Translocational Irish identities in Edna O’Brien’s memoir Country Girl (2012)

Abstract

A rural-urban exodus subsequently followed by overseas migration has characterised geographical movement in Ireland. While Irish women have outnumbered men in their diaspora, physical and symbolic identification with Ireland has been decisive to the polemic of Irish female migration. This article explores how real and symbolic contradictions in Irish women experiencing displacement are reflected in Edna O’Brien’s memoir Country Girl (2012). Using translocational positionality as an intersectional research framework, the article reveals the importance of spatiality in the ‘life writings’ of a particular situational subject and its major role in identity construction processes. Furthermore, this article relates the individual biography to the collective and complex construction of identity of Irish women abroad in the second half of the twentieth century. The analysis sheds light on many unvoiced experiences shared by female migrants and discloses key aspects of Irish migration that result in a problematic gendered relation with the land still unresolved.

Resumen

El movimiento geográfico en Irlanda se ha caracterizado por un éxodo rural-urbano seguido de migración al extranjero. Las mujeres irlandesas han sido más numerosas que los hombres en la diáspora, y su identificación física y simbólica con Irlanda ha sido decisiva a la hora de polemizar la migración femenina irlandesa. Este artículo analiza las contradicciones reales y simbólicas que las mujeres irlandesas desplazadas en las memorias de Edna O´Brien en su autobiografía Country Girl (2012). Utilizando la posicionalidad translocacional como marco de investigación interseccional, el artículo revela la importancia de la espacialidad en la autobiografía de un sujeto particular y el rol que desempeña en los procesos de construcción de identidad. Además, se relaciona la biografía individual con la construcción colectiva y compleja de la identidad de las mujeres irlandesas en el extranjero durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. El análisis arroja luz sobre numerosas experiencias no verbalizadas compartidas por las mujeres migrantes y revela aspectos clave de la migración irlandesa que dan lugar a una relación problemática con la tierra aún no resuelta.

摘要

爱尔兰的地理迁徙，以城乡外移及随后的海外移民为特徵。虽然在离散人口中，爱尔兰的女性人数胜过男性人数，但爱尔兰女性移民对于有关爱尔兰的实质及象徵性认同却充满争论。本文探讨经历流离失所的爱尔兰女性的现实与象徵性冲突，如何反应在埃德娜．奥布赖恩（Edna O’Brien）的回忆录《乡村女孩》（2012）之中。本文运用跨地域位置性作为相互交织的研究架构，揭露空间性在一个特别情境化主体的‘生活书写’中的重要性，及其在身份认同建构过程中所扮演的主要角色。此外，本文将此一个人自传，连结至二十世纪后半叶集体且复杂的海外爱尔兰女性身份认同建构。本分析阐明诸多移民女性共享却未能诉说的经验，并揭露导致爱尔兰移民和土地之间具有疑义且至今仍未解的性别化关係的重要面向。

Keywords:

• Edna O’Brien
• migration
• identity
• translocational positionality
• autobiography
• Irish literature

Palabras clave:

• Edna O’Brien
• migración
• identidad
• posicionalidad translocacional
• autobiografía
• literatura irlandesa

关键词:

• 埃德娜．奥布赖恩
• 移民
• 身份认同
• 跨地域位置性
• 自传
• 爱尔兰文学

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of Gender, Place and Culture and three anonymous referees for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Ita Daly’s Dangerous Fictions (1989), Julia O’Faolain The Irish Signorina (1984), Leland Bardwell’s That London and Winter (1981) and Dolores Walsh’s Mad Moon (1993) are good examples of female exile in twentieth-century Irish literature. More recently, William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), Sebastian Barry, On Canaan’s Side (2011), Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn (2009), Anne Enright’s The Gathering (2007) and Edna O’Brien’s The Light of Evening (2007) have been acclaimed for dealing with female protagonists and their troubling sense of place.

2. For reasons of space and pertinence, no critical or theoretical analysis of these literary forms will be discussed here. For interesting discussions on the differences between ‘autobiography’ and ‘memoir’ as literary genres, see Buss (2002) and Smith and Watson (2010).

3. The Joycean influence on O’Brien’s writing has been acknowledged both by herself (Conrad 1996; Woodward 1989) and by many academic scholars (Colletta and O’Connor 2006; Gillespie 1996; Moloney and Thompson 2003). Particularly, O’Brien’s novel Night (1972) is a stream-of-consciousness monologue whose main character, Mary Hooligan, has been compared with Joyce’s Molly Bloom in Ulysses.