‘That baby is a Fenian’: Gothic Violence, Gender, and Nationality in Two Plays of David Ireland

Abstract

'The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’, claimed author H.P. Lovecraft. The relationship between fear, knowledge, and paranoia is a common theme in many Gothic texts, such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, in which fear is generated by information withheld or obscured. Although ‘Gothic’ is a term usually reserved for literary fiction, in this paper I ask: can an understanding of Irish gender and nationalist conflict be found in the Gothic? Contemporary playwright David Ireland uses Gothic techniques to address community violence, national identity and gender. In their depictions of violent paranoia, sinister disguises, and psychological unravellings, David Ireland’s plays depict social unrest linked to conflict on the island of Ireland. In this paper I will take his plays Cyprus Avenue (2016) and Ulster American (2018) as key texts through which to view Gothic presence in modern Irish culture, analysing the ways they address conflict regarding gender and national identity. This analysis will be guided by the conceptual framework of feminist and queer theory, in particular Jack Halberstam's Skin Shows (1995) and Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine (1993). I will make the case that in these plays we can view fear of the unknown as a defining feature of conflict in modern Ireland.