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Rising of the Moon, Flynn Connolly

Science fiction has produced a fair number of profoundly feminist works dealing with oppression and resistance, whether individual or en masse – Suzy McKee Charnas’s Holdfast Chronicles, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s tale, L Timmel Duchamp’s Marq’ssan cycle, Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy, Joanna Russ’s The Two of Them and The Female Man, James Tiptree Jr’s “The Women Men Don’t see,” to name but a few – but I must admit to some puzzlement as to why Connolly’s Rising of the Moon is not as well-known as some of these others. Set in a future reunified Ireland where the entire country has come under the control of a viciously patriarchal Catholic Church, where women cannot own property, work after marriage, or even as unmarried women hold any jobs with status or authority, where they must always be under the guardianship of a man, where birth control and abortion are illegal, Connolly's dystopic vision draws a stark picture of a police state run as a theocracy, where both men and women live under close control but the worst oppressions fall on women.

Connolly’s main protagonist is Nuala Dennehy, who as a young woman was inspired by her father’s stories of the heroic freedom fighters of Ireland’s troubled past, left Ireland so she could study and then teach her motherland’s true history. Returning home to visit after 15 years away, she is appalled by the growing violations of human rights and the worsening status of women, and is drawn into an organized resistance network led by women. With her skills in public speaking and her knowledge of Irish history, and the deeds and words of its martyrs, Nuala becomes the voice of a woman’s revolution.

Connolly has expertly depicted the hypocrisy and brutality of a regime that practices censorship and terror in the name of spiritual truth and God’s love; and just as expertly, she explores the ethical struggles of resistance fighters who chose to act knowing that violence and death will inevitably come before victory can be achieved.

The novel is filled with quotations from and references to historical freedom fighters and figures of resistance around the world, from Stephen Biko and Malchom X to Bernadette Devlin and Rosa Parks; without ever being didactic, it’s an introduction to the history of political resistance and revolution, yet remains at all times the story of a small group of diverse women, each one of them fully realised characters in their own right, who commit themselves to freedom.

They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then we'll see the rising of the moon.
-- Bobby Sands