Power, Gender and the Nation: Negotiations of Belonging in Evelyn Conlon’s Short Story “Park-Going Days”

Abstract

In the central decades of the 20th century, the feminine icons of “Mother Church” and “Mother Ireland” were set as conduct models to follow by Irish women. Simultaneously, legal, moral and economic forces collaborated in limiting the scope of their agency. In order to elicit where women situated and how female expressions of belonging and not belonging took shape, this article uses intersectionality to look into the short story “Park-Going Days” authored by women’s rights activist and writer Evelyn Conlon. The plot displays the ambivalent feelings of the newcomer, a childless married woman, towards the other women in the community and her difficulties fitting in. At the same time, this story provides the reader with the unspoken personal experiences of these women in relation to marriage, work and motherhood. Thus, the analysis will show how this situation is constructed and understood by the author. Besides, the use of intersectionality will allow a multi-level analysis to unveil the interdependence of structures, social categories and representations that result in socially constructed forms of differentiation and exclusion for (some) women, and the consequent forms of resistance and consent. Finally, new paths for literary analysis are suggested within the frame of intersectionality.