Overview

Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction examines how contemporary Irish authors have taken up the history of the Irish woman migrant. It situates these writers' work in relation to larger discourses of exile in the Irish literary tradition and examines how they engage with the complex history of Irish emigration.

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9780230285767

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Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction is a concise and lucid treatment of a still neglected aspect of Irish literature. It conveys sometimes quite complex ideas in a coherent and clearly sign-posted way for readers new to the subject. Another of the book's many strengths is the way in which it doesn't just focus on the obvious texts of Irish women's migration but comes at the subject from a more oblique and critically rewarding angle and by doing so provides new and enriching perspectives. In particular, it demonstrates how representations of Irish women migrants' identities are enmeshed within complex discourses of paternalism and exclusion that permeate Irish literature more generally. I also liked the way in which novelists' non-fiction work is used, wherever possible, to contribute to the book's overall analysis. Other strengths are the excellent literature reviews throughout and the way in which the analysis is contextualized within not just Irish but English literary traditions. A timely and valuable contribution to Irish Studies on both sides of the Atlantic. - Tony Murray, Director of the Irish Studies Centre and Curator of the Irish in Britain Archive at London Metropolitan University, UK.

As her study, Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction, amply shows, women are no longer marginal characters but protagonists who provide rich commentary on emigration-related social concerns including reproductive rights, censorship, religious and class identities, whiteness, and belonging. ... The book is engagingly written and constitutes a compelling and important contribution to contemporary Irish literary criticism. (Katrin Urschel, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 39 (2), 2016)

Author Information

Ellen McWilliams is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman (2009) and has received a number of awards for research, including an Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Fellowship (2011) and a Fulbright Scholar Award (2012).

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