In her 2022 novel Trespasses, Louise Kennedy captures the emotional turmoil of an intimate relationship between Cushla, a young Catholic woman, and Michael, an older married Protestant man during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Their love is difficult, not just because Michael is married but also because it is seen as a “mixed relationship” within Northern Irish society.
The Troubles was a period of violence stemming from a political divide over British rule, which lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. The fighting was between the Unionist/Loyalists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom and the Nationalist/Republicans who sought a united Ireland. These groups were also split on religious lines with Unionist/Loyalists being mostly Protestant and Nationalist/Republicans mostly Catholic.
Channel 4’s new adaptation of Trespasses, starring Lola Petticrew, Tom Cullen and Gillian Anderson, is set in 1975, in the height of the Troubles. With the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which brought an era of “peace” to Northern Ireland, you might assume the experiences of Cushla and Michael would no longer be common. However, my research shows that the story’s themes of forbidden love remain for women in “mixed” relationships today.
