• 1 Elke D’hoker, Irish Women Writers and the Modern Short Story, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 17 (...)
• 2 Sean O’Hagan, “Claire Keegan: ‘Short stories are limited. I’m cornered into writing what I can’”, T (...)
• 3 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, in Secular Ritual, Sally F. Moore, Barbara G. (...)
• 4 Claire Keegan, Foster, London, Faber and Faber, 2010, p. 11.
• 5 Ibid., p. 13.
• 6 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, p. 36.
• 7 Ibid., p. 37.
• 8 Beth Rodgers, “‘I am glad I am Irish through and through and through’: Irish Girlhood and Identity (...)

1Claire Keegan has made herself known for “recording change”1 in her stories. In her own words, Foster (2010) is “an examination of home and an examination of neglect”,2 and studies a young girl as she processes her trauma from home while in foster care. Just as Keegan is interested in recording change, director Colm Bairéad bears witness to it with his take on Keegan’s story, An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl, 2022). Both the novella and the film present the perspective of the foster child as she finds herself “betwixt-and-between”3 her girlhood and the trauma of being neglected in the home. While her girlhood is liminal, a transitional phase between childhood and womanhood, her trauma is not initially perceived as such until she enters the foster home, where she realises: “I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be”.4 In this new environment, with “room, and time to think”,5 she realises that her discomfort stems not from the foster home itself but from the fact that for once she is not neglected, which forces her to confront her trauma, which has been reinforced and buried in silence. The change we witness in the girl in both texts follows a similar pattern to Arnold Van Gennep’s “rites de passage” described as stages of change “marked by three phases: separation; margin (or limen); and re-aggregation”.6 Victor Turner’s concept of liminality and his notion of the “liminary” figure derive from Van Gennep’s study. Turner is most interested in the marginal stage7 where we find girlhood. The female subaltern child can be understood as a liminal figure since girlhood is a transitory phase between childhood and womanhood which is often viewed as a “fraught period”.8 Both the film and the book document her journey as liminal, as she navigates these changes and works to undo both the external silence surrounding the neglect she suffered from and her own internalised silence.

• 10 Richard Fitzpatrick, “Manchán Magan: ‘There’s a tradition the wells were places where women felt sa (...)
• 11 Evelyn O’Rourke, “Claire Keegan, the Low-Key Writer with Global Acclaim”, 28 October 2024, RTÉ webs (...)

3The article is divided into two parts: the first section will examine Keegan’s book, Foster, in terms of how the girl addresses her past traumas and establishes safety by interacting with the foster parents’ well. In my reading, I understand the significance of the well in line with the Irish tradition and Irish history, which consider it as a space for healing and a sacred space where women “felt safe to gather”.10 This informs my analysis of how the girl begins her road to recovery and heals from the neglect she suffered from. The second part will analyse Bairéad’s film, An Cailín Ciúin, in terms of its use of the Irish language. I focus on Irish due to its historically liminal status, as it was silenced and outlawed during colonial rule in Ireland. Over the course of the film, Irish evolves from a refuge into a space where Cáit can connect with a history of sly civility, defiance, and resistance, understanding the language not only as a means of escape but also as a source of joy and love. I have chosen to separate these texts as Keegan herself has noted that the film is the work of another and she prefers that the director has his “own vision”.11 Certainly, the two works’ approaches to trauma and recovery may be related through tradition but they address theses themes with very different approaches, resorting to superstition and language, and therefore I also prefer to keep the works separate in my writing.

• 12 Susan Cahill, “A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing?: Girlhood, Trauma, and Resistance in Post-Tiger Irish (...)
• 13 Ibid., p. 155.
• 14 Molly Slavin, “Ghost Stories, Ghost Estates: Melancholia in Irish Recession Literature", C21 Litera (...)
• 15 Anne Whitehead, “Introduction to Part 1”, in Trauma Fiction, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, (...)
• 16 Ibid. (my emphasis).

