When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation

The signing of the contentious Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 was a traumatic experience for many Irish people. This is not only because of the ensuing Irish Civil War, but the psychological adjustments that the Irish people have to make in their partitioned land. Since the Irish Republican Army (IRA...

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Main Author:	Chang, Tsung-chi
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017
Online Access:	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/1/19244-63571-1-PB.pdf

id	ukm-11766
recordtype	eprints
spelling	ukm-117662018-06-28T07:06:43Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/ When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation Chang, Tsung-chi The signing of the contentious Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 was a traumatic experience for many Irish people. This is not only because of the ensuing Irish Civil War, but the psychological adjustments that the Irish people have to make in their partitioned land. Since the Irish Republican Army (IRA) emerged during the Anglo-Irish War (1919-21), it has been bent on terminating the British government’s control of Ireland and establishing a truly independent and unified Irish Republic through armed struggles. This traumatic history, which was embedded with the conflicts and compromises of such struggles, became a pivotal issue in many Irish writings. As a consequence, it helped shape subsequent Irish literature and culture when the dream of a free and unified Ireland was constantly recalled and reconfigured. These painful markings are reflected in complex ways in Edna O’Brien’s fiction House of Splendid Isolation (1994), in which an IRA fugitive named McGreevy holes up and finally bonds with Josie O’Meara, an aged widow, in a dilapidated house. Apart from the political turmoil, considerable anguishes caused by love and marriage converge to entangle the protagonists’ traumas. This paper focuses on how, by shifting between the multifarious narrative perspectives, O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation stitches the interwoven personal, interpersonal, and national suffering together. In addition, the role women play in facilitating sympathetic understanding and reconciliation amid the violence and traumas in contemporary Ireland is discussed. The findings imply that, despite the ageold traumatic experiences caused by political conflicts in Ireland in the past few centuries, a trauma-free tomorrow via love and reconciliation, mostly with the help of women, is possible in contemporary Ireland. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2017-11 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/1/19244-63571-1-PB.pdf Chang, Tsung-chi (2017) When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies, 17 (4). pp. 16-26. ISSN 1675-8021 http://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1043
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia
building	UKM Institutional Repository
collection	Online Access
language	English
description	The signing of the contentious Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 was a traumatic experience for many Irish people. This is not only because of the ensuing Irish Civil War, but the psychological adjustments that the Irish people have to make in their partitioned land. Since the Irish Republican Army (IRA) emerged during the Anglo-Irish War (1919-21), it has been bent on terminating the British government’s control of Ireland and establishing a truly independent and unified Irish Republic through armed struggles. This traumatic history, which was embedded with the conflicts and compromises of such struggles, became a pivotal issue in many Irish writings. As a consequence, it helped shape subsequent Irish literature and culture when the dream of a free and unified Ireland was constantly recalled and reconfigured. These painful markings are reflected in complex ways in Edna O’Brien’s fiction House of Splendid Isolation (1994), in which an IRA fugitive named McGreevy holes up and finally bonds with Josie O’Meara, an aged widow, in a dilapidated house. Apart from the political turmoil, considerable anguishes caused by love and marriage converge to entangle the protagonists’ traumas. This paper focuses on how, by shifting between the multifarious narrative perspectives, O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation stitches the interwoven personal, interpersonal, and national suffering together. In addition, the role women play in facilitating sympathetic understanding and reconciliation amid the violence and traumas in contemporary Ireland is discussed. The findings imply that, despite the ageold traumatic experiences caused by political conflicts in Ireland in the past few centuries, a trauma-free tomorrow via love and reconciliation, mostly with the help of women, is possible in contemporary Ireland.
format	Article
author	Chang, Tsung-chi
spellingShingle	Chang, Tsung-chi When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation
author_facet	Chang, Tsung-chi
author_sort	Chang, Tsung-chi
title	When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation
title_short	When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation
title_full	When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation
title_fullStr	When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation
title_full_unstemmed	When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation
title_sort	when politics meets gender: trauma in edna o’brien’s house of splendid isolation
publisher	Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
publishDate	2017
url	http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11766/1/19244-63571-1-PB.pdf
first_indexed	2023-09-18T20:01:05Z
last_indexed	2023-09-18T20:01:05Z
_version_	1777406853459738624

When politics meets gender: trauma in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation

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