From resistance to resilience
Vulnerability and narrative in Anne Enright’s the Gathering and the Wren, the Wren
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12303428 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Zengxin Ni (0000-0002-9978-2932, Beijing Foreign Studies University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-24 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Irish Studies Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0967-0882 • E-ISSN: 1469-9303 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09670882.2026.2642427 |
| OpenAlex | W7140187236 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 24 |
Vulnerability – alongside family dynamics, motherhood, and love – emerges as a central motif throughout Anne Enright’s fiction. The two narrators, Veronica Hegarty in The Gathering (2007) and Nell McDaragh in The Wren, the Wren (2023), experience both intrinsic and extrinsic vulnerability, each revealing the transformative potential of vulnerability through different paths of healing. Through Enright’s experimental narratives of intergenerational trauma, family dynamics, and the interplay of memory and imagination, both narrators are wounded and healed by love and care, undergoing a process of transformation from vulnerability to resistance and resilience, respectively. These divergent trajectories are articulated through contrasting narrative strategies and formal innovations. This article argues that the shifts of Enright’s narrative experimentation – from the first-person voice, unreliable narration, and psychological fragmentation in The Gathering to the polyvocality and hybrid forms in The Wren – reflect the characters’ varying experiences of vulnerability and represent a movement from resistance to resilience. By tracing the variations of Enright’s experimental style in connection with culturally and historically situated representations of vulnerability, this article contributes to the critical discourse on the ethical and aesthetic implications of vulnerability in contemporary Irish fiction.
Irish · Narrative · Resistance (ecology · Vulnerability (computing · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Moravian Church and William Blake
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Vulnerability in Resistance
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Introduction. Contemporary Literature in Times of Crisis and Vulnerability
Valuing Vulnerability
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Love is a tide
An uncertain event
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2027 - 2027 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |