Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland : Dissenting Voices? [1 ed.] 9781443806930, 9781847184085

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Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

Edited by

Sarah O’Connor and Christopher C. Shepard

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?, Edited by Sarah O’Connor and Christopher C. Shepard This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2008 by Sarah O’Connor and Christopher C. Shepard and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-408-1, ISBN (13): 9781847184085

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Section I: Women and Social Policy Chapter One............................................................................................... 10 A Dissenting Voice: Jennie Wyse Power, an equal rights advocate in the Irish Free State Donna Maria O’Connor Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 28 Women and Public Housing Policy in Rural Ireland 1942-60 Mary McCarthy Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 51 Gaelic Ireland and the Female Dream: Agnes O’Farrelly’s Cultural Nationalism Ríona Nic Chongail Section II: Marginal and Interstices Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 68 ‘An Snag Breac’: Speckled Voices Speaking from the Margins in Frances Molloy’s No Mate for the Magpie Sarah O’Connor Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 89 In-Between a ‘Svelte Gamine’ and an Andro-Machine: ‘Becoming-Woman’ in the Interstice, in Two Films by Neil Jordan Jenny O’Connor

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Table of Contents

Section III: Private Lives/Public Spaces Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 104 ‘Shocking Revelations’: Private Lives made Public during the course of Infanticide Trials in Ireland 1922-49 Clíona Rattigan Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 124 The Legion of Mary, Unmarried Mothers and the Expansion of the Welfare State in Northern Ireland, 1945-55 Christopher Shepard Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 148 Motherhood as Theory and Experience in the Poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill Caitríona Ní Chléirchín Section IV: Re-defining Gender Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 166 ‘No Measures of Emancipation or Equality will suffice’: Eva Gore-Booth’s radical feminism in the Journal, Urania Sonja Tiernan Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 183 La Belle – Kate O’Brien and Female Beauty Aintxane Legarreta Mentxaka Contributors............................................................................................. 199 Index........................................................................................................ 201

INTRODUCTION

Feminist philosopher, Rosi Braidotti argues that ‘woman’ is not a monolithic essence defined once and for all time, but rather, ‘the site of multiple, complex, and potentially contradictory sets of experiences, defined by overlapping variables such as class, race, age, lifestyle, sexual preference and others’.1 Drawing from a range of disciplines, this book pivots around the central concept of women, social and cultural change in Ireland during the twentieth century. The interdisciplinary, interinstitutional nature of the work gathered here aims to challenge monolithic representations of Irish female identity. The contributors to this volume do so by exposing women’s disparate political, social and cultural backgrounds, highlighting the concept of woman as a ‘site’ of exchange, overlap and variation. This idea of multiple identities is an organising principle of this collection. According to this principle, identity is always fluid and developing, open-ended rather than closed, contradictory rather than consistent. Some of the articles propose that the interstitial, or in-between, space generated by such open-endedness facilitates this process. This does not mean that indeterminacy or aesthetics of mess is favoured for its own sake, but rather the ideological attraction of disorder lies in the space it leaves for oppositional impulses. ‘Dissent is made possible not by entering some fourth dimension beyond ideology, but by recognizing that no ideology is singular or seamless, that there are always voices disputing the dominant view, if only we would hear them’.2 The interstitial space provides the room for these oppositional impulses; it allows us to hear dissident voices that may not be otherwise heard. Sonja Tiernan’s article “No Measures of ‘Emancipation’ or ‘Equality’ Will Suffice”: Eva Gore-Booth’s Revolutionary Feminism in the journal Urania’ examines the journal’s call for an intermediate gender/sex based or ideal feminine and masculine qualities. A group of radical thinkers led by Irish poet, playwright, political activist and philosopher, Eva Gore1

Rosie Braidotti, Nomadic subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory (New York, 1994), p. 4.  2 Susan Fraiman, Unbecoming women: British women writers and the novel of development (New York, 1993), p. xiv.

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Introduction

Booth established the journal Urania. Privately printed and circulated, Urania advocated the elimination of sex/gender, proposing to reform the categories of men and women into one ideal feminine form. This central argument challenged mainstream feminism, medical sexology and the prevailing gender norms. Urania was primarily concerned with deconstructing gender and sexuality, a practice which, though still contentious politically, is an integral part of feminist post-modern thinking. Tiernan details the ways in which Urania directly challenged key assumptions and goals of the first-wave feminist movement, arguing that the existence of the journal challenges our current narrative about the history of feminist activism and theory. Exploring the content of Urania, Tiernan groups it into three main categories. The first category consists of newspaper articles which featured accounts of individuals who behaved in a manner outside socially expected gender norms while in the second group, instances of sex changes, either medical or natural, were reported to highlight that sex is a fluid rather than a fixed state. The third category ran stories of people who lived their lives as a member of the opposite sex. According to Uranian principles, masquerade and the blurring of gender distinctions were viewed as positive social developments. Within these categories heterosexuality was challenged, while same-sex relationships, most specifically female, were presented as an ideal model. Ninety years after the first publication of Urania, issues of masquerade and gender confusion are still an integral part of feminist discourse. It is in this light that Jenny O’Connor explores the nomadic philosophy of becoming in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game and Breakfast on Pluto. According to Deleuze & Guattari, the process of becoming-woman is not related to gender or sexuality in any way. Woman is an ungendered alternative to phallocentric structures. To become-woman then, is to engage in a very real process of undoing, disassembling, rebuilding. Becoming is an unfolding and refolding of identity until that identity is no longer restricted by fixed terms. O’Connor argues that Jordan uses the interstice to re-explore the patriarchy from which he knowingly emanates, critiquing the structures to which he belongs. Using Deleuze and Guattari's notion of becoming in tandem with Rosi Braidotti's notion of nomadism, O’Connor suggests that Jordan presents us with characters who move from a phallocentric, unitary vision of the subject to a pluralist multiplicity that is beyond gender - that is purely and sincerely nomadic. O’Connor examines four characters, Patrick/Patricia (Kitten) Braden and Eileen Bergin in Breakfast on Pluto and Dil and Jude in The Crying Game in this light, arguing that they challenge both gender classifications and the practical application of theories of becoming. 'They are bound to the

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phallus, yet are eminently feminine. They appear to operate within patriarchal structures, yet seem to erode them from the inside. In fact, they exist in those interstices between the centre and the periphery. Jordan's creation of ‘in-betweenness’ opens up a radical space in which nomadic ideas move freely, never settling. This kinetic movement encourages the creation of multiplicities that challenge the constrictive binary systems by which we live. She observes that becoming takes place in this interstitial space which prevents the masculine and the feminine from mutual exclusivity. Rather the constant movement in this alternative space encourages vigorous propinquity and continuous interconnections. Consequently, the characters in Jordan's films are multiple and unitary, many and one, while the cinema he creates is informed by a nomadic philosophy. Defined by its transformative potential, the interstitial space produces a transitional subjectivity which challenges a system in which women and other forms of embodied identity are culturally other-ed or seen as monstrous and according to the logic of such a system become taboo. Caitríona Ní Cléirchín focuses upon issues of motherhood, language and individuation in celebrated writer Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Irishlanguage poetry. Drawing upon the work of Julia Kristeva, Adrienne Rich and Angela Bourke, Ní Cléirchín explores Ní Dhomhnaill’s painful relationship with her mother and her own self. Ní Cléirchín Uses a selection of poems to trace the process of individuation in Ní Dhomhnaill’s work, the lived and embodied experiences of motherhood, pregnancy and miscarriage. In the cultural construction of reality, binary systems suppress ambiguous or interstitial spaces between the opposed categories, so that any overlapping region that may appear becomes impossible according to binary logic, and a region of taboo in social experience. Moreover, such binaries often entail a rather violent hierarchy, in which one term of the opposition is always dominant over the other (eg. man over woman, public over private, power over powerlessness, English over Irish). Ní Cléirchín examines Ní Dhomhnaill’s ability to speak from this area of taboo about painful and sometimes prohibited subjects like miscarriage, the darker side of motherhood while her poem ‘Thar Mo Chionn’, ‘There But For the Grace’, is concerned with teenage pregnancy in Ireland. Ní Dhomhnaill gives a voice to the voiceless, challenging the processes of patriarchy. Sarah O’Connor’s examination of Frances Molloy’s picaresque novel No Mate for the Magpie concentrates on the adolescent female voice in its negotiation of discourses of power prevalent in that society. The novel is written in Northern Hiberno-English, the regional voice. Not only do

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Introduction

Molloy’s characters speak in a non-standard language, with the narrator/protagonist recounting events through Northern Hiberno English, but Molloy writes in the deviant language. A novel written in a nonstandard language challenges the notion that the standard, the ideal is superlative or even desirable, forcing the reader to reassess the ideal as the model. Dialect is an acoustic experience while writing is visual. Writing in dialect ensures that the words appear differently than if they were written in standard English. In No Mate for the Magpie, Molloy’s language enacts the story breaking down the barrier between the spoken and the written creating a sense of the uncanny for the reader. Molloy creates a style which defies a binary view of the world by fusing centre and periphery. Dialect empowers Molloy to speak back against patriarchal and hierarchal institutions in society because O’Connor argues that it operates as a kind of secret code which is inaccessible to outsiders. In this light it can be a powerful weapon or coding device which offers the user a vantage point from which s/he can observe without being observed. Moreover, O’Connor links the use of dialect to gender issues. She offers a critique of Robin Lakoff’s essentialist notion of a woman’s language using William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins, suggesting that the regional voice corresponds to what O’Barr and Atkins term a ‘powerless language’ and is common to both women and men. No Mate for the Magpie is set in wartorn Derry, using the linguistic patterns of the Derry accent rather than standard English so that language becomes a means of enacting the relationship between centre and periphery. Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka’s article is concerned with Kate O’Brien’s 1936 bildungsroman, Mary Lavelle. Mentxaka argues that the character Mary Lavelle is an embodiment of the Irish Free State, as she searches for autonomy and direction, her beauty providing her with the means to achieve indivduation. Mentxaka discusses the concept of beauty under three subheadings: patriarchal beauty, angelic beauty and modern beauty. While other critics interpret the trope of beauty as a perpetuation of the objectified, patriarchal representation of women, Mentxaka offers a radical re-reading of O’Brien’s notion of beauty. Beauty, she argues serves a complex function, allowing O’Brien to dismantle convention. Mary Lavelle is rife with references to angelic beauty which, Mentxaka argues, challenge hetereosexuality and homosexuality as separate categories. Moreover, O’Brien rewrites the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, linking the Mary Lavelle to the most popular literary depiction of homosexuality and reminding the reader that the real ‘sin of Sodom’ was lack of hospitality. Mentxaka highlights the subversive nature of O’Brien’s text which scandalised the Irish censorship board with graphic

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descriptions of sexual encounters and promulgated anarchist and socialist agendas. Often categorized as a Romance novel, Mary Lavelle, defies and that definition. Indeed, Mentxaka suggests that O’Brien created in Mary Lavelle, a cyborg – hybrid of machine and organism. Donna Haraway’s notion of the cyborg challenges feminists to engage in a politics beyond naturalism and essentialisms. Cyborg politics offers an alternative to identity politics, stressing that affinity results from otherness, difference and specificity. Haraway encourages us to shift our thinking of isolated individuals to thinking of people as vertices on networks. In this sense, a kinship can be developed that has nothing to do with Western, patriarchal ideals. Haraway’s ideal ‘cyborg world’ consists of people living together, unafraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines. ‘The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters’.3 Ríona Nic Chongail examines Agnes O’Farrelly’s contribution to Irish language and culture during the state-building years of the early twentieth century. Nic Chongail acknowledges the forward-looking Executive Committee of the Gaelic League who not only appreciated the value of women within their movement, but also offered them a public, socially acceptable platform and encouraged their educational and literary pursuits. Nic Chongail’s article conveys O’Farrelly’s hugely important role in fostering Gaelic cultural activities from the early to mid twentieth century in both Irish and English. O’Farrelly, Nic Chongail explains, has been doubly marginalized because much of her Irish language writings and broadcasts—providing a rich insight into the Revivalists’ vision of Irish Ireland vis-à-vis education, literature, politics and feminism—have been left to gather dust. Nic Chongail brings O’Farrelly’s vision of a meritocratic bilingual Gaelic Ireland, in which women would be afforded the same opportunities as men, back into focus. Despite this idealistic vision of society, women’s contribution to political debate in Ireland remained marginal. There were, of course, notable exceptions. Jennie Wyse Power was an active member of the Irish Free State Seanad in the decades following independence. A strong female voice, Wyse Power made a strong contribution to parliamentary debates on legislation affecting women. However, despite being involved in Irish political life for over half a 3

Donna Haraway, ‘A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialistfeminism in the late twentieth-century’ in Simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature (New York, 1991), pp 149-181, 155.

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Introduction

century, Wyse Power has since disappeared into relative anonymity. Donna Maria O’Connor seeks to revive Wyse Power’s legacy by concentrating on her involvement with five pieces of legislation brought before the Seanad between 1925 and 1935. These were landmark bills, marking the government’s desire to curtail women’s participation in the public sphere by denying them equal rights and responsibilities with men. Jennie Wyse Power agitated for change on their behalf, ensuring that many restrictive and conservative bills were seriously contested and, in some cases, defeated in the Seanad. Wyse Power’s impassioned and sympathetic arguments on behalf of unmarried mothers are also highlighted in O’Connor’s article. Of particular note is Jennie Wyse Power’s role as a member of the 1931 Carrigan Committee. Established to discuss controversial and taboo subjects surrounding sexual crimes and immorality, the report issued by the Carrigan Committee was eventually deemed too sensitive for public debate and its publication was suppressed. This article further contextualises recent discoveries relating to the enforced secrecy which surrounded the subject of female sexuality in twentieth century Ireland. In so doing, O’Connor ensures that the voice of Jennie Wyse Power is amplified and made public, illustrating that women were not simply a mute, disempowered and vulnerable majority within Irish society. While the majority of women were marginalised from the realm of high politics, many arguably found comfort in the virtues of home and family life. Yet, despite being recognised by both the church and state as central to the home, women were not formally involved in the creation of housing policy. This disconnectedness between male elites and the average housewife forms the basis of Mary McCarthy’s chapter on women and housing policy in Ireland. In doing so McCarthy reveals how government policy, informed by the ‘technical’ approach of male architects, failed to meet the needs of ‘ordinary’ women. McCarthy supports her argument by using architectural drawings of houses designed by both men and women. Unsurprisingly, the designs of male architects were favoured almost exclusively to those of women. Instead, Irish women were charged with the task of brightening these homes with their presence and by the tasks they performed within them. However, despite the bias against them a number of women, aided by organisations such as the Irish Countrywomen’s Association, were able to express their views. Competitions such as the Country Workers Ltd. rural design competition featured in the building industry periodical, the Irish Builder and Engineer. Although rare, these events allowed women to demonstrate their ability to produce plans which were logical, well thought

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out and labour-saving for the woman of the house. In addition to design competitions, McCarthy demonstrates that women were able to contribute, albeit in a limited manner, to the formulation of housing policy during the post-World War Two period. The state of Irish homes was also of moral importance. According to contemporaries, cramped living conditions and a lack of privacy were all factors which contributed to illicit sexual encounters and incest. In her article on women and infanticide in the Irish Free State, Clíona Rattigan’s makes innovative use, records of infanticide trials involving single women in the Irish Free State, 1922-1949. These sources make the history of Irish sexuality during the time under discussion dramatically explicit. Using a series of case studies, Rattigan investigates the degree to which the testimony of unmarried mothers was controlled and influenced by investigators, prosecutors, members of the public. Rattigan exposes and overturns the debilitating stereotype pedalled by contemporary discourses which labelled the unmarried mother as a passive victim who had been seduced or led astray, the innocent giddy girl, the clever blackguard, or the immoral offender. The reality, she suggests, was far more complex. Unmarried motherhood, like the experiences of women themselves, remains a complex and variegated subject matter. Women have been, and continue to be, both the sources and objects of charity. In his chapter on the Legion of Mary and unmarried motherhood in Northern Ireland, Christopher Shepard examines the efforts of women activists in the Legion of Mary to organise and operate a hostel for Catholic women who became pregnant out of wedlock. Based in Belfast, the Mater Dei Hostel was operated by the Mater Dei Praesidium of the Legion of Mary. As an institution it was unique in that it was the only voluntary and lay-run hostel in Ireland which was dedicated solely to serving the needs of Catholic unmarried mothers. By utilising new archival material made available by the Legion of Mary, Shepard is able to demonstrate how Catholic lay women were engage in social voluntary work that, once the reserve of women religious and the Magdalen Asylum, was increasingly impinged upon by the post-war welfare state. Shepard’s chapter reveals the complex interactions between women activists, unwed mothers and the expanding welfare state in Northern Ireland during years following the Second World War. The essays contained in this volume are meant to highlight a range of new and exciting research taking place in Ireland on issues relating to gender. The research in this book emanates from a series of conferences held at the University of Limerick, University College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast which centred on the theme: ‘Women in Modern Irish

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Introduction

Culture in Twentieth Century Ireland’. The editors wish to acknowledge the support of the Government of Ireland Higher Education Authority’s North/South Programme for Collaborative Research, and the above mentioned institutions. Finally, we hope that this book will be a valuable contribution to the literary, theoretical, historical and social study of women. Its essays are diverse and interdisciplinary, and as such, we feel that they further add to our understanding of the complex nature of gender interactions on the island.

SECTION I: WOMEN AND SOCIAL POLICY

CHAPTER ONE A DISSENTING VOICE: JENNIE WYSE POWER, AN EQUAL RIGHTS ADVOCATE IN THE IRISH FREE STATE DONNA MARIA O’CONNOR

Jennie Wyse Power, as one the many women whom Irish history has forgotten, was involved in Irish political life for a period of over 50 years from her participation in the Land War of the 1880s, to her years as a Free State Senator. A member of the Gaelic League and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, Wyse Power was involved in the Gaelic revival and was one of the founders of Ring Irish College in Waterford. In addition to these affiliations, she had a life long commitment to tackling depravation and served nine years on the Board of Guardians of the North Dublin Poor Law Union. Although she was also a leading figure in the women’s suffrage movement, her most significant contribution to Irish political life was to nationalist politics. She was an inaugural member of Sinn Féin and prior to 1921 held the positions of vice president, honorary treasurer and honorary secretary at various periods. She was unanimously elected as the first president of Cumann na mBan and held this position until 1917. While these achievements are important, it is her involvement in the Free State Seanad that is the focus of this paper. The paper aims to explore the contribution made by Wyse Power to parliamentary debates on bills relating to women’s position in Irish society. As a member of the Seanad, Wyse Power was without doubt the only woman, in either house of parliament, who consistently fought on behalf of women’s rights. Her contribution ensured that many of the restrictive and highly conservative bills brought before the Seanad were defeated. Following the deaths of Griffith and Collins, the Irish Free State government began to establish the institutions necessary for stable government. The new government was to be made up of two houses of

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

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parliament1, the Dáil and the Seanad. Members of the Dáil were to be elected by the people while 30 members of the Seanad were to be appointed by the government and 30 more appointed by the Dáil in a system of proportional representation.2 The Seanad was established for the purpose of representing minority groups, pro-treaty and unionist opinion in Ireland. Jennie Wyse Power was appointed to the first Seanad as the President of the Executive Council’s nominee in 1922. At the time of her entry to the Seanad she was a member of the Cumann na nGaedheal party3, thus representing the pro-treaty side. Although Wyse Power was appointed to the Seanad by the President of the Executive Council, the election process was later amended significantly, and by 1928 senators were elected by the Dáil and Seanad. As a member of the Seanad, however, Wyse Power had to take the oath of allegiance, something she fought staunchly against throughout her life. Her eagerness to be a part of the new Irish government and to represent Irish women in particular, can be the only reason that she accepted this stipulation. Along with Wyse Power, 3 other women were appointed to the first Seanad; Eileen Costello, who was a member of the Gaelic League and a Fine Gael candidate; Ellen Desart, Countess Dowager, a Jewish unionist and anti-women suffragist; and finally Alice Stopford Green the noted historian and Anglo-Irish Protestant. Of these only Costello spoke to any notable extent in the Seanad. In 1928 Kathleen Browne, a nationalist and member of the Blueshirts and Kathleen Clarke, prominent Sinn Féin member and widow of Thomas Clarke, signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, were appointed to the Seanad. Alice Stopford Green died in 1929 and Ellen Desart in 1933. All of the other women remained members until the end of Jennie Wyse Power’s term in 1936. In her time as a Senator of the Irish Free State, it could not be said that Wyse Power contributed to debates on every bill that came before the house but she was absolutely consistent in arguing her case on bills that related to certain issues. These issues were the poor law and poverty in general and the rights of women and children. Through legislation, the leaders of the fledgling Irish Free State continuously aimed at curtailing and deducting from the rights of Irish women. To women, like Wyse Power, who had fought alongside them in the long struggle to achieve selfgovernment, this was a massive betrayal. This betrayal is tangible in the

1

The houses of parliament were to be officially known as the Oireachtas. León Ó Broin, Protestant nationalists in revolutionary Ireland: the Stopford connection (Dublin, 1985), pp 192-3. 3 She later sat as both a Fianna Fáil candidate and again as an Independent. 2

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Chapter One

arguments of Wyse Power and her determination to provide a voice for women is continuously evident. This paper will focus on five pieces of legislation that came before parliament, during Wyse Power’s time as a Senator. These bills are perhaps some of the most controversial of their time but they also give a good overview of Wyse Power’s contribution to and influence in the Seanad. These bills are perhaps also indicative of the ideals of the Free State government in relation to women’s place in society and their gradual construction of a new and more restrictive role for women. The Civil Service Regulation (Amendment) Bill, introduced by Minister Ernest Blythe in November 1925, provides the first example of Wyse Power’s contribution to debates on equal-rights legislation. The introduction of the bill was a direct response to a problem the government had encountered in August of the previous year, when they advertised competitive examinations for civil service posts to male candidates only. A potential female candidate challenged this, threatened legal action and eventually when the government conceded that their actions were indeed unconstitutional, the examinations were opened to women also. Within a year the government had drawn up legislation to prevent this from happening again. This legislation, if passed, would allow the Civil Service commissioners to confine examinations to one sex or another or even to dispense with examinations for certain jobs if they saw fit. In both houses of parliament, the minister’s arguments in favour of the legislation centred around two main points. Firstly, he argued that there existed a staffing problem in many departments. This problem would not be solved by employing women because: ‘it is a recognised fact that there is a greater wastage amongst the women staff than amongst the men. Considerable numbers of women leave, for instance, to get married…’.4 Therefore the government aimed to solve their staffing crises by employing men only and later, when full staffing had been achieved, they would re-open competitive examinations to women. The minister’s other argument in favour of this legislation was that certain jobs were considered unsuitable for women and likewise others unsuitable for men. The government wanted to give the Civil Service commissioners the power to prevent either sex applying for certain jobs – of course this was aimed primarily at women. The minister argued that if this legislation was not introduced the door would be open for men to apply for positions as typists or telephonists and women to apply for jobs in Customs and Excise, the army, the police or post office sorters. The reaction in the Dáil 4

Dáil Éireann debates, 18 November 1925.

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was varied, many argued that the legislation was retrogressive (women had been given equal citizenship in the 1922 Constitution), while others argued that the minister was bringing in legislation which would encourage ‘jobbery’. However, the only woman TD in the Dáil, Margaret Collins O’Driscoll, sister of Michael Collins, was one of those who spoke in favour of the bill. Although she had been canvassed by ‘very influential members of her sex’ to vote against the bill, O’Driscoll stated ‘I cannot see that it infringes our rights under the constitution in any respect’, adding that ‘the more I study this bill the more I see that I would be injuring my sex by voting against it’. The bill was passed in the Dáil on 11 December.5 In the Seanad, however, proceedings went somewhat differently. Of the four female members of the Seanad, two were not to enter the debate, (one of these being Countess Dowager, Ellen Desart, a well known antisuffragist who famously commented ‘women cannot have it both ways’), the third female member, Eileen Costello commented briefly against the bill but it was Jennie Wyse Power who spoke at length against the bill, arguing against every point Minister Blythe made in favour of its enforcement. The minister’s argument that men were unsuitable for positions as typists and telephonists was met with comments from Wyse Power that these were the lowest paid grades, implying that these posts were not considered good enough for men to hold. A huge amount of debate centred on the question of whether women were fit for certain jobs. Arguing that the post of Civic Guard was unsuitable for women, one Senator commented: ‘I was hoping that the extra delicacy of Irishwomen would be a deterrent’, before adding that ‘one could look at the matter from the point of view of the aesthetic consideration of their feet preventing them from taking up the post’. Wyse Power agreed that some jobs were physically unsuitable for women but argued that this should be approached with common sense, rather than legislation. Wyse Power stated: ‘I do not think that women want to do things that they are physically unfit for, and I think men would have the same view’. 6 She did, however, disagree that women were unsuitable for the position of Civic Guards, and argued that the small number of women employed by the police in Ireland had been a great success. She believed that the reason why women were not allowed to become police was due to the prejudice against them; a prejudice which legislators sought to maintain. Wyse Power claimed that it was hypocritical of men in 5 6

Dáil Éireann debates, 18 November 1925. Ibid., 11 December 1925.

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Chapter One

government to state outright that women were not physically fit for the army or the police when; and I say, with all respect to the present Executive Council, that many of them were not suitable either for the police or the army, but they aspired to administrative power, and they have more or less justified themselves in that. But there is no use in saying to women: “You are not fit for the army and the police,” while they themselves may not be either. I think it fits both ways.7

In making her point, Wyse Power struck a swift and fitting blow to the egos of her male colleagues. She argued that the proposed legislation would enable the government to keep women out of the higher ranks of the civil service, questioning the minister on how many women held positions at the various levels. She stated that of the current junior executive posts in the civil service, 451 were men and four were women, and that two of these women were appointed with the help of the Irish Women Citizen’s and Local Government Association. She lamented the fact that this legislation was drawn up by a male Executive Council and a nearly all male Dáil without consulting women. In an inspiring speech she argued that if this kind if discrimination was to be carried out, it should never be done by a government which had relied upon women during the struggle for independence. No men in a fight for freedom ever had such loyal co-operation from their women as the men who compose the present Executive Council. When they wanted messengers to go into dangerous places they did not call on members of their own sex. When they wanted auditors to go out when the old Local Government Board broke down it was women they sent. It was women inspectors that went round through all the Unions and did all the work for them in that terrible time when the whole British organisation practically ceased to operate, and these are the people who tell us that we are physically unfit. I regret that this has come from the men who were associated in the fight with women who played the part at a time when sex and money were not considerations.8

There can be no doubt that this and many of the other arguments put forward by Jennie Wyse Power had an influence on the voting in the Seanad that day. The bill was defeated by 20 votes to 9. However, this was a bittersweet victory for Irish women. The bill was eventually passed in 7 8

Dáil Éireann debates, 11 December 1925. Seanad Éireann debates, 17 December 1925.

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the Dáil, ensuring that its defeat in the Seanad only served to delay it for 12 months. Its course in the Dáil may have been doomed from the start. Women’s equal rights organisations seemed aware that their greatest battle was in the Dáil. The Irish Women Citizens and Local Government Association sent circulars to all members of the Dáil urging them to reject the legislation and the National Union of Women Graduates lobbied the TDs. There was also a publicity drive by women’s equal-rights groups, with letters appearing in all the major newspapers urging the public not to support the bill and ridiculing the government and minister Blythe alike. One letter penned by the Irish Women Citizen’s and Local Government Association pointed out that although in Free State competitive examinations Irish nationality is a necessary pre-requisite, in those cases where appointments may be made without examination, aliens may be appointed. Therefore, they argued, that the same government that is empowered to employ aliens, is now anxious to prevent the employment of Free State women citizens.9 However, the actions of equal-rights advocates were to no avail. The absence of a respected speaker prepared to put forward a strong case against the bill no doubt had a huge influence on its failure to be defeated. It is likely that it also would have been accepted in the Seanad, had Wyse Power not influenced so many of her colleagues to vote against it. However, her victory in the Seanad was a bittersweet one, resulting only in its delayed enactment. Therefore, although the Seanad had won the battle in rejecting the bill, the Dáil had won the war in ensuring that the legislation would come into force 12 months later.10 In 1935 yet another bill was introduced by the Free State government to curtail the rights of Irish women. The Conditions of Employment bill was the government’s attempt at improving working conditions and did, in general, contain positive and forward moving provisions. However, section 16 of the bill, would allow the government to completely prohibit the employment of women in certain industries and to fix a proportion of women allowed in others. As well as being a staggering attempt at curtailing the rights of women, the bill was seen by many as a lazy, quick fix to the problem of male unemployment. As a result, women’s organisations banded together to fight against the bill. At a meeting of the Irish Women’s Workers Union, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington protested that ‘Mr Lemass’s attitude was that of a fascist dictator’, while other members

9

Irish Times, 24 November 1925. Seanad Éireann debates, 17 December 1925.

10

16

Chapter One

of the union argued that women were driven into industry by economic necessity rather than choice.11 In the Seanad, Jennie Wyse Power reiterated the arguments put forward by women activists. She argued that section 16 was aimed at ‘the daughters of the very poorest class of the community’ and these girls were driven to work out of sheer economic need and not for their own benefit. She attacked the common misconception that women who work do so in order to buy themselves ‘treats’ such as nice hats and shoes or cigarettes and alcohol; There is one thing in connection with the earnings of girls. I think we may be sure—in fact we can guarantee—that what they earn goes directly into the home. They do not drink it or play “house” with it—they bring it 12 home. It is to that very poor class this section will apply.

The opinion that women’s earnings were secondary to men’s was a European wide phenomenon. According to Richard Evans, contemporary women’s earnings were assumed to be superfluous housekeeping money, rather than a main income, even in cases where the man of the house was unemployed.13 Addressing the restriction of women’s employment in certain areas of industry, Wyse Power again argued that women must carry out heavy duty industrial work due to economic necessity. In the following statement she also hinted at the naivety of the minister in these matters: Restrictions are now before us in the matter of females, or women, in the matter of industry, and, during the course of the debate, I think it was the Minister who said that he saw a woman actually stoking a boiler. That was a terrible thing, but it did not seem to shock either the captains of industry or the chivalrous labour leaders into finding her a post more kindly than that of stocking boilers. I presume she still stokes a boiler. Why does she? Because she is physically fit and because it is a sheer necessity and because she takes lower money than a boiler man would get. But there she is, sticking it still. If she had been relieved, we should have heard about it. But she will remain there until Section 15 (a) is enforced, prohibiting the employment of female workers to do such forms of industrial work.14

11

Margaret Ward (ed.), In their own voice, women and Irish nationalism (Cork, 1995), p. 183. 12 Seanad Éireann debates, 11 December 1935. 13 Richard J. Evans, Comrades and sisters: feminism, socialism and pacifism in Europe 1870-1945, (New York, 1987), p. 2. 14 Seanad Éireann debates, 27 November 1935.

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

17

Wyse Power also criticized colleagues who believed that a woman’s place is in the home. For example, when a fellow senator stated that women over 25 years of age should be married and in the home, Wyse Power cynically asked him ‘where are the homes?’, pointing out that, although the home is a fine place for women, men are unable to financially support their women or their homes. Quashing the idealism of another senator, Wyse Power stated: The Senator who spoke held forth about the glories of the home and said the home was the place for women. Well, I hope he will set up a bureau to supply women with husbands and homes. That is his place.

For a woman like Wyse Power, who had spent nine years as a poor law guardian and was at this time a poor law commissioner, the realities of working class life in Ireland were all too vivid to allow these expressions of the ideal Irish woman to go unchallenged. Her arguments against this bill, though powerful were somewhat tinged with hopelessness. She recalled the Civil Service Regulation Bill, saying that it was regrettable that the government had followed the last in pursuing a policy of restricting women’s rights in the workplace. She expressed her lack of faith in her male contemporaries and the disappointment felt by Irish women towards the men they fought alongside to win independence. Looking back on the period immediately following the 1916 Rising she reflected: These young girls kept constantly assuring me: “When our own men are in power, we shall have equal rights.” They believed that. It may have been due to their lack of experience, but it was part of their faith. I do not know how they feel now…I am not like the little girls after the Rebellion; I have not complete faith.15

One can almost sense that she already knew what the outcome of this bill would be. Her hopelessness can certainly be attributed to her years of fighting against the sexist and retrogressive legislation which she probably never would have expected from men whom she had worked with for so many years. However, despite this perceived hopelessness she continued to argue against the bill, her final piece of advice to the minister being: I want to tell a story that kept Dublin laughing 50 years ago, though I do not remember the incident myself. The Rathmines bus, with a full cargo of passengers, fell into the lock at Portobello Harbour. The excitement was

15

Seanad Éireann debates, 27 November 1935.

18

Chapter One great. The people on the banks cried out “Save the women in the bus.” The lockman let the water into the lock and gradually the horses began to go down. The busman, in his anguish and anxiety for his employer's property, called out “Damn the women, boys, save the mare!” That story kept Dublin rocking with laughter many years after the tragic incident…I hope that when these consultations between the Minister, the employers and the 16 industrial workers take place the busman's slogan will be forgotten.

However, despite her convincing arguments and those of fellow Senator Kathleen Clarke, Wyse Power’s effort was in vain. Her arguments and those of equal rights feminists throughout Ireland were dismissed by Minister Sean Lemass as being largely misrepresentative of Irish women and unfortunately this was enough excuse for the members of both houses to accept article 16 of the bill.17 The passing of this bill was no doubt one of the darkest days for equal rights in the Irish state. The enormity of it resulted, according to Professor Mary Hayden, in the Free State being placed on a black list by the International Labour Organisation in Geneva. Jennie Wyse Power’s fight for the citizenship rights of Irish women is documented on numerous occasions in the Seanad but it is perhaps the Juries Bill of 1928 which is the most notorious of these bills. The Juries Bill was the second of two pieces of retrogressive legislation which gradually succeeded in almost completely taking away the right of Irish women to sit on juries. Irish women had been given the right to sit on juries under the 1919 Sex Disqualification Act (UK) and subsequently granted equal status under article 3 of the 1922 Free State Constitution. In 1924, the government enacted legislation which enabled Irish women to be exempted from jury service on request, solely on the basis of sex. By 1927, the government argued that the exclusion of women altogether from juries would save them, both financially and in administration time, due to the number of women called for jury service who applied for exemptions. Contemporary women’s organisations, however, declared that the introduction of this bill had more to do with the state’s aims of curtailing the role of women in the public sphere than with cost cutting. While equal-rights feminists were writing to newspapers, organising protests and generally rallying the troops, the Minister for Justice, Kevin O’Higgins, was pitching his case in the Dáil and Seanad. To say that he was not a friend of the feminist is a gross understatement. This view of women is a classic example of what we have now come to recognise as de Valera’s ideal of womanhood. His repetitive argument in favour of the bill 16 17

Seanad Éireann debates, 27 November 1935. Ibid., 14 January 1936.

