John McGahern, Amongst Women

Liam Harte (University of Manchester)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.4: Irish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Paul Delaney (Trinity College Dublin), Anne Markey (Dublin City University), Ian Campbell Ross (Trinity College Dublin), Sinéad Sturgeon (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1990

Places

Ireland, Republic of (Eire) (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Amongst Women recapitulates and refashions characters, themes and situations from McGahern’s first two novels, The Barracks and The Dark. The central figure, Michael Moran, is a domestic tyrant in the mould of Mahoney in The Dark, a father whose hold over his family, especially his three daughters, is “pure binding”. As a veteran of Ireland’s separatist struggle he has an obvious affinity with Reegan of The Barracks, whose bitter disenchantment with independent Ireland he savagely echoes: ‘“What did we get for it? A country, if you’d believe them. Some of our own johnnies in the top jobs instead of a few Englishmen. More than half my own family work in England …. The whole thing was a …

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1090 words

Citation: Harte, Liam. "Amongst Women". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 March 2001 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6723, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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