4Foster was published in 2010, during a period of writing which critics have defined as the recession era. Criticisms of the texts written during this period largely focus on traumatic narratives as the recession itself was “traumatic for the culture at large”.12 These texts “explicitly link girlhood, trauma, language, and resistance”13 in their descriptions of “unnamed, unconscious, and unspecified grief”.14 With the rise of trauma fiction, Anne Whitehead writes that there is a “desire to […] represent or make visible specific historical instances of trauma”.15 Publishing Foster shortly after the release of the Ryan Report, an inquiry into child abuse in Ireland, Keegan’s writing sheds light on instances of neglect of children during the 20^th century, specifically that of the young Irish girl in the early 1980s. Similarly to Lucy Caldwell, Eimear McBride and other Irish female authors exploring girlhood trauma, Keegan writes back to the past, encouraging questions to be asked about a time when silence surrounding abuse and child neglect was normalised. Indeed, Whitehead insists that trauma theory has “provided novelists with new ways of conceptualising trauma and has shifted attention away from the question of what is remembered of the past to how and why it is remembered”16. Writing back to one era of economic destitution from another, Keegan takes the opportunity to reflect on this period of hardship, tell the story of a young, neglected girl in rural 1980s Ireland, one of reticence and female subordination in the home, and raise her voice, allowing her to reclaim and repossess her own history.

• 17 Vivian Valvano Lynch, “‘Families can be awful places’: The Toxic Parents of Claire Keegan’s Fiction (...)
• 18 Marisol Morales-Ladrón, “Gender Relations and Female Agency in Claire Keegan’s Antarctica", Studia (...)
• 19 Sylvie Mikowski, “Childhood Narratives in Contemporary Irish Novels”, Études irlandaises, no. 40-1, (...)
• 20 Elke D’hoker, Irish Women Writers…, p. 161.
• 21 Vivian Valvano Lynch, “‘Families can be awful places’…”, p. 132.
• 22 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 9.
• 23 Vivian Valvano Lynch, “‘Families can be awful places’…”, p. 134.
• 24 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 4.
• 25 Ibid.
• 26 Vivian Valvano Lynch, “‘Families can be awful places’…”, p. 134.

5Keegan’s fiction has been described as shattering “the idealized depiction of Irish family life”17 as her families are portrayed typically as “sites of conflict, inequality, and violence”.18 Her work is also studied through the themes of cultural reticence and the Irish family, between the “unhappy child narrative”19 as explored in Foster and “her revision of the twentieth-century mother-daughter plot”20 in “The Forester’s Daughter” and “The Parting Gift” amongst others. Through “elliptical narration”21 and overheard conversations between her parents about foster care – where the young girl hears her father say, “can’t they keep her as long as they like?”22 – Keegan subtly reveals the girl’s difficult reality within her family home. Indeed, as Vivian Valvano Lynch notes, this is “hardly a comforting thing for a child to hear”.23 Her thoughts narrate the journey to the foster home, as she fantasises about a man who might “take [her] to town on the tractor and buy [her] red lemonade and crisps”24 before she considers a more realistic scenario familiar to her, of a man who will “make [her] clean out sheds and pick stones”.25 Additionally, the girl keeps these thoughts to herself and decidedly avoids asking her father about the foster family, despite knowing he is familiar with them. This suggests that a code of silence feels more familiar and safer to her than speaking up or using her voice. That she focuses mainly on the foster father in these thoughts and not so much on the mother or the prospect of other children suggests that the girl’s biggest concern is the likelihood of a household dominated by an abrasive and ungenerous man, like her own father. Lynch bolsters this as she considers “his daughter’s descriptions and thoughts […] suggest he is also sinister […] [and] that frightening things go on in his household”.26

• 27 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 9.

