The Irish: Effeminized and Effeminizing in Julia O’Faolain’s No Country for Young Men

This paper examines how Ireland has been a victim for both outside and inside forces. For England as an outside force, Ireland is a female country and the Irish are dirty people, a female race that must be rescued by marriage to the civilized male England. To affect this marriage, many measures and laws were to be taken mercilessly, hoping that such despotic measures would make Ireland and Irish people completely subjugated and effeminized. Oppression and effeminization were not just a British trade, they also hatched from inside. The higher circles of Irish society (Politicians and Church) were, if not more sinning like Lear, they were, at least, as sinning as sinned against. The poor Irish people were falling as victims between the ferocious fangs of colonial England and the fierce claws of politicians and the Irish authoritative institutions. This paper will count on O’Faolain’s No Country for Young Men to show the various techniques of both the internal and the external process of oppression and effeminization for Ireland.  The focus will be on how the colonized Irish politicians and religious men, who lived the misery of colonialism, ironically turned to be worse than the British colonizer.  Once in authority, the Irish politician O’Malley claims his responsibility as a protector of his own people and turns into another colonizer. The discussion will be extended from thematic analysis to technical analysis of O’Faolain’s writing techniques to explain how Ireland was effeminized.  The analysis will be done through the lenses of postcolonialism.