Veronica Membrive – författare

This volume studies the manifestations of female trauma through the exploration of multiple wounds, inflicted on both body and mind (Caruth 1996, 3) and the soul of Irish women from Northern Ireland and the Republic within a contemporary context, and in literary works written at the turn of the twenty-first century and beyond. These artistic manifestations connect tradition and modernity, debunk myths, break the silence with the exposure of uncomfortable realities, dismantle stereotypes and reflect reality with precision. Women’s issues and female experiences depicted in contemporary fiction may provide an explanation for past and present gender dynamics, revealing a pathway for further renegotiation of gender roles and the achievement of equilibrium and equality between sexes. These works might help to seal and heal wounds both old and new and offer solutions to the quandaries of tomorrow.

This volume studies the manifestations of female trauma through the exploration of multiple wounds, inflicted on both body and mind (Caruth 1996, 3) and the soul of Irish women from Northern Ireland and the Republic within a contemporary context, and in literary works written at the turn of the twenty-first century and beyond. These artistic manifestations connect tradition and modernity, debunk myths, break the silence with the exposure of uncomfortable realities, dismantle stereotypes and reflect reality with precision. Women’s issues and female experiences depicted in contemporary fiction may provide an explanation for past and present gender dynamics, revealing a pathway for further renegotiation of gender roles and the achievement of equilibrium and equality between sexes. These works might help to seal and heal wounds both old and new and offer solutions to the quandaries of tomorrow.

As recent studies on the «London Irish» and on the work of almost forgotten artists have revealed, there existed in the 1930s a vibrant appreciation and response to international politics and artistic innovations. Many Irish writers such as Kate O’Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, Sean O’Faolain, Liam O’Flaherty, to name but a few, felt at ease in this climate. Reconsidering Irish culture in the 1930s in light of recent critical work will further enhance an understanding of a decade of cultural production which, until the turn of the 21st century, was subjected to comparatively narrow interpretations. At a time when a fledgling democracy was being created in Ireland, the influence of these and other connections in the realm of culture cannot be underestimated. It is the major purpose of this book to rely on all these premises and rebuild the milieu of the 1930s by observing the dialogues between the homewhere-s and elsewhere-s where Ireland’s cultural legacy and cultural products have been shaped.

The turn of the twenty-first century revealed the almost endemic presence of violence, cruelty, abuse,trauma and secrets in clerical and state Irish institutions and the familiar unit. These disclosures came to contradict idealised versions of the nation permeating political and social discourses for decades while they released at one time “the burden for Irish people (...,) this reputation of Ireland as virtuous, saintly scholarly, family oriented, and all this stuff, [... since] reality, of course, [was] quite different” (Dunne 37). With history and reality closely scrutinised, many skeletons in the closet were made visible. This is how the figure of the Irish mother and the (problematic) relationship she may have not only with herself, but also with her daughter(s) and son(s), and the Irish father achieved importance in discussions around the institutionalised and celebrated construct of the Irish family.Either carried out in contemporary fiction or in the solid corpus of feminist theory based on psychoanalysis and social learning theory - to mention but two of the possible approaches - these contemporary discussions were not by any means new but they were rather accelerated by globalisation, capitalism and change. Nonetheless, it was already in the wake of 1970s when the second wave of feminism left the figure of the Irish mother vulnerable to figurative dissection for her involvement in the preservation and consolidation of the patriarchal tapestry, carefully knitted by the corporatist partnership between the Church and the State over several decades, an unswerving bond well highlighted by Anne Enright’s words at the beginning of this text.In bothIrelands, the durable patriarchal system was built upon strong structures of power/disempowerment and repression functioning in relation to gender and transgenerational regulations. These and other recent perspectives, such as Palko’s on the cultural negotiations of the definition of a “good mother”, articulate the role of the Irish mummy in isolation, and in relation to the individualisation, emancipation, autonomy and the regulation or restriction of her daughters and sons’ sexualities, and attempt to understand both sides of the dyad, their motivations, their actions and silences, their joys and their traumatic experiences. The present study attempts to be encompassing despite its limited nature, motivated as it is by the flourishing contemporary Irish literature and artistic creativity of these later decades. The chronology of this project aims at covering the contemporary literary perspectives on motherhood in works written either by male or female, Irish or foreign authors since the 1990s up to contemporaneity, in nowadays post Celtic Tiger era.