Milkman

Although relatively little happens in Chapter 4, it’s key to the novel’s depiction of sexism and patriarchy. Milkman continues to treat middle sister with outward respect, but she increasingly experiences his stalking as a form of physical and psychological violence. For one, the stress takes a clear toll on middle sister’s body, to the extent that she has to give up running: “It came that I couldn’t anymore relax and feel myself in flow, couldn’t breathe properly whereas before, the act of running brought breath through me” (185). More than that, however, milkman’s ability to get inside middle sister’s head is its own form of violation; she imagines him everywhere and feels he has an uncanny ability to “pick[] up on her secret desires and dreams” (167). He seems, for instance, to know that middle sister initially wanted to take a class on Greek mythology rather than French. On that note, it’s significant that the language middle sister uses to describe milkman’s actions often borrows from military terminology—for example, his “infiltrat[ion]” of her mind. This suggests a link between milkman’s sexual aggression and the violence of the Troubles—specifically, a form of toxic masculinity that associates maleness with dominance and brutality.

Relatedly, it’s worth noting that middle sister feels almost as violated by the community at large as she does by milkman. She resents it when people “embark on offensives and approach with their questions” (173) in an effort to get information from her, and she begins to imagine that the community is, like milkman, hiding “under the bed, behind the door, [or] in the wardrobe” (178). This sense of persecution speaks not only to the community’s invasiveness, but also to its complicity: its widespread sexism provides cover for milkman’s actions. Here, for instance, is how middle sister imagines those around her would respond if she attempted to explain what’s happening:

If I’d said, ‘He expressed condolences on my sister’s loss of her murdered man while at the same time linking my almost-maybe-boyfriend to a constantly recurring carbomb,’ they’d have said, ‘How come you’re not married and why do you go out with maybe-boyfriends in the first place?’ (181).

Similarly, the discussion of first brother-in-law serves as a reminder that the problem of misogyny is by no means confined to milkman, but is instead so common that it only attracts attention when it runs up against the community’s deep religiosity.

Another issue that takes on additional prominence in this chapter is that of public opinion. Middle sister has repeatedly referred to the “beyond-the-pales” in her community—people who have “fallen below the benchmark for social regularity” (60). In many cases, what sets these people apart is a sense that they have distanced themselves from the sectarian conflict that dominates the minds of everyone else in the community: nuclear boy is obsessed with the Cold War, the issue women seem to care more about gender than religious or national identity, etc. Arguably, however, what troubles people about the beyond-the-pales isn’t so much their disinterest in the Troubles specifically, but rather in the community consensus generally. This becomes clear when longest friend reveals that middle sister has herself become a social outcast because of her apparent disinterest in what the community thinks (and, in particular, what it considers normal). When middle sister wonders, “[I]f one person happened to be sane [...] against a whole background, a race mind, that wasn’t sane [...] would that person be mad?” (201), longest friend unabashedly replies that they would.