The Paradoxical Home and Body in Jennifer Johnston’s The Christmas Tree (1981)

Journal of Medical Humanities 44 (1):91-105 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Jennifer Johnston’s fiction presents the conditions of Irish culture and society by exploring the separations between interior and exterior realms and past and present temporalities persisting within the insulating privacy of the familial home space. In _The Christmas Tree_ (1981), the home is both haven and prison for Johnston’s heroine. In this paper, I argue that the home—which assumes the form of the individual body and the familial home—is paradoxical. The protagonist leaves 1950s Ireland because of the country’s rigid gender roles in order to pursue an autonomous life as a writer in England, but she is unable to publish her writing within the confines of the patriarchal publishing world. The home of her body becomes paradoxical when she becomes a single mother as an avenue for creativity but is then diagnosed with terminal cancer. She returns to her father’s home to die, which she re-orders and reclaims through the disorder of the uncanny—represented by her non-conformity and illness brought into the patriarchal home. By writing her life story and creating a brief, alternative maternal relationship with her young caretaker, the protagonist confronts her own ambivalence toward her parents, who also represent aspects of oppressive heteronormative gender expectations.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Cellularity of Pseudo-Tree Algebras.Jennifer Brown - 2006 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 47 (3):353-359.
Body of Intelligence: A Response to Jennifer Herdt.Harriet Harris - 2022 - Studies in Christian Ethics 35 (1):16-21.
Christmas in Hippo.Hubertus R. Drobner - 2004 - Augustinian Studies 35 (1):55-72.
Christmas in Hippo.Hubertus R. Drobner - 2004 - Augustinian Studies 35 (1):55-72.
The roots of the silver tree: Boyle, alchemy, and teleology.Jennifer Whyte - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 85:185-191.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-10-29

Downloads
12 (#925,053)

6 months
6 (#201,673)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations