The interstitial status of Irish gayness in Colm Tóibín's the Blackwater lightship and the master

Abstract

This paper explores the liminal status of Irish gayness in the aftermath of its decriminalization in 1993. Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship (1999) tries to reconcile Irish Catholicism and traditional family with new models of Irishness. Declan, the protagonist of the novel, goes back home when he is about to die of AIDS. His return reveals a dysfunctional family which only his disease brings together. His grandmother, mother and sister mourn Declan's corpse-like body. Making reference to Julia Kristeva's concepts of "abjection" and "the chora" (1982, 1984), I contend that the hero's disease is a necessary sacrifice for the family and Ireland as a whole to resurface. The second part of the paper addresses Tóibín's The Master (2004), whose fictional Henry James counterbalances Declan's overt homosexuality and AIDS-related death. The Master delves into James's hybridity as a closeted American of Irish descent opposed to Oscar Wilde's flamboyant gay Irishness. The restraint of the former and the traumatic downfall of the latter make up the late- Victorian framework through which Declan's late-twentieth-century sacrifice becomes meaningful. © 2014 by Jose M. Yebra.