“A Portrait of the Artist as an Irish Woman: An Analysis of Irish Female Artist Novels from the 1880s to the Present”

In studying the sub-genre of the artist novel in Irish women’s writing, this thesis aims to fill a gap in Irish literary history. As many Irish women writers have written their own struggles to become an author in the face of social sanction into their novels, these works deserve to be recognized as an important strand in the Irish literary tradition. Moreover, since these representations of artist heroines are all placed within the economic, political and cultural context of Ireland, the specific Irish inflection of these female artist novels also deserves to be analysed. In studying the relation between literature and society, this dissertation will also be useful for Irish feminism and gender studies. Furthermore, demonstrating how female authors both inherit the traditions of male writing and innovate the genre, this research aims to deepen the understanding of women’s literature.