Gender and Space in Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan – Destabilizing the Domestic Woman-Image

Ribáry, Borbála (2026) Gender and Space in Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan – Destabilizing the Domestic Woman-Image. In: Hungarian Perspectives on Ireland. Károli Könyvek. Tanulmánykötet . L'Harmattan Kiadó; Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem; Éditions L'Harmattan; L’Harmattan Open Access, Budapest, Paris, pp. 195-209. ISBN 9782336615448; 9789636465940

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Abstract

Portia Coughlan is the second major work of prominent contemporary Irish playwright Marina Carr from the mid-1990s, set in the Midlands region of Ireland. In Portia Coughlan and other plays from the period, Carr revisits the early twentieth-century trend of rural domestic drama, subverting its conventions to draw attention to the issue of women’s entrapment in the domestic sphere. As opposed to earlier stage iterations of the Irish mother-homemaker character, Carr’s female protagonist fails to be the perfect and selfless woman contained within the home. This article aims to examine how Carr uses space in Portia Coughlan to destabilize the idealized image of domestic womanhood and explore the possibility of establishing an identity outside this narrow definition. Carr’s stage instructions, Portia’s interactions with domestic, public, and natural spaces, as well as her imaginative descriptions of home and nature will be closely examined, tracing Portia’s hopeless quest for self-determination.

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