, Columbia becomes a fitting destination for Art, the son of a wealthy Pākehā family. Historically, throughout its long- established educational narrative, the elitist space of Columbia was inhabited by upper and upper- middle class Anglo-Saxon Americans, who upon completing their degrees moved with ease in the
completion of his degree are not entirely ungrounded. Another way in which the settler dream is
evoked in the novel is through GoGo’s imaginary journey to Northern Ireland, the land of her
ancestors, which she undertakes vicariously through a Celtic narrative of her Irish client. However, unlike her journey to America which, as I argue, becomes an act of rebellion against the imposed
collective settler dream for a better life, GoGo’s Irish adventure represents her longing for a richer, deeper, and more romantic identity.
The colonial past of New Zealand is also recalled through a major global event against which the novel is set – the handover of the British Colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997, which marked a further decline in the influence of the British Empire. Yet the novel betrays a sense of uncertainty surrounding the meaning of Britain, particularly for Pākehā New Zealanders. In the world of
publishing, local writers are shown to be still dependent on the former northern cultural centre. For example, at dinner with Art and GoGo, Art’s poet-friend, Glenda, announces with pride that her first
poetry collection is to be published in England, “[n]ot just New Zealand” (120). On the other hand,
the sense that the cultural bubble, called Mother Country, has burst is also palpable. Instead of following a well-trodden path, created by young New Zealanders seeking to further their education at a university in England, Art applies to do his doctorate at Columbia University in America, and Glenda heads to Paris to study feminist theory. In fact, in the age of postmodernism, intellectual movements prevail in continental Europe, and England is no longer the epicentre of global scholastic activity. At university, GoGo predominantly reads the work of French theorists, among whom are Roland Barthes, Helen Cixous, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Ferdinand de Saussure. One could
even say that French theory lies at the foot of GoGo and Art’s marriage, as the two have met at an
evening with Jacques Derrida at Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington. This reduced cultural
significance of England is unequivocally connected with geographical shrinking of the British Empire in the second half of the twentieth century, but when the empire comes to an end, the impact of it is felt globally, and New Zealand is not spared.
The 1997-1998 East Asian crisis becomes a second significant global event in the novel. Historically, many experts around the world attributed the economic disaster to "weaknesses in the governance, management and institutions of the financial sectors in the East Asian economies" (Jikon Lai 2), although some saw this phenomenon to be partly a consequence of the fall of the
British Empire. In the novel, this fiscal crisis affects New Zealand’s export markets, including the fruit growing industry in which Art’s family are involved, and it becomes a catalyst for increased Asian immigration to New Zealand. Both of these consequences are discussed later in this chapter, but at this stage an observation should be made on their overall effect in the novel. Through the volatile global economic situation and the changing political landscape, Kennedy creates a system of motions
that is juxtaposed with the cultural stasis in New Zealand. Once again, it seems as though history happens elsewhere, and Pākehā settler culture is dependent and peripheral. What we also see in the novel is a kind of return to the mixture of complacency and anxiety through the lives of the
characters that haunted mid-century settler cultural nationalism.
Considering the genre of The Last Days of the National Costume, the satirical angle in the
novel is unmistakable, and in Kennedy’s hands, satire turns into a comedy of stasis. GoGo’s mobility
creates only an illusion of progress, but beneath it all there is negative stability. The self-
consciousness and comic circularity of GoGo’s narration contrasts with the protagonists’
enmeshment in circumstances and environment in the case of Foreign City, and the narrative of awakening and family integration in Queen of Beauty.