Gothic and Noir: the Genres of the Irish Contemporary Fiction of “Containment”

Abstract

This article argues that the trauma of sexual abuse, particularly child abuse, was represented as early as 1965 in John McGahern’s The Dark, but was only recognized as a major theme in Irish fiction with the publication of Anne Enright’s The Gathering in 2007. Both works, together with Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, display the kind of avant-garde aesthetics that critics generally associate with the representation of trauma. However, other recent Irish novels have represented the trauma of sexual abuse and of institutional containment through tropes and themes proper to two traditional genres, gothic and crime fiction. Such is the case for Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture, and John Banville’s Benjamin Black novels.