Seamus Heaney's eight-sonnet suite Clearances

Clearances

In Seamus Heaney’s eight-sonnet suite ‘Clearances’ the Heaney reflects on the intimate and complex relationship between him and his mother. Particularly poignant are the last two sonnets, which describe the immediate emotions caused by the mother’s death and the void that her absence creates.  The effective use of enjambment, the visual images and metaphors created in the two sonnets reveal the clearance of the mother’s death translate deep into the consciousness of the family.  

In Sonnet Seven, Heaney describes the gathering of the whole family to be with the mother in the ‘last minutes’ of her life. In the first line, the persona refers to a ‘he’ who later talks to the mother. The identification of this man is ambiguous but the use of the third person invites the reader to be physically present in the scene. It seems as if the reader is also watching this man, presumably the mother’s husband, from a distance.  The husband speaks to the mother recalling Monday nights in ‘New Row’ and affectionately calling her ‘good’ and ‘girl’. However, there is a sense of anxiety and longing when he asks her ‘isn’t it right’ as if he wanted her to respond. This reflects how the husband does not want to acknowledge his wife’s fast-approaching death. The husband’s affectionate and longing one-sided dialogue to his wife creates a mood of warmth and closeness. The fact that the family was ‘overjoyed’ at the husband’s display of fondness suggests that he is normally a stolid and reserved man. That he would be moved to childish flirting and overt expression of his innocent and sincere love enhances the mood of intimacy. In the first five stanzas, as stated earlier, the reader is almost physically present, however, now the reader can also identify with the emotions and sentiment that the family is experiencing. The mother’s death is referred to in the middle of line eight. However, the affection and closeness of the family does not seem to be interrupted but rather, her death seems to be a continuation of those feelings. The extension of the sentimental feelings developed through the play also trivializes her physical death. The emphasis is not on her death but on the ‘one thing’ that ‘[they] all knew…by being there’- the revelation that the family members felt. In line eleven, the ‘space [that they] stood around had been emptied’ almost deceives the reader into believing that the ‘emptiness’ and the mother’s death is decisive as the end of her life. However, in the line following, the ‘emptiness’ has actually penetrated ‘into [them] to keep’. Heaney creates a beautiful image of the deceased mother’s soul and the memories penetrating into the clearance that her physical absence has created to live inside of him. Therefore ‘high cries’ and extreme mourning has been stifled by the ‘pure change’ of her soul emptying into the family members. Grief seems almost inappropriate for such a powerful catharsis, whereby the impact of the mother and her essence is beyond the shell of her body.