”People can really change one another” : A Comparative Study of The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien and Normal People by Sally Rooney From a Class and Gender Perspective

Bildungsroman is a literary genre developed from the ideas of the Enlightenment. The genre usually portrays young men coming into the society which raise the question: what literary possibilities exist for portraying young women coming into adult life? The purpose of this study is to analyze novels from two different time periods about girls growing up in an Irish environment to answer how their possibilities coming in to the society are portrayed. Questions that are being answered are: how do the novels discuss class, gender and relationships? How do the novels discuss society? The material consists of The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien (1930–) from 2020 and Normal People by Sally Rooney (1991–) from 2019. The Country Girls was first published in 1960 and both novels used in this study are translated into Swedish. The study uses class and gender theoretical frameworks. The class perspecitve is mainly inspired by the theories of Pierre Bourdieu about different forms of capital, disposition and habitus but Ulrika Holgersson’s feminist framework for analyzing class will also be incorporated. For the gender perspecitve Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman’s idea of sex, sex category and gender will be used to discuss how characters organize their behaviour according to sex category. The gender perspective is also largely influenced by Judith Butler’s and Karen Barad’s theories regarding performativity. The method for this study is a comparative analysis based on close reading. This study shows that these novels use opposites and protagonists in different ways to discuss oppression in the Irish society and propose solutions to that issue. While The Country Girls suggests that men are the main oppressor of women Normal People also portrays a patriarchal society but where capitalism too plays a destructive part. The Country Girls proposes feminist transnational alliances to overcome oppression and Normal People uses masochism as a theme to show how what hurts can be transformed into pleasure