ABSTRACT
In both Only Ever Yours and The Surface Breaks, Louise O’Neill presents states in which self-care cannot be bought, instead these fictional states work to suppress any appreciation for self and care. This chapter will address O’Neill’s feminism through an assessment of self-care methods, both self-generated and imposed; O’Neill describes the possibility that her protagonist may experience a Lukacian homecoming through the practice of self-generated self-care, only to intentionally collapse those potentials almost instantly. This collapse highlights how O’Neill’s protagonists are largely alienated from their bodies through the internalisation of numerous bodily and behavioural impositions. The entanglement of representations of trauma and narrative pace is caused by the juxtaposition between traumatic experiences and imposed forms of care, which tend to produce unregulated frantic internal monologues or silence – both of which fragment the advancement of plot.
