For love and country

Queering nationalism in Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle and Farewell Spain

Bibliographic Data

ID22157167
AuthorsAnn Catherine Hoag (0000-0003-4032-7668, University of Groningen, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume7
Issue3
Pages233-248
Publication date2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Modernist Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2469-2921 • E-ISSN: 2469-293X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/24692921.2024.2395992
OpenAlexW4402007623
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited18

Considering Irish writer Kate O’Brien in the context of sapphic modernisms might seem misguided as her fiction is traditional in form. Still, revisiting her writing has illuminated its play with modernist themes, and her radical establishment of transnational feminisms in her juxtaposition of Ireland and Spain. Referencing theories by Nira Yuval-Davis and the work by Jane Garrity that map the intersection of gender, sexuality and citizenship, this article argues that O’Brien presents alternative possibilities for women’s relationship to nationhood in her representations of Spain in her 1936 novel, Mary Lavelle, and her 1937 Farewell Spain. The travelogue, chronicling O’Brien’s sojourn in Spain accompanied by Mary O’Neill, her life partner, is an elegy to her experiences of a country ravaged by Franco’s fascist forces. Tracing the sapphic erotics that course through her love letter to the “femme fatale among countries,” from the language of ecstatic pleasure in her description of bullfights, and her adoring depictions of gendered, anthropomorphized towns, O’Brien presents a love of Spain in sapphic terms that is itself an object of queer devotion. As a result, her relationship with Spain revises perceptions of women’s connection to nationhood, even if temporarily, and opens new spaces for a queer nationalism

Art · Carnivalesque · Citizenship · Irish · Literature · Nationalism · Orientalism · Political science · Politics · Queer · Queer theory · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Scottish History and National Identity

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