A famine of preference: Images of anorexia in contemporary Irish literature (Edna O'Brien, Colum McCann, Nuala O'Faolain)

This dissertation investigates the work of Edna O'Brien, Colum McCann, and Nuala O'Faolain---analyzing anorexia and other examples of refusing to eat as metaphors for taking back a voice and for creating identity. I contend that anorexic behavior in Irish characters, especially women, represents an attempt at political action. Because Ireland has a history of both famine and hunger strikes, anorexic behavior is overdetermined. Additionally, in the struggle to construct an Irish free-state identity separate from the former colonizer and from the still colonized Northern counties, Catholicism was an important tool. With that religious fervor came the excessive patriarchal definition of women's roles. Anorexia nervosa and other willful starving in this atmosphere represents the tensions of Catholic control over bodies, especially women's bodies, as part of Irish identity building and nation building. In other words, the characters in contemporary Irish texts, who manifest anorexia nervosa, represent not just fears and anxieties about speech, control, and autonomy for women, but also for colonized people.; I first build a foundation for the study by connecting the legacy of the Great Famine to the post-colonial responses to food and eating through an analysis of Nuala O'Faolain's novel, My Dream of You. Next, I focus on anorexia as a response to and metaphor for Catholic control of women's bodies by examining Edna O'Brien's works, The Country Girls, August is a Wicked Month, and "Sister Imelda." I then move beyond Catholicism to discuss how border politics interpenetrates the power issues connected to bodies and appetites with a discussion of Edna O'Brien's novel Down by the River, and Colum McCann's works, Songdog, and "Sisters." Finally, I address the representations of anorexic women and their connection to male hunger strikers by juxtaposing McCann's novella "Hunger Strike" with his earlier works.