Mother-Daughter Relationships in Francesca McDonnell Capossela’s Trouble the Living

Abstract

Francesca McDonnell Capossela’s recent novel, Trouble the Living, encompasses the experiences of conflict and emigration across three generations of women. Within the context of the “troubles” in Ireland during the 1990s and the random acts of violence of the early 2000s in America, Capossela explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships. This essay focuses on the author’s depiction of this relationship, both as a cycle of connections and separations, as well as a guiding force for each character’s interaction with violence. Situated among literary references to Irish mythology and the Irish conflict, Capossela’s women embody the features of heroines and fighters, with motherhood positioned as its own form of battle. In addition to the relationships of mothers and daughters among the characters, there is the relationship that all of the women in the novel have with “mother” Ireland. Here, too, the cycle of connections and separations exists, with the ebb and flow of the relationship with one’s country determining choices of engagement with conflict and decisions to leave or return home.