Most of Doyle’s texts at least to a large extent deal, deal with experiences previously ignored in Ireland, such as urban working-class realities, unemployment, extra-marital pregnancies, dysfunctional families1. This essay deals with how Doyle’s ‘The Snapper’ challenges traditional stereotypes while perpetuating new ones. Throughout this novel we see Doyle focus strongly on the issue of the pregnancy of an unmarried girl Sharon Rabitte and the effect it has on her working class family in the 1980’s. As this story is followed we do see how Doyle develops each of the characters as they change, not only their personality but challenging their own stereotypes, creating new ones. The main one being Jimmy Sr., father to his pregnant daughter Sharon.…show more content… In the 1980’s an unmarried woman who became pregnant would be shunned out by their family. It was to be seen as an embarrassment and in some cases the pregnancy would not take its full turn. However although there was initial embarrassment as I talked about before with Jimmy Sr.’s reaction, both Veronica and Jimmy Sr. coped with the news very well. Although there is Doyle concentrates very much on Jimmy Sr. and Sharon’s relationship in this novel we still see snippets of how Veronica dealt and reacted to the pregnancy. Veronica takes the pregnancy quite well and is accepting of it. Although she does become not that much involved in the pregnancy. Instead she decides to look after her two younger daughters Linda and Tracey. She tries to teach the girls how becoming pregnant before marriage is a bad thing. This shows that although tradition is being challenged by Doyle there is still a hint of old thoughts on this event in Veronica’s head. This can be seen when this dialogue happens –‘Times have changed, Veronica, he said. I suppose so, said Veronica. But do we have to keep up with them?’ (1998, 49). Veronica still has some of that old stereotypical Irish ideology in comparison to her husband Jimmy Sr. who has completely