Contemporary Caitlín: Gender and Society in Celtic Tiger Popular Fiction

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which the traditional trope of Cathleen Ni Houlihan continues to haunt some contemporary Irish women’s novels. Focusing on recent “chick lit”, the fraught relations between gender and nationalism are analysed with a view to questioning the very possibility of embracing “post-feminism’’ in a context in which some women’s literature, far from challenging the patriarchal and capitalist status quo, actually perpetuates it.