6Herman writes that silence, in the “will to proclaim horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma”.27 The girl, nameless to us as readers, experiences a trauma of neglect, stemming largely from the poor relationship she has with her father and the lack of attention from her mother who is preoccupied with yet another pregnancy, and is rendered silent as a result. However, Keegan uses the girl’s silence not only as a way of codifying her specific traumas of girlhood and familial neglect, but as a gateway for her to find her voice and begin to heal from those traumas. As wells in Irish tradition are typically reverent, peaceful spaces, Keegan links the girl’s silence to these spaces to reconfigure it in a positive way.

• 28 Manchán Magan, in “Cumhacht an Uisce”, Ag Triall ar an Tobar, episode 4, directed by Medb Johnstone (...)
• 29 Shauna Fox, “Women, Water and Wisdom in Celtic Mythology”, March 2024, Heritage Ireland website: ht (...)

7Keegan has frequently used tradition and folklore as a tool of storytelling. In Foster, she uses wells as a focal point for illustrating the story of the girl and how she negotiates trauma and recovery. As Magan notes: “Wells are rooted in the country’s history”28 and historically associated with a particular feminine energy in Ireland. Indeed, water is typically depicted in Celtic mythology as being “analogous to that of women’s bodies”29 and spaces of healing and transformation. Manchán Magan compounds this in his studies on holy wells in Ireland.

• 31 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 23.
• 32 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 87.

The girl’s healing begins with a sip of well water, which washes away the memory of her father “leaving, of him never having been there”.31 This is the first moment in the story when she seems to feel safe and, according to Herman, with the establishment of her safety,32 the girl has begun her journey to recovery.

• 33 Eoghan Smith, “Autonomy, Naturalism and Folklore in Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields”, The Cana (...)
• 34 Manchán Magan, in “Cumhacht an Uisce”, 00:49.

8Eoghan Smith writes that Keegan uses Irish tradition as a method to develop the narrative style in her stories. He contends that her approach does not emphasise so much the mythical side of Irish tradition, but rather “test[s] the reader’s willingness to believe in the idea of story itself through the recuperation of the mythic power of that folkloric superstition”.33 Interestingly, Keegan relies on the well to play on readers’ devotion to and belief in folktales and tradition. For Irish readers specifically, wells have always been reverent spaces and daily ritual grounds. Indeed, Magan contends that many people have a great affinity for these wells.34 Relying on belief as a way of encouraging readers to believe in the story, Keegan cleverly and discreetly critiques how the Irish psyche needs the validation of a superstition as a means of legitimising perceived truths. Keegan is often critical of the Catholic Church, as understood in her novella Small Things Like These, and this approach is another subtle criticism of how society in Ireland chose silence over speaking truth to power because of beliefs. As she grows up in this version of Ireland, dominated by the Catholic Church, it makes sense that silence is a common thread in the girl’s life as her abuse remains unspoken throughout. However, by reconfiguring the meaning of the well in a positive, transformative way for the girl, Keegan allows us to consider more optimistic possibilities from traditional belief systems and unpack the silences that still linger around traditional religious spaces.

• 35 Aidan Power, “‘What happened at all?’ Coming to Terms with the Past in Foster and An Cailín Ciúin”, (...)

9For the foster mother, the well is routinely visited for practical uses like water for the house, but it also becomes a space where she can bond with her foster child. There is a hidden darkness in its waters that goes unmentioned to the girl for much of her time in foster care, of the death of the foster parents’ young son who drowned in the well. While the well becomes a space of peace and growth for the girl and a space of bonding for both the girl and her foster mother, it is also representative of a dark history and may be a symbol of the murky side of Irish devotion to the Church, to tradition, and to folklore. As Keegan aims “[t]o work on the level of suggestion”,35 one can take it that the well is a mix of 1980s Catholic beliefs and Keegan’s 21^st-century clarity, intertwining Irish myth and superstition into the present moment.

• 36 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 24.
• 37 Ibid., p. 23-24.
• 38 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 87.
• 39 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 24.
• 40 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 9.

