Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T14:18:12.401Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - Unhomely Bodies: Transforming Space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2019

Shonagh Hill
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
Get access

Summary

This chapter focuses on how the theatrical forms utilized in Paula Meehan’s Mrs Sweeney (1997) and Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy’s Women in Arms (1984, 1988 and 2002) encapsulate the tension between the body and the space it inhabits, and how the process of their mutual reshaping negotiates the expression of women’s unhomely experience. The tension between body and space offers a node through which the unhomely experience emerges in these two plays through exploration of both the home and the landscape. Mrs Sweeney and Women in Arms adopt very different theatrical forms, including the carnivalesque and Brechtian theatre, to map the complex ways in which space and body intersect; yet both suggest that realism is inadequate to the task of expressing women’s desires and look to alternative forms to carve out new spaces of expression. Counter to the limits of realism, the energy of resistance together with the suggestion of transformation and change invigorates both Mrs Sweeney and Women in Arms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×