"Where there is homosexuality, there 
is often backlash, sickness, chaos, 

imprisonment.. .Yet there is also 
intimacy, acceptance, health, and an 

abundance oflove-aspects of 
homosexual identity that are often 

denied, or perhaps not yet 
realized, by Irish society." 



S E X U A L I T Y , S I C K N E S S , S I L E N C E : 

The Gay Man in Contemporary Irish Narrative 

C A I T L I N F I T Z G E R A L D 

T H I S P A P E R I N V E S T I G A T E S R E P R E S E N T A T I O N S O F M A L E H O M O S E X U A L I T Y I N C O N T E M -

P O R A R Y I R I S H N A R R A T I V E S , E X P L O R I N G T H E P R O G R E S S I O N O F H O M O S E X U A L I T Y I N 

I R E L A N D A S I T H A S M O V E D F R O M A S U P P R E S S E D C R I M E T O A C O N F I D E N T L Y A S S E R T E D 

I D E N T I T Y . D O E S I N C L U S I O N O F H O M O S E X U A L I T Y I N N A R R A T I V E N E E D T O S U B S C R I B E 

T O E X P L I C I T , " I N - Y O U R - F A C E " F O R E G R O U N D I N G I N O R D E R T O B E I M P O R T A N T T O 

T H A T N A R R A T I V E ? D O E S A G A Y V O I C E I N C O N T E M P O R A R Y I R I S H N A R R A T I V E H A V E T O 

B E T H E L O U D E S T I N O R D E R T O S I G N I F Y A S S E R T I O N O F T H E H O M O S E X U A L I D E N T I T Y ? 

M U S T G A Y A R T I S T S B E A R T H E B U R D E N O F T H E O P P R E S S I V E P A S T I N A D D R E S S I N G H O -

M O S E X U A L I T Y I N T H E I R W O R K , O R I S I T U N F A I R T O P L A C E S U C H C A - T E G O R I Z A T I O N S 

A N D R E S T R I C T I O N S O N A R T ? T H E S E Q U E S T I O N S A R E A D D R E S S E D T H R O U G H T H E C U L -

T U R A L A N D H I S T O R I C A L C O N T E X T O F H O M O S E X U A L I T Y I N I R E L A N D , L O O K I N G A T 

T H R E E D I F F E R E N T C O N T E M P O R A R Y I R I S H N A R R A T I V E S T H A T F E A T U R E H O M O S E X U A L -

I T Y ! C O L M T O I B I N ' S THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP, K E I T H R I D G W A Y ' S THE LONG 

FALLING, A N D N E I L J O R D A N ' S F I L M THE CRYING GAME. 



"How do artists depicting homosexuality situate themselves 
in a nation where, until 1993, gays were 

considered criminals?" 
How do artists depicting homosexuality situate themselves 
in a nation where, until 1993, gays were considered crimi-
nals? While this recent shift in the national definition of 
gay identity in Ireland might lead us to expect a dearth of 
representations of homosexuality i n contemporary Irish 
narrative, a surprising number have been produced in the 
past 15 years. These narratives stand on shaky ground. On 
the one hand, they represent an identity historically sup-
pressed and silenced in Ireland, and, thus, act as unmistak-
able assertions of this identity by their very existence. On 
the other hand, they run the ubiquitous risk of furthering 
societal stereotypes of male homosexuality, which often re-
duce gay men to mere instruments of sex acts. 
Contemporary Irish narratives that figure homosexuality 
cannot avoid critical labels such as "gay novel" or "gay f i lm," 
simply because gay identity is such a controversial battle-
ground in Irish culture. But is it reductive to place such cat-
egorical titles on these narratives? Does society view such 
representations through too narrow a lens? In addressing 
these questions, we can look at three Irish narratives pro-
duced in the 1990s that figure male homosexuality: Colm 
Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship, Keith Ridgway's The 
Long Falling, and Neil Jordan's f i lm The Crying Game. By 
examining these representations of homosexuality, we wi l l 
be able to assess the ways in which each asserts gay identity 
while simultaneously subverting the reductive stereotypes 
commonly imposed on that identity by Irish society. 

In order to fully examine these representations, we must 
examine the historical and sociopolitical background 
against which they are set. Ireland's decriminalization of 
homosexuality in 1993 was the result of a widespread gay 
rights campaign that began i n Dublin in the 1970s. 
Starting "from a position of almost total marginalisation 

and powerlessness,"1 the Irish Gay Rights Movement 
(IGRM) benefited from increasingly progressive, reform-
based politics in Ireland and was able to grow and assert it-
self as a legitimate civil rights movement. The IGRM con-
tinually defended gay men being persecuted under anti-gay 
laws throughout the 1970s, effectively phasing out these 
laws before their official abolition. 1 1 Gay rights organiza-
tions like the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) or 
the Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men's Collectives focused on 
the social as well as the legal aspects of attaining equal 
rights as Irish citizens. The former participated in many 
forms of social protest, organizing defense campaigns 
against police harassment and hate crimes.1 1 1 GLEN, a pil-
lar of Irish gay rights, pushed for legal inclusion in Irish so-
ciety, issuing reports on civil rights issues for Irish commu-
nities and publishing books and pamphlets that went so far 
as to include model bills to be passed by the Irish govern-
ment.^ Chris Robson summarizes the successful strategy 
of the IGRM: 

Lesbian and gay activists have tended (in crude summary) 

to veer between two well-known stances: 'Please, please, be 

nice to us', and 'Give us our goddamned rights, and give 

them now'. The first tends to provoke contempt, the second 

to elicit the perfectly reasonable response, 'What's so 

bloody special about you?' There is, however, a third ap-

proach: 'You will agree that equality before the law is a 

basic principle. On the particular equality issue in ques-

tion, your responsibility is to abolish Statute X, and to add 

"sexual orientation" to Clause Y Statute Z. Please sign 

here. Thank you. 'v 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 07 



Robson points to the binary nature of an elided identity 
fighting to assert itself: members of this marginalized 
group oscillate between childlike pleas for recognition and 
boldly militant demands for it. A balance is eventually 
found in a less extreme, more universalized request that 
characterizes the gay rights movement in purely human 
terms. 

Humanizing homosexuals to the rest of society was not an 
easy task in patriarchal 1980s Ireland. As was written in a 
1986 publication by the Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men's 
Collectives, "The media censors us, the churches condemn 
us, the law outlaws us, and all decent, right-thinking people 
know that we are perverts, child-molesters, genetically 
damaged, hormonally imbalanced and generally disgust-
ing. '^ 1 While this is certainly a depiction of extremist soci-
etal opinions of Irish gays and lesbians during this time, it 
is echoed in much of the political language surrounding 
the gay rights movement. In praising the 1993 decriminal-
ization of homosexuality, Senator David Norris said, 

"Young people wil l no longer have to grow up in the shadow 
of the taint of criminality which had blighted the vulnerable 
youth of so many of our citizens with terror and shame. " V 1 1 

Both Norris and the contributors to Out for Ourselves cite 
the gay stereotypes caused by the prevalence of AIDS 
within the homosexual community: "The sensationalist 
coverage of AIDS is a telling example of the bigoted igno-
rance we face, best reflected in the common medical per-
ception of our sexuality as an illness in itself." v u l For a cul-
tural identity so laden with the "shame" of such 
associations to achieve legal equality is remarkable i n and 
of itself. The fact that so many Irish artists were inclined to 
figure homosexuality in their narratives speaks to an even 
higher level of acceptance and understanding in Irish cul-
ture, quite different from the condemnation referenced in 
1986. Yet, some representations of homosexuality in con-
temporary Irish literature have been dissected and accused 
of a reductive brand of silence, one that suggests an unwill-
ingness to fully confront this once-marginalized identity. 

Colm Toibin occupies this peculiar space in Irish culture— 
a gay author writing about gay characters only years after 
decriminalization, yet accused by some critics of writing 
novels that are not "gay enough." His 1999 novel, The 
Blackwater Lightship, set i n that pivotal year of 1993, fore-
grounds the relationship between Helen, Lily, and Dora, 
women of three generations in a family dealing with the 
suffering of Declan, their gay brother, son, and grandson, 
respectively, with AIDS. Some critics have found Declan's 
representation troublesome due to its silence, as he is 
somewhat relegated to the background of The Blackwater 
Lightship while Toibin focuses on the intricacies of the 
women's relationships, an authorial choice that Eibhear 
Walshe characterizes as reductive of Declan: 

As the central figure, Declan is represented in an oddly ab-

sent manner within the novel, existing only as a catalyst 

within these jarring familial relations. As the novel pro-

gresses, his subjectivity becomes eroded by this absence, 

rendering him as simply the body upon which death and 

disease has announced itself.lx 

S E X U A L I T Y , S I C K N E S S , S I L E N C E : T H E G A Y M A N I N C O N T E M P O R A R Y I R I S H N A R R A T I V E 



