Is the mother re-visioned in contempoary Irish women's literary fiction?

This thesis discovers signs of positive change in maternal representation in contemporary Irish women’s literary fiction. It is undertaken in the context of recent social change in Ireland encompassing heightened feminist consciousness and an upsurge in publication of Irish women’s writings. The rationale for the thesis is my belief that literary representations are important in shaping social life and that, in the wake of national traditions of symbolization and stereotyping of the maternal, of literary traditions of maternal idealization and demonization, and of a history of neglect in Irish literary criticism, a study on the re-visioning of the mother in Irish women’s fiction is opportune. As part of the Introduction to this thesis a brief review of feminist literary critiques of Irish women’s writings by Anne Fogarty, Ann Owens Weekes, Áine McCarthy and Heather Ingman is provided. Chapter One provides historical, literary and feminist frameworks for the discussions of the contemporary fictions analysed in the chapters which follow. The following three chapters apply close textual analysis to six contemporary novels, grouped in twos, in the light, predominantly, of feminist theories. Chapter Two covers Clare Boylan’s Room for a Single Lady and Mother of Pearl by Mary Morrissy, where the focus is on mothers who struggle against male ideologies of maternity. In Chapter Three, One by One in the Darkness by Deirdre Madden and Two Moons by Jennifer Johnston centre on older mothers who choose to live within patriarchal norms. Chapter Four features Kate O’Riordan’s The Memory Stones and Nothing Simple by Lia Mills where new feminocentric plots are provided for non-traditional, migrant mothers. Throughout all of these writings, the mother/daughter plot is a major pre-occupation. In conclusion, the thesis raises some issues concerning the reconfiguration of family figures that arise in the context of the re-visioning of the mother.