Masculinities, the failed Bildungsroman, and the nation in Mary Lavin’s The House in Clewe Street (1945)

ABSTRACT This article investigates the cultural shift from rural Ireland to bohemian Dublin in Mary Lavin’s The House in Clewe Street (1945). This essay investigates how the protagonist, Gabriel Galloway, hopes to move to Dublin to mature and develop his masculine independence. Lavin’s novel is a Bildungsroman, that uses a migration to the city as a key catalyst for character development. However, the culture shock that arises from the contrasting expectations of rural and urban hegemonic masculinities prevents Gabriel from achieving his goals of masculine development. In this article, therefore, I interrogate how Lavin complicates Gabriel’s linear masculine development, and how Lavin subsequently uses the failed Bildungsroman form to illustrate wider national conditions in Irish society after independence.