Gossip, guerrilla intelligence, and women’s war work in Anna Burns’ Milkman

Abstract

In Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018) the danger of the sectarian conflict largely confines women’s labour to domestic spaces: childrearing, homemaking and, where women do participate in the conflict, emergency homemade medical care and alerting paramilitaries of danger. The novel takes place in distinctly female spaces as we see the Troubles from within kitchens and sitting rooms, from side-ways glances, heads kept down and rushed walks home. This paper argues argue that Burns highlights a significant way women participated in the conflict: through speech, namely gossip. Gossip constitutes a kind of verbal labour and feminine guerrilla intelligence in the novel as it spreads information and allegiances within the community outside of the traditional and masculine military sphere. The novel recognises both the importance of gossip as a legitimate way women participate in conflict from within approved domestic spaces and illustrates the destructive nature of gossip on the individual. While overlooked as non-military actors, Burns highlights how women’s role in upholding their community’s power structures through gossip is key to maintaining paramilitary power and their own survival, making it a significant, if concealed, form of labour.