Walshe alleges that through an effacement of Declan's ho-
moeroticism, the character becomes a mere object, existing 
only to bring together three previously estranged women 
rather than to express his gay identity. Declan "has no gay 
subjectivity beyond his bodily frailty, no boyfriend, no lover, 
no named sexual partners, no erotic past—only a future 
clearly marked by death."54 Jennifer Jeffers takes this read-
ing of Declan even further, claiming that his sexual silence 
points to a moral lesson of Toibin's: "The Blackwater 
Lightship sets up a kind of moral punishment for Declan's 
multiple-partner sex life that is particularly damaging in a 
time and place in which [AIDS] is still not fully under-
stood. "X 1 Walshe and Jeffers read the quietude of Declan's 
homosexuality as a problematic representation of gay iden-
tity within a contemporary Irish novel, empty of sexuality 
and full of fatalism. 

While Declan's gay, adult voice is certainly not the loudest 
i n The Blackwater Lightship, to characterize h im as just a 
"body upon which death and disease has announced itself" 
is to miss a central thrust of the novel that is evident in 
many of its flashbacks. While Declan is indeed a gay man 
with a sexual identity, he is more importantly a child in des-
perate need of a mother. Declan's voice is figured most 
prominently i n Helen's flashbacks to their childhood time 
spent in their grandmother's house: 

Declan was afraid. He was afraid of the black clocks 

which darted awkwardly across the floor, afraid that if you 

stepped on one of them all the bloody insides would be on 

your feet. He was afraid of the dark and the cold and of 

his grandparents' movements upstairs which seemed to 

echo in the rooms below. And Helen knew that there was 

another fear, which was never mentioned in all that time: 

the fear that their parents would never come back, that 

they would both be left here.xn 

From the outset Declan is a frightened figure, crying easily, 
getting sick easily, needing "someone to watch out for 
h i m . " x m In place of the failed biological family, the ones 

who have watched over Declan are his gay friends, notably 
Larry and Paul, who care for h im throughout his illness. 
Paul remembers Declan's visits to h im and his longtime 
partner: 

He would come for long weekends and he'd make us hang 

out in bars and clubs with him, and he'd usually abandon 

us at a certain time and then come back home in the early 

hours like a half drowned dog. My best memory of him 

was in the morning; he would crawl in the bottom of our 

bed. He was like a small boy, and he'd talk and doze and 

play with our feet.xw 

Here Paul subtly embeds an assertion of Declan's reck-
lessly promiscuous past into the "best" memory of h im as 
a child at the end of his surrogate parents' bed. This mem-
ory is a microcosm of Declan's characterization throughout 
the novel; references to his sexuality are indirect and often 
overshadowed by his infantilization. 

What are the broader implications of Declan's infantiliza-
tion in The Blackwater Lightship} While it could initially be 
seen as an inability to accept a gay character as an adult (the 
neo-liberal, Celtic Tiger response to homosexuality), this 
implication is not commensurable with the author's own 
homosexuality. It is not just the heterosexual characters in 
the novel that infantilize Declan; he is a child through his 
own voice. When Declan calls out, "Mammy, Mammy," as 
his condition worsens, x v it is simply narrated rather than 
expressed through the viewpoint of another character. 
Terry Eagleton argues that the aim of the book is to express 
that "[rjevealing or not revealing what you are is a way of try-
ing to make contact with a mother, not a condition in it-
self ."™ Indeed, mothers are unconventionally resistant to 
the homosexuality of their sons in this novel, a distinct con-
trast from Ridgway's The Long Falling, which adheres to the 
more conventional structure of overtly masculine, unac-
cepting fathers disowning their gay sons. During Larry's 
story of bringing home his partner to his family in The 
Blackwater Lightship, he says, "It was OK in the end, mainly 
because of my father, oddly enough," a statement which 



characterizes his situation as different from the Irish 
norm. X V 1 1 Larry's story also posits the unconventional tol-
erance of the Catholic Church; a Catholic priest performs a 
marriage rite for the couple. "He changed into his vest-
ments and said Mass and gave us Communion and then he 
married us . . . He said: 'Welcome to the Catholic 
Church'. " x v m The traditional Irish instruments of oppres-
sion, patriarchy and the Catholic Church, are surprisingly 
docile in this representation of homosexuality within Irish 
culture. The social discomfort with homosexuality refer-
enced by gay rights groups is most often expressed by 
mothers in Toibin's novel—for example, when Larry relates 
to Dora his story of sleeping with four brothers. After he 
tells the tale, Dora says, "I've heard everything now" in a 
voice that was "hard and . . . louder than it needed to be." x l x 

