“She had to start thinking like a man”: Women Writing Bodies in Contemporary Northern Irish Fiction

Abstract

Studies of representations of the body in literature have become so well established as to no longer require extensive explanation or justification as a mode of criticism but, nevertheless, the choice to apply this particular mode of reading to contemporary Northern Irish fiction cannot be glossed over without comment. The body still remains a vastly under theorised aspect of Irish writing in general. The body, however, is an area of particular relevance to Irish fiction and particularly relevant to contemporary Northern Irish fiction in its depictions of national conflict, negotiations with slippery concepts of national identity and ambivalence towards the prevailing conservative cultural and religious climate. In many respects Northern Ireland remains a predominantly conservative, theocratic society in which women are still traditionally associated with the home, marriage and motherhood. However, many contemporary Northern Irish women writers navigate occasions in which the domestic and public spheres come into contact and collision, or the liminal space between them. This article focuses on three novels in particular, which span different genres, two decades and both the intra- and post-conflict periods: Give Them Stones (1987) by Mary Beckett, Hidden Symptoms (1987) by Deirdre Madden and Sharon Owens’ The Tavern on Maple Street (2005).