Words| Charlotte Ryan
It is a sad reality that in the Ireland of decades gone by the term “Irish lesbian love story” sounded like a paradox. The thought that a lesbian novel could exist which resisted falling into the categories of either super sexualised drivel bordering on porn or thinly veiled political manifestoes overflowing with bare-chested hairy feminists was never really entertained. Far less likely were nuanced and accurate depictions of the lives of two women who happened to be in love. Such was the aim of Emma Donoghue’s 1995 novel Hood, a poignantly calculated reflection on loss, grief and identity in twentieth-century Dublin.
Hood is Donoghue’s second book, published the year after her debut novel Stir-Fry. Set in contemporary Ireland and concerning a young woman’s battles with her sexuality, Stir-Fry falls into the long line of coming-out-novels that almost seem a prerequisite for LGBT writers; as if coming out in the first place wasn’t difficult enough, they are expected to similarly announce themselves to the literary world. Hood, however, moves beyond idealised lesbian romance and provides a more mature and undoubtedly more solemn glimpse at the realities of love. Told over the course of a week, the novel follows Penelope “Pen” O’Grady as she copes with the death of her lover of 13 years, Cara Wall. From receiving the 6am phone call that no one wants, to planning the funeral with the near catatonic father of her girlfriend, to confronting the painful realities of her lover’s many infidelities, Donoghue actively makes ordinary the lives of countless women who for too long have been seen as outliers in our society.
Central to her rewrite of lesbian literary narratives is Donoghue’s distancing of her story from the grand and uncomfortably romantic. The novel takes place in Dublin – not Paris or Florence or any other city choking on its own poeticism. Even (foolhardy) comparisons to Ulysses withstanding, this is a Dublin far removed from the mythologised playground of Joyce’s Leopold Bloom. The quotidian mundaneness of Pen’s life are miles away from the philosophical ramblings of Bloom, and pointedly so. Donoghue goes to great lengths to remind us that the women in her story are just women, and by no means are they exceptionally idealised. Pen is a short and overweight thirty year-old who at one point compares herself to a “great black walrus” while the object of her desires is described as having a complexion like “thin typing paper”. Certainly not the typical women to star in some lesbian sex fantasy; they don’t look anything like the stars on lesbian porn hd. But that is the point – Donoghue feels no need to compensate for the absence of a heterosexual relationship with saccharine sweet ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘ah-ing’.
While not a prize beauty, Pen’s deep-rooted emotional hang-ups are what make the novel so compelling and harrowingly realistic. Despite revelling in her passionate 13-year relationship, Pen is firmly in the closet. Her perpetual feeling of shame in a society that negates her and her relationship, as well as the anxiety of working in her former Catholic primary school, is poignantly contrasted with the tenderness of her time with Cara. Cara is also a difficult character to sympathise with: open about her infidelities and with a penchant for emotional manipulation, the reader struggles to find anything at all loveable in her. Often it seems like Pen is struggling with this too, torn between naively rejecting the allusions to flings for the sake of the years they’ve spent together, and regretting all the times she could have played Cara at her own game and slept with someone else.
Even after her death, Pen struggles with what version of Cara she should be remembering; the “good times were dangerous” so it’s best to recall the times Cara left more wounds than she healed. Donoghue’s method of recounting memories is highly effective, with Pen’s daily life told in the past tense while her memories are told in the present. What results is an enormously moving reflection on the temporal experience of memory and the enduring comfort they can offer someone, as they do Pen. However, prompted by anger and denial she eventually tires of the “good times” and retreats into more challenging recollections, depriving both herself and the reader of a much needed shot of sun-drenched, soft-voiced endorphins. In their absence we find ourselves cherishing the same moments Pen does: tentative kisses on convent rooftops, warm caresses peppering heated arguments on rainy afternoons, nonsensical gibberish mumbled in the arms of sleep. For all the curveballs Donoghue throws us in her portrayal of a real-life lesbian relationship, we see that real love is in the seemingly pointless and daily routines suffered by everyone that only become significant when they are no longer possible.
Despite these often too-realistic reflections on human suffering and loss, Donoghue’s novel is frequently lifted by flashes of dry humour at its own expense. Rather than sweep the topic of sexuality under the metaphorical carpet, Donoghue has her characters embrace it through things like t-shirts emblazoned with slogans (one fine example being “FIT FOR A CLIT”). It is to her credit that Donoghue manages to tread that fine line between pained internal suffering and light, if somewhat dark, humour.
If the novel had one flaw, it would be the frequent stereotyping of minor characters. Kate, Cara’s sister and the original object of Pen’s teenage infatuation, is played off as the pretentious emigrant indoctrinated by the soulless trends of America while Sherry, Cara’s presumed last illicit lover, is nothing more than a hippy earth mother devoid of morals. However, in a novel so richly developed and devoted to accurately portraying the lives of a chosen few such short cuts can be forgiven.
This year will mark the twentieth-anniversary of the publication of Hood and certainly it would seem that this is a novel worth celebrating. Its harrowing yet uplifting story of love and loss has only grown in relevance in those years, particularly with the Marriage Referendum looming. It has matured with a generation that will no doubt find themselves turning to it this year and in years to come as a means of finding community and assurance in their sexuality, a privilege that writers like Emma Donoghue were tragically denied.