Yet, acceptance shines through for many characters by the 
end of the novel. In a small victory, Larry teaches Dora how 
to drive, x x and in a much larger one, Lily cradles her son as 
he cries for her.5 0 0 The fact that Toibin includes a variety of 
gay characters i n the novel with a variety of life stories indi-
cates a more complex representation of gay identity that, 
while it indirectly references gay sexuality, is not as reduc-
tive and objectifying as Walshe alleges. At the end of The 
Blackwater Lightship, Declan is sick but still living, and the 
focus is on the reconciliation between his mother and sis-
ter. I f Declan is merely an object upon which death an-
nounces itself, why then does the novel not end with his 
death? 

A connection that Michael Cronin points out between The 
Blackwater Lightship and Keith Ridgway's novel The Long 
Falling is that both novels contextualize male homosexual-
ity i n the realm of the family trauma.™' Indeed, there are 
even more similarities between the two representations, as 

Cronin points out, largely based on the "metropolitan" 
nature of adult homosexual characters versus the "rural, 
traditional" setting of their childhoods x x m In The Long 
Falling, Grace, mother of the gay main character Martin, 
murders her brutally abusive husband in their rural town 
and flees to Dublin, where Martin lives. Rural Ireland is as-
sociated with abuse and oppression in this novel, further 
elicited by the backgrounded X case. In contrast, the mod-
ern, cosmopolitan Ireland in which the homosexuals in 
both books live is one associated with "emotional health, 
particularly in regard to family relationships."X X 1 V In The 
Blackwater Lightship, Dora's house in Cush is one full of 
memories of abandonment for Helen and Declan, while 
the adult gay men live in urban areas like Dublin (Declan) 
or Brussels (Paul). The modern, urban center is a space in 
which Irish homosexuals create new families composed of 
those who share their sexual identities and life experiences: 
Declan finds Larry and Paul, Martin finds kindred spirits 
like Sean, Philip, and his lover Henry. Cronin aptly points 
out that Toibin's novel presents an optimistic marriage of 
these two conflicting worlds while Ridgway does not recon-
cile them. x x v In The Blackwater Lightship, the modern, met-
ropolitan surrogate family merges with the initially failing 
traditional family, synthesizing the two seemingly opposi-
tional worlds in a time of extreme need for the person who 
has inhabited both of them. In contrast, Martin cannot 
forgive his mother for the act she committed back in his 
hometown, "treating her coldly and finally betraying 
her." x x v l While Toibin's view of a future Ireland is one of a 
synthesized group of supporters of homosexuals 
outweighing the traditional oppressors, Ridgway's is one of 
"dissatisfaction and alienation"X X V H that does not get 
resolved within the pages of The Long Falling. 

"... while it indirectly references gay sexuality, 
[Toibin's representation of gay identity] is not as reductive 

and objectifying as Walshe alleges." 

S E X U A L I T Y , S I C K N E S S , S I L E N C E : T H E C A Y M A N I N C O N T E M P O R A R Y I R I S H N A R R A T I V E 



Eibhear Walshe's critique of The Blackwater Lightship fo-
cuses largely on its lack of homoeroticism and overt sexual-
ity, elements of gay identity that are very present i n The 
Long Falling. Displaying scenes of personal gratification, 
anonymous sexual promiscuity, and monogamous physi-
cal intimacy Ridgway's approach to gay sexuality is far 
more bold and direct than Toibin's. The first instance of 
sexuality in the novel involves Martin masturbating as he 
thinks of his lover, Henry (away on business i n Paris): 

Martin, moving his hands, the skin of his arms brushing 

the skin of his thighs, closing his eyes again .. .just breath-

ing, just skin . . . He held his balance and held it still a lit-

tle longer, and held it still a moment more, and then felt it 

failing, stumbling, gone, and him falling, as if through 

water, as if the very skin of his body was the world entire 

... He laughed out loud at coming so quickiy.xxvm 

Employing lyrically urgent prose, Ridgway goes beyond the 
realm of the indirect reference in asserting the sexuality of 
his homosexual characters. The editors of the Irish Field 
Day anthology characterize Ridgway as an employer of the 
"in-your-face gay aesthetic," largely due to his willingness 
to confront the physicality of homosexuality full-on in his 
wr i t i ng . x x l x The scene from The Long Falling included in 
Field Day is one i n which a slightly intoxicated Martin vis-
its a gay sauna in Dublin, which he thinks of as "a grey area 
. . . Leave your panic and your guilt and your fear at the 
door."*™ This sauna is presumably a place in which homo-
sexual men can engage in anonymous sexual acts in a 
steamy room full of other naked gay men looking to partic-
ipate as well. Cronin characterizes the sauna as represen-
tative of "a key freedom from the social, legal, and psycho-
logical taboos placed on homosexuality in the twentieth 
century."XXX1 Indeed, the following scene would certainly be 
absent from a traditional, patriarchal canon of contempo-
rary literature: 

