“Stories last a long time after you go”: female solidarity in Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars and Elaine Feeney’s As You Were

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars (2020) and Elaine Feeney’s As You Were (2020) within the context of the Celtic Phoenix (2013–the present) particularly in relation to the political discourses of recovery from the Great Recession (2008–2013), recently carried out national referendums, constitutional changes, the reports on the systemic abuse in Magdalene Laundries and The Mother and Baby Homes, and contemporary feminist hashtag activism. Set in hospital wards, both novels depict Irish women’s struggles with their health problems to address a variety of social, cultural, political, legal, and economic impediments they face throughout Ireland’s traumatic history and emphasise shared compassion and care that reinforce the experience of communal beingness and solidarity among them. These hospital wards can be regarded as matrixial borderspaces that transform its inhabitants by means of female bonding. This article argues that both novels challenge the neoliberal discourses of recovery in the Celtic Phoenix period by deploying the discourse of illness to expose violence, injustices and inequality against women and present the female body as a site of collective empowerment, emotional support and empathy.