The Continuum of Irish Female Sexuality in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Normal People: A Contradicted Ireland

Abstract

After the Celtic Tiger years, Irish society seems to have transitioned into a much more welcoming environment for the production of literature, and in general, for the arts. The proliferation of literature, and, more specifically, of women writers and portrayals of girlhood, is giving way to a significant visualization of female voices and female issues, Sally Rooney being one of those voices. Therefore, in this paper I aim to analyse her contribution to the current Irish literary landscape through her novels Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018), where sex and female sexuality become two of the major themes. Trauma, guilt and shame (Free and Scully 2016), as key traits of recessionary Irish identity, will also be taken into account by looking into Rooney’s characters’ attitudes as they perform their own sexuality. Hence, both the advantage of a higher social awareness of female issues and the disadvantage of an ashamed Post-Celtic Tiger society mix, thus influencing the representation of 21st century Irish female sexuality, and also creating a definitely contradicted society (Crowley 2013), where social advances keep pushing forward while post-boom trauma and self-regulation keep them back.