DOMESTIC PURITY, CATHOLIC VIRTUE, AND THE THEOLOGY OF CONTAINMENT IN THE ANTE-ROOM BY KATE O’BRIEN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2026.3.06Keywords:
gender ideology, confinement, Catholic femininity, theology of containment, domestic purity, moral discipline, female subjectivityAbstract
Domestic Purity, Catholic Virtue, and the Theology of Containment in The Ante-Room by Kate O’Brien. Kate O’Brien’s 1934 novel The Ante-Room offers a critique of the Catholic domestic ideology by constructing a theology of containment. The Catholic doctrine, together with gender ideology, creates a system in which female agency is regulated through spatial confinement, internalised surveillance, and emotional repression. This paper draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of pastoral power and Teresa de Lauretis’s theory of gender as social technology to demonstrate that the ante-room itself functions as both a literal and symbolic apparatus of containment. Agnes Mulqueen’s moral crisis becomes the novel’s central test case as O’Brien reveals how Catholic virtue is built on silence and self-denial, exposing the psychological cost of a system that equates feminine purity with the renunciation of desire. The analysis further draws on Sandra Harding’s feminist epistemology and Adrienne Rich’s theorization of compulsory heterosexuality to argue that the domestic architecture described in the novel encodes not only physical but epistemological confinement.
Article history: Received 15 December 2025; Revised 22 July 2026; Accepted 24 July 2026; Available online 30 September 2026; Available print 30 September 2026.
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