10The well becomes an emancipatory space for the girl, where she can learn to move beyond her past and into a new state of being. Her internal reflections on the well and its water mirror its tradition as an emancipatory space for women, as it “tastes of [her] father leaving […] of having nothing after he was gone”.36 She wishes “that this place without shame or secrets could be [her] home”.37 The erasure of her father as she drinks the water speaks to the cleansing of this patriarchal figure from her life. She seems to enter a state of safety and a new self-awareness, indicating a move into Herman’s second stage of “remembrance and mourning”38 as she mourns her past self who endured her father, and tries “to remember another time when [she] felt like this”, and feels sad that she cannot but “happy too, because [she] cannot”.39 Though Herman writes that the central dialectic of trauma is the “[denial of] horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud”,40 the girl seems to find a way around putting a voice to her past and instead finds healing and space to move forward through the reverence of the well. Silence becomes reconfigured within its realm.

• 41 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 76.
• 42 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, p. 37.
• 43 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 87.
• 44 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 86.
• 45 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, p. 36.

11In her final visit to the well, a hand “just like [hers] seems to come out of the water and pull [her] in”.41 She falls into the well and escapes with a cold, bringing a reminder of its healing properties back to her family home with her. Her sneeze serves as the emphatic punctuation of her growth into a “postliminal state of being”,42 but it is also a reminder that she has not reached a full recovery as the cold highlights her resistance to return to her “ordinary life”.43 In this sense, although the girl must return home, she carries with her the knowledge gained from the well that she has “learned enough, grown enough”,44 allowing her to continue enacting change. Despite her persistent liminality, she is undoubtedly “inwardly and outwardly changed”.45

• 47 Beth Rodgers, “‘I am glad I am Irish through and through and through’…”, p. 160.
• 48 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, p. 37.

By translating the story of Foster into Irish, Bairéad reframes the traditional notions of the young Irish girl, which are often conflated with “charismatic wildness” compared to the “order”47 associated with colonial English in early girlhood literatures. He does this by inserting autonomy into the protagonist Cáit’s voice when she speaks Irish and when she notably chooses to be silent over the course of the film, in contrast to the initial scenes where she seems dominated by the presence of her English-speaking father and is “reduced to whispers”.48 Bairéad’s use of language reframes traditional views of the Irish girl, as Cáit embraces a sort of quiet “wildness” through Irish in defiance of her father’s “order”, offering a modern perspective on the English-Irish binary seen in earlier literatures. Thus, Irish becomes the catalyst through which the story of “the quiet girl” can be told.

• 49 Ibid. (my emphasis).

13Irish exists within its own liminality of “being both this and that”,49 as both a minority and an endangered language, but also the official language of Ireland. In the film, Irish is positioned alongside English as Cáit’s father, Dan, is the only main character who appears to not speak Irish. The film puts Dan’s abrasive personality and Cáit’s quiet demeanour in contrast with one another, reflecting historical power dynamics between English speakers and the Irish as Dan’s domineering countenance overpowers the rest of the characters from the first scene without speaking a word while Cáit remains silent in his presence. As Cáit transitions to living solely through Irish in her foster home, the language emerges from the shadow of English and creates space for Cáit to find her voice and use it to enact her own sly civility. This unfolds in two stages: first, her time in foster care teaches her that silence, that was once a response to the mere presence of her father, can become a choice instead and if she does not want to speak, she does not have to. Secondly, later in the film, Cáit has seen Irish through a positive lens where there can be confidence, joy and love instead of purely fear.

• 50 Beth Rodgers, “‘I am glad I am Irish through and through and through’…”, p. 155.
• 51 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, p. 37.
• 52 Ibid.
• 53 Paul Whitington, “An Cailín Ciúin Review: Best Irish-Language Movie Ever Made Is a Haunting Drama”, (...)
• 54 Róisín Lanigan, “In ‘The Quiet Girl,’ an Irish Loneliness Rarely Seen Onscreen”, The New York Times(...)
• 55 An Cailín Ciúin, written, directed and translated by Colm Bairéad, Curzon Film, 2022.

