Contagion and Community in Irish Fiction 1900–1942

The writers examined in this chapter, though working in the same early twentieth-century time period as Joyce, Moore, and Macardle, approach phthisis very differently, eschewing any reference to Romantic imaginings and the attribution of meaning, even for contrasting effect. Instead they ground themselves in stoic, realistic portrayals of tubercular bodies and the toll exacted by the illness on everybody involved. Moreover, while the impossibility of a cure remains a grim constant in both groups of writers, Maura Laverty and the Irish language life writing discussed here emphasize the benefits of community. These narratives do not provide a tidy metaphorical sense of meaning, focusing not on what tuberculosis means, or represents, or signifies, but what it is. If there is meaning to be found, it is through the community care practices so often portrayed in the fiction. They do not grant an overarching sense of meaning to the disease itself, but are meaningful in their own right. Until Dr Noel Browne succeeded in taming the disease in the mid-1940s, its victims and the writers who portrayed their sufferings could only work with what they had: stoic acceptance and community care.