Grania witnesses unhappy marriages on the island and in Galway. Marriage as an institution is criticised for the suffering it causes women. These stories imagined new ideas and paths for women that did not rely on marriage. Grania was influenced by the New Woman movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Grania tries to forge her own path and decide what she wants from life. Grania’s love interest, Murdough, is a boastful young man who drinks too much and scrounges money from her. She later develops a serious illness which is a source of tension in the novel. She is a patient, self-sacrificing, devoutly religious woman who despairs that Grania’s soul is endangered. Her sister Honor raises her after their father dies. Grania is the story of a young woman’s life on an island. Lawless also uses Hiberno-English in Grania. His plays such as Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World were inspired by his trips to the Aran islands, where he acquainted himself with Hiberno-English dialect. She started writing about this subject before John Millington Synge, but her work is obscure compared to his. In Grania she wrote about communities in the Aran Islands. Although she was highly popular, her work has become somewhat forgotten in subsequent decades. From a Protestant Ascendancy background, she was a prolific author. Lawless was a contemporary of the Irish Literary Revival writers, and her work is influenced by the movement. I read Grania: The Story of an Island by Emily Lawless as part of the Gender and Sexuality module with Dr.

‘If humans themselves are islands, then this tall, red petticoated, fiercely handsome girl was decidedly a very isolated, and rather craggy and unapproachable sort of island.’Įmily Lawless, Grania: The Story of an Island, Pt.

Grania by Emily Lawless