Inside there were grey bodies piled in a corner. .. almost 

immediately his cock was in somebody's hand . . . The 

man from the shower came in and stood beside him . . . He 

put his hand on Martin's balls, very gently, and leaned in 

close as if to kiss him. Martin stood, turned, faced the guy, 

pointed his cock at him, tried to hold his head.xxxn 

Martin's experience in the sauna is blatantly physical, but is 
also complicated by his love for the absent Henry: "[he] saw 
parts of Henry spin around in front of h im like branches 
broken off i n a s torm."™ 1 1 1 Homosexuality in this section 
of the novel is not the exclusively promiscuous identity that 
exists in stereotype, nor is it empty of sexuality, be it 
promiscuous or monogamous, i n the least. In this way, 
Ridgway achieves a simultaneous assertion of gay identity 
and subversion of the easily stereotyped, hypersexual gay 
man. 

In contrast to Declan, Martin is certainly a much more sex-
ual character but is also a very different kind of child. While 
Declan is a gay character in desperate need of a mother, 
Martin is a gay character who rejects his mother—a sort of 
non-child. While the novel includes references to Martin's 
childhood through the memories of his mother Grace, we 
see h im largely from age 19 (the age at which he came out 
to his parents) onward. When Grace tells Philip about the 
walks she and Martin used to take, he tells her, " I can't 
imagine Martin as a little boy. ' , x x x l v We can understand this 
as readers who are given much more evidence of Martin's 
adult identity and sexuality than of his childhood or child-
like nature. And remarkably, even Grace sees Philip's 
point: "Grace nodded. She could understand that." x x x v For 
a mother to empathize with a person who cannot imagine 
her child as a little boy is telling of the fractured relation-
ship between Martin and Grace. In his metropolitan, "out" 
life, Martin has become a different person, a person whose 
true life began the moment he left home after coming out: 

He walked down to the road, afraid to look back. He de-

cided that he would wait until he reached the gate, and 

turn then and wave at his mother. But when he got there, 

he could not make himself stop. He felt that he had 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 07 



already left, that he was already far away. He thought 

that if he stopped and looked back there would be nothing 

there.xxxvi 

Once Martin vocally asserted his homosexual identity, his 
childhood and his once-strong connection to his mother 
were virtually erased, echoing the inability of traditional, 
intolerant Ireland and modern, tolerant Ireland to recon-
cile in this novel. Whereas Declan did not lose his former 
identity in asserting his homosexual identity, thus synthe-
sizing the traditional and the modern within himself, 
Martin saw it as one or the other, and ultimately chose the 
other. 

What both of these novels undoubtedly accomplish is a hu-
manistic representation of homosexuality in contemporary 
Ireland. While these characters have many differences, 
they are as complex and as "normal" as heterosexual char-
acters, existing marginally in a society that, for years, has 
been "conservative, family-centred, monogamous, [and] 
heterosexual."XXXV11 Another contemporary Irish narrative 
that takes this humanistic approach to homosexuality is 
Neil Jordan's 1992 film The Crying Game, famous for its 
sharp twist on this representation. Parts of the fi lm can be 
viewed as a sort of allegory for homosexuality's journey 
from a silenced, criminal identity to a boldly asserted one, 
despite the fact that it was released the year before homo-
sexuality was decriminalized. Progressing from a largely 
political thematic structure to a full-on erotic thriller, The 
Crying Game questions the various guises of contemporary 
Irish (and British) society that obfuscate the fundamental 
humanity of different members of this society, including 
homosexuals. The central figure of the fi lm, Fergus (played 
by Stephen Rea), is an IRA operative who forms a bond 
with the prisoner, Jody (played by Forest Whitaker), whom 
he is instructed to guard and eventually assassinate. As 
Kristin Handler notes, the homoeroticism of this bond is 
first signaled when Jody has to urinate and cannot do so 
without Fergus's assistance, as his wrists are bound. 
Fergus hesitates to touch Jody's penis, but ultimately does 
so, after chiding from Jody: "It's only a piece of meat! " x * ™ 1 1 

