Review: Feminist Discourse in Irish Literature

Abstract

Jennifer Mooney’s Feminist Discourse in Irish Literature: Gender and Power in Louise O’Neill’s Young Adult Fiction, is an aptly-timed contribution to contemporary scholarship on gender, power, sexuality, and consent in texts for young adults. It is the first monograph on O’Neill’s texts and, unlike previous scholarship on O’Neill’s work, examines the potential limits of O’Neill as a feminist YA author. Mooney conducts a detailed and considered literary analysis of Only Every Yours (2014), a post-apocalyptic dystopia featuring a school “in which girls are bred for their beauty” (O’Neill qtd. in Redmond, n.p.) and Asking For It (2015), which explores the aftermath of protagonist Emma’s “brutal sexual assault” (O’Neill, “Louise O’Neill in Conversation”) by four boys. Feminist Discourse in Irish Literature uniquely contributes to existing scholarship in the field of Irish YA studies through its analysis of these popular novels and critical consideration of the contemporary cultural climate. Mooney examines the role of texts that “contain overtly feminist political ideology” (1) in perpetuating or problematising gendered stereotypes that rely on traditional norms and critiques O’Neill’s engagement in “absolutism” (3), wherein O’Neill connects her own experience of girlhood and womanhood to a universal one. Mooney argues that O’Neill’s approach to power within the narratives analysed “results in a narrow focus on sexism, with damning limitations for male and female characterisation” (1). She also draws on analysis of other Irish and international literature to make the case that O’Neill’s texts are not as politically progressive as some argue, and that these texts in fact represent gender and power in ways to the detriment of all genders of readers.

Keywords

• ya
• ya studies
• gender
• feminism
• irish literature