Seeds That Thin and Split: Motherhood, Femininity, and Rebellion in Roddy Doyle’s 'A Star Called Henry' and Lia Mills’ 'Fallen'

Abstract

Focusing on representations of female rebellion in Roddy Doyle’s A Star Called Henry and Lia Mills’ Fallen, this article will consider the ways in which both novels dismantle and rearticulate the dominant symbolic trope of Irish womanhood in cultural nationalism, the Mother Ireland figure. Strategies such as the recovery of alternative ‘foremothers’ of Irish femininity, both mythological and historical; the construction of female collectives as radical sites of resistance; and, a focus on mother-daughter relationships as generative and productive, allow each novel to create new spaces from which a rejuvenated, more ethical female subject can emerge.