Examining the gap in troubles fiction from a rural female Unionist/Ulster-Scots perspective

Abstract

This creative-critical thesis comprises two elements: a draft novel – ‘A Quiet Hill’ – the coming-of-age story of a young Protestant girl growing up on a farm in County Armagh in the 1980s and a critical component of three essays on the themes of place, identity and gender.

This thesis had its germination during my time on the MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University, Belfast (2016-2019) when my childhood experience as a Protestant girl growing up on a farm in County Armagh during the Troubles emerged strongly and vividly in my writing. Prompted by the publicity around Anna Burns’ novel Milkman’s success in 2018,I began to research the range of fictional narratives of the Troubles and was unable to find a story that reflected my experience. This motivated me to write ‘A Quiet Hill’.

The critical component of the thesis examines the representation of rural Protestant female experience in my novel and the ways that themes of place, identity and gender appear in other novels that speak to the period between 1971 and 2021 in Northern Ireland. Having chosen a gynocritical approach in my research, the principal novels examined are Anna Burns’ Milkman, Jan Carson’s The Fire Starters and Lucy Caldwell’s Where They Were Missed. The critical work applies perspectives from ecocriticism, postcolonialism and gender theory. Autoethnography, and the practice of using subjective experience as the basis for research is another key critical strand in this work.

By interrogating the themes of place, identity and gender in my novel and others, I demonstrate that there is a gap in the existing canon of Northern Irish novels with settings between 1971 and 2021. I discuss why this has pertained until now and show that my novel fills this gap.

Thesis is embargoed until 28th February 2026

Date of Award	Feb 2024
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department for the Economy
Supervisor	Andrew Keanie (Supervisor) & Frank Ferguson (Supervisor)