No Angels in the House in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane  and Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half Formed Thing

Esther DE LA PEÑA

doi:10.12795/RICL2022.i25.18

Authors

Esther DE LA PEÑA Universidad de Sevilla https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2732-2662

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12795/RICL2022.i25.18

Keywords:

female Irish identity, abuse, trauma, failure

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing the complex female constructions of identity, trauma and personal failure in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996), and Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half Formed Thing (2013). As the title suggests, “No Angels in the House” refers to the central role motherhood has firmly held in traditional Irish society, and how progressively this sublimination of the mother figure has evidenced a deeper somber side of domestic life. I explore the concept of the maternal in both works, and how the devastating consequences of a rigid religious upbringing will stigmatize the protagonists’ lives forever. I also analyze the post-traumatic stress disorder that the two female protagonists suffer when they fail to assert themselves in such hostile environment. In this framework, the final part of this work is devoted to reflecting upon the acknowledgement of personal failure and the impossibility of redemption. The illusion of freedom coupled with the sociocultural breeding provoke the subversion of the moral edicts, and the death of the protagonists who seem to disintegrate and fade away into a non-existence of their own.

Key words: female Irish identity, abuse, trauma, failure.

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