This thesis examines the politics of desire in Elizabeth Bowen and Kate O’ Brien. It asks “ what is the potential for representations of desire in their work to reform cultural systems based upon indoctrinated rationalisation of masculinist authority through emphasising, through close reading, the insights of relational psychoanalysis?” In answering this, it reads across the works of these authors under the headings of “Romance and Canon in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September and Kate O’Brien’ s The Ante-Room,\ “Desire and Recognition in Elizabeth Bowen’ s The House in Paris and Kate O’Brien’s As Music and Splendour” and “Psychic Life and Social Thought in Elizabeth Bowen’ s The Heat o f the Day and Kate O’Brien’s That L a d y to consider the politics of canon formation, the sexualisation of discourse, and notions of feminist and national identity within Irish cultural studies. This thesis evaluates how the canonical positioning of these texts may be read to comment on a political system based on indoctrinated rationalisation of male authority, which I read as stemming from an oppositional system of relating established in the ordering narrative of the oedipal myth. It brings the advantages of a relational approach to feminist and psychoanalytic fields of Bowen and O’Brien criticism. It argues that Bowen and O’Brien politicise the family space to negotiate representations of private and public desire, and it proposes that both of these authors reveal knowledge to be subject to interpretation and modification. This thesis asserts that the perspective of relational psychoanalysis can contribute to Irish cultural studies in terms of advancing a move towards a positive and dynamic “third space”, in which women’s studies and dominant cultural studies enter into each other’s worlds for the mutual observation and acknowledgement of differences in class, race, gender and sexuality. Arguing that Bowen’ s and O’Brien’s representations of psyche and culture promote re-evaluation of the norms governing national and gendered identity in Irish society, this thesis holds relevance for challenging current systems of political thought in Ireland regarding the family, the rights of citizenship, and the liberation of women