14Cáit learns that the “‘in between’ spaces” of Irish allow her the freedom to “initiate new signs of identity”.50 Indeed, Turner writes that “liminaries” may use a “special liminal vocabulary”.51 As Cáit negotiates new ways of being, she negotiates Irish in terms of her family home and her foster home, as well as through silences, as liminal figures are understood oftentimes to speak in “whispers, if at all”.52 Critics often view her silence as resulting from neglect or the linguistic distance from her father, but this perspective overlooks the deeper traumatic and cultural context. Paul Whitington attributes Cáit’s silence to being an example of “quiet children [who] fall through the cracks”,53 while Róisín Lanigan argues that the dichotomy of English and Irish merely reflects the “distance” between Cáit and her father.54 I believe that the neglect Cáit experiences in her family home informs her silence and is not so much a trait of her personality as a learned trauma response to her intimidating, English-speaking father. Exploring the same story but in terms of the Irish language with Turner and Herman’s models of liminality and recovery offers different insights into how the protagonist of these texts learns to negotiate her trauma as it is revealed to not just be about neglect, but intimidation too. It is through the binary of the English and Irish languages in the film that this can be illustrated most clearly. From this viewpoint, our understanding of Bairéad’s protagonist becomes more informed as we see her transition from the subdued, titular “An Cailín Ciúin”55 to a bolder and more assertive Cáit.

• 57 Elke D’hoker, Irish Women Writers…, p. 5.

That the general feeling around the language was more so about its survival rather than a full restoration speaks to Cáit’s experience of neglect in the film, as it is not about a full recovery; rather, it is about how she begins to heal. However, that the language survived its colonial subjugation speaks to the level of resistance of those who chose to use it. As English was established in Ireland as the primary socio-economic language during its colonisation, Irish was pushed out of public life and relegated to a more domestic scene. Similarly, stories written at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century were perceived as not pushing the nationalist narrative overtly in Ireland, and were discarded as being “un-Irish in their lack of political content and their focus on domestic issues”.57 The Irish language was contained within “particular contexts”, thus rendered subaltern, as English retained its dominance in 1980s Ireland.

• 58 Colm Bairéad, An Cailín Ciúin, 03:32.
• 59 Ciarán Howley, “An Cailín Ciúin Reminds Us Why Gaeilge Matters”, District Magazine, 1 July 2022, on (...)
• 60 Vivian Valvano Lynch, “‘Families can be awful places’…”, p. 134.
• 61 Aoife Barry, “An Cailín Ciúin: ‘It shows an Irish language film can speak to people – it seems fool (...)
• 62 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 9.

16Bairéad first highlights the unequal gendered power dynamics through the English-Irish binary, mirroring Cáit and her sisters’ use of Irish and their father’s imposing presence which silences them.58 Indeed, underpinning Cáit’s trauma of neglect “is the tyranny her English-speaking father carries out on the family”.59 Bairéad, like Keegan’s elliptical narration, codifies the allusion that “frightening things go on in his household”60 through Irish. Keegan uses first-person narration to follow the girl’s internal thoughts in her family home. Meanwhile, Bairéad “ironically” uses the “limitations of language”61 to illustrate Cáit’s trauma and uses her silence to depict her fear. As Herman contends, “an understanding of psychological trauma begins with rediscovering history”.62 Cáit’s own trauma before recovery is felt and reflected in the Irish language. To move towards recovery, Bairéad encourages audiences to understand Cáit’s situation through the history of the language she tries to speak.

• 63 Colin Graham, “‘Liminal Spaces’: Post-Colonial Theories and Irish Culture”, The Irish Review (Cork)(...)
• 64 Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, “The Language of African Literature”, in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of (...)

