'What the hell is it but crumbling masonry'
Masculinities and the Fall of the Catholic Big House in Brian Friel’s Aristocrats
Keywords:
Irish Drama, Irish Literature, Brian Friel, Aristocrats, Fragile Masculinities, Irish Masculinities, Domestic Space, Gender Norms, Gaelic Masculinities, Catholic Ascendency, Catholic Big HouseAbstract
This paper examines the relationship between domestic space, masculinities, and power in Brian Friel’s 1980 play, Aristocrats. Through a close reading of the domestic space of Ballybeg Hall and the play’s male characters—Father, Casimir, and Eamon—the constitution of masculinities within the space of the Catholic Big House is analysed, with particular regard to the complex intersections of class and religion in mid-1970s Donegal that underpin the action of Friel’s play. The male characters in Friel’s are representative of differing, yet interlocking, iterations of Irish masculinities, each constituted in relation to Ballybeg Hall as a once powerful space.
References
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