The essays in this book deal with a wide variety of texts, from the Old Irish of the Deirdre tale to a recent television series with a heroine of that name. There are considerations of writing from a Sinn Fein journal of the early part of this century, the poetry of Heaney, Stoker's Dracula, the plays of Beckett, the poetry of Yeats and the novels of Jennifer Johnston. The essays use these works as frameworks within which to explore the issue and role of gender in Irish writing.