After a series of events that lead to Jody's death, Fergus trav-

els to England, forming a relationship with Dil (played by 
Jaye Davidson), the woman Jody had loved. As they be-
come involved, Fergus perpetuates a sort of obsession with 
Jody dreaming about h im playing cricket and sustaining 
this dreamlike vision of Jody during his first orgasm with 
Dil, when she performs oral sex on him. Fergus's flirtation 
with the homoerotic while still remaining outwardly "ho-
mosocial" is confronted with "in-your-face" homosexuality 
at Dil's first disrobing: the person he thought was a woman 
has an unmistakable, blatantly exposed penis. 

Fergus becomes violently i l l at the sight of Dil's penis, a re-
action that Handler characterizes as "gut-level" and "homo-
phobic," and one with which the viewer initially sympa-
thizes.X X X 1 X Yet, Fergus is able to move beyond that 
homophobia and still care for Dil , albeit non-sexually— 
while he wi l l not engage in sexual activity with Dil, he wi l l 
still put a hand to her cheek. Handler writes of Jordan's 
goal in representing homosexuality i n this revelatory 
manner: 

By luring us into desiring what is supposed to seem like a 

heterosexual love story while never ceasing to signal the 

fundamentally homoerotic component of Fergus's desire 

for Dil, the film forces us, with Fergus, to confront the con-

tinuity between male bonding ("normal," valorized by pa-

triarchal culture, especially in the military) and male ho-

mosexuality (stigmatized, feared, repudiated) x l 

Handler's comments seem to suggest that a relationship 
characterized as homosexual from the start would not force 
viewers to question their stereotypes and valorizations of 
heterosexuality as effectively. The fi lm asks: How much 
does Dil's gender really matter in terms of Fergus' caring 
for him? Handler alleges that "[w]hile ultimately, and im-
portantly, Fergus does not explicitly experience homosex-
ual desire, the fi lm wants to show that he is a better man for 
overcoming violent homophobia." x l ] And yet, while 
Fergus' self-sacrifice in order to save Dil at the end of the 
fi lm displays the care he has for him, it also eliminates 
Fergus' need to confront the possibility of a homosexual re-

S E X U A L I T Y , S I C K N E S S , S I L E N C E : T H E C A Y M A N I N C O N T E M P O R A R Y I R I S H N A R R A T I V E 



lationship with Dil . As Handler points out, "Fergus' sacri-
fice puts h im safely behind bars, beyond the imminent pos-
sibility of sexual consummation."^ 1 1 By removing himself 
from the societal realm in which his relationship with Dil 
would not be tolerated, Fergus absolves himself from hav-
ing to personally deny Dil and hurt his feelings. However, 
this does not imply a mere lack of hesitance on Fergus'part; 
it is not likely that i f Dil were in jail with h im, he would wil l-
ingly pursue a sexual relationship. 

Fergus' unwillingness to progress from the suggestively 
homoerotic (tension-riddled yet nonsexual situations, non-
sexual dreams of Jody) to the barefaced homosexual (sym-
bolized by Dil's penis) echoes, to an extent, the nonsexual 
nature of Declan in The Blackwater Lightship. While the ob-
vious difference is that Fergus is a heterosexual man with 
homoerotic thoughts and Declan is completely homosex-
ual, their narratives exist in a society that would rather dis-
guise homosexuality than deal with it. Eibhear Walshe 
writes in an essay about Oscar Wilde: 

Because the homosexual is assumed to be a transgendered 

'pretend' woman ... gay identity is acutely threatening 

and unsettling within a post-colonial culture like Ireland. 

The emergent post-colonial nation perceives the sexually 

different as destabilizing and enfeebling, and thus the les-

bian and gay sensibility is edited out, silenced.^111 

Dil exemplifies this in dressing as a woman, a guise that 
masks his homosexuality as the more socially acceptable fe-
male heterosexuality. Once that guise is removed as Dil dis-
robes, his true humanity is revealed. The "destabilization" 
to which Walshe refers is further exemplified by the chaos 
that ensues in the f i lm as a result of the homoerotic bond 
between Fergus and Jody. While the other IRA operatives 
continually place a black hood over Jody's face as he is tied 

to the chair, Fergus continually unmasks him, exposing his 
humanity. Their "sexually different" kinship prevents the 
intended torture and assassination of Jody; Fergus' attempt 
to ki l l h im in militant IRA fashion is "enfeebled" and Jody 
escapes, only to be run over by a tank involved in a siege on 
the IRA base where his captivity took place. Fergus' bonds 
with Jody and Dil cannot exist in this place—they are too 
complicated, too threatening, and simply too different to 
warrant societal and even personal acceptance. 