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

19

was that the majority of women did not want to serve on juries, stating that to 85-90% of them found it distasteful.18 Jennie Wyse Power bluntly contradicted this and stated that many men did not particularly want to serve on juries either. She mentioned the frequency in which men in Dublin and the suburbs took houses in their wives names in order to avoid jury service and pointed out that: ‘both men and women will come forward ready to do their duty but you will also find both men and women no so disposed’.19 O’Higgins continuously referred to ‘women’s organisations in Dublin’, who were supposed to represent the women of Ireland but in his opinion forced their ideals of equality onto women who did not want it. He referred to the ‘advanced propagandist women’, no doubt making a personal jibe at Wyse Power, stating that although ‘the Government refuses to dragoon their unwilling sisters into jury service’, these women themselves have no grievance about it. His argument focuses on the opinion that those women who are ‘carrying out the normal functions of womanhood in the State’s economy’ do not wish to be taken away from their homes to serve on juries. The minister speaks of expectant mothers, women with the care of young children and those with the charge of households as examples of those who fit into his definition of the ‘normal’ Irish woman. He states that the position of the normal male citizen eligible for jury service is essentially different from the position of the woman citizen, asserting that: A man can be absent for a day, or a couple of days, from his household, as a rule, without any serious consequences accruing to anybody. He can lunch out, and it does not follow that the other members of his household have to do without their lunch. 20

However, as much as the minister must have infuriated Wyse Power and equal-rights activists with his statements, there was one more which took the proverbial biscuit. Believing that this legislation was, in his opinion, what most Irish women wanted, O’Higgins claimed, in what must have qualified as the most ironic statement of the day: ‘I am really the champion of women in the State but I never expect to get any gratitude for that’.21 O’Higgins, it appears, wanted to go down in history as the man

18

Seanad Éireann debates, 30 March 1927. Ibid., 8 April 1927. 20 Ibid., 23 February 1927. 21 Seanad Éireann debates, 30 March 1927. 19

20

Chapter One

who took away Irish women’s civil rights and at the same time be thanked by Irish women for doing so! Wyse Power, in her usual style, did not resort to the sweeping claims and assertions of the minister but rather assessed the bill from a long term perspective. She speculated that ‘if this bill becomes law the civic spirit that is developing in women will be arrested’. She stated that preventing women from serving on juries ‘cuts at the very root of this development’. 22 She recognised that much of this development is due to the fact that the men who led political movements in the past 50 years ‘utilised’ women in order to achieve their political aims. She stated that these women were thrust out to do work they had never done before and gradually came into public life. She ‘deplores the minister’s attitude in this matter’ because he was ‘doing an injustice to what really is a necessary asset to every state, the co-operation of its men and women’.23 Again on this occasion, as on so many others during her time in the Seanad, she mentioned the way that Irish men (mis)treated their female contemporaries in the national movement, on this occasion she refers to their ‘utilisation’ of women. One of the proposed amendments to the Juries Bill, which would eventually be included in the final draft, was to allow a voluntary panel of women jurors to be drawn up. This would allow women who wished to serve on juries, to come forward and put their names on a list, from which they may be selected for jury service. Jennie Wyse Power did not accept that the establishment of this voluntary panel was an adequate substitute for the current system, which automatically gave women the right to sit on juries. She stated that the voluntary panel would place women in the most insidious position as jurors that they could possibly be placed in. She goes on to say that should a woman who has put her name on the panel ever require an exemption from jury duty, it would be a most difficult situation. Wyse Power went on to argue that women jurors were a necessity in cases where a woman is on trial. She backed this up by stating that all of those who have given consideration to cases where women were in the dock have come to the conclusion that a proportion of women should be on the jury in such cases. Many other members of the Seanad argued it was women’s duty to perform jury service - they have been given full citizenship and therefore should perform all of the duties of citizenship. Senator Eileen Costello was the other female member of the Seanad who spoke out against the bill. Her opinion was that women had a duty to fulfil as Irish citizens; 22 23

Seanad Éireann debates, 30 March 1927. Ibid.

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

21

I think if women are to take their part as citizens, these duties should be put upon them and enforced, because that is the only way they can be 24 educated into good citizenship.

Many other senators presented similar arguments, with some adding that if women were obliged to pay taxes, they should be obliged to carry out the same duties of citizenship as men. A widespread campaign was carried out by women’s groups throughout Ireland. As a result, letters appeared in national newspapers daily, urging the public and members of the Dáil and Seanad to reject the proposed legislation. Rosamund Jacob wrote to the Irish Times protesting that the legislation infringed on the rights given to Irish women under the constitution and added: It is unjust to male jurors to prevent women from taking their share of the duty, and pre-eminently unjust to women under trial, who are thus denied the right to be tried by their peers…..The whole thing, including the delight of the press over the proposed change, is of great psychological interest as a manifestation of the fear of women that lies so deep in the 25 average masculine mind.

In addition to letters to newspapers, women’s organisations organised protests and issued statements against the bill, such as this extract from a resolution of the Irish Women Worker’s Union: as men and women are alike liable to stand in the dock as offenders against the law, it is just and right that the question of their guilt should be submitted to juries consisting of both men and women; and that, as in the case of families, judicious treatment of sons and daughters demands the combined wisdom of the mother and father, so in the case of offenders against the law, justice and mercy can be assured only through the combined wisdom of men and women jurors.26

However, despite the arguments of Wyse Power, likeminded politicians and women’s organisations, the bill was passed in both the Seanad and the Dáil. One small provision was included, aimed at keeping the ‘advanced propagandist women’ quiet, which allowed women to voluntarily put their names on a panel, from which they may be selected for jury service.

24

Seanad Éireann debates, 8 April 1927. Irish Times, 16 February 1927. 26 Ibid., 28 February 1927. 25

22

Chapter One

During her time as a Senator, Jennie Wyse Power was also a consistent supporter of the rights of women (and children) in social and so-called private matters. Her interest in and support for the wellbeing of unmarried mothers was roused with the introduction of the 1929 Illegitimate Children (Affiliation Orders) Bill. The bill’s intention was to make the father of a so-called illegitimate child responsible for the maintenance of that child in as far as possible. She pointed out that the bill is ‘the most welcome one that has been received in this house and that the minister will receive congratulations on having introduced it’.27 She stated that it has been long delayed and has been under consideration practically since the government came into existence. She also commented that women’s organisations and religious groups had been campaigning for five years to have legislation of this kind introduced and Wyse Power acknowledged their efforts also. However, it is her impassioned arguments for the ‘in camera’ clause that stand out in the debates on this bill. Wyse Power argues that when a woman goes to court to seek maintenance for her child, it should be done in an ‘in camera’ setting – in other words in a private court case where members of the public are not present. As Wyse Power describes it herself; The whole feeling underlying this hearing ‘in camera’ is that a girl would be induced to give her evidence in open court without people looking and gaping at her.28

Many Senators agreed that court cases such as these often attract large public crowds who gather at the court to revel in the predicament of the unfortunate girl. Senator Kathleen Browne stated that most girls: would rather die than face a public court, where they would be held up to the contempt of all the loafers and idlers who would go to the court to 29 gloat over their misery.

Wyse Power had in her possession documentary evidence from several religious institutions that dealt with unmarried mothers, all of which concluded that the majority of mothers would seek maintenance for their child if they could give evidence in camera. Acknowledging the fear that many young women in this situation would feel towards legal proceedings she argues that ‘when the mother is young and friendless, the district justice should have the power to arrange for a suitable woman to 27

Seanad Éireann debates, 19 March 1930. Ibid., 7 May 1930. 29 Ibid., 19 March 1930. 28

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

23

accompany her to court and remain with her while she gives evidence’. Wyse Power also noted that from her own experience of dealing with social workers, it is very difficult to get girls to go into court at all and so she believes that this bill should include as many provisions as possible to make the process easy for the young mother. Another argument put forward by Wyse Power, connected to the ‘in camera’ clause, was that the press should not be allowed into court during the case. She stated that a girl should be able to speak in court knowing that her evidence would not appear in the local paper. She also believed that this advantage should also be given to the man involved in the case, stating that senators should think of both sides of the question. She reminded senators of Abraham Lincoln’s phrase that ‘there never was a woman went astray but there was a man to help her’, although she did point out that she believed that the man was the greater sinner in these situations.30 Her empathy for these young women was, however, certainly not universally felt in the Senate. Many of her male colleagues argued against the in camera clause arguing that it would enable blackmailing of innocent young men, a fear that appears to have been rampant in contemporary Ireland. Minister Fitzgerald-Kenney was against the provision of in camera cases, stating that in his experience of working in county courts, he never came across a single example of a girl who was deterred from going to court for fear of publicity: What is the argument against having these case heard in public? Is it that these girls are shy, or that they fear that they will lose their reputation? No. 31 The girl’s reputation is gone.

Other senators argued that women who had been involved with several men would use this clause not to gain maintenance from the father of their child, but from the wealthiest man that she had been involved with. As was pointed out by a male senator: We should provide for the number of young women – possibly a small number – who have suffered, perhaps through their own fault, from having relations with more than one man. I think we all know that there have been cases where the man who has been selected to be made the putative father is generally a man who is mostly likely to be able to pay the largest

30 31

Seanad Éireann debates, 7 May 1930. Ibid., 19 March 1930.

Chapter One

24 affiliation amount.32

The Minister for Justice pointed out that all girls were not virtuous, men were not always responsible when girls fall and that there were a considerable number of immoral women in the world. When speaking in relation to possible blackmailing, the minister displayed his blatant biases: I do not say that would happen in the case of a respectable woman whose daughter fell by accident. There are, however, certain classes of people and illegitimacy seems to be almost hereditary with them. The mothers are illegitimate. In my opinion an illegitimate mother who has got an illegitimate daughter, would be just the very type of person who would urge that daughter to bring a charge of that kind.

However, Jennie Wyse Power, using her years of experience in the poor law system, cut the minister down to size by responding that: It is probable that the members of the Dáil and the members of this house have had more experience outside the courts in dealing with the people who will come under this bill than the minister has had. The minister’s experience of them is confined to the courts. People in organisations outside, as well as members of the Dáil and the Seanad, hold different views to those expressed by the minister on the matter of having these cases heard in camera.33

Although there were a few amendments included in the bill which Wyse Power disagreed with, she achieved her goal and the Seanad voted to include the in camera clause in the bill. Her suggestion that the mother or another female friend of the girl seeking the affiliation be allowed to accompany her, was also adopted into the bill. These were significant achievements considering the minister for Justice himself was against the inclusion of the in camera clause and also considering the highly conservative mentality displayed by many male members of the Seanad. In one of very few examples of socially progressive legislation in the Free State, the bill was passed in the Seanad, also in the Dáil and finally enacted in 1930.34 Wyse Power’s involvement in legislation relating to social issues came to the fore once again with the introduction of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill in 1934. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill was yet 32

See the contribution of Senator McGillicuddy of the Reeks, Seanad Éireann debates, 19 March 1930. 33 Ibid., 19 March 1930. 34 Ibid., 7 May 1930.

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

25

another intervention by the State into the sexual morality of its citizens. However, the roots of this bill lay far earlier than 1934. The Cosgrave government began the trend of introducing legislation relating to the sexual behaviour of its citizens with the 1929 Censorship of Publications Act, which prohibited the distribution of literature or advertisements regarding contraceptives. In the same year, Patrick Little T.D. attempted to introduce amendments to the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, however, he withdrew his bill on the condition that the government would establish a committee to investigate the issues that his bill encompassed, primarily sexual crime and morality in Ireland. This committee, after some changes, was established in 1930 and was to be known as the Carrigan committee. William Carrigan, the committee’s namesake, was a retired Senior Crown Prosecutor of the Central Criminal Court in Dublin.35 Perhaps not surprisingly, given her career history, Jennie Wyse Power was one of those appointed to the committee (although she was appointed in her capacity as a poor law commissioner and not as a senator). Her very appointment to this committee speaks volumes about her standing in Irish society at the time. It also reiterates her ability to discuss issues which would have been seen as extremely controversial at the time, not to mention the unpleasant topics of sexual abuse and juvenile prostitution. As well as Wyse Power, who was representing the poor law commission and Carrigan, who was representing the legal profession, the other members of the committee were two members of the clergy, H.B. Kennedy, Dean of Christchurch Dublin and John Hannon S.J. It also included two medical professionals, Miss V. O’Carroll, Matron of the Coombe Hospital and Surgeon Francis J Morrin. The Carrigan committee met for over a year to hear the testimonies of witnesses, who included probation officers, social workers, clergymen, members of charitable organisations, school teachers, district justices and members of the Irish Women Citizen’s and Local Government Association, amongst others. The witnesses gave their experiences of, and opinions on, issues ranging from prostitution and statutory rape to dance halls and ‘improper conduct in motor cars’. The opinions of the witnesses were quite similar, with most believing that immorality was rife in Ireland. They also almost all stated that the ‘fall’ of young girls was due to ignorance and lack of education, although only one out of all of the witnesses advocated the educating of young men and women in sexual matters. The majority of witnesses also considered that dance halls were responsible for the fall in morality of young Irish men 35

Mark Finnane, ‘The Carrigan Committee of 1930-31 and the ‘moral condition of the Saorstat” in Irish Historical Studies, vol. XXXII, no. 128, (November 2001), pp 519-536.

26

Chapter One

and women. The following extract, taken from the witness statement of Fr Denis Gildea of Achonry, illustrates this point. Irish Dances are very seldom danced in the rural dance hall. The usual dances being foreign ones of a very disgusting salacious type. The witness had seen in Ireland dances of a kind that he had never seen in Argentina or the USA. These dances excited the sexual natures of the young dancers, 36 mostly boys and girls of between 15 and 20 years.

The final report of the Carrigan committee, including recommendations on all areas of sexuality, was referred to a committee which would in turn advise the government on drafting legislation. When the Criminal Law Amendment bill was finally introduced in 1934, Wyse Power expressed her satisfaction that it had come before parliament, stating that it was welcomed as a measure to protect women and children. However, she did not wish for it to be discussed before the Seanad. Like many of the other senators, she believed that the subject matter was too delicate to be discussed in a public arena and requested that the matter be referred to a committee, who would in turn report back to the Seanad with its findings. In the Dáil, a similar committee had been established to consider the bill. However, according to Wyse Power, the Dáil had made a crucial mistake in not appointing women members on this committee.37 Yet again, it appeared that the Dáil lacked female representation in discussing legislation, while the Seanad, conversely, appointed 3 women including Wyse Power to the committee.38 The bill itself was based on the recommendations of the Carrigan committee, or at least those recommendations that were accepted by a Dáil committee in the interim. Many of the suggestions of the Carrigan committee were watered down by the Dáil committee so that for example while the Carrigan report recommended the age of consent be raised from 16 to 18 years, the eventual bill proposed it be raised only to 17. Other sections of the bill included the recommendation that the age at which statutory rape is considered a felony should be lowered from 15 to 13 and that the penalties for this crime be increased. The bill also aimed to amend laws on solicitation, giving police the power to issue search warrants for brothels and to deal with so-called ‘improper conduct in public places’.

36

Criminal Law Amendment Committee minute book, June 1930-August 1931, NAI, JUS/90/4/1-13. 37 Seanad Éireann debates, 12 December 1934. 38 Ibid., 16 January 1935.

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices?

27

On the presentation of the reports of their respective committees, the Criminal Law Amendment Bill was passed in both the Dáil and Seanad with virtually no amendments. On this occasion, it clearly cannot be argued that the arguments of Jennie Wyse Power had any influence on the voting of her fellow Senators. This is of course because there was no debate. This subject was seen as so sensitive that not only was there no public debate but also the reports of the Carrigan, the Dáil or the Seanad committees were never allowed to be published. Although, Wyse Power cannot be attributed with persuasive debate in this case, her influence on the formation of this bill cannot be denied. As the only member of parliament to be a member of the Carrigan Committee she was instrumental in the formation of its report and subsequently was a member of the Seanad committee who discussed the bill in lieu of public discussion. One could argue, therefore, that although she did not have the opportunity to publicly vent her opinions on this occasion, she had more influence on this bill than any other member of parliament. Whether or not she was always successful in her attempted influencing of other senators, Wyse Power’s impact on many bills and their subsequent passing or rejection in Seanad cannot be underestimated. As the only consistent representative of women and children her presence in the Seanad ensured that these groups always had a voice to speak on their behalf. This voice was particularly needed during this period, when the Free State government were aiming to express traditional Irish Catholic values through legislation, including the definition of the traditional Irish woman - particularly her role in the public sphere. Wyse Power’s presence ensured that many of the highly conservative and retrogressive bills that were passed in the Dáil, where there was no strong female voice, were at least challenged, if not often defeated in the Seanad.

CHAPTER TWO WOMEN AND PUBLIC HOUSING POLICY IN RURAL IRELAND, NORTH AND SOUTH, 1942-60 MARY MCCARTHY

Housing is a fundamental concern of modern life in twenty-first century Ireland. As an issue and focus of public policy, the provision of housing has a lengthy history. Throughout the twentieth century, housing was the most regular subject of legislation in southern Ireland.1 Yet, it was in the nineteenth century that inadequate housing began to be recognised as a social problem and thus became a matter of policy. In the late 1800s, many urban tenants living in housing stock, either owned privately or provided by philanthropic societies, faced high rents. In rural Ireland, a large proportion of labourers lived in accommodation characterised as small, squalid and barely fit for human habitation, primarily owned by landlords unwilling to afford improvements. These factors significantly contributed to the necessity for local authorities to provide houses.2 Two key pieces of legislation enacted by the British government aimed to provide improved housing accommodation for the population. The 1883 Labourers Act contained provisions for labourers living in rural localities. McPeake and Murtagh noted this act introduced the belief that the government needed to provide housing in rural areas and the dwellings subsequently built were the predecessors of future local authority

1

Richard Haslam, ‘The origins of Irish local government’ in Mark Callanan and Justin F. Keogan (eds), Local government in Ireland inside out (Dublin, 2003), p. 37. 2 Murray Fraser, John Bull’s Other Home (Liverpool, 1996), p. 27.

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housing.3 The Housing of the Working Classes Act (1890) dealt with housing for those living in urban areas. These two acts became the foundation for subsequent housing policy ratified throughout much of the twentieth century in Ireland, north and south.4 The political transformation in Ireland following devolution of government in 1920 had little impact on the existing housing problems throughout the island. The formation of two separate governments and the subsequent appointment of two different ministers, with responsibility for addressing housing difficulties, did little to effect substantial change in this area. In Northern Ireland, little or no house building took place throughout the inter-war period. Indeed, Laurence described the performance of both the Northern Ireland government and local authorities during the inter-war years as a complete failure when it came to housing.5 In the Irish Free State, a building programme was initiated in 1932 by the newly elected Fianna Fail government which had replaced the Cumann na nGaedhael party in office. At that time, however, estimates of the housing need were largely dependent upon census material.6 For example, in the north the 1926 and 1937 census’ respectively indicated a need for both urban and rural housing. In the south, although a ‘partial survey’ was carried out in 1922, the next survey did not take place until 1938.7 Thus, the extent of the housing need was never adequately identified. Therefore, an effective housing policy both north and south was absent. In addition, plans formulated to address housing needs in Northern Ireland were required to take the role of central government in London into consideration. In both the north and the south, government’s proposed housing solutions depended upon the availability of finance and supplies of essential building materials. This became particularly relevant following the onset of World War Two which critically affected the availability of building supplies.

3

John McPeake and Brendan Murtagh, ‘The rural housing problem in Northern Ireland’ in Michael Murray and John Greer (eds), Rural Development in Ireland (Aldershot, 1993), p. 153. 4 Michelle Norris, ‘Housing’ in Callanan and Keogan (eds), Local government in Ireland, pp 167, 169. 5 R J. Lawrence, The Government of Northern Ireland: public finance and public services, 1921-1964 (London, 1965), p. 147. 6 Mary E. Daly, The buffer state (Dublin, 1997), pp 214-5, 339. 7 File marked ‘Housing conditions in the twenty-six counties and in the six counties’, 1947 (National Archives of Ireland [hereafter NAI], Department of the Taoiseach [hereafter D/T], S files, 14186.

30

Chapter Two

Preparations and planned solutions to address housing problems were bound to affect Irish women. Women were recognised as central to the home. Both church and state considered their work within the home to be pivotal to society. However, women were not formally involved in policy making that concerned housing up until world war two. Until that time, women were primarily associated with housing policy in a more informal capacity, such as seeking to avail of its benefits by making applications for housing and loans or corresponding with authorities about rents or rates.8 After 1942 several women, both north and south, did become more formally involved with housing policy. Yet, the acknowledgement of women’s needs in regards to housing policy remained selective. For example, women were identified by all political parties as key voters at election time and subsequently recognised and appealed to in this context. Yet despite their centrality to the home, when it came to female input concerning housing matters such as design, women’s contribution was considered by some males to be inconsequential and indeed inappropriate. This article will examine the extent of women’s involvement in proposed house plans for housing policy between 1942 and 1960. Secondly, it will introduce a small number of women involved or influential in the formulation of housing policy and finally highlight the selective recognition of women’s importance regarding housing when it came to pre-election periods. From 1942 onwards, both the Free State and Northern Ireland governments began planning for the post-war period when the housing problem would need to be seriously addressed. Looking to the future, the southern Department of Local Government and Public Health directed local authorities to carry out surveys in all districts to determine housing needs beginning in 1943. The housing section furnished the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, with a progress report in May 1944. Based on information obtained from the local authorities that had replied up to that time, the report identified a need for 53,000 houses throughout southern Ireland. Twenty three thousand of these were needed in Dublin and 30,000 for the rest of the country. In addition, a large number of houses needed refurbishment.9 This total was revised upwards by 1947 when an overall housing requirement for the country, including all classes, was determined to be 100,000 houses. Out of this total, the working class housing requirement was estimated to be approximately 61,000 houses. Of this, 8

Limerick County Council minute books (Limerick City and County Archive [hereafter LCCA]). 9 ‘Progress report on housing’, June 1944 (NAI, D/T, S13059A).

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31

44,460 houses were required for urban areas while the need in rural areas was identified at 16,360 houses.10 In 1944, the southern minister for Local Government and Public Health, Sean MacEntee, confirmed to de Valera that the government aimed ‘to provide a decent home for every family in town and country at a rent which will be reasonable in relation to their means’.11 Indeed, the difficulty of building a house and charging a rent that was affordable was problematic in the north as well. In 1938, the Ministry of Home Affairs admitted that although subsidies had been granted and a number of houses had been built, rents were still too high for some of the poorer members of the community. 12 Forward planning was also taking place in Northern Ireland, where a government commissioned housing survey was published in 1944. The interim report of the Northern Ireland Planning Advisory Board, Housing in Northern Ireland, indicated that 97,501 new dwellings were necessary to address the housing problem. Over 57,000 of these were required in rural areas.13 The Northern Ireland report acknowledged that housing difficulties were more serious in Belfast but a section on rural housing was included. Herein, the necessity for action to improve housing was confirmed. Minimum standards for accommodation were recommended which included suggestions for living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms as well as materials for houses in rural areas.14 When post-war house planning began, ideas and designs for building houses were plentiful. Prefabricated houses were much discussed and a variety of suggestions were put forward, ranging from steel-framed houses to clay houses, by both private individuals and a number of businesses.15 Many of these ideas were publicised in the Irish Builder and Engineer, one of the few native Irish periodicals to enjoy longevity in Ireland. The Irish Builder and Engineer was a trade journal and contained a large number of advertisements. It was first published in 1859, edited by a practicing architect named J.J. Lyons. Originally titled the Dublin Builder, its name changed a number of times throughout its existence, which

10

Report entitled ‘Housing, a review of past operations and immediate requirements’, 1947 (NAI, D/T, S13059B), pp 6, 8. 11 Minister for Local Government to the Taoiseach, 13 May 1944 (NAI, D/T, S13059A). .12 Lawrence, Government of Northern Ireland, p. 151. 13 Government of Northern Ireland, Housing in Northern Ireland, Cmd 224 [N.I.], p. 46. 14 Ibid, pp 18-31. 15 Ibid, p. 38.

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continued until 1979. Between 1942 and 1960, it was known was the Irish Builder and Engineer (hereafter IBE). 16 The IBE published articles on a wide range of building related matters, including ‘architecture, engineering and the arts and handicrafts of building’.17 McKay considered the IBE a high quality publication, instructive, enlightening and an important resource.18 Articles appearing in the IBE could be signed or unsigned and at times a nom de plume was used. For example, ‘Oculus’ was in fact the architect Harry Allebery, who edited the periodical between 1935 and 1941 and continued as the architectural editor until 1952.19 There were regular features such as current topics, coming events, north of Ireland notes, south of Ireland notes, reports on tenders as well as building and engineering news in brief. It frequently contained comments on social issues, including poor housing. Tilley noted that the IBE was published for all concerned with building and engineering, both professional and labourer alike and this was no doubt a key factor in its long success. She also observed that IBE continuously emphasised the value of native Irish talent.20 Over the years IBE presented many different arguments, comments and plans for a variety of building projects from cinemas to filling stations to schools. It also featured various contemporary suggestions to improve the Irish housing situation. For example, the Dublin-based architect F. Gibney believed that clay was a valuable building material that had not been used in Ireland for a long time. However during the emergency, conditions dictated the utilization of accessible native materials. Clay did not need to be processed and was readily available, two important recommendations when transportation was difficult. Gibney believed clay provided a practical solution to the rural housing problem because it was perfectly suited for the construction of cottages of a basic, single storey design in the shape of a rectangle. Building would be quick, the need for timber reduced and maintenance would be low.21 16

Elizabeth Tilley, ‘Trading in knowledge: the Irish builder and nineteenth-century journalism’ in La Revue LISA/ LISA e-journal, (www.http.unicaen.fr/mrsh/anglais/lisa) (2005), pp 114-5. 17 Irish Builder and Engineer, 27 Feb. 1943. 18 Enda McKay, ‘A century of Irish trade journals 1860-1960’ in Barbara Hayley and Enda McKay (eds), 300 years of Irish periodicals (Mullingar, 1987), pp 103, 107. 19 ‘Biographical Index of Irish Architects 1720-1940’ (Irish Architectural Archive [hereafter IAA]). 20 Tilley, ‘Trading in knowledge’. 21 Irish Builder and Engineer, 27 Feb. 1943.

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In 1942, Gibney designed a cottage that utilised readily available clay for the walls, thatch for the roof and timber from local trees, thereby overcoming lack of building supplies due to the emergency.22 A private individual interested in Gibney’s approach built the clay cottage in Kilkenny in 1944. The cottage was reported to be ‘dry and comfortable’. It was noted that this cottage was much larger than the usual labourers cottages built by local authorities.23 The cottage had the appearance of a traditional, whitewashed, thatched Irish cottage and indeed featured exterior walls two feet thick. The floor plan can be seen in figure one. Figure 1: ‘A modern clay cottage’.

Source: Irish Builder and Engineer, 17 June 1944.

As the diagram illustrates, the clay house was simple and practical in design. It had three bedrooms and three windows. In the front, one window was placed to the left of the front door and two to the right of the door. The main front door of the clay cottage opened into a small area with one door immediately to the left into one small bedroom and a door to the right into the main living room. A range was positioned at the central chimney at the middle of a dividing wall in the living room. This chimney also served two fireplaces located in each of the two bedrooms behind the chimney wall, thus providing some form of heating. Both bedrooms were accessible through the living room. However, there did not appear to be any form of heating in the bedroom located at the front of the house.

22 23

Ibid., 17 June 1944. Ibid.

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A scullery was also accessible from the living room at the rear of the house. Although there was no indication as to where water storage was located, the scullery featured a sink with hot and cold running water. However, there was no provision made for any type of press or shelves. Cooking was done on the range located in the living room in the traditional cottage style. To the side of the house and accessible through the scullery was a water closet. Here, there was also a fuel store with a back door opening off of this area to the outside of the house. This clay cottage was primarily a conventional design that incorporated some modern features. The location of the scullery sink was such a distance from the range that its location was less than convenient for the woman of the house. However, the cottage did have hot and cold running water which eliminated the task of drawing water from a well, pump or stream in buckets, making the sink a welcome, labour saving feature. In February 1944, the IBE featured the announcement that Countryworkers Ltd. Dublin would run a competition for designing a rural cottage. Country Workers Ltd. believed that the standard rural cottage provided for agricultural workers could be vastly improved upon if Irish architects used their talents and abilities to design a cottage practical yet visually pleasing. The competition was launched to design a rural cottage intended to accommodate an agricultural worker along with his wife and four children. The cost could not exceed ǧ400 and the house had to include a number of specifications such as provision for heating, cooking, sanitation and rainwater storage. In July 1944, the IBE published two prize-winning plans: the overall first place for the competition and one of the joint winners for a special category. The overall, first place winner, out of an entry of twenty-one sets of designs, was the architect P. Sheahan. The judges felt Sheahan’s winning house would fit in well with its surroundings. It was considered ‘homely and graceful’.24 The plan was for a small, two storey, three bedroom house. It had a large, wide window to the left of the front door and a small window to the right. Throughout the house there were seven windows, three located upstairs. Looking at the plan of the ground floor, as shown in figure two, the long living room had a range for cooking which utilised a chimney that also serviced one fireplace on the floor above it.

24

Ibid., 29 July 1944.

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices? Figure 2- First prize plan, 1944 Design a rural cottage competition.

Source: Irish Builder and Engineer, 29 July 1944.

35

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The range was positioned with its back to the staircase. At the rear of the house there was a little room provided for the ‘wash up’ that contained a sink, a press and some shelves. There was a water butt or barrel to catch rainwater positioned in the front of the house next to the small window and another located at the rear corner of the house which constituted the required rainwater storage. This meant that water had to be drawn into the kitchen or scullery area at the back of the house. Thus, the plan indicated provision for heating, cooking and rainwater storage although there were no obvious sanitation facilities. This arrangement indicated that for meals, the woman of the house needed to draw in water to the ‘wash up’ area from the outside ‘butt’, prepare food in the ‘wash up’ room, then go into the kitchen to cook on the range and back out again to clean up. The house had three bedrooms, the smaller located on the ground floor. The chimney for the downstairs range was also used for the single fireplace on the first floor located in what was specified as the ‘girl’s room’. This meant that neither of the other two bedrooms had any provision for heating. The ‘girl’s room’ had two beds, as did the ‘boy’s room’ which was also on the first floor. Separate rooms for boys and girls were not unusual by this time, although the number of children in each varied between families throughout the country. For example, one woman in southern Ireland also had separate rooms for her daughters and sons. However, the girl’s room accommodated her eight daughters while the boy’s room was for her three sons.25 The 1944 rural cottage design competition by Countryworkers Ltd., also had a category for ‘special competitors’ or those other than architects or architect’s assistants. This category produced joint winners out of eleven schemes submitted. One joint winner was Mrs Russell, from Dublin and the IBE published the plan of her three bedroom house for the purpose of providing a basis of comparison between the ‘technical’ approach and ‘ordinary woman’s’ approach to the problem.26 Her floor plan can be seen in figure three.

25 26

Oral history testimony, 31 Jan. 2006. Irish Builder and Engineer, 29 July 1944.

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Figure 3- Joint first prize plan for special competitors, 1944 Design a rural cottage competition.

Source: Irish Builder and Engineer, 29 July 1944.

There was no sketch furnished of the outside of the house of this winning plan, however, the floor plan indicated a bungalow-type cottage. There were eight windows throughout the house, two large and two small in the front, one at the side and three in the rear. The living room in this house also had a range, however, it was placed adjacent to a copper tank for hot water along an ‘L’ shaped worktable, press and sink combination. This was a convenient, less labour intensive arrangement for the woman of the house as far as food preparation, cooking and washing-up was concerned. There was no obvious means of water storage although provision for sanitary facilities including a bath was included in the plan. There was a shed adjacent to the house, up a step and past the bathroom area. There were two fireplaces located side by side on an internal wall providing heat in two of the bedrooms. Although there was no fireplace indicated in the third and smallest bedroom, one of the walls was shared by the turf range found in the living room. This may have provided some

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warmth in that bedroom. Each bedroom had a wooden floor.27 As noted, this plan was published to provide a non-architect’s idea of a labourer’s country cottage. The arrangement of the kitchen facilities indicated a woman’s touch which, in comparison to the first prize winning plan, seemed to be logical and somewhat labour saving for the woman of house. Some contributor’s to the Irish Builder and Engineer, around the time these plans were published, strongly maintained that designing houses should be strictly left to the professionals (who were predominantly male) and that women should definitely not have an input. One correspondent indicated on the 22 April 1944: The opinions of women on matters that were at one time the prerogative of architects and engineers have been occupying some space in our daily newspapers. The contributors seem to imagine that their knowledge of stoves and sinks entitles them to decide where these and other culinary requisites shall be placed in relation to the rest of the house … But the idea of allowing our wives to plan our homes for us is about as ridiculous as permitting them to choose our suits and overcoats because they can pick a wearable necktie. Without attempting the work of qualified architects, there are many ways in which the fair sex can display their artistic talent; and if one may judge from the lack of originality shown in suburban houses, they do not utilise this to any extent. To the ladies is given the opportunity of selecting wallpaper, carpets and curtains. They can arrange and re-arrange the furniture in every room without being censured too harshly…we look to them to brighten our homes by their presence and by the work they do there. To the architect 28 may be left the job of designing our houses.

Indeed, male architects continued to design the vast majority of houses and for a long time it appears that women’s ideas were seldom considered. Consequently, these types of designs were offered to the policy makers when formulating solutions to the housing problem. In fact, Sheahan’s first prize-winning plan for the Country Workers Ltd. competition to design an agricultural worker’s cottage was similar to plans actually adopted by county councils. Figure four offers an example of a house that was designed for Limerick County Council and implemented in 1949.

27

28

Ibid. Ibid., 22 April 1944.

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Figure 4- 1949 Limerick County Council plan for rural cottage.

Source: Limerick City and County Archive, Limerick County Council Housing records, 1949.

This plan is relatively simple, designed as a rectangular shaped bungalow with three bedrooms. It was one storey with three windows and a door in the front, two windows and a door to the back and a single window at one end of the house. The main kitchen area had a concrete floor and a fireplace that shared a wall with one bedroom which did not appear to have a fireplace in it. Two bedrooms on the other side of the kitchen had a fireplace in each, thus affording heat. Off the side of the kitchen, to the rear of the small bedroom was a scullery that had a door, a window and a shelf, which appears to be the closest thing to a facility in this house. There was no sink and no provision for one to be installed in the future. This bungalow had water butts or casks for water storage. They were both outside, which meant water had to be drawn into the house. One butt was at the front corner of the house and the other was at the rear of the house, at the opposite end from the scullery.29 From a woman’s point of 29

‘1949 plan for rural cottage’, Limerick County Council Housing Records, 1949.

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view, there did not appear to be anything remotely labour saving about this local authority house. From 1944, a range of designs and suggestions were also offered in Northern Ireland that could be constructed to solve the housing problem. Many of these were experimented with, including Nissan huts, aluminium bungalows, timber houses and pre-fabricated dwellings.30 Prefabrication was a much discussed potential solution for the pressing housing need throughout Northern Ireland and was also linked to possibly providing employment opportunities for those unskilled workers who would eventually be unemployed when industries reduced manufacturing rates. 31 In April 1946, it was planned that Northern Ireland would receive delivery of a number of ‘Arcon’ prefabricated houses manufactured in Britain. The Arcon house was designed by Arcon Chartered Architects of London and was described in the IBE as a ‘temporary house’ that was composed of a steel frame ‘clad with a double layer of asbestos-cement sheeting’.32 The floor plan for the Arcon house can be seen in figure five. The Arcon house had a living room, kitchen and two bedrooms with a water closet and separate bathroom. It had three windows in the front and two at the rear. The living room was large enough to accommodate a dining table and chairs as well as two upholstered chairs. The provision of shelves was a feature listed for this living room which was fitted with a ‘large slow combustion stove’ that also heated water for the house. This was in contrast to most living rooms in houses built in southern Ireland which generally contained a range. Indeed, Mogey noted that ranges that burned turf were not usually found in Northern Ireland, although some kind of stove, such as the slow combustion stove featured in the Arcon house, was generally used.33 In the Arcon house, the stove provided heating for both bedrooms that was distributed through ducts. Each bedroom contained a built-in wardrobe. The kitchen had to be accessed through the living room and was positioned at the front of the house. It was

30

Housing in Northern Ireland, p. 37. According to this report, prefabrication was generally understood to refer to ‘houses made in factories, transported to a site and erected quickly’. 31 Ibid. 32 Irish Builder and Engineer, 20 April 1946. 33 John M. Mogey, Rural life in Northern Ireland (London, 1947), p. 95.

