Transgressing Boundaries: Belfast and the “Romance-Across-the-Divide”

Abstract

One of the most popular sub-genres of Northern Irish Troubles fiction is the so called ‘Romance-across-the-divide’, a narrative in which two characters from different religious, cultural and social backgrounds struggle to overcome the region’s sectarian divide. As the centre of the Northern Irish conflict, Belfast epitomises the obstacles posed by the political situation for lovers attempting to defy socio-cultural and denominational boundaries. Joe Cleary argues that in the Northern Irish context the romance narrative is employed to illustrate the possibility of a reconciliation of opposed political camps. This article attempts to refute Cleary’s view. Focussing on Naomi May’s Troubles (1976), Dermot Healy’s A Goat’s Song (1994) and Kate O’Riordan’s Involved (1995) it sets out to demonstrate that unhappy unions of lovers cutting across sectarian lines serve instead largely to depict the ongoing political division within Northern Irish society and the breach between the North and the South of Ireland.