Bodies over the Boundary

Abstract

In this chapter we will interpret texts that present an unusual set of circumstances in the contemporary Irish novel. The novels in this chapter flagrantly disrupt the boundaries of gender and sexuality, which at first suggests that these texts are easily decipherable. Because of the evident and frequently ostentatious gender and sexual differences in such novels as Emma Donoghues Hood or Tom Lennons Crazy Love, we might assume that we are able to “see” and read the texts easily. But from the history of the Irish novel written in English, no precedent is available. In a recent collection, Sex, Nation, and Dissent in Irish Writing (1997), Eibhear Walshe brings together critics who focus on the intersection of homoeroticism, nationalism, and political radicalism. According to Walshe, the collection begins with “two moments in Irish history: the criminalisation of same-sex desire in Britain and Ireland by means of the Labouchere Amendment (1885), and the construction of the political and cultural project of the Celtic Revival with Yeats s first collection of poetry (1889).”1 A concern for Walshe is the fact that “a lesbian and gay presence within any national literature troubles privileged formations of what traditionally constituted ‘woman’ and ‘man.’”2 In this chapter I am not concerned with the formation or manifestation of a national literature in relation to the contemporary Irish novel; yet, issues of an Irish homosexual identity are apparent in the recent novels.