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41

Figure 5: The “Arcon” prefabricated house.

Source: Irish builder and Engineer, 20 April 1946.

equipped with a worktop, cooker, and sink lined up against the wall.34 This arrangement would have been labour saving for the woman of the house, although the kitchen appeared to be a very narrow room. Indeed, the plan showed room for a folding table only and a larder on one wall. The kitchen window was the width of the kitchen with nothing placed underneath it. 35 The components of the Arcon house were fashioned in Great Britain and transported to Northern Ireland where it could be built quickly. Another advantage of this particular house was that it did not require any special knowledge or skill in order to assemble it. 36 While experiments were undertaken with prefabricated houses such as the Arcon house, the traditional method of building also continued. Indeed, according to Mogey’s 1947 report, although the local authorities were slow in building sufficient houses to meet the great need, the houses or cottages that were

34

Irish Builder and Engineer, 20 April 1946. Ibid. 36 Irish Builder and Engineer, 20 April 1946. 35

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constructed by local authorities were generally considered to be ‘well built and well maintained’.37 Nevertheless, prefabricated houses continued to find a useful place in Northern Ireland. In September 1950, it was announced that Orlit (Northern Ireland), Ltd. in alliance with William Logan and Sons were to construct 2,000 rural houses known as Ulster cottages. These two bedroom cottages were designed principally for localities without a water supply (although there was a version developed for serviced areas). The Minister for Health and Local Government, Dame Dehra Parker regarded the Ulster cottage as ‘supplement’ rather than a ‘substitute’ for traditional buildings.38 A plan for the Ulster cottage can be seen in figure six. Figure 6- Floor plan, Ulster cottage.

Source: Irish Builder and Engineer, 6 January 1951.

Ulster cottages were one storey bungalows, as were most of the rural local authority houses in the south. However, the Ulster design was quite 37 38

Mogey, Rural life, pp 105, 128. Irish Builder and Engineer, 16 Sept. 1950.

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different from the bungalows built in the south in 1949 for example. The Ulster cottage was actually a prefabricated house whereby the ‘shell and most of the interior were delivered to the site in ready-made units’.39 The basic design of the house was also different. Looking at the plan lengthways, the main access was located on what appeared to be the end of the house. The long ends of the house, both front and back, had three windows each. There was a store immediately to the left of the main entrance which was designed as a ‘pram space’ with room for a hat and coat rack.40 Behind the store was the scullery which contained a sink, cooker, larder and cupboard. From a woman’s perspective, these were lined up in a labour saving, ‘L’ shape. The sink was fed from a rainwater tank in the roof, which is not visible in the floor plan. 41 This was in stark contrast to what passed as a scullery in the 1944 first prize winning design in the Country Workers design competition or the scullery provided in the 1949 Limerick Local Authority house. Neither of those houses had any features to be lined up in an ‘L’ or a tank for rainwater. In addition, the Ulster scullery even had room for a small table and chairs in the corner. The living/kitchen space, towards the back or at the end of the length of the house, appears to have been equipped with a traditional range just as the houses in the south would have had which was not generally the case for other houses built in Northern Ireland. The living room in the Ulster cottage was designed to accommodate a sofa and chair as well as a dining area. There were three bedrooms along the other length of the house but only one had provision for heating. The question of sanitation was not addressed within these houses because, as noted, they were designed for rural, country, unserviced areas. 42 The Ulster cottage proved to be a popular design, particularly with the Minister of Health and Local Government, Dehra Parker. However, not all councils intended to use it. For example in September 1950, Limavady rural council preferred a more traditional house for its district and dismissed the Ulster cottage as unsuitable for Northern Ireland.43 Nevertheless in 1952, Terence O’Neill, then Parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Health and Local Government, continued to recommend the Ulster cottage to councils as the most inexpensive solution to housing problems.44 Indeed in 1952, a variation of the fundamental design for the 39

Ibid., 6 Jan. 1951. Ibid. 41 Ibid., 16 Sept. 1950. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 30 Sept. 1950 44 Ibid., 11 Oct. 1952. 40

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Ulster cottage also became available. What was known as the Ulster house was based on the same principles as the Ulster cottage but was a two storey version prepared for serviced areas. Figure seven illustrates this variation.45 Figure 7- Floor plan, Ulster house.

Source: Irish Builder and Engineer, 6 December 1952.

The three bedroom Ulster house was semi-detached with an outhouse and fuel store not shown on the plan. Each house had seven windows in total. There was a main front door with one window on the ground floor and two windows on the first floor. Upstairs there were three bedrooms. These had no visible provision for heating, although the largest bedroom would have had the chimney in the wall that might have provided some warmth. There was provision for a bathroom and hot press on the first floor although there was no visible water store included in the floor plan. To the right of the front entrance was a door leading into a small parlour. At the rear of the ground floor was the living/kitchen space. Opposite the front door was the entrance to the living/kitchen area which was at the rear of the house. This room did not appear to be as well appointed as the Ulster cottage. There was a means for cooking located on 45

Ibid., 6 Dec. 1952.

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the central wall, possibly a stove or a small hob. There was a sink provided, although it was confined to the back corner of the house and there was a small larder located on the rear wall. While the sink, stove and larder were located in the same room, this was a limited arrangement and not as convenient for the woman of the house when compared to the Ulster cottage.46 Convenience for the woman of the house, for example in kitchen arrangements, did not always appear to be top priority in the aforementioned plans. The exception was Mrs Russell’s joint winning plan for the 1944 Design a rural cottage competition which featured a convenient ‘L’ shape kitchen arrangement. An IBE article in 1943, simply signed ‘PGR’, had observed that kitchen design was generally where male architects made mistakes. This was ‘in spite of all that has been written on the subject and all the thousands of perfect plans and schemes that have been printed …’. Male architects often forgot simple things. For example, a sink should be placed in good light; it needed to be an adequate size and positioned properly, not too high or low. ‘PGR’ hoped to engage a woman architect if ever building a house.47 However, male architects continued to dominate the profession. In June 1951, IBE reported that the Irish Housewives Association had distributed a questionnaire to its members to gather ideas for an ideal house. Based on the information collected, a house was subsequently built for the Ideal Home exhibition in the Mansion House, Dublin in September 1951. However, the house was designed by a male architect, Mr R. H. Dowling.48 Another male architect won a 1955 kitchen design competition sponsored by Irish Exhibitions Ltd.. Mr Wilfred Cantwell designed a ‘U’ shaped kitchen that included a sink and garbage disposal unit as well as a dishwasher. Yet, there were women trained as architects. For example, between 1929 and 1955 forty women had graduated from the University College Dublin School of Architecture.49 Eleanor Butler was one of those women. She was a Dublin architect who graduated from UCD in 1938, having begun her course with seven other women. Butler later mentioned in a 1978 interview, that she was unsure how many of her fellow students went into private practice, noting that prejudice was very strong against women at that time.50 In 1948, the 46

Ibid. Ibid., 19 June 1943. 48 Ibid., 14 April 1951; 29 Sept. 1951. 49 , David Bradley, A brief history of the U.C.D. School of Architecture (Dublin, n.d.), appendix. 50 Irish Times, 28 October 1978. 47

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new Taoiseach of the first inter-party government, John A. Costello nominated Butler to the southern Irish Senate where she served until 1951. One of Butler’s key ‘policy interests’ was social housing. She believed that bad housing promoted disease and in 1950 she spoke in the Dail about the unsatisfactory houses being built, noting they were too small for the typical Irish family.51 Butler also acted as a housing advisor to the Irish Countrywomen’s Association (ICA) and lectured under its aegis in the mid-1950s. In 1956, Butler was asked by the Minister for Lands, Joseph Blowick, to study and report on house designs for the Irish Land Commission. In collaboration with the Land Commission assistant principal architect, Mr Alcock, Butler revised two house designs. Subsequently, these houses were built for the Land Commission in 1959, bringing to fruition Butler’s formal input into the implementation of housing policy.52 While Eleanor Butler was concerned with the unsatisfactory size of the houses being provided in the south, Brett maintained that the northern Minister for Health and Local Government, Dehra Parker, was throughout her term of office an advocate of the small sized Ulster Cottage which he noted was economical although of inferior design that lacked facilities.53 In the south at this time, there were no women holding a ministerial position in the government. However, Parker had become Northern Ireland Minister of Health and Local Government on the 26 August 1949. She was the first woman to be appointed to the Northern Ireland cabinet. When she assumed ministerial duties in Health and Local Government, the IBE’s ‘North of Ireland notes’ featured a short comment titled ‘Woman at the helm’, referring to Parker’s assuming command of the Ministry. It was noted that as minister, Parker was charged with tackling the huge Northern Ireland housing problem.54 In November 1949 Parker took the decision to reduce the size of houses to be built by traditional means rather than approving a reduction in the number of houses to be built. These decreases in dimension were due to limitations on building materials as well as a concern for the ability of prospective tenants to rent.55 It was for these same reasons that Parker noted in January 1950 that she would not be insisting on the necessity for 51 Maedhbh McNamara and Paschal Mooney (eds), Women in parliament: Ireland 1918-2000 (Dublin, 2000), p. 174; Irish Builder and Engineer, 5 Aug. 1950. 52 Irish Times, 28 Oct. 1978; Private secretary, Minister of Lands to private secretary, Taoiseach, 28 April 1959 (NAI, D/T, S13059G). 53 C. E. B. Brett, Housing a divided community (Belfast, 1986), p. 31. 54 Irish Builder and Engineer, 17 Sept. 1949. 55 Ibid., 26 Nov. 1949.

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bathrooms and water closets in houses built in unserviced rural areas. She called for simple houses to be built by local authorities so that tenants who found current rates difficult to pay might be catered for.56 Parker judged that by sanctioning lower housing standards, local authorities would be able to build houses to rent at lower rates. 57 Parker held the office of Minister for Health and Local Government until March 1957, thereby making her a woman who exercised considerable influence in the formation of housing policy in Northern Ireland in the post war period. Also influential regarding housing for the post war period was the Northern Ireland Planning Advisory board. Appointed in 1943 under the chairmanship of David Lindsay Keir, the board was comprised of representatives from borough councils and county councils, a number of commissioners as well as representatives from a variety of associations and organisations. It had at least one female member. Miss Dorothy Robertson represented the Rural Development Council of Northern Ireland. Thus, appointed as part of the advisory board, Miss Robertson was one of the few women who appear to have contributed to the formation of housing policy.58 Robertson was also one of the signatories of the ‘Second Interim Report’, dated 9 November 1945, with terms of reference from the Minister of Agriculture, Lord Glentoran, to ‘enquire into and report upon the future of agriculture in Northern Ireland’.59 The state of rural housing was quite a prominent feature in this report and identified as a significant cause for the disquieting depopulation of rural areas. In general, housing caused much discussion when planning policy for the post war period. Indeed, government files from that time might give the impression that housing provision was a central concern of domestic policy for both administrations. However, newspapers provided an alternative view on government housing policy. For example, post-war general elections occurred in the north in 1945 and in the south in 1948. At election time, newspapers revealed that instead of being prioritised, housing was often down the list of concerns mentioned in newspapers within the range of campaign rhetoric dispensed before general elections. For example, during the 1945 Northern Ireland election campaign, the Northern Whig printed Unionist Prime Minister Basil Brooke’s general ‘message to the people of Ulster’. In this, the major issues identified were law and order, employment, removal of wartime controls, agricultural 56

Ibid., 21 Jan. 1950. Ibid., 1 April 1950. 58 Housing in Northern Ireland, Interim Report, 1944, p. 3. 59 Ibid., p. 1. 57

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policy and last of all rural housing. The priorities of the Northern Ireland Labour party were similarly advertised, although housing was even further down the list with economic and industrial policy as well as control of financial and credit institutions deemed to be of greater importance. Housing policy was not always very important before elections and women were not always very important to housing policy. However, women were very important at election time and were frequently targeted in campaigns and addressed as key voters. This was particularly true in the north where women voters consistently outnumbered men throughout the 1942-60 period.60 For example, in June 1945, the Northern Whig printed a message from Prime Minister Brooke specifically addressed to the women of Ulster. Brooke reminded northern women that the 1945 election was actually their election and indicated that the future of Ulster was in women’s hands because they comprised the majority of voters. Brooke noted that all women wanted ‘good homes, steady employment for their menfolk, health and education for their children’. The Unionist party could deliver these things with women’s help, including houses on a comparable standard to Britain. 61 Here, women were easily linked with the house at election time but not always considered when housing policy was formulated. Women were also important voters in the south. In January 1948 during the general election campaign, a political advertisement in the Irish Times featured the face of a smiling woman transmitting the message that she was voting for Fine Gael in the upcoming general election in her capacity as a wife, a mother, a housewife and a citizen. For this lady, taxation, education, cost of living and fair play were central issues to the election.62 Housing was not mentioned in this particular advertisement, however, a sample of broader election appeals show that the Fianna Fáil party included housing as part of its new plan, promising the electorate to increase industry, agriculture and employment which would result in more houses and hospitals, better roads and rural electrification. Labour had similar targets with national ownership of railways and the four-milling industry at the top of its manifesto although Labour did call for the establishment of a national housing board. Clann na Poblachta listed unemployment, emigration and the high cost of living as priorities in one advertisement in the January 1948 election campaign.

60

W. E. Vaughan and A. J. Fitzpatrick (eds), Irish historical statistics (Dublin, 1978). 61 Northern Whig and Belfast Post, 23 May; 29 May; and 11 June 1945. 62 Irish Times, 10 Jan. 1948.

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The 1948 general election in the south brought a change with the installation of the First Inter-Party government which included Fine Gael, Clan na Poblachta, Labour, National Labour, Clan na Talmhan and independents. This government covered the spread of the political spectrum and improving housing was a priority for the parties individually and collectively. This suggested greater emphasis on housing with additional signs that women were possibly gaining some ground regarding influence. For example, one of the new parties in the government was Clan na Poblachta. Mrs B. Berthon Waters, an economist who wrote for the Irish Times, was acting in an advisory capacity to Sean MacBride and the Clann na Poblachta party in the 1940s. In a number of pamphlets in the early 1940s as part of the Towards a New Ireland series, Berthon Waters offered an economist’s perspective towards Irish housing policy. In an article titled ‘How New Zealand Saved the Farmers’, for example, Waters described the way houses were built in New Zealand and compared this to the manner in which houses were built in Ireland. She suggested that similar improvements could be implemented and achieved in Ireland because the two countries shared a number of similarities, including a desire to meet the basic needs of its citizens. She believed there was no reason why the same economic principles applied successfully in New Zealand could not be applied effectively by the southern Irish governments.63 Thus, very gradually a small number of women slowly emerged to become influential in the formulation of housing policy during the postWorld War Two period. The degree of their influence, however, was limited. There were occasional female advisors, committee members and political representatives who had varied input into possible solutions for rural housing problems. Dehra Parker was the most influential woman involved in housing policy formation throughout her term as Northern Ireland Minister for Health and Local Government. However, Parker had to cope with the twin problems of cost and supply shortages when tackling housing issues. These two factors dominated policy decisions. As a result, rural women’s needs were not always considered when housing policy was formulated in the north and the same could be said for the south. Despite the fact that women, both north and south, were recognised and courted as important voters throughout the 1942-60 period, a woman’s daily work did not command any significant attention or warrant concessions from any party when it came to post war housing policy. In 63 B. Berthon Waters, ‘How New Zealand saved the farmers and guaranteed wages’ in Towards a New Ireland, vol. 1 (1942), pp 11, 13.

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1944, Mrs Russell’s ordinary woman’s plan for a country cottage was dismissed as an amateur offering making the 1950 model of the Ulster cottage the next best plan in regard to convenience in a kitchen arrangement with the sink, cooker and storage arranged in a labour saving ‘L’ shape and rainwater provided from a roof storage tank. Indeed, it became part of Northern Ireland housing policy to recommend the Ulster cottage design for a number of years after the war because it was quick and inexpensive, thereby filling a need at an economical cost. This was supposed to have been a temporary house. The plan for the permanent house built in Limerick in 1949 had very little in the way of convenience for women. It would appear the sentiments of the IBE correspondent noted earlier prevailed for a long time and it was generally preferred that women remained confined to curtain and carpet selection. With the limited formal input of women into the formulation of housing policy plus the dominant concerns of cost and availability of material, perhaps this was not really that surprising.

CHAPTER THREE GAELIC IRELAND AND THE FEMALE DREAM: AGNES O’FARRELLY’S CULTURAL NATIONALISM RÍONA NIC CHONGAIL

A movement free from all political bias and outside of party spirit may yet be the national movement of the country; and such the Irish language revival claims to be. Political weapons are not to be despised, nor can they well be dispensed with; but we must not forget that politics are but a means to an end, and that end is nationhood.1

These were the words of Agnes O’Farrelly in The Reign of Humbug, an emotive lecture delivered by the young university graduate in December 1900, at a meeting of St. Mary’s Literary Academy, Dublin.2 This address launched O’Farrelly into the public sphere and the political, social and economic views expressed in it, from anti-foreignism to Irish literary cultivation, were to form the basis of her life-long nationalist convictions - permeating her creative and scholarly works, driving her linguistic and educational ventures and propelling her indefatigable cultural activism, all in pursuit of a utopian Gaelic ‘nationhood’. Her public promotion of all things Gaelic, coupled with impressive academic qualifications, allowed her to take her place within the elite decisionmaking body of the Gaelic League alongside Douglas Hyde, Eoin Mac Néill and Pádraig Pearse, the forefathers of modern Ireland. A ‘nonpolitical’ clause in the Gaelic League’s constitution enabled Douglas Hyde, founder and President of the Gaelic League, to constantly affirm 1

Agnes O’Farrelly, The reign of humbug (Dublin, 1901), p. 3. The reign of humbug was read in St. Mary’s University College, Muckross Park, Donnybrook, Dublin 4, on 11 Dec. 1900. Agnes O’Farrelly (1874-1951) was also known by her Irish name Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh and her pen name ‘Uan Uladh’ [Lamb of Ulster]. 2

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that this organization was not a political body in his wish to secure the support of people of his own class and religion.3 However, both Hyde and O’Farrelly chose a narrow definition of politics, which did not encompass the Gaelic League’s prominence within the Irish cultural sphere. In O’Farrelly’s case, this reflected her idealist tendencies, which she combined with a pronounced pragmatic talent to further her dream of Gaelic nationhood, a dream which found its conception in the Aran Islands at the turn of the twentieth century. O’Farrelly had joined the Gaelic League in the autumn of 1898, 4 five years after the organization was established, and quickly realized that she could gain influence in such an organization which welcomed language enthusiasts and cultural nationalists, irrespective of sex. With its network of branches throughout the country, and the propagandist publication An Claidheamh Soluis [the Sword of Light] at its disposal, the Gaelic League provided a ready-made platform from which O’Farrelly could promote her dual agenda: the re-Gaelicisation of Irish culture and the struggle for women’s rights. Her initial interest in the Irish language stemmed from her youth, when she assisted her older brother in gathering and recording Irish words in the vicinity of Mullagh, Co. Cavan, where her father was the local Catholic landlord.5 Although the Irish folklore tradition and pockets of the Irish language still existed in this rural community, O’Farrelly’s access to the language was limited as it did not form part of the national school curriculum. O’Farrelly decided to study Irish independently and when she entered St. Mary’s Dominican College for women on 28 Merrion Square, Dublin in her early twenties, she was determined to continue this study of Irish. In 1897 she was admitted to the ‘Celtic’ class, taught by Eoin Mac Néill, who inspired her to take the road to Gaeldom.6 Thus, in early August of the following year, O’Farrelly set off for the Aran Islands, ‘Mecca na nGael’ [Mecca of the Gaels], on a linguistic and 3

See Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland, Irish in university education: evidence given before The Royal Commission on university education, 1902 (Dublin, 1902). 4 Fáinne an Lae, 22 Oct. 1898. 5 Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig, ‘Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh’, in Coláiste Uladh 19061956 (Dún na nGall, 1956), p. 25. 6 The Intermediate Education (Ireland) Act 1878, allowed for the study of ‘Celtic’ amongst other classical and modern languages, however ‘Celtic’ was in effect the Irish language which is frenquently referred to as having been ‘smuggled’ onto the curriculum. See Tomás Ó Fiaich, ‘The great controversy’, in Seán Ó Tuama (ed.), The Gaelic League idea (Cork, 1972), p. 66. See also, Eoin Mac Néill Papers (National Library of Ireland [hereafter NLI], Eoin Mac Néill papers, MS 10,882).

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cultural voyage organized by Mac Néill.7 At this time, Irish language enthusiasts were preoccupied with the quest for linguistic purity, which prompted them to spend their summer holidays on the Aran islands, off the Galway coast, particularly Inis Meáin [The Middle Island], where the language was deemed purest of all. In Inis Meáin, O’Farrelly actively engaged in what the Gaelic Leaguers saw as a utopian community of Gaelic values, Gaelic order, Gaelic language and self-sufficiency, untouched by British colonial influence. It was the microcosmic society and Gaelic prototype which the League wished to propagate throughout Ireland. O’Farrelly became aware of the Gaelic League’s activities on her first trip to Aran, as a branch of the Gaelic League had recently been established in Cill Rónáin in Inis Mór [The Big Island], and another in Inis Meáin. When she returned to Inis Meáin the following summer, she had become a fully-fledged Gaelic Leaguer, and decided to cultivate the grassroots of the organization herself, by setting up Craobh na mBan, or the Women’s Branch of the League.8 Craobh na mBan met every Sunday and through O’Farrelly’s initiative and instruction, the young women of Inis Meáin learned to read and write in the Irish language. Their dedication to learning was most poignantly portrayed in O’Farrelly’s travelogue Smuainte ar Árainn: ‘Is minic casadh bean orm, naoidheanán aici ar a baclainn, agus leabhrán Gaedhilge aici dá léigheamh ag dul go dtí an tobar’ [Often have I met a woman, child in arm, and reading an Irish book on her way to the well].9 J.M. Synge, the playwright, whose summers spent in Inis Meáin coincided with those of O’Farrelly, was also to acknowledge Craobh na mBan’s impact on the women’s lives in his work The Aran Islands: It is remarkable that these young women are willing to spend their one afternoon of freedom in laborious studies of orthography for no reason but a vague reverence for the Gaelic. It is true that they owe this reverence, or most of it, to the influence of some recent visitors, yet the fact that they 10 feel such an influence so keenly is itself of interest.

Although O’Farrelly admitted to a ‘natural disinclination to appear in public’, when she first joined the Gaelic League, she soon decided that personal reluctance had to ‘be sacrificed to our duty to the language as

7

Sinn Féin, 24 May 1913. An Claidheamh Soluis, 12 August 1899. 9 Smuainte Ar Árainn, (Baile Átha Cliath, 1902), p. 23. 10 J.M. Synge, The Aran Islands (London, 1992), p. 68. 8

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members of the Executive’.11 Her belief in equality for all, her awareness of the opportunities and status attainable through education and the personal fulfillment involved in learning led her to encourage the island women to study their native tongue. Through Craobh na mBan, O’Farrelly organized Feiseanna (singing and dancing competitions) and Aeraíochtaí (open-air entertainment) in Inis Meáin. This was the modus operandi in the Gaelic League’s promotion of native culture and an enjoyable means of gathering new recruits. By educating these women along the lines of cultural nationalism, O’Farrelly hoped they would begin to appreciate their uniquely Gaelic culture, and pass it on to the next generation. The women’s mission, according to O’Farrelly’s close friend, Mary Butler, author of the Gaelic League propagandist pamphlet Irish Women and the Home Language, and involved in Gaelic League activities on Inis Oírr (the smallest of the Aran group) at the time, was to make the homes of Ireland Irish, in the belief that ‘If the homes are Irish the whole country will be Irish. The spark struck on the hearth-stone will fire the soul of the nation’.12 Unlike English-language literature, which was easily procured at the turn of the twentieth century, there was little printed literary material available for potential readers of Irish, like the women of Inis Meáin. Although a highly-structured Irish language literature had flourished during the Classical period (c.1200-1601) under the poetic patronage of Gaelic chieftains, British colonialisation instigated its rapid removal.13 Cultural dispossession accompanied the territorial dispossession of Gaelic chieftains and the Classical literature had virtually disappeared by the time the Gaelic League was established. This written literature was superseded by oral literature, which in late nineteenth century rural Ireland was a highly-crafted and developed art form central to social interaction. While the Gaelic League vigorously promoted oral literature by holding storytelling competitions at its Feiseanna, it became apparent to its Executive Committee that a solid, if temporary, literary corpus needed to be built in order to fill the void in Irish-print literature. The Executive Committee had much ground to cover and was not in a position to nurture new literary talent, except through the national Oireachtas Literary 11 Dame Columba Butler, A life of Mary E.L. Butler (National Library of Ireland, MS 7321). 12 See Mary E. L. Butler, Irish women and the home language (Dublin, 1901). 13 The Battle of Kinsale in 1601 in which the Irish chieftains O’Neill and O’Donnell were beaten by British forces marked the end of old Gaelic order in Ireland. See Seán Ó Tuama (ed.), Poems of the dispossessed (Dublin, 2002), pp xix-xxv.

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Competitions, held on a yearly basis since 1897. A sub-committee on publishing, Coiste na bhFoilseachán, was founded in 1900, consisting of the Gaelic League’s literary experts, including O’Farrelly and with Pádraig Pearse as Secretary.14 This committee had a difficult task in creating a new literature ab initio, including educational aids for learners and a creative literature for competent native speakers and those who were gaining in proficiency through their attendance at Gaelic League classes across the country. The Publications Committee selected, edited, and created this literature themselves. O’Farrelly’s belief that ‘If the language of this country is to prosper and spread it must remain common property’, extended to Irish literature; thus the Publications Committee was constantly seeking to fill gaps in the corpus, aiming to cater for all sections of emerging Gaelic Ireland.15 The breadth and prolific nature of O’Farrelly’s own literary output highlights the resourcefulness of the committee – from her novellas Grádh agus Crádh [Love and Torment] (1901), An Cneamhaire [The Rogue] (1902) and her travelogue Smuainte ar Árainn (1902), to her edition of Leabhar an Athar Eoghan: The O’Growney Memorial Volume (1904).16 By 1909, almost 150 books had been published by the committee.17 Several of these publications had been financed by the committee members. O’Farrelly herself was one of the most generous contributors, later commenting that: ‘The contributions in money towards language purposes are as nothing compared to the lavish contributions in time and energy - I might also say in life-blood which went to build the organisation’.18 Within the ranks of the Publications Committee, conflicting attitudes soon emerged as to how best to judge standards. Should creativity and structural innovation be ranked above the traditional Gaelic narrative structure and linguistic purity? For the conservative Revs Richard Henebry, Pádraig Ó Duinín and Peadar Ó Laoghaire, the latter was prioritized; however, the younger generation, represented by Pádraig Pearse and O’Farrelly, were essentially modernists, hoping to pull Irish 14

Donncha Ó Súilleabháin, Athbheochan na Gaeilge – Cnuasach Aistí (Baile Átha Cliath, 1998), pp 85-6, An Claidheamh Soluis, 30 May 1903. Stiofán Bairéad, Éamon Ó Néill, Seosamh Laoide and Tadhg Ó Donnchudha were also on this committee. 15 An Claidheamh Soluis 19 Dec. 1914. 16 Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh (eag.), Leabhar an Athar Eoghan: the O’Growney memorial volume (Baile Átha Cliath, 1904). 17 Proinsias Ó Conluain agus Donncha Ó Céileachair, An Duinníneach (Baile Átha Cliath, 1958), pp 212-13. 18 An Claidheamh Soluis, 19 Dec. 1914.

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literature into the twentieth century. This objective was expressed by Pearse, whilst editor of An Claidheamh Solais: ‘Irish literature if it is to live and grow, must get into contact on the one hand with its own past and on the other with the mind of contemporary Europe’.19 Although O’Farrelly, Pearse and Pádraic Ó Conaire all rejected the English language as their medium of expression, they readily embraced foreign themes and structures in order to create a modern literature. O’Farrelly had little precedent to follow in terms of women’s print literature in Irish and thus was drawn to the hybrid literary influences of her native Co. Cavan, namely the works of Sheridan and Swift, and the French and English literature which she had studied in St. Mary’s College. While she wished to distance herself from English, ‘the tongue of the stranger’, the structure and themes of the ‘stranger’, particularly those of emerging English and Anglo-Irish women writers, such as Somerville and Ross and Emily Lawless, were suited to her needs. As her primary aim in writing was to popularize the Irish language amongst Irish women as part of a larger Gaelic cultural overhaul, she adhered to the themes of love, murder and everyday struggles, which she knew to be successful in women’s literature and read by Irish women of all social classes. Supported by her colleagues on the Gaelic League’s Publications Committee, O’Farrelly quickly created a corpus of Irish language literature, reflecting the dual Ireland of her day, dual in language, literature, culture, religion and social class. Her decision to write was facilitated by several factors. Her hereditary status provided her with the money, education and ‘room of her own’, as Virginia Woolf so aptly put it, to engage in fiction, like several of her female contemporaries.20 By favouring the novella format in both Grádh agus Crádh (1901) and An Cneamhaire (1902), she was catering for women whose reading was constantly interrupted by domestic duties – women such as those she had met on her visits to Aran. These novellas, along with her short story Sorcha (written in English), focus on the adventure and challenges facing young women preparing for marriage, women of the same age as O’Farrelly herself. Through her young female characters, she challenged the unjust influence of the strong over the weak, the dominant culture over the subculture, the rich over the poor and the man over the woman. For example, the female madness motif first attributed to ‘The Mad Woman in the Attic’ in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) and associated with women’s literature in Victorian England is central to Grádh agus Crádh. 19 20

An Claidheamh Soluis, 26 May 1906. Virginia Woolf, A room of one’s own (London, 1929).

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For the female protagonist, a manifestation of madness becomes a means of liberation from the oppressive role imposed on her by her father, representative of patriarchal society. While O’Farrelly spent her summer holidays educating the women of Inis Meáin, she taught Celtic in Alexandra Women’s College, Dublin during the rest of the year, where she was the first Celtic teacher. She understood the educational struggle facing her female students, as her own educational experience had recently been tainted when she applied for a Fellowship from the Royal University in 1900, persuading her friend Mary Hayden to follow suit. Their applications were disqualified by the RUI President William Delaney on the basis that ‘the statutes exclude women’, though Mary Hayden had examined the statutes and claimed this to be untrue.21 In early 1902 the Irish Women Graduates Association (IWGA) was established to combat such educational inequalities and both O’Farrelly and Hayden joined the committee. On 10 June 1902, O’Farrelly represented the IWGA at the Robertson Commission on University Education in Ireland, and her seemingly radical suggestion that women Fellows should lecture in the men’s colleges created quite a stir.22 In 1904 O’Farrelly relinquished her teaching position in Alexandra College to take up the position of chief examiner in Celtic to the Board of Intermediate Education, and was replaced in Alexandra College by Pádraig Pearse.23 As an active member of the Gaelic League’s Educational Committee, she was deeply involved in its educational and linguistic experiments.24 The foundation of summer schools based in Irish-speaking regions was one such experiment, promoted by the London branch of the Gaelic League at the organisation’s Ard-Fheis [A.G.M.] in 1901. This venture was to serve as a model for the Irish language teacher-training Colleges which proliferated throughout Ireland, following the foundation of Coláiste na Mumhan [the Munster College] in 1904.25 In 1905, Dáil 21 Conan Kennedy (ed.), The diaries of Mary Hayden 1878-1903: Vol. V 18991903 (Killala, 2005), entry dated 7 Dec. 1900. 22 Eibhlin Breathnach, ‘A history of the movement for women’s higher education in Dublin, 1860-1912’ [M.A. thesis, University College Dublin, 1981], p. 163. 23 See: Anne V. O’Connor and Susan M. Parkes, Gladly learn and gladly teach: Alexandra College and School 1866-1966 (Dublin, 1983), p. 58. 24 Annual report of the Gaelic League 1902-3 and proceedings of the Árd-Fheis, 1903 (Dublin, 1903), p. 9. 25 In 1905, Coláiste Chonnacht, Coláiste Bhéal Feirste and Coláiste na Rinne were all established. See: Nollaig Mac Congáil, ‘Stair na gColáistí Gaeilge agus Bunú Choláiste Uladh’, in Seosamh Ó Ceallaigh (ed.), Coláiste Uladh 1906-2006 (Dún na nGall, 2006), p. 114.

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Uladh, the Ulster body of the Gaelic League, established its own summer teacher-training College on the basis that there was a ‘scarcity of competent teachers to give instruction in the native speech either in the schools or in the capacity of travelling teachers’.26 Ardscoil Cholumcille or Coláiste Uladh [the Ulster College] was established in 1906 in Cloughaneely at the heart of Irish-speaking Donegal, and its mission was to address this lack of competency in Irish amongst potential teachers. This project was undertaken in preparation for the bilingual educational system, which the Gaelic League saw as the first step in the reappropriation of Irish identity. As Alice Milligan, poet and nationalist, proclaimed: ‘The Gaelic League could find here a glorious opportunity for a unique educational mission’.27 O’Farrelly was chosen to head this educational mission as the College’s first Principal and offered her educational expertise free of charge.28 ‘She is bound to inspire her pupils, young and old, with her own generous enthusiasm for work, and her own high ideal in scholarship’, reported An Claidheamh Soluis.29 Under O’Farrelly’s supervision, Coláiste Uladh became ‘a highroad to Irish’ every summer, with Pádraig Pearse, Roger Casement and Lord Ashbourne, amongst many other friends of O’Farrelly, visiting and enhancing its profile.30 O’Farrelly maintained that ‘Education is not a thing of books and figures and statistics. It is a living, vital thing; mind in contact with mind, human thought trying to hand on its expression and the result of its labour’; thus much emphasis was placed on extracurricular and cultural activities in Coláiste Uladh, which was also to foster and encourage prominent Donegal writers, most notably Séamus Ó Grianna and Fionn Mac Cumhaill.31 O’Farrelly was appointed Principal of Coláiste Laighean [the Leinster College] in 1910, on the strength of her work in Coláiste Uladh. However, the previous year she had been appointed to a lectureship in Irish in the new National University and, due to increasing work commitments, she retired from Coláiste Laighean in 1913.32 Although O’Farrelly was involved in the academic and political dimensions of University life, sitting on Governing Body and dedicating 26

An Claidheamh Soluis, 16 Sept. 1905. Freeman’s Journal, 14 July 1906. 28 Irish Peasant, 9 June 1906. 29 An Claidheamh Soluis, 16 June 1906. 30 Derry Journal, 16 July 1920. 31 Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh, ‘Educational policy and methods of Ireland’, in D. Rhys Phillips, Transactions of the Third Celtic Congress, 1920 (Perth, 1921), p.105. 32 An Claidheamh Soluis, 9 July 1913. 27

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her energies to the Irish language, she is best remembered for establishling the UCD Camogie Club in 1911, a month after the foundation of Ireland’s first official Camogie Association.33 The closest she herself came to playing camogie was to act as umpire on occasion, but her cultural nationalist instincts led her to view camogie as fundamental to the construction of a modern Gaelic society, in which women would actively participate. Leisure time, she believed, should be Gaelic leisure time and it was convenient that her other great passion in life, the Irish language, could be diffused throughout this sporting organization in a subtle manner. Not alone a forum of popular culture, or a mere female alternative to the G.A.A., the Camogie Association was potentially a powerfully organized social network, bringing women together to promote and celebrate the abilities of their sex. O’Farrelly believed it would provide players, administrators and supporters with a sense of inclusion, community, strength and spirit, all diffusing into the larger framework of cultural nationalism. It was: ‘something evolved out of our own needs and our own people – the needs of womanhood – the needs of those women who had looked on for centuries from the side-line at the men of their race perfecting their physique and their stamina in games of skill and strength’.34 She adhered to the Spartan idea that the discipline and physical activity involved would make ‘better women and better mothers of their race because of this game’.35 Camogie enabled its female enthusiasts to celebrate their sex, to choose their own Gaelic rolemodels, such as Gráinne Mhaol [Grace O’Malley] and Ethna Carbery, which were the names of two London-based clubs.36 The image of Gráinne Mhaol who transgressed gender roles, creating a precedent of female prowess in Gaelic Ireland, was projected as a source of inspiration to camogie players, an alternative to the predominantly male heroic values and symbols within Gaelic-Ireland. This bore resonance with the image of Cú Chulainn with his Camán [Hurl] which Pádraig Pearse effectively used in St. Enda’s boys school.37 The poet Ethna Carbery, however, was a recently-crowned 33 Camogie Association Yearbook, 1911 (Camogie Association Archives, Croke Park, Dublin). 34 Radio broadcast by Agnes O’Farrelly, Feb. 1937. See: ‘Irish of the Irish’ in newspaper cuttings 1928-1938 (Camogie Association Archives, Croke Park, Dublin). 35 Sunday Independent, 3 July 1938. 36 Camogie Association Yearbook, 1912-19, Camogie Association Archives, Croke Park, Dublin. See Anne Chambers, Granuaile: Ireland’s Pirate Queen c.15301603 (Dublin, 2003). 37 See: Elaine Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots (Cork, 2004), lgh. 128-30.