The Crying Game differs from the Toibin and Ridgway nov-
els in that its context is political, and not familial, trauma. 
Mothers are absent here, and military organizations sym-
bolize the patriarchal society that silences gay identity. 
Both the novels and the fi lm, however, portray homosexu-
ality as an identity fraught with associations and stereo-
types that detract from its essence as a human identity, 
specifically the idea of "sexuality as an illness itself." Each 
narrative depicts this struggle in a different way In The 
Blackwater Lightship, Declan's humanity is represented by 
his characterization as a needy child, a universal role with 
which all readers can presumably identify. And yet his 
physical deterioration, the presumed result of sexual 
promiscuity, is described with visceral bluntness through-
out the novel: "He asked for the basin under the sink to be 
put near him, and soon, with each spasm, he vomited and 
retched into i t . " x l l v In The Long Falling, Martin has left his 
child identity behind in place of his adult, homosexual one, 
confidently assured of his sexuality and yet still sensing a 
certain grotesqueness in it. As he talks to his friend Sean 
about the sauna, Martin says, "And the smell and the eyes, 
everybody rotten in some way, rotting, as i f we're thrown 
here, dead."x l v We cannot help but think of Declan's erod-
ing body and its connection to his sexuality. The most overt 
connection of sexuality and illness is that, in The Crying 
Game, Fergus instantly retches at the shocking sight of 

.. their narratives exist in a society that would rather 
disguise homosexuality than deal with it." 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 07 



Dil's penis. A revulsive tension is connected to sexuality in 
each of these narratives and is never fully resolved in any of 
them. While Handler describes it as "gut-level," it seems 
more likely that such a tension is the product of a society 
that for years has propagated the notion of the "generally 
disgusting" homosexual. 

Contemporary artists that figure homosexuality into Irish 
narrative bear a manifold burden. Firstly, they must assert 
gay identity strongly enough, for a group so systematically 
marginalized i n Irish culture demands a voice. Secondly, 
they must be sure not to include any societal stereotypes of 
homosexuals within their representations, for those have 
been propagated long enough. And while doing both of 
these things, they must keep a human perspective on the 
narrative. I f every gay character in a novel were exactly the 
same, it would be reductive of the identity as a whole. Are 
such burdens fair to contemporary artists, especially artists 
who are gay themselves? Perhaps not from a formalist per-
spective; art should always be able to stand on its own, out-
side the confines of cultural and historical context. And yet 
a gay, Irish reader might protest that such requirements are 
fair. In his introduction to Love in a Dark Time, Toibin ex-
plains his intentions in writing the book (a collection of es-
says on gay artists): 

I am interested in tracing the tension between the fearless 

imagination and the fearful self. I want to trace, in writ-

ing, the connection between the altar boy's half-understood 

sense of his own sexual difference, which would soon 

develop into strategies of concealment... I want to imagine 

now the lone figure ... as he opens a book in solitude and 

secrecy to find there the story of his life, told to him by 

E.M. Forster or James Baldwin or Thomas Mann or Thorn 

Gunn, or by one of the others who have broken the silence 

that has surrounded our lives for so long.xln 

Artists who choose to represent homosexuality in Ireland 
today, and the rest of the world, cannot avoid the fact that 
they are breaking the silence to which Toibin refers. They 
cannot escape the fact that they are writing for that lone fig-

ure searching for himself within the pages of a novel or the 
scenes of a film. The narratives we have discussed show 
that lone figures can be very different characters, and do not 
gloss over some of the grim realities of the gay man today. 
Where there is homosexuality, there is often backlash, sick-
ness, chaos, imprisonment. To deny this would be to deny 
reality. Yet there is also intimacy, acceptance, health, and an 
abundance of love—aspects of homosexual identity that are 
often denied, or perhaps not yet realized, by Irish society. 
In order to depict these aspects, artists do not necessarily 
have to adhere to the "in-your-face" aesthetic i n terms of 
sexuality. Instead, they must present an "in-your-face" hu-
manity—a purpose that Toibin, Ridgway and Jordan all ul-
timately achieve. 

