on unequal power relations embedded in an outdated class system, the Anglo-Irish community is shown to have rendered itself virtually obsolete. This in turn is intimated by Lois's and Laurence's relative indifference to the threat of the political upheavals. As the drawn-out ending of a story in which they feel they have no part, the war yet keeps them in thrall and thwarts them in their search for the meanings of their own "historical present". Satire/comedy Some critics like Renee C. Hoogland and Neil Corcoran believe that the novel carries satirical and comic elements that target the Anglo-Irish and English society. Hoogland states: "In traditional generic terms, The Last September can be classified as a social comedy that satirizes the manners and the morals of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry and the English upper-middle classes." Hoogland also points Myra Naylor's class “arrogance and bigoted nationalist views allow Bowen to display her exquisite talent for social satire. The main target of the Irish lady's scorn are the English upper-middle classes: I always find the great thing in England is to have plenty to say, and mercifully they are determined to find one amusing. But if one stops talking, they tell one the most extraordinary things, about their husbands, their money affairs, their insides. They don’t seem discouraged by not being asked. And they seem so intimate with each other; I suppose it comes from living so close together. Of course they are very definite and practical, but it is a pity they talk so much about what they are doing. I can’t think why they think it should matter. In Elizabeth Bowen: The Enforced Return, Corcoran explains the comic depiction of the Anglo-Irish society: Constantly playing against the brightness of social comedy in The Last September, therefore – notably the comedy of edgy insinuation and misunderstanding that characterizes Anglo-Irish/English/Irish relations – is a pervasive effect of attenuation, bathos, desuetude. ‘They were delayed, deflected,’ it is said of Hugo’s and Marda’s lengthy failure to pay a return visit to Danielstown; but, in fact, this could be said more generally of the Anglo-Irish in the novel too. Corcoran also thinks that "...The Last September maintains throughout the parity, if not the primacy, of its comic tone. Inventing the marriage of Hugo and Laura, for instance, the fastidious Laurence also, with a shudder, envisages a time when they and four sons 'all hurried out to