Relative Visibility: Women, Exile and Censorship in John McGahern’s The Leavetaking and Amongst Women

Abstract

In Kate O’Brien’s novel Pray for the Wanderer (1938), published almost a decade after the Censorship of Publications Act (1929), Matt Costello, a writer of some acclaim, returns home after a long absence, on a visit that is made fraught by the fact of his work having been banned in Ireland. His sojourn at home is short-lived as Ireland, predictably, proves to be an impossible place for the Irish artist to flourish. In an exchange with a friend early on in the novel, in which they debate whether Ireland has truly produced any great writers, they come to an inevitable conclusion about the fate of the Irish artist on home territory: ‘“We’ve only produced one native giant so far … we’ve only got Joyce to measure against the immortals up-to-date. And his great spring seems to have dried up on him now.” “He’s banned, too.” “Oh, but naturally”’ (1951, pp. 48–9). The jaded ‘Oh, but naturally’ in reply to the news of the banning of James Joyce is a sigh that echoed through mid-century Ireland as the effects of the Censorship of Publications Act, which followed the establishment of the Orwellian ‘Committee on Evil Literature’ in 1926, left its mark on generations of writers.