An Essay on Mary Beckett's Belfast Woman

ssay on Mary Beckett’s A Belfast Woman


Belfast Woman is a short story of an elderly woman, Mrs Harrison, who lives as a Catholic in a street where mainly Protestants own most of the houses. She has to face many difficulties to live on in a country where religion has such a great effect on people’s life.
The story starts with a so called ” in medias res ”, as Mrs Harrison gets the threatening letter and reader is initiated in the Irish events without any real fact just he can guess from the feelings of the woman and her memories.
Then we can hear the story of the old lady’s life as she recalls her memories while sitting in the kitchen with her letter. The first of all, she recalled her first negative experience of the Catholic Protestant opposition, when her family were burned in 1921: ”I ran down in my nightgown and my mother was standing in the middle of the kitchen with her hands up to her face screaming and screaming, and the curtains were on fire and my fathe...