17The barrier between her father Dan and the rest of his family, which are all female, speaks to the unequal power dynamics that define their household. Indeed, the “ambiguities and cultural dislodgements of imperialism”63 are reinstated in his character, through his use of the language of Ireland’s coloniser, as well as in the intimidating countenance he exudes over his family. The first time he appears on screen is as a shadow, alluding to the hangover of imperialism in Ireland, as the film is set just sixty years post-independence. Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o describes English as “the language, and all the others had to bow before it in deference”.64 Similarly, Cáit and her sisters all seem to cower before their father. Their relationship with him is marked most clearly from one of the first opening scenes as Cáit sits quietly, while her sisters speak excitedly through Irish.

• 66 The lack of sexual knowledge evident in her sisters’ conversation signals the level of neglect in t (...)
• 67 Colm Bairéad, An Cailín Ciúin, 03:32.
• 68 Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, “The Language of African Literature”, p. 11.

Interestingly, the girls use Irish as a means of discussing sex, which was a very taboo subject in Ireland at that time.66 Their voices are animated as they speak openly with each other, as Irish affords them the freedom of speech in their few short lines. However, the presence of their English-speaking father, although it seems he does not even speak Irish and therefore cannot understand what they are saying, is enough to reduce them to silence when he enters.67 Here, Irish is both a site of freedom of speech but also a language that kneels “in deference”,68 not even at the mentioning of a word in English, but by the mere presence of the man who represents it. Its status in the country as it existed as a choice within particular spaces speaks to Irish’s status within the margins as liminal, and representative of subalterns like Cáit and her sisters.

• 69 Colm Bairéad, An Cailín Ciúin, 1:07:37.
• 70 A traditional Irish sean-nós song.
• 71 “You are my love and my comfort forever” (Colm Bairéad, An Cailín Ciúin, 1:07:38).
• 72 Sarah Bradbury, “Colm Bairéad on The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), Adapting Claire Keegan’s Goster, (...)
• 73 Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, “The Language of African Literature”, p. 4.
• 74 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 57.
• 75 Ibid., p. 25.

18As Cáit settles into foster care, she learns to understand Irish in terms of love and joy, as opposed to suffocating silences and strained whispers. Where there is silence in her foster home, it is marked not by tension but by instances of love. Indeed, as Cáit watches her foster parents, Eibhlín and Seán, in a loving embrace through a gap in a door frame,69 the position of Irish shifts in the story. Eibhlín’s voice is heard over the scene, singing an Irish song, “An Páistín Fionn”.70 As Seán puts his arm around Eibhlín, she sings “is tusa mo rún, mo chumann go buan”.71 Here, Irish is presented in a new, loving way. It is positioned against the experiences of neglect and fear in her family home where Irish was a refuge, and the foster home, teaching Cáit that it can be a comfort and a source of nourishment. Indeed, Bairéad notes that “the emotional sustenance that she receives in the Kinsellas [is] the thing that stays with her and that changes her as a person”.72 That Irish can shift who she is as a person is reflective of how “[t]he choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people’s definition of themselves”.73 As Cáit witnesses her foster parents in a loving embrace, the unequal power dynamics in her family home and their impact are highlighted. Within her home, her father’s tyranny suppresses her voice and instils fear in her. Her quiet nature is seen simply as a personality trait, as she is known as “the quiet girl”. However, it appears to be a learned response from moments of anxiety or fear. Cáit has developed what Herman describes as an “immature system of psychological defenses”74 in her survivalist instinct to mature quickly and beyond her years, teaching her that silence is safer. As one of the younger siblings, Cáit observes and learns from her older sisters’ experiences, and understands that it is wiser not to involve herself in their conversations and instead to maintain a constant state of silence and vigilance. Herman writes that for the traumatised individual, this kind of vigilance may be an unconscious response as “traumatic symptoms have a tendency to become disconnected from their source and to take on a life of their own”.75 Cáit’s instinct to dissociate and to stay quiet do not appear to be conscious decisions as it may be a well-established response she learned over the years of her girlhood.

