Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: Art and Islandness in Sinéad Gleeson’s ‘Hagstone’

Godfrey Baldacchino writes that human borders, in contrast with nature’s boundaries, have zero porosity and begrudgingly condone leakages. This liquidity of the human condition can be particularly true in some spaces where humans decide to settle next to the sea: on islands. To further this understanding, we turn and look at islands’ art and the representation of islandness in literature. In the novel ‘Hagstone’ by Sinéad Gleeson, the concept of islandness is simultaneously pinned down and complicated: Island studies through the years has highlighted three key aspects of islandness (geography, ecology, and culture), and yet scholars have struggled to identify universally defining traits of islandness. Through close reading, this article presents an analysis of ‘Hagstone’ that leads us to understand the link between art and islandness, and the latter’s submerged features present in the novel, and highlights how islandness itself shapes the character Nell’s relationship with her art throughout the story. How do those who live on the island narrate their experience with islandness? And how do creative practices contribute to a more nuanced understanding of islandness? Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines literary analysis and Island studies, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the literary art produced on and for the island. The intricate relationship between island and artist emerges in Gleeson’s work, in a world where reality drifts back and forth in waves, and an artist’s only option is to exist inside her art.