This book examines archetypal motifs related to aspects of human relationships in contemporary Irish women's short stories from the late 1960s to the present. These relationships examined embrace not only relationships between men and women, as married couples and lovers, but also women to women relationships as mothers, daughters, sisters or lovers. This book has uncovered certain recurrent motifs which may be construed as archetypal and are employed as a narrative device to express a certain level of feminist awareness by Irish female writers in their stories against the backdrop of Irish feminism emerged in the late 1960s.
This feminist aspect of Irish women's stories appears to address the paradoxes of patriarchal ideology underlying male domination in male/female courtship and marriages, the conflict between patriarchally loyal mothers and rebellious daughters, powerless, but rival, female siblings and peers competing for limited resources and male attention under th
This feminist aspect of Irish women's stories appears to address the paradoxes of patriarchal ideology underlying male domination in male/female courtship and marriages, the conflict between patriarchally loyal mothers and rebellious daughters, powerless, but rival, female siblings and peers competing for limited resources and male attention under th