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Gaelic martyr, having died in her prime. She was a devotee to the female and nationalist cause, and as such, her achievements appeared possible to emulate amongst young women.38 O’Farrelly was aware that by promoting camogie in National University, amongst the educated young ladies of the burgeoning Catholic middle-class, the most influential women of their generation, she was securing the future of camogie. Lord Ashbourne presented O’Farrelly with the Ashbourne Cup in 1915, as a prize for the Intervarsity Camogie Championship, and O’Farrelly herself was honoured by the Dublin Camogie League in 1928 when presented with ‘The O’Farrelly Cup’, which was competed for in the Dublin Senior League of that year. She did not overlook her native County Cavan in her promotion of the game, encouraging local priests and other influential figures to establish clubs there in the 1920s. During the 1930s, O’Farrelly’s skill in mediation was essential in resolving conflict within the Camogie Association. When the Camogie Association followed the G.A.A.’s contentious decision to ban foreign games in 1934, as part of a wider anti-foreign and self-protective stance in Ireland, O’Farrelly amongst others was concerned that this decision would place ‘a barrier between the two associations, camogie and hockey’, and that girls would choose to play hockey over camogie.39 As hockey was believed to be Celtic in origin and later adopted by the English, O’Farrelly saw no reason why the two games should not co-exist. It became apparent that the foreign games ban was proving detrimental to camogie and it was removed in 1939. The Ulster Camogie Council, of which O’Farrelly was elected president in January 1939, voted to continue the ban, leading to a split in the national Association. Although O’Farrelly was still in favour of removing the ban, she was sympathetic to the Ulster Council’s stance and its ‘determination to be Irish at all costs’.40 In December 1941, O’Farrelly and her administrative colleague Seán O’Duffy, with the support of G.A.A. officials, succeeded in bringing the disputing bodies together and were praised for their ‘painstaking efforts over the last two years in the

38 ‘Ethna Carbery’ was the pen-name of Anna Johnston (1866-1902), poet, cofounder of the ‘Shan Van Vocht’, with Alice Milligan and a cultural nationalist. She was a Vice-President of Inghinidhe na hÉireann upon its foundation. C.f.: Diarmuid Breathnach agus Máire Ní Mhurchú (eag), Beathaisnéis a Ceathair, 1882-1982 (Baile Átha Cliath, 1994), pp 70-2. 39 Sunday Independent, 25 Feb. 1934. 40 Irish Independent, 18 April 1938.

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cause of a better understanding and ultimate unity’. O’Farrelly became life president of the newly reformed Association.41 At the onset of World War I, O’Farrelly, like her colleagues in the Gaelic League, was becoming increasingly embroiled in nationalist politics. In April 1914, she became a co-founder of Cumann na mBan, organized by nationalist women as a counterpart to the Irish Volunteers, with the advancement of ‘the cause of Irish liberty’ as their main objective.42 O’Farrelly presided over the first meeting and made a rousing speech: ‘We shall do ourselves the honour of helping to arm and equip our National Volunteers. Each rifle we put in their hands will represent to us a bolt fastened behind the door of some Irish home to keep out the hostile stranger. Each cartridge will be a watchdog to fight for the sanctity of the hearth’.43 Political differences were immediately apparent among the members of Cumann na mBan, however, and O’Farrelly’s speech was severely criticized by more radical feminists for its conservatism and for compounding the subordinate position of women vis-à-vis the Irish Volunteers.44 In October 1914, O’Farrelly resigned from the organization, following media reports that she was using the Gaelic League’s public platform to urge Irish Volunteers to enlist in the British Army.45 Although she specified in a letter to An Claidheamh Solais that: ‘Táim-se díreach i n-a choinne sin agus labhras go láidir i n-a choinne ar an gcruinniughadh so a bhfuil sibh ag trácht air’ [I am directly opposed to that and I spoke strongly against it at the meeting to which you are referring], she was accused of the ‘violation of the neutrality of the Gaelic League’, and many Gaelic Leaguers remained doubtful about her political allegiances.46 The question of politics within the ‘non-political’ Gaelic League had been growing since 1913, and Eoin Mac Néill would later state of this time: ‘The fact was that the Gaelic League had drawn to its membership many

41 See ‘Unity at Last’ in newspaper cuttings 1938-1954 (Camogie Association Archives, Croke Park, Dublin). 42 Joanne Mooney Eichacker, Irish Republican women in America: lecture tours, 1916-1925 (Dublin, 2003), pp 7-10. 43 Derry Journal, 20 April 1914. 44 Irish Citizen, 2 May 1914. 45 Her resignation was linked with an anti-enlistment statement which appeared in The Irish Volunteer, signed by Jennie Wyse Power, Aine O’Rahilly and eight other members of the Cumann na mBan Executive. See Irish Volunteer, 17 Oct. 1914; and Marie O’Neill, From Parnell to de Valera: a biography of Jennie Wyse Power 1858-1941 (Dublin, 1991), p. 80. 46 An Claidheamh Soluis, 12 Sept. 1914; Sinn Féin, 5 Sept. 1914.

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who regarded it as a political instrument’.47 By the time of the Gaelic League Ard-Fheis in 1915, politics had become a contentious issue. Criticism of O’Farrelly was widespread amongst nationalist separatists, not for her engagement in politics, but because of her seeming Redmondite affiliation.48 A resolution to alter the ‘non-political’ clause in the Gaelic League’s constitution was passed at this Ard-Fheis and the separatists won a majority on the Executive Committee, at the expense of O’Farrelly and the supporters of John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party.49 Douglas Hyde resigned as President in opposition to the politicization of the League. .

In 1916 O’Farrelly’s close friends Pádraig Pearse and Roger Casement were executed by the British Government, Pearse for his role in the Easter Rising, and Casement for high treason, despite her efforts to save him by co-founding a reprieve committee with Colonel Maurice Moore and starting a petition on his behalf.50 As a result, O’Farrelly became increasingly disillusioned by Ireland’s political situation.51 By now, she had essentially been ostracized from the two movements, Irish and Female, to which she had dedicated her working life. However she had no intention of renouncing her belief in equality for women and in the Irish language, the personal causes which formed the basis of her utopian ideal. She now needed a more congenial outlet for her Gaelic vision and political stance. She found the former in the guise of the Celtic Congress and the latter through writing poetry.52 In 1921, O’Farrelly’s politicized poetry collection Out of the Depths was published, spurred by ‘the agony through 47 Michael Tierney, Eoin MacNeill scholar and man of action 1867-1945 (Oxford, 1980), p. 178. 48 John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, encouraged the Irish Volunteers to support Britain in World War I in the interest of the implementation of the Home Rule Act 1914, which was shelved for the duration of the war. A split emerged within the ranks of the Volunteers, the majority the ‘National Volunteers’ siding with Redmond. The separatist minority, which retained the name of ‘Irish Volunteers’, led by Eoin Mac Néill became increasingly influential in the Gaelic League. See Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse: the triumph of failure (Dublin, 1977), pp 207-22. 49 See Irish Independent, 16 May 1957. 50 Colonel Maurice Moore was the brother of George Moore. 51 Brian Inglis, Roger Casement (London, 1972), p. 352. 52 Her only visible role in Irish politics at the outset of the Irish Civil War was as a member of the women’s peace delegation, formed in the hope of reconciliation after the Free State Government began to shell the Four Courts on 29 June 1922. (Rosamond Jacob diaries, 1 July 1922, NLI, MS 32,582/41).

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which the nation is passing’.53 Her decision to write in English secured a wide readership, which Irish-language poetry could never achieve, and she published her poetry in mainstream English and Irish newspapers.54 This may have been prompted by E.T. John, President of the Celtic Congress, who informed her that ‘the English Press at best gives us a very inadequate impression of the real state of affairs in Ireland’.55 Once the political situation improved in Ireland, she returned to Irish-language poetry, publishing in 1927, Áille an Domhain [Beauty of the World], a neoromantic celebration of nature. In 1917 the Welsh M.P., E.T. John, re-established the Celtic Congress, which stemmed indirectly from the Pan-Celtic Association, founded by Dr Fournier d’Albe in Dublin in 1898. Traditionally, the Gaelic League held an ambivalent attitude towards this association. While Pádraig Pearse was an enthusiast, and Douglas Hyde wanted to join the Pan-Celtic Association in the hope of merging it with the Gaelic League,56 others regarded this society with hostility, believing its Anglo-Irish members were trading off the Gaelic League’s hard work, and emphasized that: ‘The Irish language will not be saved by picnics to Tara Hill, or by the eating of big dinners in a Dublin hotel’57. Although O’Farrelly had been invited to participate in the Pan-Celtic Association at the turn of the century, she had chosen to remain fully committed to the Gaelic League. E.T. John’s re-established Celtic Congress differed from its predecessor by drawing its membership from a different section of society, identifying itself with scholarship rather than class. As its raison-d’être was to nurture and promote Celtic scholarship and culture, or in O’Farrelly’s words: ‘to get the best thought in each of the countries together’,58 both she and Douglas Hyde were obvious Irish recruits. The branch structure and modus operandi of the Celtic Congress resembled that of the Gaelic League when O’Farrelly had first joined, as did its scholarly members, who reinterpreted and exaggerated the Celtic connection between the ‘Q-Celtic’ Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and the ‘P-Celtic’, Wales, Brittany, and later

53

Agnes O’Farrelly, Out of the depths (Dublin, 1921), p. 7. O’Farrelly published these poems in The Irish Times, Irish Independent, Freeman’s Journal, Weekly Herald (London) and Labour Leader (Manchester). 55 E.T. John to O’Farrelly, 23 Dec. 1920 (National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, E.T. John papers, 2776). 56 See Eoin Mac Néill papers (NLI, Eoin Mac Néill papers, MS 10,874). 57 An Claidheamh Soluis, 27 May 1899. 58 O’Farrelly to Miss Roberts (John’s personal secretary), 2 June 1929 (National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, E.T. John papers, 5012). 54

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Cornwall, the so-called ‘branches of the Celtic family’.59 In theory, the Celtic Congress was to be an apolitical annual forum, in which representatives of the Celtic countries, all overshadowed by colonial powers, would discuss and share educational, linguistic and cultural advances, aiding each other in their efforts to create a Celtic identity.60 Within this Celtic alliance, Ireland was seen as the most influential ‘nation’, as it alone was rebelling against imperial rule, with some success. Similarly, the Irish cultural revival was viewed as a source of inspiration to the other Celtic countries, and as O’Farrelly was representative of this Irish renaissance, she was held in high regard by her fellow Celtic enthusiasts. Although most Celtic enthusiasts wished the Celtic Congress to provide a celebration and showcase of their common culture, extremists envisaged it as a forum in which to nurture ‘the reconstruction of Celtic life in its entirety’.61 O’Farrelly’s vision of a utopian Gaelic nation had now taken on a Celtic dimension, as she realized the unfeasibility of the former. The Celtic Congress was brimming with tangible idealism, just as the Gaelic League had been when O’Farrelly had first joined, and which she constantly sought to renew. In early July 1925 O’Farrelly organized Dublin’s first Celtic Congress, after previous attempts to do so were hampered by civil unrest.62 Although the Gaelic League had previously refused to co-operate with the Celtic Congress, it now pledged to support the event, as did O’Farrelly’s academic colleagues Dr Coffey, Osborn Bergin and Mary Hayden of UCD, amongst others. A highlight of the Congress was a concert featuring the best of Irish dancing, music and singing, held in the Mansion House.63 In spite of a report furnished to the Cumann na nGaedheal Government which read: ‘From the absence of any serious attempt to proceed on business lines, the operative section of the Committee, consisting of Miss O’Farrelly and Dr Hyde, must be regarded as incapable of making a success of the Congress’,64 the Congress ‘proved to be a great success and in this respect’, according to E.T. John, adding that the Congress was 59

D. Rhys Phillips, Transactions of the Celtic Congress, 1921 (Swansea, 1923), p. 14. 60 Angus Henderson, ‘Pan-Celticism and politics’ in The Welsh Outlook, vol. VII (August 1920), p. 197. 61 Leader, 29 Feb. 1908. 62 The Celtic Congress was planned to take place in Dublin in 1922 and 1923, but was cancelled due to the Civil War. 63 Derry Journal, l 6 July 1925. 64 Report on The Celtic Congress, by the Department of External Affairs, 10 June 1925 (NAI, Department of the Taoiseach, S4476A).

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‘indebted to Miss O’Farrelly’.65 O’Farrelly was made Honorary General Secretary of the Celtic Congress for her efforts. She was to repeat this Dublin performance in 1934 and 1947 and was financially supported to some extent by De Valera’s government. At subsequent Celtic Congresses held in Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and the Isle of Man, O’Farrelly organized the Irish representation: scholars, dancers, actors and singers. In 1938, O’Farrelly arranged for players from the Dublin Senior Camogie League to travel to the Isle of Man Congress, to play a match against a local team. While O’Farrelly hoped that this experience would deepen the girls’ understanding of Celtic culture, she was also hopeful ‘that there among their Gaelic friends they were planting the seed of their national game’.66 This act echoed her own formative experience in the Aran Islands, based on knowledge-sharing, a reciprocal relationship between native and visitor. At the 1947 Celtic Congress, the seventy-three year old O’Farrelly made a passionate speech portraying her vision of a singular Celtic identity with its roots fixed ‘firmly in the past’, although its ‘gaze is on the future’.67 This speech, with its denunciation of the ‘the power of the foreign press and false doctrines of life’ and ‘the worship of wealth and ease and power’, reiterated the advice and warning inherent within The Reign of Humbug, forty-eight years earlier, with one difference: in 1900, the native Gaelic culture in Aran had served as the prototype for O’Farrelly’s ideal Gaelic ‘nation’, which she anticipated would take root and flourish on mainland Ireland. Now her Gaelic vision had been forced eastward beyond Ireland, and by 1947 this vision had been cloaked by Celticism. O’Farrelly remained Life President of the Celtic Congress until her death in 1951. In assessing O’Farrelly’s contribution to Irish language and culture during the state-building years of the early twentieth century, initial credit must be given to the forward-looking Executive Committee of the Gaelic League. Not alone did they appreciate the value of women within their movement, but also offered them a public, socially acceptable platform and encouraged their educational and literary pursuits. O’Farrelly’s contemporaries, Mary Hayden, Mary Butler and Alice Milligan, all cultural activists and literary figures who used the English language as their medium, also benefited from the Gaelic League’s all-inclusive policy 65

E.T. John to Mr Phillips, 10 July 1925 (National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, E.T. John Papers, 4489). 66 Sunday Independent, 3 July 1938. 67 Irish Press, 24 July 1947.

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and promoted various cultural activities. Until recent times, these women, who played a hugely important role in fostering Gaelic cultural activities from the early to mid twentieth century, have been marginalized in the history books. However, O’Farrelly has been doubly marginalized, as her Irish language writings and broadcasts, providing so rich an insight into the Revivalists’ vision of Irish Ireland vis-à-vis education, literature, politics and feminism, have been left to gather dust. O’Farrelly’s vision of a meritocratic bilingual Gaelic Ireland, in which women would be afforded the same opportunities as men, was, in her own words, a product of the ‘atmosphere of high thoughts and fair dreams’ which had kept the Gaelic League afloat in the early days of the Revivalist period.68 Throughout her life and career, O’Farrelly worked relentlessly towards this vision, having once informed Mary Butler that if we have dreams ‘then we must make them come true’. 69

68 69

See Dame Columba Butler, A life of Mary E.L. Butler, (NLI, MS 7321). Ibid.

SECTION II: MARGINAL AND INTERSTICES

CHAPTER FOUR AN SNAG BREAC: SPECKLED TONGUE SPEAKING FROM THE MARGINS IN FRANCES MOLLOY’S NO MATE FOR THE MAGPIE SARAH O’CONNOR

Frances Molloy was born in Co. Derry in 1947. At fifteen she left school to work in a factory, later spending a brief period as a nun. Dissatisfied with her religious vocation, she departed the convent for England where she was married. In 1971 the couple returned to Derry and lived there for two years. However, escalating violence in Northern Ireland caused great concern for the welfare and well-being of her husband, a Dubliner, and children living in a sectarian and extremely volatile society. 1972 was the peak year for violence in Northern Ireland; 467 killed out of the total killings of 678 since 1969. The family eventually left the claustrophobia and oppressiveness of Northern Ireland behind and went to Lancaster, England. Success came quickly with her first novel No Mate for the Magpie published in 1985.1 The political strife she experienced first hand provides the context for this novel. No Mate for the Magpie is a picaresque novel; satiric prose fiction which depicts in realistic often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish heroine, Ann McGlone, of low-social status living by her wits in a corrupt society. The McGlone family relocate five times in the novel due to fire, hauntings, violence and intimidation, prejudice and financial pressure. Likewise, Ann is constantly in a state of relocation, always on the move from one residence to another and from one job to another. This incessant movement allows Molloy to investigate fully the hardships that the family and in particular, Ann face. Molloy exposes class prejudice, 1

Frances Molloy, No Mate for the Magpie (London, 1985).

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sectarianism, inequality in the workplace, racism and the country and city divide in 179 pages. Molloy uses the faux-naif narrator, Ann Elizabeth McGlone, to attack corrupt and peculiar institutions in Northern Ireland. The protagonist’s voice speaks from the margins of Northern Irish society in the 1960s and 1970s because it is female, catholic, working-class and speaks in the subversive Derry accent. Dialect empowers Molloy to speak back against patriarchal and hierarchal institutions in society. In using it, the author gives a voice to the disempowered, the damaged and the wronged; making the weak, strong, giving the silenced a voice and ultimately bringing the peripheral to the centre. In Ireland the magpie is called a cabaire breac or snag breac, both of which mean a speckled prattler. By using the Magpie in her title Molloy is also highlighting the type of language she employs -- dialect -- a speckled tongue. Dialect betrays a distrust of standard English language. Local dialect is associated with intimacy and personal involvement whereas the standard dialect is associated with social distance. Consequently, Molloy’s narrator Ann McGlone speaks as an insider to the outside world. The use of regional, social or ethnic dialects for purposes of identity and unity is well documented. Indicating group membership through language, whether to other members of the same group or to outsiders, is a phenomenon that is transparent and needs little explanation. What is more difficult to observe and understand, at least for outsiders, is the use of regional, social or ethnic dialect as a sort of secret code. It can be a powerful weapon which offers the user a vantage point from which he/she can observe without being observed. No Mate for the Magpie is peppered with examples of non-English. If the reader is not from within the minority group which uses these words, he or she can only have a limited access to their meaning. In this case these Hiberno-English words can create a barrier to understanding. The words become gaps, fissures, or clefts of silence in the understanding of the reader. It is precisely from these points of non-reference that the author gives the disempowered a voice– she allows these breaches to enunciate for on their behalf. The idea that there is a standard type of English is taken for granted by most. However, only standard English has a written form, so virtually all written English is standard English. In speech there is so much variation within the standard. James Milroy suggests that perhaps it would be best to say that ‘the ‘standard’ is actually an ideal, a norm that speakers have in

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mind.2 By thinking of the ‘standard’ as ideal, Milroy, alerts us to the fact that non-standard forms of English are thought to deviate from the standard. Such a departure is perceived as a movement away from a certain notion of correctness, a higher level of social status and prestige. Thus, the standard is always associated with the higher social classes. The standard version of the language is institutionalised; used in major institutions in society and is taught in the educational system. Normally, the lower socio-economic groups speak in the least standard, most localised way. Not only do Molloy’s characters speak in a non-standard language, with the narrator/protagonist recounting events through Northern Hiberno English, but Molloy writes in the deviant language. She is writing back against the Empire. A novel written in a non-standard language enacts a rebellion against the notion that the ideal is superlative or even desirable. This forces the reader to reassess the ideal as the only model. Rather than a rhetoric which constantly separates the centre from the periphery, Molloy creates a style which defies this binary view of the world by fusing the core and the margin. This supports Ruth Carr’s view that Frances Molloy was determined to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ the plight of the oppressed.3 By showing, and not simply telling, Molloy conveys her status as an insider, identifying with the oppressed. Molloy uses dialect to locate her narrative firmly within the context of working-class Derry. An examination of the instances of dialect reveals that it is employed with great dexterity so as not to alienate the non-local reader. Consequently, there is more emphasis on accent through phonetic spelling. The author is aware that success depends on understanding. Molloy permits her narrator, Ann McGlone to use Northern HibernoEnglish grammar and vocabulary sparingly while use of accent is liberal. Typically confined to a relatively small area, accent serves to locate the speaker more succinctly than dialect. In the novel itself the narrator, Ann Elizabeth McGlone, mentions that her teacher Mrs Greene: was good at readin’ stories te us outa a book that she kept locked up in a cupboard along way hir handbag an’ a cane. It was the only book in a wee room that wasn’t about god an’ although a couldn’t read, a loved it. It was wrote be a man from America be the name of Joel Chandler Harris an’ it was big and dusty an’ grey an’ smelly. Ivery night a used te pray that she

2

James Milroy, Regional Accents of English: Belfast (Belfast , 1981), p. 19. Ruth Carr, ‘About the stories’ in Frances Molloy, Women are the scourge of the eart (Belfast, 1985), p. 18. 3

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would give it te me but she niver.4

It is hugely significant that Frances Molloy brings the name of Joel Chandler Harris into this novel. Harris gathered dialect tales he heard from slaves in the Georgia of his childhood. He placed them within a narrative context that made them available to a large white audience, sharpening the effects of their regional details and the age-old wisdom by which the enslaved secretly outwit their masters. Through his work, he introduced Americans to the basic patterns and rhythms of southern AfricanAmerican speech. It is obvious that Harris’s ear for the subtleties of dialect, and his ability to emphasize the universal nature of the classic standoffs between the weak and the powerful influenced and inspired Frances Molloy in her use of the vernacular. Joel Chandler Harris helped compose a national literature that used localism to describe the universal. Frances Molloy is part of a similar process in Ireland. William M. O’Barr and Bowman K. Atkins’s article ‘Women’s language or powerless language?’, modifies Robin Lakoff’s discussion of ‘women’s language’.5 O’Barr and Atkins conclude that ‘women’s language’ is in large part a language of powerlessness, a condition that can apply to men as well as women. Their findings show that in one particular context, not all women exhibit a high frequency of women’s language features and some men do. Atkins and O’Barr’s argument is that instead of being primarily sex-linked, a high incidence of some or all of the above mentioned features appear to be more closely related to social position in the society.6 They suggest that ‘women’s language’ and ‘powerless language’ interact, that to speak like the powerless is not only typical of many women because of their powerless social position but also is part of the cultural meaning of speaking ‘like a woman’. Atkins and O’Barr conclude that speakers using a high frequency of powerless features, whether male or female, were judged as ‘less convincing, less truthful, less competent, less intelligent and less trustworthy’. Thus, the kind of language used feeds back into the social situation. The language used in No Mate for the Magpie is such powerless language, which as Atkins and O’Barr point out, serves not only to act as a reflection of a powerless situation, but also seems to reinforce such an inferior status. However, Molloy creates a public discourse through a stigmatised language 4

Molloy, No Mate for the Magpie, p. 11. William M. O’Barr and Bowman K. Atkins, ‘Women’s language or powerless language?’ in Sally McConnell-Ginet et al (eds), Women and language in literature and society (New York, 1980), p. 93. 6 Ibid., p. 101. 5

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perceived as socially inferior and opens up a new, radical space for dialogue. In ‘The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change’, William Labov states that ‘in stable sociolinguistic stratification, men use a higher frequency of non-standard forms than women’.7 He names this tendency ‘covert prestige’. Labov implies that the use of either standard or non-standard speech gives people a certain level of status or significance within society. In other words men use more localised forms and are less influenced by the social stigma attached to them while the reverse is true for women. It is noteworthy that Frances Molloy, a woman, has chosen to write No Mate for the Magpie in non-standard form when it is usually men who use a higher frequency of such structures. She exhibits a large degree of ‘covert prestige’ bringing it into the public sphere where it becomes explicit rather than clandestine – both the language and the people who use that language are no longer ignorable. Northern Hiberno English, the language of No Mate for the Magpie is a blend of English and Irish. The non-standard language sounds like a howl or a shout to speakers of Standard English. Edward K. Brathwaite in his study of Jamaican English identifies such a mix as a nation language and asserts that it resembles Standard English in terms of its lexical features. Equally, he asserts that “in its contours, its rhythm and timbre, its sound explosions, it is not English.” Such a language is the result of a specific cultural experience. The communal nature of language is thus important.8 It is thus a lived, dynamic and changing phenomenon, not merely a linguistic structure. It is something that people do, and the constitutive environment of language is as important as the utterance. The notion of a Standard English is a construction of imperial rhetoric that constantly divides ‘centre’ from ‘margin’. The combination of two languages in No Mate for the Magpie, by virtue of the dynamism identified by Brathwaite, allows the reader access to a new rhetoric which exists between them. Molloy thinks laterally rather than hierarchically; the

7

William Labov, ‘The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change’ in Language Variation and Change, vol. 2 (1990), p. 202. According to Labov ‘overt social prestige’ is the tendency of women to favour pronunciations that mark them as speakers of the standard. ‘Covert prestige’ is the tendency of men, especially young men to favour pronunciations that mark them as speakers of the broad vernacular. It does not follow that every man or every woman conforms to this behaviour. It is a general tendency only. 8 Edward K. Brathwaite, History of the voice: the development of nation language in Anglophone Caribbean poetry (London, 1986), p. 302.

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language she uses flouts colonial rhetoric and collapses the division between core and periphery, creating a new expression. Origins and naming are given great prominence in the book. Ann is called after two grannies, ‘Ann, after the catholic wan, an’ although me ma didn’t like it much, Elizabeth, after the oul protestant wan, just for the sake of pase’.9 There is confusion over the correct name of Ann’s older brother. The nurse that christened him ‘couldn’t mine whether she had called him John or Patrick because she was busy an’ got the two wains that died that mornin’ an’ been christened be hir mixed up’.10 Consequently, Ann’s mother switches between names to make sure she gets his name right half of the time. Ann’s parents and seven siblings remain unnamed throughout the novel. To stop in-fighting between relatives, Ann and her older brother assume the role of Godparents to their baby sister and are entrusted with bringing their new-born charge to the church to be christened. They disobey instructions to have the ‘ba’ christened Martha (after their dead Aunt) upon seeing her gravestone with the name Martha McGlone carved on it. Eventually, Dania is agreed upon, after an aunt who is a nun in Africa. As security, Martha is added as a second name but as Ann says; ‘de ye not think that Dania Martha McGlone sounds like it has somethin’ missin, an me big brother allowed that a was right’.11 Eventually Frances is added as a third name. Disappointed with their reception upon their return, the young godparents: For the rest of that night an’ most of the nixt day me an’ me big brother niver spoke a civil word te me ma an’ da so they had te call the ba, the wee wain, because they didn’t know who she was. Then me ma threatened to send for the priest so we relented an’ toul her…’.12

The duality, secrecy and confusion involved in these ‘naming’ episodes contrasts against the specificity of the narrative voice. Molloy gives those with uncertain origins, marginal or peripheral identities a certainty and sense of belonging through language, an expression of that very place to which they belong. The only first names we do know are those surrounded by confusion. The ‘nameless’ family can represent the everyfamily, the local becomes a symbol for the universal. Humour is used throughout the novel to draw the reader in, as the opening shows. 9

Molloy, No Mate for the Magpie, p. 1. Ibid., p. 3. 11 Ibid., p. 61. 12 Ibid., p. 62. 10

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Way a wee screwed up protestant face an’ a head of black hair a was born, in a state of original sin. Me ma didn’t like me, but who’s te blame the 13 poor woman, sure a didn’t look like a catholic wain atall.

The casual and spontaneous nature of the narrative is striking. Immediately, Molloy sets up a dynamic between Ann McGlone and two of the prevailing institutions in Northern Ireland at the time: the church and the government. Thus, the faux-naif device allows Molloy to place Ann McGlone in an optimum position from which she can observe and comment on bizarre institutions in Northern Ireland. This view is what Frank (her friend) terms ‘a very Ann way of puttin’ it”.14 The location of the narrator corresponds to the use of dialect as a means of observing without being observed. Humour also operates on the same level. The narrator reveals how this works in chapter five, when she admits that humour was her coping mechanism in relation to the harsh and inexplicable treatment she received in the convent. The Reverent Mother, way all the penances at hir disposal, had niver been able get te me. A certin part of me always foun’ comedy in hir ridiculousness…because she had a face that looked for all the worl’ like the freshly plucked arse of a goose.15

Such a device is extremely valuable when one is born into a situation in which inter-sectarian strife is condoned and even promulgated by the church: Father Dan…was a great man. All the people used te love him on account of the fact that he niver toul them how they were goin’ te burn in hell foriver an’ iver because of their sins. Instead he taught them bigotry an’how te boycott protestant shops.16

This division is carried into the nickname given to the residential area where the family lives, Korea. Korea is the name the children put on the place where they live because ‘the neighbours were always fightin’ an throwin’ bricks an’ bottles through each others windows’.17 The reference to Korea, broadens the scope of the novel, showing Molloy’s concerns 13

Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., p. 122. 15 Ibid., p. 92. 16 Ibid., p. 6. 17 Ibid., p. 16. 14

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with the global through the local. Ann narrates how ‘wan day word landed in ‘Korea’ that our breadman had cursed the pope’. The narrator observes that ‘He was a protestant an’ they say that he cursed the pope the night before in an’orange hall. A do’no how they could have known because only protestants went inte orange halls, an’ none of them would hardly tell on him, supposin’ he did curse the pope’.18 Ann McGlone exposes the prejudices and myths that underlie sectarianism in Northern Ireland. There follows a vicious attack carried out by the women of ‘Korea’ armed with pitchforks, bill-hooks, hatchets and hedge clippers while the children of the neighbourhood loot his cashbox. The family eventually moves from ‘Korea’ to a remote country house in the hope of escaping the violence. However, one night they are wakened by a loud noise. ‘Even though it was the middle of the night it was as bright as day outside an’ we thought it was the en’ of the worl’.19 The reversal of night and day emphasises the unnatural and irrational nature of the action being described – internment. This policy meant that people could be locked up indefinitely without being charged with a crime and without their case ever going to court. It was one of the most repressive measures the British government introduced to smash resistance by the Catholic minority to being treated as second-class citizens. Ann’s father remained in jail for four years. While he was imprisoned Ann relates the difficulties her mother experienced as a lone parent and sole breadwinner. Short of money, she applies to the authorities for national assistance. The authorities send someone out to the house to question her. ‘Me ma wasn’t too used te bein’ quizzed be anybody an’ she didn’t like the authorities very much because they were the same authorities that put me da in jail’.20 The narrator makes an explicit identification between all authoritative institutions. These authorities question Mrs McGlone about her handicapped son. Ann observes: They pretended te be wile concerned about him alltheghther an’ toul me ma so’, however, she exposes the hypocrisy in this system when she discloses the circumstances surrounding his birth.21 She never let on that the doctor who would have been a priest if he hadn’t left the seminary the night before he was te be ordained, wasn’t at the birth in the back room of our house in ‘Korea’ even though he got me ma te sign a paper the nixt day sayin’ that he was so as he could get paid for 18

Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 25. 20 Ibid., p. 27. 21 Ibid. 19

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bein’ there. Or that the midwife who had han’s that were blessed be the pope had panicked when me wee brother was born not able to breathe, an’ knelt down beside me ma’s bed an’ took a special prayer that she kept for all emergencies outa hir han’bag an’ started te read it out loud an’ get me ma te read it after hir, before she went about makin’ me wee brother breathe.22

Ann’s mother tells nothing of the midwife’s incompetence or the priest’s corruption because she ‘got feared’.23 The authorities remove Ann’s wee brother and place him in a hospital. This family cannot rely on the institutions in society because they are intimidating and inherently unjust. Ann joins the convent because she has only two choices in life: to go back to her previous job in a pyjama factory where she was burnt and abused or to get married. Convent life is a life of silence. Ann’s mother cries when she appears dressed in the holy habit because she ‘looked like somthin’ no woman could iver have given birth te’.24 The emphasis is on the unnatural rules and regulations by which the nuns live. Ann learns that she must keep custody of her eyes at all times, custody of the lips and hands. Ann learns obedience, humility and how self-will only hinders the search for perfection. Turning away from earthly desires is a step towards giving oneself completely to God. In return for her love, she will receive great and manifold gifts from God. Ironically, Ann learns this important lesson by being forced to use second-hand sanitary towels. The incongruity of the situation is not lost on her. A allowed that at that rate of goin’ these nuns musta loved god a quare good bit because it appeared te me that the seven poun’ that a had brought them for sanitary protection was a great an’ manifole gift indeed 25 considerin what they were sellin’.

Molloy uses the faux-naif narrator to contrast two contrasting moral codes. Ann is accused of holding on to her worldly desires because she has a Brendan Boyer autograph on her arm. The Reverent Mother gives Ann a dressing down. She is made to feel like the greatest sinner ever born although she knows she isn’t because ‘a had niver kilt anybody’.26 Molloy holds the apparently infallible teachings of the church up to the light and 22

Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 27. 24 Ibid., p. 75. 25 Ibid., p. 77. 26 Ibid., p. 78. 23

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exposes their fallibility through Ann McGlone. Ann reads Thomas A. Kempis’s book, The Imitation of Christ, and concludes that her mother and father ‘didn’t san a snowball’s chance in hell of iver getting’ inte heaven’ on Kempis’s terms. Ever a resourceful person, Ann searches for ways out of her dilemma so she examines the text for loopholes. She finds plenty: Te begin way, for a body that done so much preachin’ about humility, he was foriver talkin’ on about what god thought about iverythin’ like he was privy te the mine of god, or was even god himsel’. A don’t know why the superiors were always goin’ on about how great he was atall the only reasonable conclusion they could possibly come te was that the man was a terrible oul fanatic an’ a cod allthegether, that couldn’t put two 27 consecutive words on a page without contradictin’ himsel’.

