56 pages • 1 hour read
Louise KennedyTrespasses
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Dúil”
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary
A week goes by with no sign of Michael, and Cushla gloomily wonders what she did to reveal that she is “too young, too unsophisticated, too Catholic” for him (64). Teaching her eager students the Hail Mary in Irish helps her feel a little better. Gerry informs Cushla that Davy is absent because his father was severely beaten and is in the hospital. The headmaster and Father Slattery summon the students to an assembly in response, and the priest begins to relate another one of his frightening, violent stories. Gerry stops him by playing a song he wrote about peace.
When Cushla comes home, she sees that her mother has been to the hairdresser and has made soup, two indicators that she is trying not to drink. They make dinner for Davy, Tommy, and their sister, Mandy. A group of teenagers gathers outside the McGeowns’ house to taunt them. Gina sends Tommy back inside to watch his younger siblings and sends the teenagers away after a brief standoff. Back home, Cushla doesn’t object when her mother drinks some gin.
Michael calls her from a payphone and picks her up. She tells him about her day and Davy’s father as they drive to his flat. Their conversation turns to Easter, and he gives her some gorse flowers to boil with the Easter eggs for her students. He says that gorse flowers are thought to be unlucky and that he is “happy to take his chances with bad luck if she [is]” (74). Cushla says that it’s getting late, so Michael drives her home and promises to call her soon. The eggs turn bright yellow when Cushla boils them with the flowers. Gina mentions that Michael was in the newspaper because he criticized the Diplock court system, which uses three judges and no jury. Gina is suspicious of her daughter’s curiosity regarding the barrister, and Cushla tells herself that she’ll have to be more careful.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
On Good Friday, Michael calls Cushla and asks her to meet him at his flat. She agrees immediately and begins to resent her situation. While passing a series of ominous messages about public safety, Cushla imagines some tailored specifically for her: “DON’T FALL FOR A MARRIED PROD TWICE YOUR AGE…DON’T AGREE TO SEE HIM EVERY SINGLE TIME IT SUITS HIM” (78). At the flat, Cushla and Michael have sex for the first time. The next morning, she sees some books in his kitchen, including a copy of Liam O’Flaherty’s Dúil with the name Joanna Butler inscribed inside. Michael pretends not to hear her when she asks about Joanna Butler. He tells her that he’s been studying Irish and shows her his notes on the word dúil, which means “desire, liking, fondness, craving” (83). When Cushla returns home the following morning, Gina demands an explanation. Cushla lies and says she spent the night at Gerry’s. She knows her brother would be furious if he learned she was sleeping with a married customer.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
On Easter Sunday, Cushla and Gina give the McGeown children some candy and a lift home from Mass. An angry Tommy tells Cushla about his father’s injuries: “Fractured skull. Both legs broken. Smashed jaw” (91). Eamonn, his wife, Marian, and their two children, Emma and Nicola, join Cushla and Gina for lunch. Gina says that Cushla was out all night with a fellow teacher, and Eamonn reminds her that could cost her her job at the Catholic school. When Marian and Eamonn share the news that they are five months pregnant with their third child, Gina is deeply offended that they didn’t tell her sooner. Later that day, Cushla receives a call. She says Michael’s name when she answers the phone, but it’s Tommy calling to thank her for her kindness and apologize for his angry demeanor. Cushla tells Tommy that he’s welcome to call her whenever he likes. The idea that she might be able to truly help the McGeown children makes her feel “good. Grown up, useful” (96). She longs to talk to Michael but decides not to call him.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary
Cushla visits the McGeown children and then goes to the pub. To her mortification, both Michael and Gerry are there. Michael is furious that Cushla is going on another date with Gerry, and Cushla retorts that Michael is often unavailable. He slips her a phone number before she leaves for the movies with Gerry. Gerry confesses, “I don’t fancy you, you know” (105). Still, they enjoy their time together and hug each other goodbye. Michael calls her that night and admits that he’s feeling jealous. She replies, “I never know where you are or what you’re doing. So I won’t be getting myself to a nunnery anytime soon” (106). After he apologizes, she hangs up on him. Gina, who heard from Eamonn that Michael was at the pub that day, tells Cushla that his wife’s name is Joanna Butler. She implies that Joanna’s alcohol addiction and frayed nerves are due to Michael’s infidelity.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary
Mr. McGeown’s condition improves, and Davy and his siblings are allowed to visit him in the hospital. In the five days since Cushla’s movie date with Gerry, she hasn’t heard from Michael. She feels physically ill as a result and is uncharacteristically harsh toward her students. As Cushla is preparing dinner, Michael calls and asks her to meet him in five minutes. He brings her back home after they hastily have sex. Gina warns Cushla that if she continues to see a man, she’ll “be the talk of the town” and perhaps “end up in the family way” (113). Tommy comes to see Cushla later that night and tells her that he’s dropping out of school to support his family. Although she encourages him to finish his last year of high school, she understands that job opportunities for Catholics are limited regardless of their education.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary
On the next Irish conversation night at Penny’s house, the conversation turns to Michael’s work. An acerbic Victor scoffs at the idea that the republicans on trial are being treated unjustly, and Michael answers, “The system would not be tolerated anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Or in any civilized country for that matter” (118). Victor makes snide remarks about Catholics to Cushla in an effort to goad Michael. She feels terribly unwelcome and afterward tells Michael, “Fuck’s sake. It’s awkward enough sitting there like the token Taig without you shaping up to biff your friend” (121). Michael and Cushla argue, but she agrees to spend the night at his flat. He explains that Victor despises republicans because he witnessed the carnage on Bloody Friday and is upset with Michael because the barrister is defending three boys who are accused of murdering a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Part 2 Analysis
In the novel’s second section, Cushla’s yearning for Michael grows, and a shocking act of violence deepens the rift in her town. The brutal attack on Davy’s father by Protestants is clearly religiously and politically motivated, prompting Michael to observe: “It’s not about what you do here [...] It’s about what you are” (72). Seamie is targeted not only because he is Catholic but also because, in Cushla’s words, he is in “a mixed marriage” with a Protestant woman (72). The attack on Seamie sets into motion much of the remainder of the story, including Michael’s murder. It also underscores The Complexities of Relationships in a Divided Society, illustrating the sort of recrimination Cushla and Michael may face if their “mixed” relationship is exposed.
The text uses lists to emphasize The Pervasiveness of Violence. In Chapter 9, the narrator summarizes Slattery’s Easter Sunday sermon, which lists details of Christ’s suffering: “His sermon was not a celebration of the Resurrection but a dirge about Christ’s Passion. Torn with scourges. Mockeries and insults. Obedient to the point of death” (89). The priest’s sermon is similar to another list provided later in that same chapter, describing Seamie’s injuries: “Fractured skull. Both legs broken. Smashed jaw. Cracked ribs. Collapsed lung. Ruptured spleen. They slashed his hands and wrists with a nail hammered into a plank” (91). The wounds in Seamie’s hands and wrists hold symbolic significance because they resemble stigmata, marks that correspond to those left on Jesus’s body by the crucifixion. Within the Catholic tradition, saints like Padre Pio are believed to have received stigmata as a sign of God’s favor. In the novel, Seamie’s wounds symbolize the suffering of Catholics in the Troubles.
Another important symbol to appear in this section is gorse. The plant, which Michael acknowledges symbolizes bad luck, abounds in the region. Michael declares that he is “happy to take his chances with bad luck if she was” when he gives the gorse flowers to Cushla (74). The gesture is romantic as well as defiant. He and Cushla are already trying their luck because he is a married Protestant man and she is a Catholic woman in a bitterly divided period of Irish history. Chapter 12 explores how the lovers’ differences complicate their relationship. After a tense Irish conversation night, Michael and Cushla have an argument. He insists that Victor’s goading had nothing to do with her, but she knows anti-Catholic discrimination when she sees it because she’s experienced it all her life: “I should have told him to fuck off, she said, instead of sitting like a good little native, letting him humiliate me” (121). Although Michael doesn’t share his friend’s discriminatory views, Cushla’s relationship with him subjects her to Protestant discrimination.
As Cushla and Michael begin their affair, the narrative explores the theme of Navigating Ethical Dilemmas. Cushla experiences intense inner conflict due to her relationship with a married man. In Chapter 8, for example, she feels “a first twinge of resentment” because she only sees Michael when he can spare time for her between his family and his demanding career (78). Intensifying her inner conflict, she knows that her family, especially her brother, would disapprove and that she could lose her job if the affair is discovered. However, neither of these conflicts deter her from pursuing the relationship. Part 2 is fittingly entitled Dúil, the Irish word for “yearning” and “desire.” Liam O’Flaherty’s book of the same name belongs to Joanna Butler, foreshadowing that she is Michael’s wife. This is confirmed in Chapter 10, and Cushla, who has thought little about the woman, starts to have some sympathy for Joanna: “Somewhere out that road, a woman who had once signed her name in girlish cló gaelach was with a man who used her old schoolbooks to make other women want to sleep with him” (107). The dilemmas Cushla faces begin to impact her physical health. In Chapter 11, she wonders, “Was it that her body had become her conscience, sending shudders through her to remind her of her badness?” (108). She experiences nausea and loss of appetite as well as the emotional pain of feeling used. Her newfound sympathy for Michael’s wife further complicates her relationship with him.