• 76 “Nothing happened” (Colm Bairéad, An Cailín Ciúin, 1:25:33).
• 77 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, p. 37.
• 78 Ibid.
• 79 Homi K. Bhabha, “Sly Civility”, October, vol. 34, 1985, p. 78, DOI: 10.2307/778489.
• 80 Colm Bairéad, An Cailín Ciúin, 1:29:47.
• 81 Claire Keegan, Foster, p. 88.
• 82 Victor Turner, “Variations on a Theme of Liminality”, p. 37.

19Although Cáit gains some confidence during her time in foster care, upon returning home, she reverts to silence once her father enters the room. However, she does not remain fully silent this time as when her mother asks about the cold she catches from falling into the well, she defiantly responds: “Níor tharla aon rud ar aon chor”.76 Despite Dan’s presence in the room, Cáit’s mother speaks in Irish. In this instance, Cáit is truly “betwixt-and-between”77 her biological parents and her foster parents, but also between languages. Turner describes this “betweenness” as something of a “paradox […] being both this and that”.78 However, it is quite powerful that Cáit can switch between languages. As English was imposed on her by her father, Cáit can choose to speak in Irish and neglect him from her conversation as a way of enacting her own sly civility against him. Cáit, as the “native”, refuses “to satisfy the colonizer’s [her father’s] narrative demand”, thus frustrating his “surveillance […] which seeks to dominate”79 her. Clearly, Cáit has learned more about herself in the summer she spent in foster care, where Irish could be more than a refuge, than during her entire childhood at home. Between her past and her future selves, Cáit has found some comfort in this liminal space. Bairéad illustrates this at the film’s close, when Cáit runs to the gate and jumps into Seán’s arms to say what she has been wanting to say to him all along, “Daddy […] Daddy”.80 The first comes as a warning as she sees Dan walking towards them, but the second is softer, as she rests her head on Seán’s shoulder. The word “daddy” sounds identical to the Irish word for it, “daidí”. Though in the short story she certainly is saying “Daddy”,81 the film’s use of Irish leaves room to suggest that perhaps Cáit is saying either, or both. In the case she means to say both, she remains liminal, “betwixt-and-between”82 her trauma and her recovery; between “the quiet girl” and “an cailín ciúin”.

• 83 Cathy Caruth, “Introduction”, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Cathy Caruth (ed.), Baltimore, The (...)
• 84 Ibid.

20According to Cathy Caruth, traumatised people carry an “impossible history within them, or they become themselves the symptom of a history that they cannot entirely possess”,83 and their trauma is “intimately bound up with a question of truth”.84 Indeed, Magan writes of the Irish people:

• 86 Róisín Ingle, “1980s Ireland Was All Fields and Parental Neglect Was the Norm”, The Irish Times, 31 (...)
• 87 Manchán Magan, Listen to the Land Speak, p. 333.

Magan contends that the Irish are in a process of waking up and returning to these myths and traditions, unpicking these “inalienable truths” and talking about the darker periods in Irish history. Keegan and Bairéad are key figures in this movement within the arts as they bring the story of the Irish girl in the 1980s to the surface and highlight the mistreatment of children and “parental neglect [which] was the norm”.86 The protagonists of both film and book were born into a traumatic era for women and girls and so it is no wonder that they become symptoms of a history of mistreatment and neglect, inheriting a painful history from their mothers and carrying it on within themselves. Just as the country’s trauma is bound up with truth, so is their individual trauma. Magan describes this “process of awakening and reconnecting with [and healing from] the past” in terms of the “rise of ‘the feminine energy’”87 in Ireland. Writing and producing a film from a specifically female perspective, that of the young girl who has historically been forgotten in Irish writing, Keegan and Bairéad provide a voice for the Irish girl in a silent and traumatised Ireland. In returning to traditions and seeking ways to draw out the truths in their myths, Foster and An Cailín Ciúin reconfigure her position from the liminal spaces of silence and trauma, and give her the room and space to heal, and speak.