Coming into Clover. Femininity in Irish-American Literature and in Mary Lavin's "A Memory" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Bamberg, course: Coming Into Clover, language: English, abstract: This paper is about how Mary Lavin deals with the complexity of being a born American writing about Irish women in Ireland, and by taking her short story "A Memory" as an example. The questions this study deals with are: How is femininity represented in "A Memory"? Does the American born author Mary Lavin follow the traditional picture of Irish women in Irish literature and its historical context? What are her motives for doing or not doing so?

For as much as there are Irish female authors, they represent a minority. When revising different anthologies of literature coming from Ireland though, one is predestined to encounter Mary Lavin's name in at least most of them. Lavin was born in America, and that might also contribute to the fact, that she stood out between so many male writers. As published by Daphne Wolf in an Irish America magazine issue of 2013, "In the male-dominated field of Irish writers, Mary Lavin was a pioneer" (60), it is of no minor relevance to focus on her work, and how she, herself, as an Irish-American avant-gardist female author, created women in the Irish literature.

This research will firstly analyze the short story "A Memory" and the definition Lavin gives there to femininity in both a formal perspective, taking in count the story's narrative point of view, style and theme, and its content, like the plot and the conflict of the story. Secondly, it will explain the role and position of women in the Irish society through its literature and authors, and it will explore the historical events in which women were involved during the 1960's and 1970's that is the time when "A Memory" was published (1973). For this, relevant pieces of information of Irish history and analysis of Irish literature will serve to answer to the question. In the third place, this work will compare the results to Mary Lavin's background in order to give a concise explanation for her motives, if the fact of being a born American woman has an influence in her perspective of femininity, and how she transfers that into Irish literature. Lavin's biography and articles about her, such
as her obituary, are relevant for the study.