The Realities of Girlhood in Contemporary Ireland in Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (2013) and Louise O’Neill’s Asking for It (2015)

Abstract

This article examines the representations of girlhood in contemporary Irish fiction, in which sexual assault is normalised, and victims are silenced in response. It looks specifically at A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (Eimear McBride, 2013) and Asking for It (Louise O’Neill, 2015). Girlhood in these novels is dominated by the threat of sexual assault and the existence of rape culture, especially in a digital age and #MeToo era. In post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, critics have noted a growth in YA literature, especially female authors addressing “uncomfortable but important matters in their works”, including “violence against teenage girls and women in Ireland” (Seijas-Pérez 66). Both protagonists in these novels, the Girl in A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, and Emma in Asking for It, experience sexual assault. The reactions of the local community and close friends or family to both girls’ experiences of sexual assault illustrate community and institutional responses to trauma in an Irish context. The article will analyse themes of shame and trauma, using close readings from the novels to break down the aftermaths of each individual experience of sexual violence within a broader cultural context. The works of Cathy Caruth and Susan Cahill, amongst others, will be used in this analysis in order to expose the lived realities of girlhood in contemporary Ireland.