Reimagining Subversive Masculinities in J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and John Broderick's The Pilgrimage

Abstract

This article investigates two banned novels, J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man (1955) and John Broderick's The Pilgrimage (1961), to explore how the mid-century Irish novel explored themes of masculinity in opposition to official Church and State teachings on postcolonial Irish masculinity. In its analysis, the article focuses on each novel’s use of narrative and style to articulate thematic concerns over the rigidity of the expectations of mid-twentieth-century Irish manhood. Moreover, it demonstrates how both authors construct models of masculinity that reject contemporaneous teachings on an idealised masculinity and expose the contradictions that are inherent in such teachings. The article's examination of these works showcases how both novels sought to complicate these dogmatic images of masculinity, and were ultimately banned by the Censorship Board as a result.