Jane Elizabeth Dougherty

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025. 286 pages.

ISBN: 9781068502309

In this well-defined study of over a century of Irish Women’s writing, Jane Elizabeth Dougherty applies feminist psychoanalytical theory to examine Irish postmodern narratives, which she argues, before 2018, depicted the maturation of the female as “disarrayed and often deliberately disorderly” (13). Dougherty’s methodological charting of the Irish cultural experience examines established ideologies of Irish literature and subsequent Irish identity, as generated by W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, in contrast to female-authored texts by Anne Enright, Eimear McBride, and Eavan Boland. Employing a variety of texts to trace the evolution, or lack thereof, of female narrative maturation within Ireland’s formative years, Dougherty’s innovative study calls attention to a literary legacy of misunderstanding and neglect.

Providing a highly functional overview of the employed texts, Dougherty’s introduction intertwines Ireland’s social and literary history with the subsequent four chapters and coda, organised to guide the reader sequentially through this narrative. Commencing with the 1916 Rising and concluding with the landmark 2018 abortion referendum, Dougherty positions her research in line with the early constitutional assertion that the female child was not recognised. In a discussion published on the Edinburgh University Press blog, Dougherty states: “There is no agreed-upon cultural story of how and when an Irish female child becomes a woman” (2025). The author further emphasises how “female developmental stories have been largely overlooked by critics”, due to a view that their narratives were “counterfeit, pale imitations of the Irish male developmental story” (2025). This alienation directly influences Dougherty’s considerate handling of the texts she investigates in her study. “I treat the writers under study as authors, a privilege denied to most of them” (30), she states, creating a space to inspect how limitations placed on females from birth extended to adulthood, thus generating a “social marginalisation” (11) of both the women themselves and their resulting literature.

Significant dismissal of the female writers prompts Dougherty to claim that they: “should be judged on their potentiality, even when they do not fulfil it” (30). In her justification of this, she points to how early, unpublished writings of male writers, namely Joyce and John McGahern, have been granted serious criticism, despite the authors’ dismissal of their own texts, and irrespective of perceived aesthetic. Regardless of any mediocrity, Dougherty proposes, such equality should be offered to female writers, a suggestion that encourages a rediscovery of women’s writings and potentially a vibrant opportunity for scholars to restore the missing voices of Irish literature. Exclusion, actual and metaphorical, is a central theme, Dougherty concisely cataloguing a parallel erasure of literary female writings with other voices of the period, such as the Daughters of Ireland or the Irish Ladies’ Land League (102) during the establishment of the State. Advocating the maturing of female narration as an “ideal genre through which to develop feminist psychoanalytic narratology”, Dougherty argues: “the genre exemplifies strong narrativity while the gender possesses little narrative authority” (25). Drawing on the 1990 election of Mary Robinson, Ireland’s first female President, to portray the initial resituating of female authority in the Irish narrative, Dougherty pinpoints what she terms the nation’s “rebirth” (71). Proposing the President’s symbolic status painted a new version of “Mother Ireland” (73), Dougherty suggests this renaissance encouraged an unveiling of hidden narratives by Ireland’s “othered” citizens, specifically women and children.

Highlighting the historical swallowing of Irish women writers such as Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson into British literary history and setting necessary limitations, the book focuses solely on prose works by writers from the Irish Republic; Dougherty justifying any exclusion of notable works such as Milkman (2018) by Anna Burns in favour of Irish texts she describes as being formerly “[…] overlooked, or undervalued by critics and scholars” (30). Refreshingly, this includes neglected works, such as Dervla Murphy’s Wheels Within Wheels. First published in 1979 and reissued in 2010, Dougherty supplies a first critical reading of the travel writer’s autobiography. Portraying an astute understanding of the importance of female-to-female relationships within an Irish context, Dougherty contends: “The death of the mother is the birth of the female” (157), referring to Murphy’s newfound freedom following the death of her mother. This observation can be paralleled with the demise of old Ireland and the subsequent tepid freedoms achieved through constitutional changes and further separation of Church and State. “Like most female subjects”, Dougherty writes, “Murphy is confounded by her mother’s simultaneous power and powerlessness” (157).

Such assessment deviates from the usual male-oriented gaze often proffered by scholars or as apparent in Ireland’s literary canon. However, Dougherty reverts to this lens in her review of Clare Boylan’s novel Holy Pictures (1983), largely due to Boylan’s own emphasis on characterisation of the female through the eyes of a variety of male characters, each illustrating the tendency to place women as objects either needing to be protected or hunted. In this, and the novel’s sequel/prequel Home Rule, Dougherty observes how “mature female subjectivity is disempowerment” and female development is matched by the degeneration of self through what she terms “castration” (160-1). This implies a further removal of the female, to “other”; neither male nor fulfilling the designated maternal role. Evidenced by Dougherty through her careful dissection of female characters’ temporality, this notion is supported later in the novel as the father changes the family surname. As Ireland’s identity shifted with the creation of a Republic, this enforced removal of female identity parallels the constraining of Irish female narratives and subsequent prevented maturation that Dougherty’s research magnifies. Dougherty culminates her study with a timely exploration of emerging authors, whose work explores “Irish female maturation narratives produced by members of the global majority that have grown up in and should be full citizens of the Irish Republic” (250).  This Hostel Life (2018), an anthology from Nigerian-born writer Melatu Uche Okorie, and Soula Emanuel’s Wild Geese (2023) have recently broken with traditional conventions to fill a literary space empty of representations of global cultures. Dougherty highlights Okorie’s fresh contemplation of an “audience’s white gaze” (251), amplifying the need for contemporary ideas surrounding Ireland’s “narratives of working-class and impoverished female maturation” (249).

Despite previous reviews alluding to a lack of diversity in this research, this does not detract from what this book achieves. Considering the timeframe it covers, Dougherty’s focus and conciseness are admirable. Any neglect may lie in the lack of inclusion of disabled authors such as Rosaleen McDonagh, whose plays and memoir, Unsettled (2021), unfortunately fall outside the strict parameters set by Dougherty. Visually elegant both inside and out, it would be negligent not to draw attention to the book cover’s suitably thought-provoking artwork, provided by Sligo-based mixed-media artist Michelle Granville. Through its complex examination of literary form, narration and content, Dougherty advocates for the elevation and revival of previously ignored Irish women’s writing. Viewed through the lens of feminist psychoanalytic narratology, Dougherty’s approach is invigorating and justifiably situates female writing on equal footing with those considered the fathers of Irish literature, providing an extensive and useful bibliography to a new academic audience in the process. While this broadly engaging teaching resource will foster conversation across all levels of academia, it is particularly useful to undergraduate studies due to the balance of theory and textual example.  A constructive addition to contemporary research, the true impact of this book will be the role it plays in future recognition and revaluation of Irish female narratives.