Banshees, Hags, and Changelings: Feminist Folklore Transformations in Irish Writing

Irish folklore is replete with images of transforming women. The wailing banshee, the alluring mermaid, the unsettling changeling and others recur throughout folktales and have become well-known through contemporary depictions in texts and films. In the wake of recent feminist thinking, online movements, and revelations of gender-based violence in state institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries, Irish women writers have found fresh ways to adapt this folklore, addressing the underlying tensions inherent to these stories and creating alternative paths to agency.

In Banshees, Hags, and Changelings, Molly Ferguson examines how women writers, energized by the recent cultural feminist reckoning in Ireland, reappraise the subjects of these folktales and the anxieties they address. Exploring contemporary literary works across genres, Ferguson identifies the cultural processing of trauma resulting from gender-based violence through exploring the tensions that lie beneath each tale.

Molly Ferguson is an associate professor of English and affiliate faculty member in women’s and gender studies at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.