"The Theatre of the Family": An Irish Approach to Gender Awareness in Catherine Dunne's Fiction (original) (raw)
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Women and Patriarchy in the Literature of Kate O'Brien - Research Paper
To be born male or female had different political, social and economic consequences for an individuals life in nineteenth century Ireland. The opportunities of the daughter of an aristocratic family in the middle ages and those of a woman living in the slums of late nineteenth century Dublin, were light years apart in many ways, but each woman's life and her opportunity were influenced by her sex and, as a consequence, were different to those of her brother, father or husband. 1 This research paper will examine the attitudes towards gender roles in nineteenth century Ireland and how this expressed in the literature of Kate O'Brien 2 . Chapter one will focus on O'Brien's first novel Without My Cloak which became a best seller and won her the first Hawthornden and James Tait Black memorial prizes. 3 By examining the lives of O'Brien's key female characters it will become clear how the ideology of separate spheres combined with codes and expectations of a patriarchal society effected the lives of these women in various ways. Later on in chapter one we will see evidence from various journals and diaries which belonged to women in nineteenth century Ireland that confirm that these rigid codes and boundaries which restricted women truly were a reality in Ireland and not just true of O'Brien's fictional characters. Chapter two will focus on The Ante-Room, a sequel to Without My Cloak, first published in 1934. Again, by focusing on the main female characters in The Ante-Room, chapter two aims to unveils how these women were confined and restricted due to the dominant patriarchal society. The use of primary sources such as diaries and journals in chapter two also will reinforce this reality.
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DESTABILIZING TRADITION: GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND POSTNATIONAL IDENTITY IN FOUR NOVELS BY IRISH WOMEN, 1960-2000 Sarah M. Nestor, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2012 This dissertation examines four novels that represent Irish women and girls confronting the typical narrative of Irish national identity in the twentieth century. The post-independence construction of Irish national identity depended upon prescriptive roles that aligned with its founders’ beliefs about the nation’s ethnic homogeneity and moral superiority. Irish women’s identity and roles as wives and mothers were imperative to upholding this idea of the nation, particularly its morality. Irish women were therefore charged with maintaining well-defined gender roles and the nuclear family in an effort to define a distinctive Irish identity. Thus, when women’s roles are challenged or changed the idea of the nation and national identity are also challenged or changed. This study finds that novels by Edna O’Brien, Maeve Kel...
Literary Insights into Contemporary Ireland: An Interview with Catherine Dunne
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For a long time, Irish women’s lives were strictly confined to the private domain, and women’s issues were largely silenced and hidden from public knowledge. Additionally, both Church and state maintained that women should hold a certain morality, particularly relating to areas of sexuality and reproduction. As a result, until relatively recently, Irish women’s issues remained largely ignored and therefore unremarked upon. This paper will examine two major areas in which Irish women’s lives have traditionally been repressed: women’s sexuality and domestic violence, both issues which were once considered taboo for open discussion. This paper will also discuss how these same issues are being represented in Irish chick lit novels, thus providing a frank and positive voice for these largely female issues and for the everyday experiences of women in Ireland.
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Ideal Irish Womanhood Contested in Martina Devlin’s Short Story “Alice Through the Bathroom Mirror”
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Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Irish Catholic Church adopted and spread a gendered moral discourse to educate women in chastity, purity and passivity. In the twenty-first century, this religious discourse has been maintained and reinforced with the medicalisation of women’s bodies and the pressure put on female subjects to become mothers. Following feminist and resilience studies, we will analyse Martina Devlin’s short story “Alice through the Bathroom Mirror” (2003) to see how the female body is objectified, dehumanised and pathologized by men, and how gender expectations can be challenged by resisting subordination and objectification.