Humour as a subversive1 feminist strategy in “the portable virgin” by ann enright∗

Abstract

This article analyses “The Portable Virgin”, a short story published by the Irish writer Ann Enright in 1991, in order to establish the way in which gender and humour interact in it, to define the characteristics and functions of the comic elements that Mary, the protagonist, uses to render her reality, and to show the strategies employed by Enright to subvert the myths, particularly that of the Virgin Mary, on which the patriarchal feminine identity rests.