E N D N O T E S 
i . Rose (2) 
i i . Rose (11) 
i i i . Rose (19) 
iv. Robson (51) 
v. Robson (51) 
vi . Out for Ourselves (7) 
vi i . Norris (23) 
v i i i . Out for Ourselves (9) 
ix. Walshe 2004 (18) 
x. Walshe 2004 (18) 
xi . Jeffers (118) 
x i i . Toibin 1999 (56) 
x i i i . Toibin 1999 (203) 
xiv. Toibin 1999 (174) 
xv. Toibin 1999 (258) 
xvi. Eagleton 
(http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n20/print/eaglo1_.html) 
xvii . Toibin 1999 (170) 
xvii i . Toibin 1999 (172-3) 
xix. Toibin 1999 (147-8) 
xx. Toibin 1999 (247-8) 
xxi. Toibin 1999 (155) 
xxii . Cronin (258) 
xxii i . Cronin (259) 
xxiv. Cronin (260) 
xxv. Cronin (261) 
xxvi. Cronin (260) 
xxvii. Cronin (262) 
xxviii . Ridgway (45-6) 
xxix. Walshe & Kilfeather (1040) 
xxx. Ridgway (114) 
xxxi. Cronin (262) 
xxxii. Ridgway (117) 

S E X U A L I T Y , S I C K N E S S , S I L E N C E : T H E C A Y M A N I N C O N T E M P O R A R Y I R I S H N A R R A T I V E 

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xxxiii. Ridgway (117) 
xxxiv. Ridgway (299) 
xxxv. Ridgway (299) 
xxxvi. Ridgway (190) 
xxxvii. Walshe & Kilfeather (1039) 
xxxviii. Handler (33) 
xxxix. Handler (34) 
xl. Handler (33) 
xl i . Handler (33) 
x l i i . Handler (34) 
x l i i i . Walshe 1995 (149) 
xliv. Toibin 1999 (253) 
xlv. Ridgway (122) 
xlvi. Toibin 2001 (8) 

R E F E R E N C E S 

Cronin, Michael G. 2004. "He's My Country: Liberalism, 
Nationalism, and Sexuality i n Contemporary Irish Gay Fiction." 
Irish American Cultural Institute. Eire-Ireland, 39(38:4), pp. 
250-267. 

Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men's Collectives, ed. 1986. Out for 
Ourselves: The Lives of Irish Lesbians el Gay Men. Dublin: 
Women's Community Press. 

Eagleton, Terry. 1999. "Mothering." London Review of Books, 
21(20), October, 
<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n20/print/eaglo1_.html>. 

Handler, Kristin. 1994. "Sexing the Crying Game: Difference, 
Identity, Ethics." Film Quarterly, 47(3), pp. 31-42, Spring. 

feffers, Jennifer M . 2002. "The Blackwater Lightship." The Irish 
Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and 
Power. New York: Palgrave, pp. 112-19. 

Norris, David. 1995. "Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 
1993." Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland eds. Ide O'Carroll, and 
Eoin Collins. New York: Cassell, pp. 13-24. 

Ridgway, Keith. 1998. The Long Falling. London: Faber and 
Faber. 

Robson, Chris. 1995. "Anatomy of a Campaign." Lesbian and 
Gay Visions of Ireland eds. Ide O'Carroll, and Eoin Collins. New 
York: Cassell, pp. 47-59. 

Rose, Kieran. 1994. Diverse Communities: The Evolution of 
Lesbian and Gay Politics in Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press. 

The Crying Game. 1992. Dir. Neil Jordan. Perf. Stephen Rea, 
Forest Whitaker, Jaye Davidson, and Miranda Richardson. 
Miramax. 

Toibin, Colm. 2001. Love in Dark Time and Other Explorations of 
Gay Lives and Literature. New York: Scribner. 

Toibin, Colm. 1999. The Blackwater Lightship. New York: 
Scribner. 

Walshe, Eibhear. 1995. "Oscar's Mirror." Lesbian and Gay 
Visions of Ireland eds. Ide O'Carroll, and Eoin Collins. New York: 
Cassell, pp. 147-157. 

Walshe, Eibhear. 2004. "The Vanishing Homoerotic: Cultural 
Contexts for Colm Toibin's the Blackwater Lightship and the 
Master." Conference Paper. 

Walshe, Eibhear and Kilfeather, Siobhan, eds. 2003. 
"Contesting Ireland: The Erosion of Heterosexual Consensus, 
1940-2001." The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. (4), pp. 
1039-1089. 

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