The Famine of the 90s: Female Starvation and Religious Thought in Leanne O'Sullivan's "Waiting for My Clothes"

Abstract

This paper offers a critical analysis of Leanne O'Sullivan's debut collection Waiting for My Clothes, in particular focusing on its recurrent themes of anorexia and bulimia. Leanne O'Sullivan is part of a new generation of Irish poets, located at the crossroads of tradition and modernity. In its critique of the so-called beauty myth, Waiting for My Clothes takes the reader to a New Ireland where the anxiety for national definitions has lost part of its force in favour of the progressive internalisation of Irish life. However, this paper will concentrate on O'Sullivan's examination of the religious dimension of anorexic patterns, an aspect that presents her as heiress of the influence exerted by Catholicism in the conceptualisations of femininity in Ireland.