This excerpt demonstrates Molloy’s keen sense of right and wrong and her incisive ability to read people. Although the narrative is humorous, it is punctuated by moments of raw poignancy. For example, the young narrator says in a sentence devoid of any dialectal tincture: ‘The hardest thing about life in the convent was the lack of human contact’.28 Molloy underlines the brutality and unnaturalness of such a life by the absence of dialect. Ann laments the fact that the only voice they were allowed to hear was the voice of god: a voice which lacked any human warmth. Rather than her mother ‘screamin’ at the bottom of the stairs for all the dirty rotten good-for-nothin’ blaggards of the day that were lying stinkin’ in their beds, te get up before she had made them sorry that they didn’t heed hir warnin’.29 Ann wakes to the ‘cold metallic peal of a bell, tellin’ us when te rise, when te pray, when te ate, when te study, when te work an’when te go back te bed again’.30 Molloy contrasts these two ‘voices’ in order to reveal the coldness and monotony of the latter. Her mother’s wake-up call is full of life, illustrated through the use of dialect, while the bell seems to simply divide up the day by its monosyllabic drone. Ann states that for her the bell could never compensate for the gentle caress of her da’s voice saying to her at twelve o’clock at night, ‘gone te yer bad ye bastard ye or a’ll fell ye’.31 Humour serves to widen the gulf between Ann’s home-life and her convent-life, between a natural and lively atmosphere and an austere world of endless rules and penance. 27

Ibid., p. 79. Ibid. 29 Ibid., p. 89. 30 Ibid., p. 79. 31 Ibid., p. 80. 28

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Ann is asked to leave the convent because the Reverent Mother is convinced she is possessed by the devil. The morning after Ann starts her first lay job, she wakes with a terrible pain in her neck. The doctor examines her and pronounces her mental. The doctor will not give her anything for the pain because he says it’s all in her ‘mine’. ‘Wheniver they had satisfied themsel’s be chattin’ way me again, they all agreed that a was not outa me mine atall but just as sensible as any of them’.32 This is Molloy’s sarcastic judgement of society. The author reinforces the connection between all authoritarian institutions by making an explicit identification between the office in ‘The Big House’ and the Reverend Mother’s office ‘only it didn’t have crucifixes an’ holy pictures in it, an’ ye didn’t have te kneel down because they give ye a chair te sit on’.33 In ‘the mental’, the nurses treat Ann like an insignificant person. They refer to her in the third person, ‘the patient’, which causes Ann to put ‘me’ in brackets in the narrative. The institutions described strip Ann of her personality, her self. She is desexualised, and infantilised in the convent; her hair is cut, she is made to wear a shapeless habit and must call the woman in charge ‘Mother’. The bed in which she sleeps in the psychiatric hospital is described as a ‘cot’. In the mental, all questions regarding Ann are directed to her mother which effectively silences her. In both institutions Ann is deprived of her voice, condemned to keep custody of the lips as a nun while she is ignored in the psychiatric hospital. The nightgown she wears in the psychiatric hospital looks like a nun’s petticoat. She is quizzed by doctors and nurses yet her basic needs are ignored. Ann stops answering their questions in the hope that they will give her something for the pain. After that a come te the conclusion that the only way te get anythin’ for the pain was te really convince them that a was mad … Then a said te them in a big loud voice, a say, a said, this will probably come as a great surprise te all of you, but it just has te be said, a have a father, who has an arse, that doesn’t seem te know the first fuckin’ thing about how te shoot rabbits.34

Ann invokes the words of her father in order to assert herself in the presence of these ‘whole lot of big important high up lookin’ people”.35 These are the very words which allowed Ann to recognise her father after 32

Ibid., p. 94. Ibid., p. 95. 34 Ibid., p. 97. 35 Ibid., p. 95. 33

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a four-year internment period when she was convinced he was a sheeoge.36 By citing her father’s colloquial expression, Ann is speaking back against the powers that be, the ‘big important high up lookin’ people’. Ironically, it is by feigning madness that Ann gets attention and the medication she needs to relieve her suffering. In fact, the people who work in the institution are portrayed as doing things in a backward way. For example, the nurses put lotion in her hair ‘te kill the moudies that [she] didn’t have’. Ironically, it is after they treat Ann with E.C.T. or electroplexy, that she loses her ability to name herself. In her words ‘I couldn’t mine me name’. She loses all sense of her own origins: she doesn’t know who her mother and father are or where they are from.37 The hospital remains ‘legally responsible’ for Ann for five more weeks.38 During that time she received three E.C.T. s and twenty tablets every day, lotion for her ‘moudies’ every Saturday for illnesses and mites that she did not have. Molloy’s description of the E.C.T. is stark and unsympathetic. Wheniver they got ye there ye could see other patients, men an’ weemen of all ages an’ sexes lyin’ side by side in various states of undress. Some waitin’ te have it done, some lyin’ grey-faced an’ spent after, an’ others in the process of the treatment way things like headphones strapped te their skulls, sendin’ electric currents inte their brains te induce epileptic-type convulsions that turned the body rigid for some seconds’ agony that the general anaesthetics couldn’t dull, their mouths clamped open way some 39 apparatus te stap them from swallyin’ their tongues.

Ann links the jail which unlawfully held her father for a crime he didn’t commit and the psychiatric hospital where she is being held against her will, for an illness she doesn’t have. The only thing Ann can remember about her father is that he served time in prison. This memory angers him and he tells her that he was locked up because he was an Irishman.40 Similarly, Ann concludes that she must be imprisoned in ‘the mental’ because she is an Irishwoman. Molloy highlights the subjection of every Irish person to arbitrary and irrelevant rules made by bizarre and nonsensical institutions. A said te them that the doctor was aff hes own bloody head because when a had a pain, he wouldn’ give me anythin’ for it, sayin’ that it didn’t exist, 36

Ibid., p. 51. Ibid., p. 100. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 101. 40 Ibid., p. 101. 37

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an’ now that it was gone, he was trying’ to pretend there was somethin’ wrong with ME.41

Ann moves to Belfast after she escapes from ‘The Big House’. One of her flatmates, Cassie was thrown out of her house because she became pregnant outside marriage. Molloy indicts Irish society by saying that Cassie ‘wasn’t allowed te keep her wains (three) so she give them all te the nazareth nuns in case the neighbours foun’ out about them an’ thought hir family were a whole crowd of oul low-come-downs’. 42 The author alludes to Ireland’s architecture of containment, the collective societal effort to hide pregnant unmarried mothers in Magdalene laundries. Cassie’s mother was the president of the local presidium of the Legion of Mary. The reader is alerted to the origins of Cassie’s brother’s name, Gerrard Majella, after the patron saint of mothers. Gerrard beats Cassie and calls her a whore. Ann adds dryly, that the patron saint of mothers was a priest. Molloy’s biting wit allows her to identify with the underdog in society, whoever that might be. The eighteen-year-old protagonist begins work as a machinist in a factory. She is greeted by banners, signs and flags which denounce the Catholic Church and proclaim that Ulster is British.43 Ann is forced to play a role in order to survive in such a hostile atmosphere. [A]s me confidence increased, a got te enjoy the part a was playin so much, that a become more excessive an’ outspoken than any of the others 44 in me scathin’ criticism an’ condemnation of fuckin’ popish scum.

Her theatrical performance suggests that the atmosphere is staged or unreal which serves to heighten its reality. Her newfound friends invite her to go to an orange hall to hear the Reverend Ian Paisley speak that evening assuring her that she ‘was in for a treat’45 Needless to say, Ann does not attend this meeting and does not go to work the next morning. She calls the manager to explain her situation to him and her discloses his own desire to move back to his native Newcastle ‘before the crazy weemen in the factory foun’ out that he was a catholic too’.46 Molloy draws attention to Ann’s ability to play a role in order to evade a hazardous situation where she is clearly in the minority. It also calls attention to the over-the41

Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 106. 43 Ibid., p. 107. 44 Ibid., p. 108. 45 Ibid., p. 109. 46 Ibid. 42

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top nature of such fanaticism. Ann assures the manager that he need not worry because he has a ‘very protestant name’.47 The manager laughs and confesses that he would never understand the Irish. Soon after that Anne becomes a skivvy for a local parish priest. She soon learns that this priest ‘didn’t want to be atall familiar way a servant’48 and she has to carry her own bags, heavy with books, into her new residence. The priest is extremely particular and sets about showing Ann just how he likes his house to look and run. Ann sleeps in a hospital bed and ensures that the priest’s bed is dressed with hospital corners. These references allude to past time spent in the psychiatric hospital and refer to future time Ann spends as a trainee nurse for mentally retarded children. No Mate for the Magpie is an intricate tapestry depicting lives and events within a single community. Molloy possesses the ability to weave stories in and out of one another, linking episodes with others, creating parallels between institutions and encountered behaviour. The priest shows Ann his wardrobe which is full of coloured suits: that he musta wore on holidays or whenever he went down te the other side of the border te pick up a loose woman …(People in the north of Ireland believe that the weemen on the other side of the border have looser morals than the wans in the north an’ people in the south think the opposite is true.)49

He is a representative of a well-respected institution but Ann’s wry sense of humour breaks down that reverence in order to expose his failings. The narrator is quick to point out that myths held on one side of the border are often held on the other. People north of the border are exactly the same as those south of it. Thoroughly discontented with the treatment meted out to her, Ann immediately plans her strategy of rebellion. The following morning, the priest lists the mistakes Ann has made. The parish priest, after tellin’me aff for all the things a had done wrong, like not wait’ te be spoke te first before speakin mesel’, an’ not standin’ up wheiver he entered the kitchen, an’ not servin’ from the right an’ clearin’ away from the left or whichever way it’s supposed te be for a can’t right mine, an’ not puttin’ out a butter knife, an’ not puttin’ the jam on a dish, an’ the milk in a jug, an’ not settin’ out the cutlery right …started te brief me on what was needed te be done for hes lordship the bishop’s arrival the 47

Ibid. Ibid., p. 114. 49 Ibid., p. 116. 48

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This list gives the reader the impression of a critical, fussy and exacting man who is obviously hard to please. The words are densely packed on the page which adds to this effect. There is, nevertheless, ‘one wee cloud on his horizon’—Ann McGlone. 51 She staunchly refuses to eat after the priest and castigates him for his behaviour Father, a said, an’ it sounded friendly, a have been livin’ on this earth now for twenty years, an’ in that time a have been made te do some very degradin’ things, but let me tell ye here an’ now, so as ye won’t be labourin’ under any illusions, a’ll be damned before a add te that list be 52 aten your lavins.

The priest insists that this complaint is quite ‘irregular’, ‘bad etiquette’ and altogether wholly improper.53 Questioning authority, Ann calls her friend, Frank, who is also a priest to confirm that the ‘proper procedure’ is commonplace. Frank informs her that there are certain ‘norms’ that are kept. ‘It’s the way things have always been done’.54 Thoroughly dissatisfied, Ann demands to speak to Martha, Frank’s housekeeper, who corroborates Frank’s statement. Ann is fuming and advises Martha that ‘things were in damned big need of changin’.55 Ann speaks to Frank again and tells him that it was people like him who were in the wrong job, ‘tryin’ te make out that they were Christians an’ at the same time getting’ other people te ate their lavins’.56 Frank admits wrongdoing and observes that people’s lives are filled with contradictions. Molloy uses Ann to critique paradoxical nature of societal ‘norms’. Rather than conforming to these unjust rules and allowing the parish priest to treat her badly, Ann mounts an insurrection. On the day that the bishop is due to arrive, she sleeps in, stays in bed for the afternoon reading, Dubliners, a banned book, and eating the priest’s Garibaldi biscuits and drinking his whiskey. When the parish priest finally discovers Ann’s sit-in, he becomes very alarmed at the impending visit. Ann asserts that ‘Bishops is no different from you or me father, honest te god. No different from anybody else … Ye see father, bishops is so ordinary that a have even had me hair cut be wan. Bishops is 50

Ibid., pp 117-8. Ibid., p. 119 52 Ibid., p. 120. 53 Ibid., p. 121. 54 Ibid., p. 123. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 51

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nothin’ but barbers’.57 Ann has the ability to see through hierarchal structures, observing people for what they are, full of contradictions. Her frankness and sardonic humour ensures that such structures are destroyed creating a level playing field. Chapter Seven is devoted to the civil rights marches in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was launched in April 1967. A constitution was drawn up to defend the basic freedoms of all citizens: to protect the rights of the individual, to highlight all possible abuses of power, to demand guarantees for freedom of speech, assembly and association, to inform the public of their lawful rights. N.I.C.R.A. was the most widely known civil rights group but it was not the first organisation to lobby for civil liberties. N.I.C.R.A. was, however, the most important group within the civil rights movement and it began the events that led to the creation of a mass movement. October 5th 1968 is most commonly referred to as the beginning of the ‘Troubles’. On this day the N.I.C.R.A. had planned to march from Duke Street in Derry’s Waterside to the city centre. As the marchers amassed the Royal Ulster Constabulary attacked the demonstrators in full view of the world’s media. Within hours of the event pictures of police brutality were transmitted around the globe. Ann McGlone narrates the events of that day: The first march a went te was in Derry on the fifth of October nineteensixty-eight. The march turned out not te be a real march atall on account of the fact that as soon as we tried te move aff from the Waterside station, all two thousand of us, we foun’ our way blocked be a cordon of polismen lookin’ wile fierce. We tried te go be another route, but the polis were there too. The people who organised the march toul us that they didn’t want a confrontation way the polis so they just hel’ a meetin’ instead.58

An impromptu meeting was held .The police surrounded the marchers, blocking off any exit from Duke Street. Ann describes this experience as being herded into a sheep-pen on fair day.59 With sardonic humour she recounts a policeman’s warning to all the women and children to leave the crowd – ‘because they were plannin’ te murder only men that day, a suppose’.60 Molloy relates the events of that day by drawing attention to the singularity of the crowd. In all Ann’s sentences the crowd is the single object, subjected to unrestrained violence.

57

Ibid., p. 125. Ibid., p. 127. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., p. 128. 58

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The polismen … started te chastise the crowd be beatin’ it over the head way big batons. The crowd begin te bleed an’ scream an’ tried te run away, but no matter which direction it run away in, it was met be more polismen way batons.61

Two water cannons were introduced to finish the job of clearing the street and drove the demonstrators across Craigavon Bridge. Molloy draws attention to the destructive nature of the water cannon. She describes it as a ‘big hideous monster’, a ‘terrible dragon’, ‘ferocious’ and ‘ice-coul’, ‘the like of which had niver been seen on the face of Ireland before’.62 Then comes the scornful and derisive last word: ‘an’ the people allowed that it was no mistake atall that it had the same initials as the minister of home affairs because they both bore a strikin’ resemblance te wan another’.63 The link with William Craig is galvanised by capitalisation of the first letters of the words Water Cannon. The People’s Democracy, a group comprising 800 students with both catholic and protestant religions, organised a march across the North, from Belfast to Derry. They set out on New Years Day 1969. Approximately 100 people participated in the march. They were met throughout the four day event with R.U.C. barricades and forced to take alternative routes through fields and along country lanes. The numbers had swelled to 500 as the marchers embarked upon the last league of their journey. District Inspector Harrison stopped the march just before Burntollet because he had information about loyalist resistance ahead. [A] bighead polisman was a loud hailer an’ a blackthorn stick, stapped us along the road an’ toul’ us that there was a small group of Paisleyites waitin’ ahead at Burntollet Bridge an’ he expected them te throw some stones at us. He said the best thing for us te do was te link arms way eah other an’ keep movin’ forward way our heads down an’ not te panic because hes men had the situation under control an’ they would do everythin’ in their power te protect us.64

Detective Inspector Harrison, together with County Inspector Kerr, determined that there were 50 loyalists ahead and concluded that there was no threat. The marchers advanced behind the R.U.C. When they reached Burntollet Bridge, located only eight miles from Derry, they were attacked by about 350 loyalists. The loyalists, identifiable by their white armbands, 61

Ibid. Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., p. 131. 62

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were positioned in fields overlooking the road. They began throwing rocks and using cudgels spiked with nails. Several marchers were critically wounded and several were almost killed. Marchers sought to escape their aggressors by speeding up the road but there escape was hindered by a second group of loyalists blocking their path. The R.U.C. accompanying the protest refused to offer any protection to the marchers. Many of the attackers were off-duty ‘B Specials’. Nobody was ever arrested for the incident. Nobody has iver been arrested for takin part in that ambush te this day, even though the polis knew damned well who the culprits were because they could be seen laughin’ an’ chattin’ te many of them, on the very best of terms, while the ambush was on.65

Ann McGlone joined the march from Belfast to Derry on 3 January. Ann observes that the policeman who had given them the all clear had gotten his facts terribly wrong. She describes the war dance of the Pasleyites: [T]hey charged down the slope at us clutchin’ crow bars, an’ clubs, an’coshes, an’ cudgels way big rusty six inch nails stickin’ outa them, an’ gaffes, an’ bill hooks, an’ scythes, an’ picks, an’ pitchforks, an’ partisans, an’ many other kine of wile dangerous lookin’ implements too numerous te mention.66

The verbal missiles hurled at the marchers earlier along the route transformed to ‘big heaps of heavy rock’. Rather than fleeing, Ann McGlone stands her ground on the bridge. Wounded by rocks, with blows raining down upon her she concludes that her number is up. She manages to crawl to the safety of a nearby bush where there is another body huddled. ‘The body’ buttons Ann inside its coat and edges its way across the bridge out of the line of fire. After their ordeal, Ann notices that the body’s name is, appropriately enough, Armstrong. They are treated for their injuries and continue on. Molloy’s searing condemnation of sectarian violence is crystallised in the final assault by the ‘all too feeble’ women who were mostly ‘semi-housebound housewives way bad legs an’ piles an’ some terrible big operations’.67 These women remind Ann ‘of the weemen outa ‘Korea’ the day they attacked the breadman’. These women

65

Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 131. 67 Ibid., p. 135. 66

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resort to poking the protesters with toasting forks and emptying the contents of their chamber pots over them. Ann McGlone eventually leaves Belfast for Dublin after a long and painful convalescence. She loses her way and finds it difficult to negotiate the public transport system. Her stay in Dublin allows Molloy to explore the country/city divide. Ann resides with several landladies who are extremely concerned with their status in the community. The protagonist’s first job is in a private hospital run by nuns for mentally handicapped children. Sister Boniface runs the hospital with an iron fist and a wooden spoon, the symbol of discipline. Children, the weakest members of our society are treated as non-entities in this hospital. Ann has two pet patients: Mary, a dumb, mute girl and Leonard, a particularly violent little boy. By spending time with each of the children, showing them some love and attention, Ann changes their lives. She notices that Mary can speak and that she is certainly not deaf. Mary’s story is symbolic of the novel itself. The narrator pays attention to the ignored, voiceless young girl in the same way that Molloy shows her interest in the disempowered, and the silent in society. Both the narrator and the author speak on behalf of the damaged, the peripheral, and the wronged helping the mute in Irish society find a voice. Leonard, Ann tells Sister Boniface, is not a violent child. He only attacks those who he recognizes as threatening. Leonard has learned violent behaviour from members of staff. Ann defies Sister Boniface by destroying the symbol of her power, her wooden spoon only to realise the futility of her actions. Sister boniface opens a drawer to reveal countless other wooden spoons. Molloy presents a very negative and destructive picture of authority in the novel. The fact that the ‘wooden spoon’ is so easily replaceable does not bode well for those subject to it. The violent behaviour depicted is learned and re-learned by a society that cannot release itself from this vicious circle. Ann defends the children in a tirade against Sister Boniface which ends by her throwing a telephone at her head. Having brought disgrace on her landlady by being fired by a nun, Ann was given notice at her lodgings. She quickly finds a new job, at an undertakers making shrouds and new residence. Her new land lady, Miss McBride only rented ‘hir apartments out te the most highly recommended, superior, respectable, good livin’, young, Irish catholic business-ladies’.68 Ann exposes the prejudices and racist attitudes of Miss Bride. They talk about sex, god, contraception, sin, education, race, politics and responsibility. ‘Miss McBride was easily the most grotesquely fascinatin’ 68

Ibid., p. 150.

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individual a had iver come across in the whole of me life’.69 Ann fills Miss McBride’s house with young fellows from every part of Ireland, who were down on their luck. She convinces Miss McBride that she is an undercover nun working alongside a priest sent to work among young catholic men in danger of being sucked into sin. Ann changes employment and begins work with a delicatessan. She stays in digs. Her landlady had seven children and a semi-invalid husband who worked part-time as an electrician. All nine members sleep in the kitchen. The fire has to be cleaned out every night for the father to stretch his legs. Molloy draws attention to the poor housing in Dublin in the 1960s. Ann joins an anti-vietnam war demonstration on her way home from work. She is again on the receiving end of police brutality. ‘The guardian of the peace who was tryin’ te murder’ her ‘dashed’ her to the ground. Ann’s only recourse was to bite him in the testicles in order to escape her assailant. After this incident Ann is imprisoned in the Bridewell. Molloy links the procedure involved in Ann’s court appearance to the rosary. She receives two years’ imprisonment – suspended. Consequently, she is sacked and obliged to find alternative accommodation. That day Ann does not bother looking for a job. She walks around Dublin observing people, their poverty, alcoholism, dehumuanisation, religion, loneliness, destitution, desperation, and frustration. While ‘Please give generously an’ god will reward you’ boxes shoved under noses, by well-fed, well-dressed, well-past middle-age ladies’.70 Intolerance, racism, hunger, anxiety, drug addiction are ubiquitous while ‘the people with the answers to all the problems of the land, toutin’ their propaganda sheets for nine pence a copy outside the historic General Post Office’.71 The scene is contextualised by the G.P.O., a landmark of Irish independence—triumph through failure—in the background. There is no suggestion of such triumph here. Ann’s suitcase, previously full of books is now only half full. The emphasis is placed on the emptiness around Ann McGlone. A could see ‘Anna Livia’ movin’ beneath me, resolutely, determinedly, headin’ outa Ireland, an’ a knew then that a too must do the same an’ go to a place where life resembled life more than it did here, but that like ‘Anna Livia’ my mind would never quite escape the compellin’ god-forsaken shores ‘of my fool-driven land’.72 69

Ibid., p. 157. Ibid., p. 169. 71 Ibid., p. 170. 72 Ibid. 70

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The final view of Dublin is one of stasis and moral stagnation which contrasts to the previous continuous movement of the protagonist/narrator. This makes Ann’s earlier observation that ‘things were in damned big need of changin’73 all the more poignant. Ann ranges from Derry to Belfast to Dublin and finds no solace in any of these places. The same problems recur leaving her with no option but to escape the compellin’ god-forsaken shores ‘of my fool-driven land’.74 The only movement detailed in the final scene is that of the river as it flows away from Ireland. Ann can feel the movement of the ‘chattering waters’ beneath her. The use of the word ‘chattering’ suggests that there is a likeness between Anne’s speckled tongue, and the river’s babbling, prattling waters. Just as the river moves inexorably towards the sea, Anne’s exile is imminent.

73 74

Ibid., p. 123. Ibid., p. 170.

CHAPTER FIVE IN-BETWEEN A ‘SVELTE GAMINE’ AND AN ANDRO-MACHINE: ‘BECOMING-WOMAN’ IN THE INTERSTICE, IN TWO FILMS BY NEIL JORDAN JENNY O’CONNOR

The famous introduction to A Thousand Plateaus underlines the prevailing ethos of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical works: ‘The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd’.1 Neil Jordan’s cinema engages with this theme of multiplicity, imbuing his characters with a myriad of aspects and angles, allowing them many prisms through which to apprehend the world. However, to be multiple is not simply to be multifaceted. To be multiple is to be involved in an active process of becoming. To continually become, one must explore the interstices between centre and periphery, between body and organs, between tree and rhizome.2 Becoming is thus a rhizomatic process in itself, in that it ‘ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles’.3 The rhizome and the becoming process are interwoven, yet singular; univocal and multiple. In order to become then, one must commit to living rhizomatically; forming 1

Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A thousand plateaus (London, 1987), p. 3. For Deleuze, the tree root, or arboreal system of organisation is that which is static and subscribes to grand truths and meanings. It is society’s self-imposed system of order. The rhizome, by contrast, is created through infinite connections between disparate things and bodies, so that meanings are continually shifting and affects are always changing. Thus, the rhizome offers a way of thinking that does not deal in binary opposites of right and wrong, real and imaginary, organisation and chaos. 3 Deleuze & Guattari, A thousand plateaus, p. 8. 2

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and reforming connections and links between disparate modes of thought, not seeking a grand truth, but simply investing oneself in constant oscillations of change, forming an alliance with, and understanding the other. While becoming is not a process that arrives at a conclusion, or a finale, there is a point at which it begins. Before one can become-animal, or become-nomad, one must first become-woman. For Deleuze and Guattari, becoming-woman is not a process that is related to gender or sexuality in any way. Rather, woman is a move away from patriarchal, homosocial man and hierarchical constructs – it is an ungendered alternative to phallocentric structures. To become-woman then, is to engage in a very real process of undoing, disassembling, rebuilding. It is a means by which to shed the skin of gender-ised ideologies, and reveal new surfaces beneath. This process does not end. The shedding is continuous, is integral to the becoming itself. However, there is no essence to becoming, no central truth to be gleaned at the heart of it. It is simply another way to live, an alternative practice of existence that does not privilege patriarchy, or matriarchy, or any ideology at all. It is an unfolding and a refolding of identity, until that identity is no longer restricted by fixed terms. Like Slavoj Žižek, Neil Jordan begs the question, ‘What if the ‘proper’ space for philosophy is these very gaps and interstices opened up by ‘pathological’ displacements in the social edifice?4 ‘Becoming-woman takes place on risky bodies, on in-between bodies, on bodies that are willing to enter into an alliance with others. In Neil Jordan’s cinema, the figure of the in-between wo/man is undoubtedly risky, in that it resides on the borders between gender definitions. The in-between body also has a unique relationship with the penis, and subsequently with the phallus (which may be seen to be the penis’ symbolic signified5); the in-between body in Jordan’s cinema conceals and reveals the penis in equal measure, and always underlines heterosocial possibility. Thus, the phallus no longer signifies masculine power and privilege. Instead, it is both material and ‘plastic’, 6 and signifies the binarism and androcentrism of our systems of organisation, rather than the narcissistic and libidinised source of both power and neurosis that psychoanalysis claims it to be. The characters of Dil in The Crying Game and Patrick/ Kitten in Breakfast on Pluto both perform femininity, yet they also enter the process of becoming-woman in a more profound way. In the 4

Slavoj Žižek, Organs without bodies: Deleuze and consequences (New York, 2004), p. x. 5 Judith Butler, Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of ‘sex’ (New York, 1993), p. 73. 6 Butler, Bodies that matter, p. 89.

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interstice, between patriarchy and femininity, they emerge, and become. I will also examine the figures of Jude in The Crying Game and Eileen Bergin in Breakfast on Pluto as two examples of becoming-the-Lady in works of courtly love; the first who becomes ‘an inhuman partner in the precise sense of a radical Otherness’ and the latter who functions as the maternal ‘abstract Ideal’. 7 The courtly love trope discussed by Žižek addresses woman from a masculine perspective, and this can also be said of Deleuze’s and Jordan’s work. That Jordan defines and determines his women reflects the feminist concern of the Deleuzian approach to becoming-woman: if men are establishing feminine thresholds and boundaries, is not the primacy of the phallus still alive and well? Each of these characters in some way becomes-woman, and all four together challenge Deleuze’s theory to its limits. A discussion on the possibilities of subversion of the social and sexual order created by transvestites, transsexuals, or overtly feminised men or masculinised women is not new.8 However, to examine these characters within a matrix of becoming is to immediately and necessarily displace the dominance of patriarchy. To become is to continually vacillate, to constantly change. With such a shifting collective identity, those who actively become automatically place themselves outside the dominant phallogocentric nexus. With patriarchy superseded in this way, and not replaced with an alternative arboreal system, becoming is the new alternative to binary logic; not antithetical, not opposite, but rhizomatic. However, the fact that ‘becoming-woman’ is the concept of two male philosophers is not lost on feminists. Rosi Braidotti, who discusses Deleuzo-guattarian thought as philosophical nomadism, offers an overview of the many ways in which feminists engage with Deleuze & Guattari’s becoming-woman.9 Above all, the sticking point is the lack of historical recognition of the feminist subject position in the ‘becomingwoman’ framework. Deleuze and Guattari gloss over the history of feminism in favour of highlighting the overarching power of the patriarchal order and the need to liberate oneself from it. 10 Thus, feminism becomes ‘woman-ness’, a process that dismantles the phallic system, rather than one that promotes the feminine sexually, socially and 7

Slavoj Žižek, ‘The inaccessible lady’ in New Left Review, vol. 202 (Nov–Dec 1993), pp 96 and 95. 8 Jenny Murphy, ‘The quare ones: finding a male homosexual space within Irish cinema’ in Film and Film Culture, vol. 2 (2003). 9 Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: towards a materialist theory of becoming (Cambridge, 2002), pp 110-116. 10 Ibid., p.82.

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politically. In Braidotti’s view, Deleuze is ‘stuck on a fundamental ambivalence about the position of sexual difference within his own project of ‘becoming-woman’. 11 For her, feminism cannot be so easily placed in its box. She is reluctant to offer up the feminist subject to the ‘becomingwoman’ framework, and to deny in the process the validity of the sexually differentiated female subject position. However, she views the process of becoming as coterminous with the Deleuzo-guattarian concept of nomadism. In Braidotti’s words, ‘The nomadic or intensive horizon is a subjectivity ‘beyond gender’ in the sense of being dispersed, not binary, multiple, not dualistic, interconnected, not dialectical and in a constant flux, not fixed’.12 The confluence of philosophical nomadism and sexual difference feminism finds its place for Braidotti in the enfleshed subject.13 This osculation also brings together feminists and Deleuzians, to explore multiplicity and nomadism within a philosophy of the feminine.14 For Luce Irigaray, the symbolic woman cannot be divorced from the enfleshed women of Western society; therefore, woman may be obliterated by a phallogocentric society but she is already multiple. For Irigaray, the virtual feminine is the enfleshed transcendence of the female subject position (defined as the other of the same).15 Through the female body, woman defines herself. Braidotti adeptly examines the rhizomatic links between Deleuze and Irigaray on these and other points. Becoming is key to both of their philosophies, and Braidotti is keen to point out the complementarity of utilising both theoretical perspectives in tandem, of thinking the spaces in-between feminism and Deleuzism, rather than reinforcing the divide between them.16 When examining the work of Jordan, this approach lends itself well to the exploration of the lacunae between enfleshed and symbolic multiplicities and becomings; the marked gaps between performative femininity as discussed by Butler and the becoming-woman of Deleuze and Guattari; the interstices between the psychoanalytical form of desire that Žižek applies to courtly love and the Deleuzian desire that fuels the fire of the becoming process. Irigaray calls for an embodied subject that disempowers and destabilises the phallus. Deleuze calls for a subject/ body that engages with other subjects to form a 11

Ibid., p.82. Ibid., p.80. 13 Ibid., p.106. 14 See Luce Irigaray, This sex which is not one (New York, 1985); Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the other woman (New York, 1985). 15 Braidotti, Metamorphoses, pp 22-3. 16 Ibid., p. 115. 12

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collective of energy flows. Braidotti calls for these processes of becoming to redefine feminist politics. The univocal call of all three (and many others) is that which Jordan addresses: the call to destabilise the grounds on which gender and sexual subjectivities exist, to topple the tree from the roots. The character of Patrick ‘Kitten’ Braden inhabits a multiplicity of subject positions and has a unique ability to form alliances with marginalised ‘others’. His enfleshed body – the masculine swathed in femininity – is that of Cillian Murphy, the pellucid-eyed masculine ‘gamine’.17 Murphy is entirely aware of his ability to portray beauty, to perform femininity: I kind of knew very early on that I could do the looking pretty, looking beautiful stuff; it was to back that up with the soul of the character, that was the challenge…But it was a joy, I loved doing all of that – that’s what we do, we put on clothes and we put on funny voices. You get into looking pretty and beautiful very easily. The only thing I did that was sore was shaving the legs, and chaffing, but you know nothing that was unbearable. There were a lot of hours in make-up; you have to commit to it 100%, so I did. 18

This performativity of femininity (and particularly, pursuit of glamour) recalls Butler’s work on gender construction in Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter. According to Butler, when a man puts on a dress, he challenges the phallic dominance of social tradition. He deconstructs the ‘natural’ appearance of gender and subverts it by pushing the boundaries of acceptability. 19 However, Butler does not suggest that the transvestite enters into a process of becoming-woman. As Braidotti stresses, Butler is in fact anti-Deleuzian. 20 I believe that while Murphy may perform gender, he goes further than that: he enters into an alliance with the feminine. He becomes a hybrid of masculine/ feminine attributes and thus enables the character of Kitten to involve. Deleuze and Guattari describe involution as the forming of ‘a block that runs its own line ‘between’ the terms in play and beneath assignable relations’. 21 It is evolution that takes place 17

During Kitten’s period as a peep-show performer, she explains to a punter why her ‘bazoozoms’ are not as voluptuous as those of her co-workers by describing herself as ‘svelte’ and ‘gamine’. 18 Interview with Lir MacCárthaigh, Film Ireland, vol. 108 (Jan-Feb 2006), pp 123. 19 Butler, Bodies that matter. 20 Braidotti, Metamorphoses, p. 112. 21 Deleuze & Guattari., A thousand plateaus, p. 263.

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between heterogeneous terms, the way in which one can evolve by forming an alliance with the other. The trajectory of the line of flight through this block of becoming is the space between gender performativity (Butler) and becoming-woman (Deleuze) and as such, it marks the boundary between the two theories. While Butler repudiates any rhizomatic links between her work and that of Deleuze, gender performativity enables the actor to play with the idea of gender as a process of construction. From here, gender can be deterritorialised and the character is projected into a sphere of becoming. Becoming does not occur by filiation but by contagion. Murphy does not give birth to Kitten; rather he involuntarily passes on the rabid process of becoming that will never end. Thus, Murphy, and Kitten, undo ‘the straitjacket of phallocentrism’.22 The result is a multiple and univocal being that is unfettered by the binary logic of gender difference. For this reason, Kitten (and Dil later on) will be referred to in the feminine personal pronoun throughout this essay. Alain Badiou underlines that ‘for Deleuze, beings are local degrees of intensity or inflections of power that are in constant movement and entirely singular’.23 Patrick/ Patricia Kitten Braden embodies this apparent conflict between univocity and multiplicity in a gendered way, by asserting that she is a boy on certain occasions (in order to prevent breaking Bertie’s heart, for example) and a girl on others (to repudiate the expectation that all girls should have big bazoosoms’). However, the character of Eily Bergin confuses this relationship between the univocal and the multiple. Mr Feely tells Patrick in ‘Chapter 4: My Mother - An Introduction’ that his mother was ‘swalleyed up’ by the city of London many years ago and calls her ‘the most beautiful girl in the town’. Later, Kitten elaborates on this tale, telling the police to look for Eily Bergin in the house that vanished. The oral ingestion of the maternal by the urban and the disappearance of the feminine recalls Irigaray’s discussion of the ‘elsewhere’ of female pleasure. As Irigaray states, That ‘elsewhere’ of female pleasure might rather be sought first in the place where it sustains ek-stacy in the transcendental. The place where it serves as security for a narcissism extrapolated into the ‘God’ of men. 24

For Kitten, the ‘God’ of man is his biological father, and his mother is the simulacrum of a film star – not the same, not a copy, but a version of the original. With the two ideologies at odds here, the search for the 22

Braidotti, Metamorphosis, p. 69. Alain Badiou, Deleuze: the clamour of being (Minneapolis, 2000), p. 24. 24 Irigaray, This sex which is not one, p. 77. 23

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female elsewhere (where she can find a god that is not phallocratic) and the preoccupation with the idealised lady (that Žižek describes), Kitten fantasises a rape sequence in his school essay, ‘Breakfast on Pluto’ that is both comical and speaks of such repressed desire. In this fantasy, her mother occupies the no-nonsense role of moral and virtuous abstract Ideal, who comments on the awakening of Fr Liam’s sexual desire thus: ‘Woops…my skirt and housecoat are riding up. Better abort this task at once or we could have an exploding clergyman filling the air with pent-up sexual energy’. She soon realises that ‘it wasn’t Fairy Liquid he’d been playing with down there’ and this concludes Kitten’s story about his conception. This tale of Freudian forbidden love and the repression of Oedipal desires is predictably met with dismay by the Christian Brothers. The language of naked and inappropriate desire between a woman and a man made in the image and likeness of God (the ultimate phallocrat), is not permitted. Irigaray goes on to say that the expression of female pleasure is forbidden within the patriarchal structure, in which the God of man and the God of woman are irreconcilable. In this case, it is not only forbidden but entirely absent. In Kitten’s imagination, his mother had no outlet for her desire, but rather attempted to bury it in domesticity, where a priest’s housekeeper was expected to maintain the patriarchal order at all times. The God of man calls for women to offer up their sexuality and pleasure, and the language of both, to ensure the smooth running of androcentric concerns. The God of woman comes into being when woman crosses ‘through the mirror’ 25 of binary division, into that elsewhere of self-affection, where feminine pleasure will not be ingurgitated by the phallic order. This mirror motif is echoed in the doubling of Kitten’s face when she presses herself against the glass of the peep-show room and listens intently to Fr Liam’s oblique proclamation of fatherly love. She discovers that it is even possible for a priest to become-woman, to move beyond the governing laws of patriarchy and homosociality and to declare love of the fetishised, transgendered, other. Kitten discovers her elsewhere of feminine pleasure in a peep-show house, with a priest on the other side of the glass. Eily’s character embodies the paradox between a feminine Other that defies classification and ventures through the mirror into a realm of feminist self-affection; and the conduit for apprehending knowledge of the father, a ‘spiritual guide into the higher sphere of religious ecstacy’. 26 The image of her on the red bus marks her becoming25 26

Ibid. p. 77 Žižek, ‘The inaccessible lady’, p. 95.

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woman: she travels away from the God of man, away from the father and the son, towards a beyond of possibility. Her becoming takes place on a risky body: a body that refutes the expectation of maternal love, in favour of a self-affection. This fascinates, rather than disappoints Kitten, creating an obsession that is focused on discovering the ingested (m)other. When Kitten finally meets Eily, s/he dresses as Margaret Thatcher, and attempts to embody the ‘English…Conservative…powerful’ feminine. She plays a British Telecom employee and asks questions about the telephone habits of the household, gleaning information about Eily’s marital status and family along the way. The discovery that Kitten makes is that Eily has reverted to the mother of a nuclear family, a position that Kitten herself cannot reconcile with the ‘swalleyed’, ‘Phantom Lady’ of her imagination. Without revealing her identity, she leaves, and returns to her home town, forming a heterosocial family of transvestite (Kitten), black, pregnant IRA widow (Charlie) and priest (Fr Liam). The Oedipal model of desire is overthrown, and is replaced with the productive Deleuzian desire, that insists on the dislocation of unitary models of existence and the exploration of connective flows between bodies that constantly seek to be multiple. This heterosocial network collectively becomes-woman, and is not afraid to evolve beyond itself (Charlie and Kitten eventually move back to London). A similar negation of homosociality, and an apparent choosing of the heterosocial that is enabled through a becoming-woman, takes place in Jordan’s The Crying Game. Again, we encounter the Jordan paradox here: the most challenging female roles are in fact acted by men; the heterosocial can sometimes appear as merely an inversion of, rather than an alternative to, the homosocial; the only woman in the film is monstrous, an ‘ice lady’, another version of Žižek’s ladies of courtly love (and the audience is encouraged to vilify this feminine atrocity). 27 Once again, the transvestite figure passes for female, and much attention has been given to the ‘lack of castration’ anxiety that inverts Freud’s original theory. 28 However, if we once again turn to Butler’s discussion of the plastic phallus, it is possible to readdress this revelation. By showing the penis in the film’s ‘money shot’, the phallus is resignified. Rather than being a potent symbol of masculine power, it is simultaneously the barrier to sexual fulfilment and the gateway for Fergus to begin a process of becoming-woman. In facing his fear of what the phallus represents, Fergus 27

Jody refers to Jude as an ‘ice lady’ when she refuses to take off his hood. Žižek notes that Fergus’ disgust on seeing Dil’s penis is caused by the fact that he sees something where he expected to see nothing. Žižek, ‘The inaccessible lady’, p. 105.

28

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must reassess the system of hegemonic fear and violence that he has thus far operated within. Dil’s penis is the phallic order, yet it also offers the potential of a type of physical philosophical nomadism by reinscribing the phallus with an inherent ability to subvert itself. The enfleshed appendage thus has a dual function: to remind us of the ever-present phallic order and to draw our attention to the necessity of deterritorialising it. Dil becomeswoman, her risky body visible for all to see, but she also enables a core member of the patriarchal inner circle to himself become-woman. Fergus’ journey through the phallogocentric matrix begins when he develops a relationship with prisoner, Jody. They develop various terms of endearment and Fergus even takes out Jody’s penis when he wants to urinate and holds his hands to enable him to lean forward. The intimacy that is nurtured between them is Fergus’ first step towards becomingwoman (though he is not aware of such a process taking place). Jody shares stories about Dil, telling Fergus that unlike other women, she is ‘no trouble at all’. Instead, she is ‘Lady as inaccessible Object’ 29, the perfect Ideal, that only exists (in the first half hour of the film) as a photographic reproduction of the original. The homoerotic support network that develops between Fergus and Jody is cemented through this discussion of Dil, and she appears to be the object of exchange within a homosocial framework. The constant oscillation between homo- and hetero-social networks is another example of thinking the spaces in between binaries, as Braidotti advocates. If, as Deleuze and Guattari state, ‘the self is only a door, a becoming between two multiplicities’, then Fergus is a gateway between the embodiment of his hetero- and homo-social selves. Through the catalyst of Jody, the multiplicity of the self is triggered and rhizomatic lines of flight emerge. These lines of flight escape from Fergus as molar entity, caught within the patriarchal system, and settle on a plane of possibility where gender and sexuality exist in the intermezzo, between binaries. 30 When Fergus travels to London, his very body is under the threat of retaliation and violence. His body under threat seeks out Dil’s risky body and together they grapple with the practicalities and sexual etiquette of life in the interstice. Dil, under the impression that Fergus already understands the nature of her body, reveals all to him and forces him to confront the possibility that the feminine may not be as transparent as Jody assured him. Instead, the feminine here is drawn as an enfleshed contradiction.

29 30

Ibid. p. 101 Deleuze & Guattari, A thousand plateaus, p. 305.

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Despite the fact that Dil is biologically male, she is the most challenging example of femininity in the film. Dil challenges patriarchy by embodying the Other, by creating a gap between appearance and reality. The paradox remains however, that a feminist enfleshed subject is not enough to challenge Fergus’ dedication to homosociality, despite the fact that becoming-woman is a way of dismantling the very principles on which it is based. For Deleuze and Guattari, [t]he question is not, or not only, that of the organism, history and subject of enunciation that oppose masculine to feminine in the great dualism machines. The question is fundamentally that of the body – the body they 31 steal from us in order to fabricate opposable organisms.

The body that is stolen in this case is the feminine body from Fergus’ idealised vision of Dil. Violence is the instant reaction to the revelation of the penis and Fergus hits Dil in the face, knocking her over. The distinction between hitting a woman and hitting a man is implicit here: once Fergus is shocked into seeing things as they ‘really’ are, the recourse to violence is seen to be a natural consequence of the re-establishment of the homosocial order. He vomits and leaves. If Eily Bergin’s disappearance can be viewed as the ingurgitation of the feminine, then Fergus’ reaction may be the regurgitation of the masculine. On his next visit to The Metro Bar, we notice that men in drag adorn the place; Fergus is sick at the thought that he knew all along, that his ‘safe’ homosocial vision of transgressive social spaces has proved unreliable. His desire is as yet molar, not molecular: he is governed by psychoanalytic consciousness, by moral rationality. Until Fergus extracts himself from the restraints of psychoanalysis, where guilt and fear reign, and explores the psychoanalytic drives in a schizo way, he is forced to repeat this reaction; to regurgitate again and again his masculine molarity. Deleuze and Guattari privilege schizoanalysis, which they view as a rhizomatic system, over psychoanalysis, an arborescent, or tree root system. Psychoanalysis, they argue, dictates to the unconscious, limits possibilities and restricts flows. While they regard as positive the focus of psychoanalysis on the ‘drives’, they argue that ‘psychoanalytic theory and practice end up closing the very door they had initially opened’.32 Jordan plays with the potential and restrictive elements of psychoanalysis in this film, counterpoising it with rhizomes and multiple becomings.

31 32

Ibid. p.305 Braidotti, Metamorphosis, p. 97.

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The molecular line of flight towards a becoming-woman, Deleuze and Guattari argue, is not a libidinised one. To the contrary, the love between Fergus and Dil illuminates the fact that in psychoanalysis, ‘the libido suffuses everything’. 33 It is a Deleuzian love, one that breaks through preconceptions built on psychoanalytical, patriarchal rules of morality and molarity. Deleuze and Guattari redefine love in schizoanalytical terms: What does it mean to love somebody? It is always to seize that person in a mass, extract him or her from a group…then to find that person’s own packs, the multiplicities he or she encloses within himself or herself which may be of an entirely different nature. To join them to mine, to make them 34 penetrate mine, and for me to penetrate the other person’s.

The mutual penetration of Fergus and Dil is ultimately molecular. They enter into a territorializing relationship with one another, whereby one is altered, as is the other, through their rhizomatic connections. In the deconstruction of binaries, the unsettling of patriarchy and the schizoanalytical approach to desire, an interstice of possibility is created. According to Deleuze and Guattari, girls and women do not belong to any sex, grouping or order. They are, from a young age, diverted away from male behaviour and encouraged to be the idealised Other; they must slip through the net, defy dualisms and embody and define themselves.35 This begs the pertinent question: within the patriarchal system in which all Deleuze and Jordan operate, is there any room for feminism at all, or must feminism literally leave behind the female protagonist in order to ‘get over’ itself? I cannot answer simply the question that Deleuzian feminists have grappled with for many years, yet I disagree that by negating the materialism of the feminist subject, becoming-woman could be said to negate feminism itself. Rather, if becoming-woman is a process that undoes patriarchy, then it is a feminist process. I also must agree with Braidotti that becoming-woman offers us new possibilities out of the deadlock of Woman as the Other of the Same. 36 As Jordan’s cinema suggests, ‘Deleuze’s emphasis on the ‘becoming-woman’ of philosophy marks a new kind of masculine style of philosophy: it is a philosophical sensibility which has learned to undo the straight-jacket of phallocentrism’.37 To move from a phallocentric, unitary vision of the subject to a pluralist multiplicity that is beyond gender is purely and 33

Deleuze & Guattari, A thousand plateaus, p. 39. Ibid., p. 39. 35 Ibid., p. 305. 36 Braidotti, Metamorphosis, pp 105-106. 37 Deleuze & Guattari, A thousand plateaus, p. 69. 34

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sincerely nomadic. However, the figure of Jude tests the theory of feminist nomadism even further. A monstrous, inhuman character, she is akin to the ‘traumatic Woman-Thing’ of Žižek’s courtly love trope, a femme fatale who attempts to ‘bring ruin to the hard-boiled hero’. 38 However, this is not a ‘straight’ film noir in any sense, and Jude’s inhumanity can be seen to be a becoming-monster and finally, a becoming-machine. At the beginning of The Crying Game, Jude engages in a gender performativity rather than a becoming-woman: dressed in a denim miniskirt, she constructs herself as an object of desire for the male gaze to apprehend. Once she has engineered the capture of Jody however, her make-up and high heels are removed. When he attacks her, she shudders and tells Fergus that it was not easy to have him ‘all over’ her, but suggestively admits that ‘one of you made me want it’. Moving within and without the male expectation of female desire, Jude lures Fergus into an embrace. However, shortly thereafter she abandons any semblance of compassion for Fergus or Jody and begins her journey through becomingmonster, to becoming-machine (for an instant) before death. According to Rosi Braidotti, ‘the paradox of the contemporary teratological imaginary’ is that ‘they familiarize us with human oddities and thus lower our threshold of the horrible’ yet ‘they keep a cold and unsentimental distance from them, displaying them as unself-conscious and quite autonomous’. 39 Braidotti discusses hybrid, freakish beasts from science fiction films, one of whom is the figure of the monstrous female, who must be punished for assuming male characteristics and appropriating the power of the male dominion. 40 This is far removed from becoming-woman, which is a destablising of the patriarchal structure: here instead, Jude seeks to constantly reinforce that patriarchal matrix of order. She corresponds to the masculine notion of ‘woman’ when it suits her but she ultimately becomes the monster of the masculine-feminine figure: not a hybrid, but an aberration. The much maligned figure of Jude in The Crying Game has been discussed broadly as a ‘femme fatale’ figure in Kevin Rockett’s book on Jordan, 41 as well as in Žižek’s essay on courtly love. Yet this facile interpretation does not reach the core of the process of becoming on which Jude destructively embarks. Rather than simply operating as one who brings about the downfall of the male hero, she exists independently as an in-between of feminine masculinity, or masculine femininity, the most 38

Žižek, ‘The inaccessible lady’, p. 104. Braidotti, Metamorphosis, p. 202. 40 Ibid. p. 199. 41 Kevin Rockett, Neil Jordan: exploring boundaries (Dublin, 2003), p. 133. 39

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heinous of aberrations imaginable. Jude cannot be female Other, outside the Pale of androcentric society, and virtual male, inside the border of phallogocentric dominance and power. Therefore, she must choose. By becoming-monster, she embraces the contradiction, yet she can never truly become-man, so instead becomes-machine. This corresponds with Deleuze’s theory that ‘there is no becoming-man because man is the molar entity par excellence, whereas becomings are molecular’. 42 Jude as woman, engages her molecular becomings by oscillating between identities, yet she can never truly succeed. Her endeavour is misconceived, and thus she will never truly arrive at the point where she seeks to be: the centre of the patriarchal circle. It is no wonder that this figure of femininity is vilified and seen to be a step backwards for feminism. She is an andro-machine, a woman who fails to see the disruptive power of the feminine. Like Dil, her clothes define the social perception of her, yet underneath, her biology betrays her. Dil is female with a penis; Jude is male with a vagina. Yet while Dil’s refutation of (homo)social convention is a positive statement of difference, Jude’s desire to be other than female Other is a disappointing return to the Same. Jude does not embrace the positive potentialities of the post-human cyborg that Braidotti refers to, 43 yet in her death, she crosses over to a becoming-machine. Jude is not posthuman, nor is she rhizomatic. For her, becoming-machine is not about forming connections, creating alliances with other machines. Her momentary becoming-machine merely reinforces her becomingmonstrosity: her death is spectacularly resisted, and her envy of Dil is fully revealed. Like the androids and cyborgs of other science fiction films, it takes multiple bullets to stop her. Instead of being a desiring-machine in the Deleuzian sense, that creates powerful and positive forces for molecular change, her dying desire is revealed in her last comment to Dil. By proclaiming ‘you sick bitch’, Jude accepts that Dil will be what she never will – a successful hybrid, a wo/man. In between classifications, genders and sexualities, Jordan fosters a nomadic philosophy of becoming. He utilises the interstice to continuously re-explore the patriarchy from which he knowingly emanates and critiques the very structures to which he belongs. In tandem with Deleuze, the two form a masculine reading of the potential of the interstice. As Jordan’s cinema suggests, ‘Deleuze’s emphasis on the ‘becoming-woman’ of philosophy marks a new kind of masculine style of philosophy: it is a philosophical sensibility which has learned to undo the straight-jacket of 42 43

Deleuze & Guattari, A thousand plateaus, p. 322. Braidotti, Metamorphosis, pp 244-245.

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phallocentrism’. 44 To move from a phallocentric, unitary vision of the subject to a pluralist multiplicity that is beyond gender is purely and sincerely nomadic. However, the four female characters discussed in this essay do their utmost to challenge both gender classifications and the practical application of theories of becoming. They are bound to the phallus, yet are eminently feminine. They appear to operate within patriarchal structures, yet seem to erode them from the inside. In fact, they exist in those interstices between the centre and the periphery. Creating this in-betweenness is perhaps one of Jordan’s most noble achievements, for to quote Žižek once more, ‘the most fundamental philosophical gesture is: not to close the gap, but, on the contrary, to open up a radical gap in the very edifice of the universe’ (xi). In Jordan’s universe, nomadic ideas move freely about and never settle, binaries are challenged and multiples are encouraged. Thus, while Jordan may be accused of being an androcentric director, and instating the wo/man (rather than the woman) as the true figure of destabilisation of patriarchy, he nonetheless advocates the power of the hybrid, the possibility of the rhizome, the potentiality of the multiple being to unsettle the binary rationality by which we live. Thus, in the interstice, Jordan encourages a becoming to take place, through which masculine and feminine are not mutually exclusive, but rather form continuous connections. As a result, he creates characters that are multiple and unitary, many and one. In doing so, he creates a cinema that is imbued with a nomadic philosophy.

44

Braidotti, Metamorphosis, p. 69.

SECTION III: PRIVATE LIVES/PUBLIC SPACES

CHAPTER SIX ‘SHOCKING REVELATIONS’: PRIVATE LIVES MADE PUBLIC DURING THE COURSE OF INFANTICIDE TRIALS IN IRELAND 1922-49 CLÍONA RATTIGAN

Mary G., a twenty-two year old unmarried woman, was charged with the murder of her unnamed female infant in July 1943. In her statement Mary said that she had ‘kept company with different boys since [she] was 18 years of age’ and said that ‘about four or five different boys had connection with [her] during the past four years’.1 Mary’s seemingly matter-of-fact and upfront attitude towards pre-marital sexual relationships is mirrored in many of the statements single women who were charged with the murder or concealment of birth of their illegitimate infants made to the Gardaí during the period under review. In ‘Origins and Legacies of Irish Prudery: Sexuality and Social Control in Modern Ireland’,Tom Inglis noted that ‘the history of Irish sexuality remains a relatively hidden, secretive area’ and suggested that ‘the reason why this subject has been ignored by historians is that there is an absence of revealing historical records and archives’.2 While historical sources on sexuality in Ireland are no doubt limited, sources that are available have perhaps been under-utilised. The records of infanticide trials involving single women in the Irish Free State reveal a great deal about sexual activity among unmarried men and women. The statements of single women charged with the murder or concealment of birth of their illegitimate infants often provide insight into attitudes towards premarital sexual activity and patterns of sexual behaviour. Moreover, the evidence 1

National Archives of Ireland [NAI]: Central Criminal Court [hereafter C.C.C.]: ID 22 84, Co. Meath, 1943. 2 Tom Inglis, ‘Origins and legacies of Irish prudery: sexuality and social control in modern Ireland’ in Éire Ireland, vol. 40 no. 3 & 4, (Fall/Winter 2005), pp 9-10.

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of single mothers and the depositions of their relatives and neighbours reveal how the wider community responded to extra marital pregnancy. These records can shed a great deal of light on an area of Irish history that has often appeared beyond the reach of the researcher. It should be noted that the records of abortion trials also give historians access to intimate aspects of the personal lives of both men and women. Indeed, the records of infanticide and abortion trials in the Irish Free State are perhaps unparalleled by any other written source in terms of exploring patterns of sexual activity among working class women in post-independent Ireland. This chapter will explore the records of infanticide trials involving single women between 1922 and 1949.3 As Luddy has observed, ‘throughout the 1920s and later, conflicting representations of unmarried mothers abounded’.4 Single girls who became pregnant were often portrayed, either as unsophisticated, ‘innocent or giddy’5 young women who had been seduced and exploited by ‘clever blackguards’,6 or as immoral, hardened offenders. However, the statements of single women charged with the murder or concealment of birth of their illegitimate infants between 1922 and 1949 suggest that the reality was far more complex. While some women may have been unsophisticated and uninformed about sex and pregnancy and a smaller number had ‘fallen’ more than once, the records suggest that the experiences of single, working class women during the period under review varied considerably and in many cases did not conform to the stereotypes in the discourses on unmarried motherhood prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s. Some women had been involved with the fathers of their infants over a considerable period of time, others had had brief encounters with the men they named as the infant’s father and a small number of women had been raped or abused. Contemporary observers tended to group unmarried mothers into neatly defined categories. However, the range of sexual experiences and contrasting attitudes towards sexuality evident in the statements of single women charged with

3

Although infanticide did not become a separate offence in the Irish Free State until 1949, I occasionally refer to the murder of newborn infants as infanticide in this article. The term infanticide was often used in newspapers and by contemporary observers. 4 Maria Luddy, ‘Moral rescue and unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 1920s’ in Women’s Studies, vol. 30 (2001), p. 798. 5 Rev. R. S Devane, ‘The unmarried mother: some legal aspects of the problem’ in Irish Ecclesiastical Record, no. 23 (1924), p. 60. 6 Ibid., p. 63.

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the murder or concealment of birth of their illegitimate infants in the Irish Free State defy such clear-cut categorisation. ‘30 October 1934. Visited Lizzie E. home at C. accompanied by Sergt. Tobin and Gd. Salmon’.7

Given that these statements were made at a time when sexual activity among unmarried couples was seriously frowned upon and discussion of sexual matters was considered taboo, the level of detail in many of the statements of single women charged with infanticide is quite striking. The records of infanticide trials certainly raise questions about the manner in which Gardaí conducted investigations into suspected cases of infanticide. While some women may not have been interrogated about their sexual experiences, others were questioned about the most intimate aspects of their relationships with the fathers of the deceased infants. It seems unlikely that these women would have volunteered such information, and would probably have been pressed by Gardaí to disclose details about the kinds of relationships they had with the fathers of the infants whose deaths were being investigated. In the vast majority of cases such information had no bearing on the actual investigation and it is unclear why Gardaí who conducted investigations into suspected cases of infanticide questioned unmarried female suspects at length about the infant’s father or the nature of the woman’s relationship with him. The sample for this study consists of a total of one hundred and ninetynine cases of infanticide and concealment of birth that were tried in the Irish Free State. One hundred and ninety-five cases were tried at the Central Criminal Court during the period under review and a further four cases were heard at the Court of Criminal Appeal. Fifty-six women out of a total of one hundred and ninety-nine cases referred to the fathers of the infants whose deaths were being investigated in their statements and thirty-eight women named the fathers of the deceased infants.8 7

NAI: C.C.C.: ID 56 24, Co. Roscommon, 1934. During the course of my research to date I have studied the records of one hundred and ninety-nine cases of infanticide and concealment of birth that were tried in the Irish Free State. Fifty-six women out of a total of 199 cases (28%) referred to the fathers of the infants whose deaths were being investigated in their statements and thirty-eight women (19%) named the fathers of the deceased infants. It is important to note that these figures do not include cases where the infant’s father was a co-defendant or cases where the father of an illegitimate infant was tried for its murder. In such cases it was apparent who the infant’s father was and the statements and depositions in these cases often included details about

8

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‘She said I was the cause of her trouble’9

The fathers of illegitimate infants were rarely questioned during the course of investigations into suspected cases of infanticide. In the vast majority of cases they were not suspected of having played a part in the infant’s death. However, unmarried women were often questioned about these men. In April 1936 Kate F. was arrested on suspicion of having murdered her unnamed male infant. Her statement is particularly interesting as it was recorded in question and answer format and illustrates the manner in which some Gardaí questioned women suspected of murdering their infants. Even though the father of Kate F.’s baby was not a suspect in the case, she was asked who he was, where he lived, how often they had met, whether she had struggled with him and how long she had spent with him. Kate F. divulged very little information. She named the infant’s father and said that she had only met him once, had struggled with him and didn’t spend long with him but she could not say how long she spent in his company.10 Although the issue of consent was immaterial to the investigation of suspected cases of infanticide, a number of women were asked if they had engaged in sex willingly. Elizabeth K. was asked a number of questions about her sexual relationship with Michael H., a former member of the Garda Síochána.11 Although Michael H. was not the father of the deceased infant the Gardaí who questioned Elizabeth inquired about how often they had ‘connection’ and where it took place.12 In fact, Elizabeth seems to have been asked more questions about the nature of her relationship with Michael H. than with the father of her infant. ‘I don’t like to give his name’

A number of women told Gardaí that they did not wish to name the infant’s father. Although the man’s identity had no bearing on the investigation some women were clearly pressurised to name the putative father. When asked about her infant’s father Christina M. told Gardaí that in October 1940 a man had taken her up Dalkey hill but claimed that she could not remember what occurred there.13 The Gardaí who interrogated relationships between unmarried mothers and the infants’ fathers. Therefore, information is recorded about the fathers of illegitimate infants in sixty-three cases (32%). 9 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 65, Co. Tipperary, 1937. 10 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 56 31, Co. Sligo, 1931. 11 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 69, City of Dublin, 1935. 12 Ibid. 13 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 11 96, Co. Dublin, 1941.

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her may have tried to induce her to describe her encounter with this man but Christina refused to answer their questions. Mary Ellen T. told Gardaí that she had a four-year-old daughter but refused to name the girl’s father. ‘I do not wish to say who the father of my first child is’.14 The Gardaí must have pressed her for this information even though it had no bearing on the case. When questioned about the death of her infant daughter, Mary K. said that she was keeping company with a young man while she was in England but refused to name him. She simply said ‘I don’t like to give his name’.15 In her study of adolescent female sexuality in the United States between 1885 and 1920, Odem argued that the sexual encounters described by young women in statutory rape case in the Alameda and Los Angeles courts ‘did not fit the image of male lust and female victimization promoted in the seduction narratives of purity reformers. Instead of being the helpless victims of evil men, most of the young women were willing participants in a more complicated sexual drama than middle-class reformers or public officials could imagine’.16 The discourse on single motherhood in Ireland during the period under review often presented the unmarried mother as a passive victim who had been seduced or led astray. However, from the statements of single women charged with the murder or concealment of birth of their illegitimate infants during the period under review, it is clear that unmarried Irish women were not merely the passive victims of male lust and many women seem to have been willing participants in the sexual encounters they described in their statements. ‘It was a stranger I met coming out of the bog’

Some of the sexual encounters described by single women in their statements suggest that they were of a casual nature. In a number of cases, single women charged with infanticide seem to have been uncertain about the identity of the father of the deceased infant. Some women may have only met the infant’s father on one occasion. Jane M. was convicted of infanticide in November 1945. When Dr McDonagh asked her who the infant’s father was she said that she didn’t know before adding that ‘it was a stranger I met coming out of the bog’.17 Some women may have been 14

NAI: C.C.C.: ID 20 101A, Dublin, 1942. NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 60, Co. Kilkenny, 1931. 16 Mary E. Odem, Delinquent daughters: protecting and policing adolescent female sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1995), p. 53. 17 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 27 5. Dr McDonagh concluded that Jane M. was sub-normal in intelligence. 15

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uncertain of the man’s identity, particularly if they had had sexual relations with more than one man. Gladys M. told Gardaí that in June 1928 she had started ‘going about’ with two men.18 She said she had permitted both men ‘to have connection with [her]’ but because Ned W. was ‘mostly with [her]’ Gladys believed that he was the father of her infant son.19 Mollie H. admitted that she did not know who the father of her baby was. She said that she ‘put the blame on one fellow named Sean R. but he was not the father of the child’.20 A total of sixteen women referred to other sexual partners in their statements.21 Florrie B. told Gardaí that while she was keeping company with John M., her boyfriend of nine years, she had intercourse with another man on three occasions.22 ‘I never kept company with any boy for any length of time. I went with fellows now and again’

A number of women appear to have had short-term relationships with the fathers of their illegitimate infants. Often these women lost touch with the infants’ fathers months before they were due to give birth and in some cases contact had ceased before the woman realised she was pregnant. Margaret H. was charged with murder and concealment of birth in June 1944. She said she ‘kept company’ with a soldier for two months and during that time ‘he had connection with [her] nearly every time [they] met’ but she had lost touch with him eight months before she gave birth.23 When she was arrested in October 1931 Bridget M. said that ‘[she] never kept company with any boy for any length of time. [She] went with fellows now and again’.24 ‘We had an understanding that we would be married’

Many single women charged with infanticide during the period under review had been involved with the father of their infant for a considerable length of time. Some women maintained close contact with the fathers of their infants until they were tried for infanticide. A number of women seem to have expected that they would eventually marry the fathers of 18

NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 76, Co. Wicklow, 1929. Ibid. 20 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 88 122, Co. Dublin, 1926. 21 This also includes information in files where the fathers of illegitimate infants were charged with their murder. 22 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 29 13. Co. Wexford, 1949. 23 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 24 131, Co. Cork, 1944. 24 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 65, Co. Mayo, 1931. 19

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their infants. Annie R. had made long-term plans with the father of her infant. She told Gardaí that she was keeping company with a man named Patrick R. and that she intended to marry him. She said that she was ‘fairly intimate with him’ and he came to see her twice a week.25 Similarly, Nora C. told Gardaí that she had been keeping company with a boy for the past year. They met once a week and she said that they ‘had an understanding that we would be married’.26 When Elizabeth E. was arrested in October 1934 she had been keeping company with the father of her infant for some time. Elizabeth’s sister Rose said that Tom ‘used to come up every Sunday night until about a week before the child was born’.27 She also said that ‘he was up on the Thursday night before she went into hospital’.28 Sergeant Patrick Tobin heard Elizabeth E. remark that if her baby had lived she could have made Tom M. marry her. ‘I take it that this ends the above matter’

A history of long-term involvement with the father of her baby often worked in favour of women who were charged with infanticide. If the father of the infant agreed to marry a woman charged with infanticide, she could often avoid serving a prison sentence. At least seven women were discharged between 1922 and 1949 following their marriage to the putative fathers of their illegitimate infants. In November 1930 Mary B. pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her infant child. As she had since married the father of her child she was released on bail.29 Sarah M. pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her illegitimate infant in October 1943.30 However, the court ordered that if she married the infant’s father and lodged the marriage certificate with the county registrar in Green Street courthouse she would be discharged without further order. Kate H. married the father of her infant in Sligo jail in July 1932.31 In August 1931 a Co. Tipperary solicitor wrote to the registrar at Green Street courthouse regarding the marriage of Mary H. who had recently been found guilty of concealment of birth. He also enclosed a copy of the marriage certificate,

25

NAI: C.C.C.: ID 29 1, Co. Cork, 1944. NAI: C.C.C.: ID 22 84, Co. Roscommon, 1943. 27 NAI: Court of Criminal Appeal, 13/1935. 28 Ibid. 29 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 72, Co. Tipperary, 1930. 30 NAI: Trials Record Book, ID 27 1. 31 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 95 72, Co. Mayo, 1932. 26

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noting that ‘I take it that this ends the above matter’.32 Some single women avoided serving time in a religious run institution or in prison by marrying the putative fathers of their infants. Once they had married, single women who had been charged with the murder or concealment of their illegitimate infants would no longer have posed a threat to Catholic morality. From the available evidence it is not clear what prompted the fathers of some women’s murdered infants to offer to marry them, thereby securing their release. These men may have acted of their own free will or they may have been subject to pressure by the woman’s family, by members of their own family or by the wider community. Local priests may also have played a role in engineering these marriages. In a 1934 Co. Clare case the father of the deceased infant wrote to Teresa C. who was being held in Dublin’s Mountjoy jail and expressed his willingness ‘to make atonement and to marry her’.33 The Clare Champion noted that the parish priest ‘entirely approved of the attitude of the parties’.34 ‘He more or less did it against my will’

Most single Irish women charged with infanticide during the period 1922 to 1949 appear to have willingly engaged in sexual encounters with men of the same class background. However, a small number of women told Gardaí that they had not consented to sex. Deborah S. was sentenced to death for the murder of her illegitimate infant. In February 1929 Deborah told Gardaí about an encounter she had with a man named John S.. Deborah explained that she did not know John S. very well. She said she ‘used to be talking to him going to the creamery but [she] had nothing else to do with him’.35 Deborah implied that John S. was the father of her infant and made it clear that she did not consent to sex with him. She said that while they were sitting on a wall and talking, he put his arm around her, knocked her off the wall, and raped her. She explained how she ‘was trying all the time to put him off of [her] and he wouldn’t get off’.36 Deborah did not report her rape to the Gardaí at the time and it is possible that, having been arrested on suspicion of murder, she invented or 32 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 33 68, Co. Leix, 1931, Letter from William Dwyer Solicitors, Roscrea Co. Tipperary to James O’Connor, County Registrar, Green Street Dublin dated 11th August 1931. 33 Clare Champion, 22 Dec. 1934. 34 Clare Champion, 22 Dec. 1934. 35 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 61, Co. Kerry, 1929. 36 Ibid.

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exaggerated the account. When she was arrested in November 1928 Anne H. told Gardaí that her infant was the ‘property of John H’.37 She claimed that he offered her two shillings ‘to have connection with [her]’ and that ‘he done so against [her] will’.38 When Hannah B. was arrested and charged with the murder of her infant she told Gardaí that she had been raped by a middle-aged man when she was leaving her sister’s house late one night. She said that she ‘did not tell any person that this happened to [her]’.39 Although Mary T. was not raped, when she described her experience with the father of her infant she suggested that he used some degree of force. Mary said that she tried to stop John C. ‘when he lifted [her] clothes up’ but when he used force she said she then decided to ‘let him do whatever he wanted’.40 Similarly, Elizabeth K. said that the father of her infant ‘more or less did it against [her] will’.41 While some women charged with the murder of their illegitimate infants may have been raped, it is also possible that women may have claimed that they had not consented to sex because they were concerned about their reputation. Instances of incest and abuse occasionally came to light during the course of investigations into suspected cases of infanticide. In a small number of cases, women charged with infanticide had been sexually abused by male relatives or by male employers who were in a position of authority over them. Nora H. was charged with the murder of her infant in April 1931. She explained to Gardaí that she did not go to hospital to have the baby; ‘[she] said [she] would have it at home and leave it to [her father] because he owns it’.42 A week before the birth Nora’s father had said that if he saw a child in the house he would kill it. When Nora reminded him that he ‘owned’ the child she said ‘he got into a temper then and was fighting all the night’.43 According to the Trials Record Book Nora undertook to spend two years in the Magdalen Asylum in Donnybrook. However, the Reverend Mother of the convent wrote to the registrar at Green Street courthouse seven months after Nora’s admission to request that she be ‘removed without delay’.44 Nora had endangered the lives of some of the other inmates and had ‘to be kept apart from the other

37

NAI: C.C.C.: IC 90 22, Co. Sligo, 1928. NAI: C.C.C.: IC 90 22, Co. Sligo, 1928. 39 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 55, Cork, 1931. 40 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 68, Co. Leix, 1930. 41 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 69, Dublin, 1935. 42 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 73, Co. Waterford, 1931. 43 Ibid. 44 NAI: Trials Record Book, ID 33 68. 38

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inmates of the institution’.45 She was then sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour. It is unlikely that charges were brought against Nora’s father. Nora’s behaviour in the convent may well have been due to the abuse she experienced but she was treated as a criminal rather than a victim. In a 1928 Co. Wexford case it emerged that Mary C., who had been employed by Myles D. as a domestic servant had had sexual intercourse with both her employer and her employer’s son.46 They had all shared the same bed for a number of months. In his statement, Myles D. said that Mary had slept between him and his son. Although Mary C. seems to have consented to sex with her employer’s son, it is not possible to determine whether she also consented to sex with her employer on two occasions. Mary C. gave no indication of her feelings towards either man in her evidence although she mentioned that at one point there ‘was a conversation about John marrying [her]’.47 ‘Nobody apparently suspected he seduced his own niece’48

Margaret M. was charged with the murder of her illegitimate infant in September 1930 and her uncle Laurence B. was charged with concealment of birth. Laurence B. said that he had been keeping company with his niece for two years. In her statement Margaret said that she went to live with her uncle ‘the day before Christmas Eve last and since then [they] [had] lived together as man and wife’.49 She said that they slept in the same bed and that she had ‘connection’ with her uncle on and off since she went to live with him.50 Margaret was twenty at the time of her arrest and her uncle was forty-eight. According to newspaper reports on the case, Margaret’s father was an alcoholic. The Irish Times claimed that Margaret M. had ‘been brought up in circumstances of extreme unhappiness’ and alleged that her father often turned his family onto the road.51 It is possible that Margaret went to live with her uncle because she had very few options. While Margaret may have had genuine feelings for her uncle, the fact that she attempted to commit suicide shortly after she had killed her newborn infant suggests that she may have been less than happy with the 45

Ibid. NAI: C.C.C.: IC 90 27, Co. Wexford, 1928. 47 Ibid. 48 Irish Times, 3 May 1938. 49 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 60, Co. Dublin, 1938. 50 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 60, Co. Dublin, 1938. 51 Irish Times, 3 May 1938. 46

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situation in which she found herself, although the probation officer, Elizabeth Carroll, said that she was convinced ‘from conversations with her and other evidence that her whole desire is to get out as soon as possible and go back to her uncle’.52 ‘I didn’t know the condition I was in up to the last’

In her discussion of female sexuality during childhood in 1930s and 1940s Dublin, Lyder observed that ‘discussion of, or instruction in, sexual matters appears to have been virtually non-existent’.53 This is apparent in the statements of several women who were charged with infanticide in the Irish Free State. A number of single women charged with infanticide during the period under review appear to have had very little knowledge about pregnancy or childbirth. When Margaret H. made a statement in September 1931 she said; ‘I now want to say that although I missed my usual monthly illness I did not know what was wrong with me’.54 In a 1928 Co. Meath case, the defendant told Superintendent Kelly that she was ashamed to say that ‘[she] didn’t know the condition [she] was in up to the last’.55 The medical officer who examined the defendant in a 1948 Co. Kilkenny case remarked that ‘from examination it appears that this girl was completely ignorant of the dangers connected with child birth and also with some of the essential physical facts’.56 When Mary M. was asked why she never became acquainted with such matters she said ‘I never asked anyone, I didn’t like talking about it – my sister knows it all, much more than me’.57 Mollie H. implied that she consented to sex because she was not aware of the potential consequences. She said that she ‘was about a week with [her boyfriend] when he advised me that it was no harm for a boy to interfere with a girl’.58 The extent of Irish women’s lack of knowledge in sexual matters was recognised by a number of groups and individuals concerned with sexual morality in post-independent Ireland. Several of those who gave evidence to the Carrigan Committee commented on the high level of sexual ignorance among Irish women. 52 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 60, Co. Dublin, 1938, Letter dated 30th September 1938 from Elizabeth Carroll, Probation Officer to J. J. O’Connor, Circuit Court Office. 53 Hazel Lyder, ‘Silence and secrecy’: exploring female sexuality during childhood in 1930s and 1940s Dublin’ in Irish Journal of Feminist Studies, vol. 5, nos. 1and 2 (2003), p. 80. 54 IC 94 66 55 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 90 18, Co. Meath, 1928. 56 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 29 7, Co. Kilkenny, 1948. 57 Ibid. 58 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 88 122, Co. Dublin, 1926.

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While it seems probable that many young women would have been uninformed or poorly informed about pregnancy and childbirth during the period under review it is also possible that some women may have exaggerated their ignorance when they were asked why they had failed to prepare for the birth of their infants or to seek medical assistance. ‘Nearly every year for the past five or six years I had a baby’

Margaret W. was charged with the murder of her infant July 1933. Upon seeing Margaret in the barracks a Garda stationed there remarked, ‘we’ve met before’, and asked her who was responsible for her condition this time.59 Margaret replied that it was ‘the same fellow as before Mick T. – it is three times – he is the father of my third baby and the third time I have been arrested’.60 Margaret W. was not the only single woman charged with infanticide who confessed to having given birth to an illegitimate infant previously. In fact, eighteen women who were charged with the murder or concealment of births of their illegitimate infants between 1922 and 1949 had given birth on at least one other occasion. Ten women said that they had given birth once previously.61 Five women had given birth twice previously.62 Two women had had three infants and one woman had given birth five or six times previously. During questioning in May 1943 Kate O. told Gardaí that ‘nearly every year for the past five or six years I had a baby. I had all the babies in the house. They were all born alive but one, which was dead born’.63 Women who had their first-born infants fostered or placed in an institution or whose parents permitted them to raise their children in the family home often concealed subsequent pregnancies, gave birth alone and killed their infants. Lucy B. and her four-year-old daughter had both been living with her parents when she was charged with the murder of her newborn infant in August 1929. While Lucy’s family were willing to accept one child born outside wedlock they may have been unwilling to accept a second transgression and this may have motivated Lucy to kill her second illegitimate infant. Some women like Elizabeth H., Kate O. and Margaret W. seem to have killed all of their newborn infants. 59

NAI: C.C.C.: ID 33 64, Co. Kildare, 1933. NAI: C.C.C.: ID 33 64, Co. Kildare, 1933. 61 Seven of these infants were alive when the mother was arrested, two resided with foster mothers, two children lived with their mothers and her parents and one woman’s child lived in a Catholic home. This information was not recorded in two cases. 62 Seven of these infants had died. 63 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 22 84, Co. Westmeath, 1943. 60

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‘A place to be avoided by our sisters?’64

Single women charged with infanticide in the Irish Free State rarely referred to dance halls in their statements. Only five women in the sample for this study stated that they had met men in dance halls. When Mary Ellen T. was charged with the murder of her infant in December 1941 she named her infant’s father and said that he had had ‘connection’ with her while they were at a dance.65 Elizabeth D. was charged with the murder of her illegitimate infant in March 1946. She told Gardaí that she attended dances at the Peat Works during the summer of 1945 and explained that she and her sister Peggy were usually accompanied home by different men after the dances. Elizabeth said that ‘[she] never knew the names of the men who used to accompany [her] home from those dances and none of them ever told [her] his name. During the times [she] was accompanied from those dances three or four different men had connection with [her] on two or three different occasions each’.66 ‘Open misconduct’

At the tenth meeting of the Carrigan committee, Rev M. Fitzpatrick of St. Michael’s, Limerick claimed that ‘the way in which boys and girls lay by the roadsides near Limerick was a source of evil’ and at a subsequent meeting John Flanagan, a parish priest based in Fairview complained about the ‘open misconduct’ which ‘carried on in the vicinity of Dublin’.67 Between 1922 and 1949 there were few places where unmarried couples, particularly working-class couples, could meet in private. It is hardly surprising then that many single women charged with the murder or concealment of birth of their infants referred to sexual activity taking place outdoors or in farm buildings during the period under review. Jospehine R. and the father of her infant first met at a dance in February 1925. They later met at a sandpit where they had ‘connection’.68 Elizabeth K. told Gardaí that she had had sex with the father of her infant along the banks of the river Dodder. Mary C. who was employed as a domestic servant in rural Wexford told Gardaí that when she had been working in the household for ‘about three months’ her employer’s son John had sexual 64

Flann O’Brien, ‘The Dance Halls’ in The Bell (February, 1941), p. 44. NAI: C.C.C.: ID 20 101A, Dublin, 1942. 66 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 29 11. 67 Criminal Law Amendment committee (1930) minute book, (NAI: D/Jus, 90/40/1). 68 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 90 26, 1926. 65

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intercourse with her in the cowhouse.69 Bridget C. was charged with the murder of her infant in December 1932. Bridget C. named the infant’s father in her statement and explained that they had met at a dance. She said that they left the dance at six a.m. and went into a haggard on the way home where they had sex. Mary K. said that she used to meet her boyfriend in a field in the evenings.70 Some couples were prepared to take considerable risks in order to spend time together. Mary Anne C. and Michael C. were charged with concealment of birth in June 1924. They had both been employed as servants on Andrew L.’s farm. In his deposition Andrew L. said that he told Michael C. that his wife had noticed that Mary Anne had been sleeping in his bedroom. Mary Anne and Michael could have been dismissed. Their employer threatened to inform the parish priest about their conduct. Andrew L. told Michael that he ‘would not allow his keeping a girl in his bedroom and that [he] would report the matter to his parish priest’.71 Michael told his employer that he intended to marry Mary Anne shortly and Andrew L. did not take any further action. Although a number of commentators expressed concern about the use of the motor-car by ‘male prowlers’ in order to bring ‘ignorant girls to ruin’, only one women charged with infanticide between 1922 and 1949 referred to sex taking place in a car.72 When she was arrested Mary M. told Gardaí that she travelled with Jack, the putative father of her infant, in his van and that ‘he stopped the van on the back road between Bray and Greystones and he had connection with me’. 73 ‘They drag from place to place, and never settle down’

The vast majority of single women charged with the murder or concealment of birth of their illegitimate infants in the Irish Free State worked as domestic servants. Many of these women would have left home in their mid to late teens to work as domestic servants and would therefore, have been free from parental supervision at a relatively early age. This may help explain why domestic servants are over represented in the records of infanticide trials. The Reverend P.J. Roughneen from Ballaghadreen in Co. Roscommon told the Carrigan Commission that 69

NAI: C.C.C.: IC 90 27, Co. Wexford, 1928. NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 63, 1931. 71 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 90 15, Co. Longford, 1925. 72 Report of the Committee on the Criminal Law Amendment Acts (1880-1885), and Juvenile Prostitution (NAI, DT, S5998), p. 20. 73 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 11 93, Co. Wicklow, 1939. 70

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domestic servants who went into service immediately after they had attained school leaving age were frequently led astray. In his evidence, Dermot Gleeson, Justice of the District Court in Ennis, remarking on the thousands of daughters of small farmers and labourers all over Ireland who went into domestic service once they left school, claimed that many have ‘no sense of discipline or responsibility’ and ‘drag from place to place, and never settle down’.74 Mary T., a twenty-year-old domestic servant who was charged with murder and concealment of birth in February 1935 appears to fit Gleeson’s description. She had worked for several families prior to her arrest. She was employed in Mallow for a month in April or May 1934 and ‘during that time [she] went with a good many boys and [she] got in the family way’.75 Many domestic servants who lived away from home were free from the constraints of family life and because employers did not always monitor their servants’ behaviour, many domestic servants may well have enjoyed a greater degree of independence than many of their peers. Some employers kept the behaviour of their unmarried female employees under close scrutiny, whereas others did not. When Mary C.’s employers learned that their fourteen-year-old employee had been leaving the house at night to meet boys they took immediate action and Mary’s freedom in the household was restricted. 76 A number of witnesses who gave evidence before the Carrigan committee were of the opinion that employers often seduced young women who worked for them by intimidating them. Hearn has asserted that ‘sexual exploitation of servants by masters and sons of the house was not uncommon’.77 While there may well have been many such instances in post-independent Ireland, single women charged with infanticide in the Irish Free State rarely referred to being seduced by their employers in their statements. ‘A hasty marriage by force of circumstances’

74

NAI, Department of Justice, 90/4/21. NAI: C.C.C.: ID 56 24, Co. Waterford, 1935. 76 Although this is not an infanticide case – Mary C. was charged with the murder of her employer’s daughters – I have referred to the case here as it illustrates how closely an employer monitored the behaviour of her unmarried servant and curtailed her freedom when she was suspected of behaving improperly with men. 77 Hearn, ‘Life for domestic servants in Dublin, 1880-1920’ in Maria Luddy and Cliona Murphy (eds), Women surviving: studies in Irish women’s history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Dublin, 1990), p. 168. 75

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While a small number of women married the fathers of their infants after they had been charged and in some cases convicted, other women married shortly before they gave birth. It is clear from the records of infanticide trials that premarital conception was clearly considered shameful even in cases where couples married shortly before the birth of their child. The Anglo-Celt newspaper, which covered the trial of James B., his wife Jean and his mother Annie for the murder of a newborn infant, referred to James and Jean’s recent marriage as a ‘hasty marriage by force of circumstances’.78 The report suggested that the three defendants had ‘early on at all events, the intention of hiding the fact of this hasty marriage’.79 Although Jean B. said that she had not been ‘anxious to conceal the child’s early arrival…her husband, mother-in-law and sisterin-law were anxious to conceal it’.80 Margaret D. was married for two or three months before she gave birth but felt compelled to destroy the evidence of premarital conception. ‘I did it because I thought I would keep it quiet…I wanted to keep the people from knowing it’.81 Catherine A. gave birth a month after her marriage to the infant’s father. She continued to live with her parents following the marriage and told Gardaí that her husband ‘has only stayed an occasional night since’.82 ‘He wasn’t worth it’

While some women may have had strong feelings towards the putative fathers of their illegitimate infants and clearly hoped to marry the men who were responsible for their pregnancies, others revealed little about their feelings towards their sexual partners and some women seem to have regretted the sexual encounters they referred to in their statements. Mary C. clearly regretted her involvement with the father of her infant. She told a doctor who treated her following the birth of her illegitimate infant that ‘he wasn’t worth it’. 83 Mollie H. told Gardaí that she ‘used to feel queer every night’ after the man she was keeping company with had ‘carnal connection’ with her.84 The manner in which Mollie described sexual intimacy with men – ‘he used to interfere with me every night’, ‘they used to interfere with me also’ – suggests that sex was not necessarily an 78

Anglo Celt, 14 Dec. 1940. Anglo Celt, 14 Dec. 1940. 80 Ibid. 81 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 56 22, Co. Limerick, 1935. 82 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 75, Co. Wexford, 1929. 83 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 22 83, Dublin, 1943. 84 NAI: C.C.C.: IC 88 122, Co. Dublin, 1926. 79

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enjoyable experience.85 However, this may have been the only way in which Mollie could describe sex. Moreover, once Mollie had given herself up for arrest she may have deliberately sought to present herself as victim rather than agent. ‘The silly girl’86

Most single women charged with the murder or concealment of birth in the Irish Free State were in their twenties. However, during the course of the investigation into the death of Mary Anne S.’s illegitimate infant, the Gardaí ascertained that Mary Anne had been under the age of consent when she became pregnant. The father of Mary Anne’s infant was arrested and charged with unlawful carnal knowledge but he was later acquitted because Mary Anne’s evidence was deemed unreliable. According to a Garda report Mary Anne ‘apparently did not want to give evidence at all’.87 The Gardaí do not seem to have been sympathetic towards Mary Anne’s case and referred disapprovingly to ‘the apparent simplicity with which the girl was seduced’.88 The Gardaí seem to have doubted that she had been seduced and showed that they had little sympathy for sexually active young women of dubious morals. ‘I said I was going to do nothing about it; that I wouldn’t marry her’.

It is evident that some women were clearly rejected and abandoned by the fathers of their infants. In her statement Elizabeth K., who stood trial for the murder of her illegitimate infant in February 1936, said that when she told her boyfriend that she thought she might be pregnant he ‘cleared away’.89 When Peggy S. told her boyfriend that she was pregnant and suggested that he do something about it Edward C. said ‘[he] was going to do nothing about it; that [he] wouldn’t marry her’.90 ‘I knew I was responsible for her condition and we agreed to get married’91

While many men may have shirked their responsibilities during the period under review and ‘cleared away’ when their girlfriends became 85

Ibid. Rev. R.S. Devane, ‘The Unmarried mother’, p. 68. 87 Garda report on ‘Mary Anne’ (NAI, DT, S 11040). 88 Ibid. 89 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 69, Dublin, 1936. 90 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 29 3, Dublin, 1948. 91 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 27 4, Co. Cork, 1945. 86

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pregnant, some men were prepared to stand by the women they were involved with.92 A 1945 Co. Cork case highlights the obstacles that young couples could come up against when attempting to get married. Kathleen L. told Gardaí that when she told Patrick M. that she was pregnant he agreed to marry her. As Patrick was under the age of twenty-one he needed his mother’s consent to marry, but she refused to give her consent. The young couple appealed to the Bishop of Kerry but he refused to intervene and said ‘he had nothing to do with marriages’.93 In July 1945 Kathleen and Patrick left Kerry ‘with the intention of getting married in Cork’ but the priest they went to see in Cork refused to marry them unless they could provide a letter from their priest in Kerry. Kathleen gave birth in a boarding house in Cork and Patrick was charged with the infant’s murder. There is evidence in at least one case that suggests that some men may have been prepared to marry women who had given birth to an illegitimate infant. Mary H.’s boyfriend Joe knew that she had a baby from a previous relationship but he claimed in court that he was still prepared to marry her. When questioned in court Joe explained that ‘during the time [he] was keeping company with the accused [he] learned that she was the mother of a baby…Notwithstanding this [he] was prepared to marry her’.94 However, not all single women who became pregnant necessarily wished to marry the men who were responsible for their condition. James N. told Gardaí that when he noticed that his girlfriend was ‘remarkably stout’, he asked her ‘was there anything wrong or who was the father of it’ but Margaret denied she was pregnant. Although James had known Margaret ‘all her life’ and was keeping company with her, Margaret does not seem to have confided in him.95 There is evidence to suggest that a number of women, like Margaret S. seem to have been reluctant or unwilling to confide in the men with whom they had had sexual relations with. Margaret may not have wanted to marry James N. or she may have considered giving birth secretly and killing the infant preferable to living with the stigma of single motherhood. Bridie F. also chose not to inform the father of her infant that she was pregnant even though she had been keeping company with him for a year and a half. Bridie was at a dance in Patrick D.’s house the night she gave birth but she had not informed him that she was pregnant. Patrick said that when he saw the baby he ‘asked 92

NAI: C.C.C.: Dublin, 1936, ID 60 69. NAI: C.C.C.: ID 27 4, Co. Cork, 1945. 94 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 27 5, Co. Limerick, 1945. 95 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 60 65, Co. Tipperary, 1937. 93

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Bridie did she know this all the time. She said she didn’t’.96 In her statement Mary C. said that she met a man in June 1940.97 When she found that she was pregnant a few months later she told Jim M. and he offered to marry her. However, she said that she did not want to marry him. According to Mary, Jim said ‘there is no need to worry I will stand by you and he said that he would marry me. I said that I would not marry him’.98 If the infant’s father was unsupportive or left the area before the birth some women were prepared to make contact with former boyfriends in an attempt to secure male support, marriage and respectability. Exhibit ‘P’ in the case against Mary Anne D. and her brother Martin for the murder of Mary Anne’s illegitimate infant consisted of a letter Mary Anne wrote to her friend Peter prior to her arrest. Mary Anne told Peter that she regretted what had happened. Referring to her baby’s father she said, ‘I was foolish to let him it will never happened me agin [sic]’.99 She pleaded with Peter to come to visit her in her mother’s house and asked him to pretend that he was her husband because she had ‘told [her] mother and the lads that [she] was married’.100 Mary Anne told Peter that if he didn’t agree to come to visit her ‘it will be hard for me I might have to go to a hom [sic]’.101 She said that if he agreed to act as her husband she would never forget him and she also sent him some money along with the letter. Peter did not respond to Mary Anne’s letter. He later handed the letter over to the Gardaí in charge of the case and Mary Anne served her two-year sentence at the Henrietta Street Convent. Bernard M., who was probably the father of Mary Anne’s illegitimate daughter, was also questioned in court. He confirmed that he had been keeping company with Mary Anne but said they had never been married and she had never asked him to marry her. Peter’s refusal to come to Mary Anne’s aid is hardly remarkable. What is perhaps more striking in that particular case is the lengths which Mary Anne was prepared to go to in order to prevent people from gossiping about her and to preserve her own reputation. Aspects of the private worlds of unmarried mothers suspected of killing their illegitimate infants featured regularly in Irish newspapers between 1922 and 1949. However, journalists generally held back from discussing the more controversial or sensational aspects of Irish infanticide 96

NAI: C.C.C.: IC 94 72, Co. Tipperary, 1929. NAI: C.C.C.: ID 11 97, Co. Meath, 1941. 98 Ibid. 99 NAI: C.C.C.: ID 56 30, Co. Mayo, 1936. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 97

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cases. Incest, abuse and underage sex were sometimes a feature of the cases tried in Irish courts but were never discussed in Irish newspapers. While this kind of information would not have been available to the general public, people who attended infanticide trials would have learned about aspects of the private lives of single women charged with infanticide. There was often a considerable degree of public interest in infanticide trials, particularly when cases were tried at a district court. The Connacht Tribune reported that when sisters Elizabeth and Rose E. were tried for the murder of Elizabeth’s baby in January 1935 the courthouse was crowded.102 During the trial of a brother and sister at a special court in May 1936 for the murder of an unnamed female infant the reporter for the Connacht Tribune noted that although ‘the public were excluded…a large crowd assembled outside the courthouse and remained there for hours’.103 However, it is not known how members of the public responded to the ‘shocking revelations’ that emerged from courtrooms in the Irish Free State.104 The statements of single women charged with infanticide in the Irish Free State provide a considerable degree of insight into the lives of working class women and in some cases, indicate how they viewed relationships with men and premarital sex. The voice of the unmarried mother that emerges from the statements taken by the Gardaí and in the transcripts of trials is one that is controlled to varying degrees by the investigator and the prosecutor. Women suspected of committing infanticide were probed by the police for information and were often forced to disclose details of the sexual relationship they had had with the father of the infant. Yet, even allowing for the coercive environment of disclosure, the records of infanticide cases undoubtedly remain an invaluable source.

102

Connacht Tribune, January 19th 1935. Connacht Tribune, 9 May 1936. 104 Wexford People, 2 June 1928. 103

CHAPTER SEVEN THE LEGION OF MARY, UNMARRIED MOTHERS AND THE EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE STATE IN NORTHERN IRELAND, 1945-55 CHRISTOPHER SHEPARD

Once taboo, the subject of illegitimacy and unmarried motherhood has, in recent years, taken on increasing significance within mainstream Irish history. Replete with allegations of the mistreatment and marginalisation of vulnerable individuals—including unwed mothers—by clerics and religious institutions, this discovery has done little to rehabilitate the tarnished reputation of the Catholic Church. The revelations of child sex abuse and the use of violence in its institutions has done much to undermine the Catholic Church as the guardian of morality and main provider of social services in post-independent Ireland. It was in both these contexts that the Church facilitated the secreting away of single pregnant women to religious institutions was not clandestine. That these actions were done with the full knowledge and acceptance of Irish society is unquestionable. The revelations surrounding the Catholic Church, together with the secularisation of Irish society in the past twenty years has led many scholars to question its hegemonic position in Ireland. As a result, the study of unmarried motherhood and illegitimacy in Ireland has greatly expanded in recent years.1 Yet, despite the expansive nature of this topic, 1

For example, see Maria Luddy, ‘Moral rescue and unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 1920s’ in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 30, no. 6 (2001), pp 797-817; Paul Michael Garrett, ‘The abnormal flight: the migration and repatriation of Irish unmarried mothers’ in Social History vol. 25, no. 3 (Oct., 2000), pp 330-43; Louise Ryan, ‘Irish female emigration in the 1930s: transgressing space and culture’ in Gender, Place and Culture, vol. 8, no. 3 (2001),

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most studies have concentrated on a narrow range of themes such as infanticide and the emigration of Irish unwed mothers to Britain. As a result, the plight of single mothers in Northern Ireland and the institutions which cared for them have yet to be examined. One reason for this is that the historical fascination with inter-communal conflict and violence in the north of Ireland has often subsumed issues of gender. Another is the assumption that the provision of welfare services by non-state actors in the north had been fully incorporated into the British welfare state by the late1940s, making voluntary social work redundant. However, this is to misread the complex social and political interaction between state and civil society in the province. Rather than monopolise the provision of care in Northern Ireland, the state welfare regime took a pragmatic approach to voluntary-based personal social services. In some instances the state amalgamated and incorporated voluntary schemes, while in other cases it accommodated the independence of religious-based charitable societies. This was particularly true of unmarried mothers. Unwed mothers presented unique challenges to the state. With single motherhood defined as both a moral and social problem, the state allowed religious voluntary agencies to operate parallel services to aid unwed mothers in need of assistance. While providing care to unmarried mothers, voluntary organisations also offered women activists an opportunity to engage in grassroots religious and social activism. This chapter will focus on the Legion of Mary, a prominent Catholic voluntary organisation, and its work with unmarried mothers in Northern Ireland in the decade following the Second World War.2 The Legion’s efforts to reach out to these marginalised and vulnerable women centred on the Mater Dei Hostel, an institution it set up especially for unmarried mothers. Operated by a praesidium—the name given to a small parish-based unit of the Legion of Mary—of lay women, it was the only lay-run Catholic

pp 271-82; Lindsay Earner-Byrne, ‘The boat to England: an analysis of the official reactions to the emigration of single expectant Irishwomen to Britain, 1922-72’ in Irish Economic and Social History, vol. xxx (2003), pp 52-70. 2 The minutes of the Mater Dei Praesidium of Legion of Mary held by the Legion of Mary’s Down and Connor headquarters. This archive contains twenty two uncatalogued and un-calendared volumes of minute and account books relating to the day to day operations of the Mater Dei hostel for unmarried mothers, 398 Antrim Road, Belfast. Ranging from 1944-2001, this source provides a remarkable look into women’s activism and the secret world of unwed motherhood in Ireland during the second half of the twentieth-century.

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residential facility dedicated specifically to meeting the needs of unmarried mothers in Northern Ireland.3 Founded in 1921 as an association of Catholic lay women in the Dublin archdiocese, the Legion of Mary became one of the largest and most widespread Catholic lay organisations to emerge during the twentieth century.4 It enabled women to become more involved in the lay apostolate through Catholic-centred social activism and was influenced by the home and hospital visitation work carried out by the Brothers of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul (a Catholic charitable society that was run by men).5 Although men were eventually admitted, early editions of the Legion of Mary handbook described the organisation as ‘a society of valiant women who with the sanction of the church…have formed themselves into a Legion for service in that warfare which is perpetually waged by the Church against the world and its evil powers’.6 More practically, the Legion of Mary placed itself ‘at the disposal of the bishop of the diocese and the parish priest for any and every form of social service and Catholic action which these authorities may deem suitable to the legionaries and useful for the welfare of the Church’.7 The Legion of Mary encouraged its members to work toward personal sanctification through a combination of prayer and community-based 3

There were, of course, other institutions for unwed mothers, including the Magdalen Asylum run by the Good Shepherd Sisters on the Ormeau Road, but this was the only home organised by Catholic lay women for Catholic unwed mothers. Other institutions included the Malone Place Rescue and Maternity Home (Presbyterian), Hopedene Hostel (inter-denominational) and the Thorndale Home (Salvation Army). 4 Although Frank Duff is widely considered to be the founder and driving force behind the success of the Legion of Mary, it is important to note that in attendance at the first meeting of the Legion were Fr Toher, Frank Duff and fifteen women, including Mrs Elizabeth Kirwan, who was to become the first president of that praesidium and later Dublin’s Curia. See Cecily Hallack, The Legion of Mary (London, 1941). 5 Historical accounts of the Legion record that upon hearing details of the visit of St. Vincent de Paul to Dublin’s St. Kevin’s Hospital, several ladies attending a meeting of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Society asked ‘couldn’t something be done to enable us to undertake the sort of work which the St. Vincent de Paul Brothers are doing…in visiting the Union’. Hallack, The Legion of Mary, pp 18-9. 6 See Archbishop Byrne Papers (Dublin Roman Catholic Diocesan Archives [hereafter DDA], Archbishop Byrne papers, Lay organisations I, File pertaining to Legion of Mary [c.1924-c.1937]). For more information on the life and work of Frank Duff see Leon O’Broin, Frank Duff (Dublin, 1983). 7 Francis J. Ripley, Terrible as an army set in array (Glasgow, n.d.), p. 29. See also Legio Mariae: official handbook of the Legion of Mary (Dublin, 1993).

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Catholic social action. Beginning in 1921, Legion women, led by Mrs Elizabeth Kirwan, were assigned in pairs to visit ‘the poor women in the Dublin Union Hospital under the care of the Mercy Nuns’. Over the years this work gradually expanded from hospitals to private homes, providing spiritual assistance to the elderly and the infirmed.8 In the Irish Free State, the Legion also took a leading role in the provision of voluntary social services including the provision of shelters for the ‘down and out’ as well as acting as liaisons with the local police and welfare officials.9 The Legion’s attempt to help the ‘down and out’ in Dublin’s notorious red light district, the Monto, were immortalised in Duff’s 1961 book, Miracles on Tap, which was subsequently banned by the Irish censor. In it, Duff describes how ‘other than the Magdalen Asylums, the problem [of prostitution] was untouched in Dublin’.10 Determined to fight for the souls of these women, the Legion of Mary decided to open ‘a low-down’ lodging house’ which would be able to attract those ‘leading lives of sin…’.11 In July 1922, the Sancta Maria Hostel was opened at 76 Harcourt Street. Run by Josephine Plunkett and Rose Scratton, Sancta Maria aimed to rescue women by providing them with alternatives to sin, Protestant proselytizing organisations and the Magdalen Asylum. By 1930 the Legion’s work with the ‘neglected and rejected’ in Dublin expanded to include the Morning Star Hostel (1927) for homeless men and the femalerun Regina Coeli Hostel (1930) for homeless women, which included ‘a hostel within a hostel’ for unmarried mothers and their children.12 The expansion of the Legion was not just limited to Dublin. In 1927 the Legion of Mary moved north to the Belfast Diocese of Down and Connor, where social deprivation and feelings of Catholic alienation toward the Protestant state provided fertile ground for Legion work. 8

According to Ripley examples of Legion work could include, but was not limited to: ‘visitation of hospitals; work for the most wretched and dejected of the population [lodging houses, etc]; visitation of the homes and the people; the making of the Parish Census; the Apostolate to non-Catholics; the dissemination of Catholic literature; the book-barrow; works of all descriptions for the young; study; promoting sodality membership; care of Catholic servants; the forwarding of the practice of daily Mass and frequent Holy Communion; the recruiting and after-care of Auxiliaries; miscellaneous parochial aid; work for the foreign missions’. Ripley, Terrible as an army set in array, pp 34-5. 9 Finola Kennedy, ‘Frank Duff’s search for the neglected and rejected’ in Studies: Irish review, vol. 91, no. 364 (2002), pp 381-9. 10 Frank Duff, Miracles on tap (New York, 1961), p. 1. 11 Ibid., p. 2. 12 Leon O’Broin, Frank Duff (Dublin, 1983), p. 16; Kennedy, ‘Frank Duff’s search for the neglected and rejected’, pp 381-9.

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According to Leon O’Broin, the Legion of Mary ‘found a powerful ally in Dr Joseph MacRory, the Bishop of Down and Connor’, who gave it ‘carte blanche’ to work with the variety of social problems which existed in Belfast at that time.13 By 1931, the Legion in Down and Connor increased from 3 original praesidia, located in the Belfast parishes of St. Paul’s, St. Brigid’s and St. Patrick’s, to ‘18 stretching from Ballycastle in the north to Kilkeel in the south of the diocese’.14 As the Legion of Mary grew, its work within the diocese expanded from home and hospital visitation into the field of social welfare and rescue work. In 1933 the lodging-house model first established in Dublin was introduced in Belfast with the opening of the Sancta Maria Hostel. Like its Dublin namesake, Sancta Maria sought to rescue women from prostitution by offering them a combination of accommodation, work and religious encouragement.15 This was followed in 1935 by the Regina Coeli Hostel for homeless women and in 1939 by the Morning Star Hostel for ‘destitute’ men. The following year the Legion of Mary opened its first hostel dedicated exclusively to the welfare of unmarried mothers in Ireland. Run by a praesidium of lay women, the Mater Dei Hostel was opened 15 August 1940 providing accommodation and welfare services for up to twenty unmarried mothers and their children.16 There, women legionaries provided unmarried mothers not only with food and shelter, but a variety of welfare-type services. They arranged doctor’s visits and confinements at local hospitals, obtained jobs for unmarried mothers, assisted with adoptions, negotiated for the successful return of mother and child to the family home and liaised with state welfare authorities. Legion members also worked closely with members of the clergy and other voluntary organisations throughout the U.K. and Ireland to help unmarried mothers re-integrate into society free from the punitive constraints associated with detention in the now infamous Magdalen Asylum. The remainder of this chapter will focus on the work of the Legion and will examine the challenges faced by Legion activists and unmarried

13

O’Broin, Frank Duff, pp 34-5. Joseph Jackson, An instrument in the hands of the church: a brief history of the Legion of Mary (Belfast, n.d.), p. 7. 15 Ibid. 16 The Mater Dei hostel opened first on Lonsdale Street before moving to the Antrim Road following damage to the premises caused by German bombing raids on Belfast in 1941. 14

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mothers as they attempted to negotiate with the increasing interference of the post-war welfare state.17

The Legion of Mary, the State and Adoption The desire to help unmarried mothers was based upon a combination of religious, philanthropic and personal motivations. These ranged from a genuine concern for the ‘down and out’ to a desire to protect vulnerable individuals from the proselytising activities of Protestant charitable societies. It was also personal in that the Legion of Mary taught that temporal work would lead to the sanctification of its members. An expression of active faith, one of the cardinal points of the Legion apostolate is that ‘active work must be done’.18 Unlike more formal Catholic institutions such as the Magdalen Asylum, a central objective of the Legion of Mary was to enable unmarried mothers to return to normal life as quickly as possible. One of the ways they attempted to do so was through facilitating the adoption of children. Despite the loosening of moral strictures during both the First and Second World Wars, unmarried motherhood remained highly stigmatised both morally as well as in the legal systems of most ‘western’ nations. For the vast majority of women living in the middle decades of the twentieth century, unmarried motherhood was condition to be avoided at all costs. Those who become pregnant out of wedlock risked shaming their families and becoming pariahs in their own community. Discourses of public health and sexual morality often blamed the unmarried mother for her plight, contrasting her sexual transgression with models of chaste motherhood. Contemporary literature often explained illegitimacy and unmarried motherhood in terms of psychological disorders and social deviancy. As Maguire notes, ‘the philosophy that underpinned measures…to assist unmarried mothers was the firm conviction that unmarried mothers were fundamentally unfit to have custody of their own

17

This article makes use of an extensive collection of minute-books documenting the weekly activities and meetings of the Mater Dei praesidium. As such, they provide an insightful, though incomplete, window onto the work of female activists attempting to meet the needs of a socially marginalised class of women. Crucially, these minutes also reveal how women members of the Legion of Mary were able to use Catholic action to engage in their own brand of grassroots social activism by providing physical relief to women with no other place to turn. 18 Legio Marie: the official handbook of the Legion of Mary (Dublin, 1993), pp 287-8.

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children’.19 Although, it should be noted that the Legion of Mary did not push adoption as a solution to illegitimacy, the narrow definition of motherhood as confined to marriage made it difficult for single women to keep and support illegitimate children. Without the legal protections afforded by marriage, financial independence or family support, the only viable option available for the majority of unmarried mothers was to give their children up for adoption. Nevertheless, the prospect of adoption in the two Irelands remained fairly limited until the 1950s. Irish politicians on both sides of the border were reluctant to accept that there was a genuine need for legal adoption despite the arguments in favour of it. In fact, it was widely believed that adoption would undermine the fundamental rights of parents, or even encourage irresponsible parents to abandon their children. However, this did not prevent senior clerics in the south of Ireland, in collusion with the state, from encouraging American Catholics to adopt illegitimate children as early as 1945.20 Deemed to be at odds with Catholic teachings and the constitutional position of the family, adoption legislation in Éire was not passed until the 1952 Adoption Act.21 Even then, this legislation took four years to draft and was largely the result of a grassroots movement which sought to encourage the adoption of children (illegitimate or not) cared for in orphanages and other religious-run institutions.22 In Northern Ireland legislation which legalised adoption was passed by Stormont in 1929. Unlike the Republic of Ireland, where political pressure was eventually brought to bear on reluctant lawmakers to introduce legislation, the passage of the 1929 Adoption of Children Act (Northern 19 Moira Maguire, ‘Foreign adoptions and the evolution of Irish adoption policy, 1945-52’ in Journal of Social History, vol. 36, no. 2 (2002), p. 389. 20 For more information on ‘un-official’ American adoptions see Mike Milotte, Banished babies: the secret history of Ireland’s baby export business (Dublin, 1997). Milotte reports that the first publicised case dates to 1947. Although accurate records were not kept on adoptions occurring from 1945-49, over 1500 children were adopted by Americans between 1950 and 1972. See also the remarks made in Dáil Éireann regarding the adoption files discovery, Dáil Éireann debates, 14 March 1996. 21 The 1952 Adoption Act (Éire) created a new Adoption Board in January 1953 it included two women, Mrs Victor Penny and Mrs Hugh McNeill Macauley. The former had been active in the campaign for legal adoption through the Adoption Society of Ireland (1948) of which she was honorary secretary. See Irish Independent, 17 January 1953. 22 The classic text on the campaign for legal adoption and the response of the government and the Catholic Church in the south of Ireland is John H. Whyte, Church and state in modern Ireland, 1923-70 (Dublin, 1974).

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Ireland) had more to do with legal harmonisation with Great Britain than from internal pressure groups.23 In fact, it has been argued that many of the social welfare reforms witnessed in Northern Ireland during the interand post- war years resulted from changes to legislation in Britain as opposed to local demands for reform.24 Begun as a government proposal, the 1929 Act aimed to protect the legal rights of adopters ‘against the demands of natural parents for the return of their children’, despite the fact that, as in the south of Ireland, many legislators believed it posed a threat to the sanctity of family life.25 Nationalist leader Joseph Devlin, for example, questioned the necessity of adoption legislation, which challenged ‘the very foundation of family life’.26 Conservative unionists also had misgivings regarding the implications of adoption, but nonetheless passed the legislation. Northern Ireland’s adoption law was reformed over subsequent decades to bring the practice further under the control of state welfare authorities. The 1950 Adoption of Children Act (Northern Ireland) included protections for both natural and adoptive parents as well as children. It prevented a child from being placed for adoption before it reached six weeks of age and used interim adoption orders to provide a transition period of between three months and two years. These measures, based on the 1949 law governing adoption in England and Wales, also required the registration of adoption societies with the Ministry of Home Affairs, and be run as non-profit charities. To further protect the interests of the child, legislation proscribed the practice of providing incentive payments, called premiums, to perspective adopters and the placing of personal ads ‘indicating that an infant is available for adoption or that any person is desirous of adopting an infant’. However, an exception was made which allowed registered adoption societies and welfare agencies to advertise ‘that they are willing to make arrangements for the adoption of an infant’.27 While these statutes made adoption easier from a legal perspective, they did not guarantee either its popularity or its success.

23

England and Wales legalised adoption in 1926. For more information on the campaign for legal adoption in the Republic of Ireland, see Whyte, Church and state in modern Ireland, 1923-70. 24 Patrick Buckland, The factory of grievances, p. 150. 25 Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council: adoption of children (Belfast, 1963), p. 7. 26 The parliamentary debates, official report, vol.11, house of commons [N.I.], p. 946. 27 Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council: adoption of children, p. 8.

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As the only lay-run Catholic institution for unmarried mothers and their children in Northern Ireland, the Mater Dei Hostel was intimately involved in the arrangement of adoptions and the temporary boarding out of children. The minute books of the Mater Dei praesidium contain countless entries documenting the wishes of unmarried mothers to have their child euphemistically ‘fixed up’, or adopted. To help facilitate the placement of illegitimate children in Catholic homes, a subsidiary praesidium called Mater Miscordiae was formed and registered as an adoption society with the Ministry of Home Affairs under the 1950 Adoption of Children Act (NI). Working together, both Mater Dei and Mater Miscordiae provided unmarried mothers with the opportunity to place their child for adoption or have it boarded out to foster parents or in a religious institution. Helping to secure adoptions was seen as a highly valuable endeavour by legionnaires. The role of the Legion in providing homes for children was often highlighted in talks, or allocutia, given by the praesidium’s spiritual director. For example, the praesidium’s spiritual director, Fr Barrett, used his allocutio to praise this aspect of the Legion. He stated, that, from its inception, ‘about 75% of all the babies passing through the hostel have been placed in homes, good homes, the orphanages have always been considered a last resort’.28 Nevertheless, records of praesidium meetings suggest that adoption was not as common as Fr Barrett claimed. In 1945, for example, hostel minutes recorded only 34 adoptions (including those to relatives) out of 118 children born to hostel residents.29 The efforts of Legion women in securing adoptions were hampered by several factors. These included resistance on the part of mothers, the general dearth of suitable homes or adoptive parents and the fact that legal adoption was not yet widely accepted, particularly among the Catholic community. Minutes of praesidium meetings reveal that the social conditions prevalent in post-war Belfast also restricted the prospect of adoption. At the time, Belfast was still a city marked by a shortage of housing and widespread over-crowding in working-class districts.30 These

28 Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 10 October 1955 (Manuscript in the possession of the Legion of Mary, Belfast). 29 Ibid., 1945-6. As these records are by no means comprehensive, this figure only represents residents who were specifically mentioned in the minutes as having had their child adopted. 30 A 1944 examination of housing in Northern Ireland reported that nearly onethird of existing homes were either deemed unfit for habitation or classed as over-

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conditions added to the difficulties of finding homes for illegitimate children as is evidenced by countless reports by Legion activists. Adoptions most often failed because homes did not meet standards set by Mater Dei, its adoption society or welfare officials. The reality of poverty and poor living conditions were also reflected in official sources. For example, in a report on the provision of social welfare services for children, the Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council revealed that the problem of unsuitable foster homes as one of the most common reasons that children came into care.31 The lack of suitable homes willing to foster or adopt children was a problem experienced by the Legion of Mary from the inception of the Mater Dei Hostel. For example, from August 1945 to May 1946, five mothers and children were re-admitted to the hostel because of failed adoptions. The reason for many failed adoptions related to the condition of the homes in which children were placed.32 An example which involved a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), illustrates this point. The minutes record that, after being admitted to the Hostel on 21 August 1945, this woman arranged to have her child fostered in Portadown in February 1946. However, less than a month later, on 5 March 1946, a local priest informed the Legion of Mary to contact the mother because her child was suffering from a sever case of bronchitis. On closer inspection, it was evident that the cause of the infant’s condition was largely due to the fact that it was kept in ‘a very neglectful condition’. As a result, Canon Peter McNelis, the parish priest at Drumcree, intervened in the matter, declaring the home unfit and requesting the Legion’s help in re-uniting mother and child.33 At his request, legionnaires re-admitted the pair into Mater Dei. Eventually the Legion was able to find lodgings for both mother and child. Unfortunately, single motherhood proved too difficult for this woman, and she eventually had her child placed with a woman in Belfast in May 1946. This case illustrates the complex interactions that took place between legionnaires, clerics and recipients of charity. This type of philanthropic or moral welfare work was never straight forward. Legion women had to negotiate many problems in the course of crowded and recommended the immediate prioritising of 100,000 new homes. See Government of Northern Ireland, Housing in Northern Ireland, Cmd 224 [N.I.]. 31 Operation of social service in relation to child welfare: a report by the Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council (Belfast, 1958), p. 10. 32 See Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 21 August 1945; 4 December 1945; February 1946; 5 March 1946; May 1946. 33 The Irish Catholic almanac and directory, 1946 (Dublin, 1946), p. 148.

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providing assistance to unwed mothers. For example, difficulties with fostering and adoption were often exacerbated by multiple births. In this situation legionaries did everything in their power to get the mother’s relatives to accept responsibility for mother and children by taking them back into the family home. However, as illustrated by a case in 1954, this often proved difficult. On 3 January 1954 an expectant mother residing in the hostel gave birth to twin boys. Rather bizarrely, hostel minutes record that the woman’s parents arrived at the hostel three months later to visit their daughter and grandchildren while on their way to a holiday in Leeds. Commenting on what fine children her daughter had, they enquired as to when a home would be found for them. However, none was forthcoming. After nearly a year of living in the hostel, the sisters decided to ask the woman if they could write to her parish priest for help in placing the children. On 3 January 1955, the praesidium was informed that two sisters from Mater Miscordiae had gone to visit the woman’s parents. Upon arrival they found that, although the family had moved into a new house, it only contained two rooms. When asked if they would be willing to take their grandchildren, the woman’s father reportedly said that ‘they would not think of taking the twin babies. He would have considered taking one but not two’.34 Hearing this, Fr Barrett suggested that the sisters write to the Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal D’Alton, to see if the diocesan orphanage could help place the twins. On 26 January 1955 a reply was received from Cardinal D’Alton’s secretary stating that the Cardinal had been in contact with the family and that ‘His Eminence [would] send some money to the…family through Fr [Stephen] Teggart from the Orphan Society as they had agreed to take…the children if they were given some help and cots, etc.’.35 As a result, the young mother and her twins left the hostel later that week, but not before the sisters baked a cake to celebrate the twins’ first birthday. Although this case was highly unusual in that it involved the intervention of a Cardinal, it serves to illustrate the lengths to which legionaries were willing to go, if only rarely, to get an unmarried mother’s family to take responsibility for the welfare of their daughter and her children. Another problem that the sisters of Mater Dei faced when attempting to arrange adoptions was the practice of providing premiums, or cash incentives, to cover the costs of prospective adoptive or foster parents. Theoretically these premiums were paid in order to expedite the adoption process and to offset the cost of clothes, bedding and legal expenses which 34 35

Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 3 January 1955. Ibid., 26 January 1955.

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could range from between £15 and £20.36 In reality, premiums were an added source of anxiety for both legionnaires and unmarried mothers who were essentially forced to pay for the adoption of their children. In only a small number of cases did the father of the child offer material support for his child in this manner.37 Unsurprisingly, given the necessity of premiums, legionnaires were often asked by hostel residents to help them raise money. Although legionnaires were prohibited from giving direct material relief to residents, they were often able to arrange for premiums by appealing directly to family members or to sympathetic priests, who were often able to help contact relatives, donate money and place children with adoptive parents or in Catholic institutions. In many circumstances the cost of providing accommodation for residents was paid for by family donations, which the Legion facilitated directly or through the intervention of a local priest. In doing so, the women who ran the Legion hostel had to deal with a variety of motives, often having less to do with charity than necessity. The minutes from 18 December 1945 record that when her mother became seriously ill, a resident’s father sent £25 in order to speed up the adoption process.38 Similarly, on 15 October 1946, the minutes report that Mater Dei had received £30 from a priest named Fr Teggart in order to supplement the cost of an adoption, requesting that it be given priority as the child’s mother was needed at home. Similarly, another woman’s mother was recorded to have paid the Legion £20 for the adoption of her daughter’s baby so that her daughter could come home.39 These records are not only sad, but they illustrate the power that contemporary attitudes to sexual morality had on Irish life. Many parents were aware of their daughter’s sexual transgressions and were willing to part with moderately large sums of money to make illegitimate grandchildren disappear, a practice that lay women in the Legion of Mary helped facilitate. 36

Children in care: a report by the Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council, (Belfast, 1956), p. 6. 37 As a general rule, legionnaires did not encourage contact with putative fathers. However, it is worth noting that the minutes do record that a minority of residents received financial support from these men. For example, on 11 September 1945 one woman received £40 to cover the cost of adoption from the father of her child. But, after discussing adoption with the sisters of Mater Dei it was noted in the minutes that she preferred to have the child fostered for a short time rather than permanent adoption. See Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 11 September 1946. 38 Ibid., 18 December 1945. 39 Ibid., 28 March 1946.

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The work of the Mater Dei Praesidium illustrates that, for those who did not have the security of a premium, adoption proved much more difficult. Hostel minutes are replete with entries describing the sometimes desperate pleas of young single mothers for financial help to provide adoption premiums. Although the Legion was forbidden from providing material relief, it nonetheless recorded the plight of its unwed mothers. In August 1945 a hostel resident took her child to Strabane, Co. Londonderry, only for the adoption to be refused because she didn’t have any money. Although legionaries eventually found a home for the child in Donegal, this was not an isolated incident. The demand for premiums caused much distress to un-wed mothers and, as the minute books of the Mater Dei Hostel reveal, was far from ideal for either party. With adoption and the care of children coming under the control of state welfare agencies, the practice of providing premiums was increasingly seen as undesirable. In 1937 a parliamentary committee set up to report on the work of adoption agencies and societies in England and Wales found evidence that individuals were using the payment of premiums for financial gain by extorting money from the birth mother.40 The inability of social welfare agencies to protect the interests of the child in such circumstances led to a ban on premiums along with the ‘publication of advertisements indicating that the parent or guardian of an infant is desirous of having the infant adopted’.41 While this should have made adoption easier and more attractive, birth mothers and prospective foster parents continued to encounter problems. In many instances, the solution to the problem of illegitimacy was that of long-term foster care in a voluntary institution. Although this was supposedly a last resort, illegitimate children whose mothers could not provide for them made up a high percentage of children in the care of Northern Ireland’s Catholic voluntary homes. A government report on children in care revealed that between 1956 and 1959 the number of illegitimate children cared for at Nazareth House and Nazareth Lodge— both run by the Sisters of Nazareth on the Ormeau Road, Belfast—was 80 and 66 (56.9 and 76.1 percent) respectively. Also situated on the Ormeau Road was the Catholic-run St. Joseph’s baby home, where 78 (or 86.7 percent of) infants were illegitimate.42 Given the high percentage of 40

Northern Ireland, Report of the departmental committee on adoption societies and agencies, [Cmd.5499], N.I.H.C., 1937. 41 The parliamentary debates, official report, vol.33, house of commons [N.I.], pp 1930-31. 42 Northern Ireland, Child Welfare Council report of the operation of the social services in relation to child welfare, 1956-59 (Belfast, 1960), p. 5, pp 32-3.

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illegitimate children under their care, these institutions played a major role in the care of Catholic children in Northern Ireland. Ironically, one of the major obstacles that confronted legionaries while trying to find suitable Catholic homes for these children was the Church’s moral stance on sexual relations and the stigma with which its adherents attached to illegitimacy. Appealing to legionaries to secure more adoptions in April 1954, the bishop of Down and Connor suggested they canvass all the parishes in the diocese for prospective foster homes. In response to the bishop’s request, Sister Fitzmorris—representing the hostel’s outreach praesidium, Mater Miscordiae—replied that after canvassing the diocese they had managed to find only one prospective home. However, when the ‘people concerned discovered that the child was illegitimate they no longer wanted the baby’.43

Legion activists and the expansion of state welfare in Northern Ireland The 1953 Ulster Yearbook boasted that the work of caring for the unmarried mother in the province was ‘undertaken almost entirely by voluntary bodies that are well supported financially by the welfare committees’.44 The extent to which the sisters of Mater Dei would have agreed with the government’s claims of financial support is a matter of conjecture, but by the 1950s they were beginning to show greater cooperation with the welfare state. Although keen to maintain its independence, Mater Dei began to incorporate the rules governing welfare benefits into its policies, including those which governed the employment of new and expectant mothers. On 30 April 1951 the resident sister, Sister Mohan, informed the praesidium that an inspector from the National Assistance Board, Mr Thompson, had advised her of the correct procedures to follow when applying for benefits. He stated that in future the hostel needed to ensure that residents apply for insurance benefits before applying for National Assistance. The relationship between the Mater Dei and the National Assistance Board was to prove important to both the Hostel and its residents, as it operated the welfare assistance scheme for Northern Ireland. However, the intervention of the state into Legion affairs, based on the expansion of state-directed social welfare, was to have serious implications for the work of Catholic lay women. 43

Minutes of Mater Dei praesidium, 26 April 1954. The Ulster yearbook: the official yearbook of Northern Ireland, 1953 (Belfast, 1953), p. 235.

44

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In 1955 the government agency which handled welfare claims in Northern Ireland, the National Assistance Board, raised the age-adjusted benefit rates in an attempt to provide further support for individuals ‘without resources to meet their requirements’. This decision directly affected the work of the Legion of Mary’s Mater Dei Hostel. The minutes for 28 March 1955 indicate that an agreement was reached between Mater Dei and the National Assistance Board whereby unwed mothers in the hostel would receive a non-adjusted flat rate of 32s. 6d. per week. The Assistance Board would also, pursuant to the new rate schedule, pay 12s. per week for children and grant each mother a further weekly allowance consisting of 7s. 6d.45 While the benefit rate paid to hostel residents was 5s. less than that paid to a ‘single householder’, unmarried mothers were eligible to receive an age-adjusted benefit of 33s. 6d. if over 21 years of age, and 27s. 6d. if aged between 18 and 21. Although considerably less than female industrial wages which, in 1955 averaged between £4 and £5 per week, assistance benefits were in line with residential domestic service jobs which paid anywhere from 25s. to £2 10s. per week.46 From its establishment in 1941 Mater Dei, like its Dublin counterpart Regina Coeli, had encouraged women to go out to work in order to support both themselves and their child.47 However, the need to work was reduced through state assistance benefits. To ensure that hostel residents remained eligible, the sisters of Mater Dei decided that mothers in receipt of National Assistance benefits should no longer be encouraged to take employment, ‘as they do so at the expense of the Hostel’.48 In fact, state assistance was deemed so important that in June 1955 Mater Dei concluded that all National Assistance forms should be ‘filled in by sisters on duty whenever a new girl is admitted in order that we shall not lose any

45

Government of Northern Ireland, Report of the National Assistance Board for Northern Ireland: for the year ended 31 December 1955 [H.C. 1201] (Belfast, 1956), pp 3-4. 46 Wimperis, The unmarried mother and her child, p. 115. Although these numbers deal exclusively with England and Wales, the Northern Ireland census of production records that three years later the average weekly salary of a woman employed in the linen industry was £5.8s. For the textile industry that figure was £5.9s.0d., and in the clothing industry it was £6.0s.0d. Government of Northern Ireland Ministry of Commerce, Report on the census of production of Northern Ireland 1958 (Belfast, 1961), p. 22. 47 Lindsay Earner-Byrne, ‘The boat to England: an analysis of the official reactions to the emigration of single expectant Irishwomen to Britain, 1922-72’ in Irish Economic and Social History, vol. xxx (2003), p. 64. 48 Minutes of the Mater Dei Praesidium, 28 March 1955.

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more money’.49 It is not quite apparent how much this meant to the hostel since minutes emphasise that money was paid directly to the mothers and account books do not reveal a direct grant to the hostel.50 But, the hostel did have a policy which encouraged and, indeed, expected women to contribute to their upkeep while in residence. Mater Dei was perhaps right to keep a co-operative distance between itself and the state. Other institutions with a much longer track record, such as the Malone Place Rescue and Maternity Home (founded by Presbyterian women), were gradually being transferred to the control of the National Health Service and the Northern Ireland Hospital Committee during the early 1950s. Mater Dei, however, had always tried to walk a fine line between co-operating with, and keeping its distance from, state authorities. For example, a female welfare officer from Derry provoked a debate amongst legionnaires when she wrote to the hostel in 1950 to inform it that the local welfare committee was offering grants to voluntary homes that were prepared to take in unmarried mothers recommended by it. But, rather than accept, minutes reveal a genuine anxiety regarding the state. In particular, they worried that if ‘the hostel accepted the welfare grant we may have to take in non-Catholics or we would have no option but to take Derry City residents’.51 As the 1950s went on, it became obvious that the state would interfere regardless of whether or not it was in receipt of a grant. Mater Dei was, like similar institutions, beginning to come under the scrutiny of a state welfare regime which was determined to take a more active role in overseeing voluntary provisions for unmarried mothers and their children. In attempting to regulate voluntary welfare providers, the Northern Ireland government employed female welfare officers who were quite influential figures in enforcing hygiene and other regulations. The minutes reveal that the hostel was visited on several occasions by Miss K.B. Forrest, a Children’s Inspector with the Ministry of Home Affairs. After one visit, Sister Mohan and Fr Barrett were reported as having briefed the praesidium that Miss Forrest was ‘not at all impressed with the Hostel and missed nothing as she went around’, making particular mention of the use of the kitchen as a space for drying washed nappies and the lack of a fire escape. The cost of making the necessary improvements to the hostel as recommended by Miss Forrest were so worrying that Fr Barrett stated that Mater Dei may be forced to suggest to Bishop Mageean that the ‘Hostel 49

Ibid., 27 June 1955. Ibid., 20 Nov. 1950. 51 Ibid., 20 Nov. 1950. 50

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should cease to function as a home for unmarried mothers’.52 In any case, the Ministry of Home Affairs’ interest in the Hostel meant that it could be inspected at any time, safety and sanitary conditions must be monitored at all times.53 In the end, the recommendations made by Miss Forrest fell short of Fr Barrett’s worse case scenario.54 Nevertheless, government interest in the operation and management of the Mater Dei hostel would continue. And, over the next few years, Miss Forrest continued to inspect the hostel and even advised the praesidium on how to apply for government aid.55 Despite making improvements, the physical condition of the Hostel was again to come under official scrutiny, only this time from medical officials. In late April 1957, the sisters reported that they were having trouble making hospital arrangements for hostel residents. After speaking with other Belfast homes for unmarried mothers, including the Protestant Hopedene Hostel, it was discovered that they were encountering similar problems and recommended that Mater Dei contact Dr M.P. Milligan, the female doctor in charge of the admissions at the Jubilee Maternity Hospital.56 Sending Fr Barrett to speak with her, he reported back to the praesidium stating ‘that Dr Milligan is most particular about the state of the hostel and after her visit here last year, we had to make several improvements’. It appears that the condition of the hostel had so appalled Dr Milligan that she would no longer accept patients from Mater Dei. Fr Barrett warned that since ‘the hostel is open to inspection at anytime, it is up to us—the sisters of Mater Dei—to keep it in a condition which will leave no opening for criticism at any time’.57 Apart from the effect that living conditions had on its residents, its outward appearance was a 52

Ibid., 28 March 1955. Ibid., 25 April 1955. 54 These included necessary improvements to the bathroom, kitchen and milk room, the installation of an additional lavatory and the erection of a fire escape. See Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 23 May 1955. 55 For instance, in April 1956 Forrest advised Mater Dei’s president, sister Slack, that the hostel should consider registering as a voluntary home which would enable them to take in girls under the age of 18, and claim back some of the costs of capital improvements to the structure, such as the aforementioned fire escape. Ibid., 16 April 1956. 56 Appendix IX of the 1951-56 Northern Ireland Ministry of Health and Local Government, Reports on health and local government administration in Northern Ireland [Cmd. 314, 320, 332, 339, 359, 379] states that the Joint Secretary of the Health and Local Government Advisory Committee on Maternity Services was Miss M.P. Milligan, M.B., B.Sc., D.P.H. 57 Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium 29 April 1957. 53

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reflection on the Legion itself. Moreover, criticisms of the hostel could also lead to negative portrayals of the Legion of Mary as well as the Catholic community as a whole. As voluntary institutions like the Mater Dei Hostel came increasingly under the influence of government agencies, so too did its residents. This had serious implications for women activists in the Legion of Mary, who were bound by the obligation that ‘the intimate and hidden nature of the Legionary work must be kept safeguarded’.58 This maxim led to tensions between the praesidium and government welfare officials who were not as concerned with maintaining strict secrecy.59 While they were willing to encourage residents to accept public assistance, evidence suggests that some of the sisters of Mater Dei remained ill at ease with government interference into Legion affairs. Rather than alleviating tensions, various incidents involving welfare officials resulted only in frustration. One such case involved a hostel resident who, after recently giving birth, was devastated to find out that her mother was contacted by a visiting welfare nurse who, believing that the child was legitimate, informed her of her daughter’s pregnancy. Although the confusion was caused by the doctor incorrectly filling out the child’s birth certificate, the Legion was blamed. The minutes reveal that the mother in question was extremely upset, believing that legionaries had deliberately informed her 70 year old mother of her pregnancy. ‘It was very sad’, the minutes read, as ‘arrangements had been made for [the woman’s] marriage and she says she will never return home’.60 Although welfare officials later apologised for this misunderstanding, the lay women who ran Mater Dei were angered by the state’s interference in the lives of hostel residents. While it is quite clear from the minutes that some sisters were beginning to resent state intervention, others like Sister Mohan, a trained nurse who resided in the hostel, took a more pragmatic view of the state. Explaining the situation in terms of public health, Sister Mohan stated that nursing homes and hospitals had a duty to inform welfare authorities of births so that ‘after a mother and baby arrive home from hospital she is interviewed by a welfare visitor [usually also a nurse] who asks her a number of questions; what kind of birth did she have, if it is her first; who the father of the child is, etc’.61 However, given Catholic feelings of alienation towards the Northern Irish state, there was a general perception 58

Ripley, Terrible as an army set in array¸ p. 32. ‘Cardinal points of the Legio of Mary’ in Legio Mariae (http://www.legion-ofmary.ie/Publications/Handbook%202004/Index.html) (10 August 2005). 60 Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 30 July 1951. 61 Ibid. 59

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among legionaries that, because it was a ‘voluntary place’ not in receipt of a government grant like similar Protestant homes, Mater Dei was ‘under no obligation to the welfare authorities’.62 Although true of the institution itself, hostel residents did receive a government grant which placed Mater Dei within the realm of the welfare state. Nevertheless, the tactlessness of government inspectors continued to be a source of frustration for the hostel organisers. For example, minutes record how, after refusing to tell an inspector who the father of her child was, one resident was threatened that, because she was from the country, ‘there were means and ways of finding out’. As members of an organisation bound by secrecy and the imperative that legionnaires should ‘not sit in judgement’, many of the sisters were shocked at such insensitive treatment. To them, it seemed self-evident that welfare officers had no ‘right to ask such personal questions’ of women under the care of the Legion of Mary.63 The interventionist approach taken by welfare officials certainly lessened the burden placed on single mothers. However, it affected not only personal privacy, but the independence of voluntary institutions such as Mater Dei. The initial response of the Legion members to official interference was to instruct mothers to refuse to disclose personal information to authorities. Hostel leaders even suggested holding an inquiry into how much legal authority a welfare visitor had over its operations and its residents. However, despite these actions, resistance soon faded. When the National Assistance Officer called on 29 March 1954 and questioned six residents legionnaires did not protest. After explaining that the questions were necessary, the Assistance Officer was allowed to conduct her interviews and instruct the mothers to contact putative fathers for financial support.64 After this meeting the relationship with government officials was remarkably improved, and in July 1954 a visiting welfare nurse congratulated legionaries for having found homes for so many children, and concluded that women with nowhere else to go were fortunate to have such a place.65 Kunzel’s study of voluntary homes for unmarried mothers in the United States suggests that attitudes like those expressed by the Mater Dei 62

Ibid. A 1947 memorandum from the Department of Health (Éire) highlighted a similar problem in relation to the over-crowding of semi-state provision for unmarried mothers in Dublin. See Department of Health memorandum on Regina Coeli (National Archives of Ireland, Department of Health files, M124/60). 64 Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 29 March 1954. 65 Ibid., 29 July 1954. 63

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praesidium can be interpreted as a ‘subversive form of resistance’ to the professionalisation of care. She notes that contemporary voluntary societies commonly refused ‘to recognise casework as a professional skill…that equipped them with greater expertise in caring for unmarried mothers’.66 While members of the Legion of Mary did not suggest that they were experts in the care of unwed mothers, they did offer resistance to the intrusion of professional social workers. However, in the end this hostility was short lived. Although legionaries continued to protest cases of bureaucratic indiscretion they did not revolt against state authority nor did they withdrawal their services. Instead, the Legion managed to cultivate a cooperative relationship—although this was largely based on religious difference—rather than antagonism. Whether it was instructing residents on how to obtain free milk, death grants for infants or asking that new mothers fill out new maintenance grant forms after being discharged from hospital, minute books reveal a positive and pragmatic acceptance of state welfare during the 1950s.67 The Mater Dei Hostel needed the welfare state just as much as its residents—as was illustrated by the changing pattern of referrals. During its early years, the vast majority of women entering Mater Dei were referred by private individuals, local priests and women religious. While this remained an important informal network, an increasing number of expectant mothers were referred to the Legion by local welfare agencies, including county boards. For example, Elizabeth K. and her child arrived to the Hostel on 23 April 1951 accompanied by the local welfare officer from Downpatrick. That same week another mother and child were sent to Mater Dei, only this time from a Catholic social worker in Birmingham England. Similarly, on 2 July 1951 Miss McMillan, a welfare officer responsible for Co. Londonderry wrote Mater Dei requesting they accept a pregnant Catholic woman from Derry City. This pattern continued with further requests issued by welfare authorities from across Northern Ireland, particularly Derry and Tyrone.68 However, the referral process was not unidirectional. In some instances Mater Dei would also refer cases brought to its attention by informal sources directly to 66

Kunzel, Fallen women, problem girls, p. 133. Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 22 June 1953. Minute entries record that the Mater Dei received a letter from the Ministry of Labour which included forms and instructions needed to apply for a death grant. In October 1955 the Belfast Area Welfare Office wrote to Mater Dei regarding maintenance payments for hostel residents. 68 Ibid., 24 September 1951; June 1953; July 1953. 67

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welfare authorities, particularly in cases involving minors. For example, after receiving a letter from a mother requesting they provide assistance for her sixteen year old daughter, the minutes of 25 January 1954 record that, because she was under 18, it was decided that they should ‘seek the help of welfare in this case’.69 Unsurprisingly, the acceptance of welfare cases often limited the sisters’ scope for independent action. In June 1953, the president of Mater Dei, Sister Rose McEntee warned the praesidium that in cases which involved the welfare authorities any decisions that they made were ‘final and cannot be appealed against’.70 Not long after a case presented itself where the sisters wanted to send a resident home to her parents because she required unspecified special care. However, this woman refused to go home, and a note from the welfare authorities which accompanied her on admission instructed against this action as conditions at home were said to be ‘very undesirable’.71 Another case involved a young woman who was sent to Mater Dei by welfare authorities on 25 January 1954. When her father arrived to collect her from the hostel in March he was informed that she had been placed there through the local welfare authority and that authorisation was needed to be released from care. After contacting the welfare office, Sister Mohan was put through to the special care doctor in charge of the case. He told her that nothing could be done for at least two weeks and that if she were to go home, her family ‘would be after her all the time’.72 Nevertheless, this girl eventually left without obtaining permission. Her actions resulted in Miss Shields, a Special Care Officer from the Northern Ireland Hospital Authority, reprimanding the resident nurse, Sister Mohan.73 Citing family circumstances, Miss Shields admonished the legionnaires, stating that the girl had been placed in the care of Mater Dei ‘by order of the court’ and was not allowed leave without official permission.74 Needless to say, this directive was not always heeded. 69

Ibid., 23 January 1954. Ibid., 29 June 1953. 71 Ibid., 31 August 1953. 72 Ibid., 29 March 1954. 73 The Special Care Service was charged under the 1948 Mental Health Act (N.I.), with providing for ‘persons suffering from arrested or incomplete development of mind’. The name of the service stems from the wording of the legislation which, instead of referring to persons as ‘mentally defective’ uses the phrase ‘person requiring special care’. See Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority report (Belfast, 1950), p. 52. 74 Minutes of the Mater Dei praesidium, 26 July 1954. 70

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In March 1956 officers of the Special Care Service responsible for minors and others persons under state care, again came into conflict with Mater Dei for disregarding its instructions. In this instance, the sisters in charge of Mater Dei allowed a woman in their care to return to work in Belfast’s Roman Catholic Mater Hospital despite questions regarding her mental capacity. According to the Special Care Service, this woman was in need of supervision. Mater Dei, however, questioned this assessment, citing the woman’s ability to competently answer all the questions asked by her physician. Although angry that their protests were not heeded by welfare officials, legionnaires were again warned that ‘once the special care doctor interviewed a girl she was automatically placed under their supervision’.75 The history of the Legion of Mary’s work with unmarried mothers in Belfast reveals how the growing influence of state welfare, and the professionalisation of social work, impacted on the delivery of voluntary welfare. However, despite asserting greater authority over the housing and care of unmarried mothers, state welfare agencies did not entirely supplant the services provided by voluntary societies. As a result groups like the Legion of Mary were able to maintain a viable operational presence in the years following the implementation of the welfare state. The Legion of Mary’s work with unwed mothers also reveals much about the role of lay women in the delivery of Catholic welfare initiatives in Northern Ireland. Driven by the needs of the north’s minority Catholic community, Legion women were able to establish Ireland’s only lay-run institution which, unlike Dublin’s Regina Coeli, was dedicated solely to needs of unmarried mothers. In so doing, these women faced several challenges. During the 1940s and 1950s the expansion of state welfare and the professionalisation of social work had a major impact on the delivery of care in Northern Ireland by marginalising and taking over the work of many voluntary organisations such as the Malone Place Maternity and Rescue Home Nevertheless, this chapter also reveals that state welfare agencies, despite their assertion of greater authority over the housing and care of unmarried mothers, did not entirely supplant the services provided by voluntary organisations like the Legion of Mary. Of course, the divided nature of Northern Irish society was undoubtedly significant in securing the continued importance of the Mater Dei Hostel. According to one commentator, ‘in the absence of political organisation, and because Catholics felt no allegiance to the entity of Northern Ireland, the church by default was the acknowledged chief 75

Ibid.

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source of authority and social coherence in ‘a state within a state’’.76 The idea of Catholics banding together to form ‘a state within a state’ can also be seen through the plethora of institutions such as the Mater Hospital, Catholic maintained schools and voluntary organisations which supported the needs of Catholics. According to Rafferty, from the 1920s onwards there was: a great mushrooming of Catholic organisations in the north of Ireland doubtless as part of the process whereby the community held the state at a distance and devolved its own alternative society within the orangedominated environment. The Catholic Arts Guild, the Catholic Young Men’s Society, the Legion of Mary, the Catholic Boy Scouts, the Holy Child Society, even a Catholic Billiards League. These and a host of other societies contributed to the one end of preserving a distinct Catholic ethos in the Protestant state.77

The need to establish Catholic institutions that were independent from the Northern Ireland state was an important justification for the expansion of the Legion’s work with unmarried mothers during the 1940s and 1950s. Moreover, the existence of Protestant-run hostels for unwed mothers certainly strengthened this desire. However, it seems that any hostility or rivalry that may have originally underpinned their efforts dissipated as Legion activists gradually developed a co-operative relationship with both the Northern Irish state and their Protestant counterparts. The motivations which led to women taking up Legion membership were no doubt complex. However, it was not just communal loyalty that drew Catholic lay women to participate in the Legion. Some may have wanted to make a positive impact on both their communities and on the individuals in need of help. As lay representatives of the Church, there was perhaps a strong desire to defend mothers and children that were vulnerable to ‘suspect influence’, whether that was ‘state or charitable’.78 The spiritual dimension to the Legion’s work was constantly reiterated in speeches to its activists. In July 1945, the spiritual director of the Mater Dei Hostel, Fr Murray, declared that ‘the Legion was a vocation’…a privilege given by God through his Holy Mother’, dedicated to the sanctification of its members, as well as others in the community.79 Nearly 76 Fionnuala O’Connor, In search of a state: Catholics in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1993), p. 274. 77 Oliver Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster, 1603-1983: an interpretive history (London, 1994), p. 228. 78 Lindsay Earner-Byrne, ‘Managing motherhood: negotiating a maternity service for Catholic mothers in Dublin, 1930–1954’, p. 267. 79 Minutes of the Mater Dei Praesidium, 10 July 1945.

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a decade later, legionnaires were again reminded ‘that the work being done was for Christ and His Blessed Mother, for the salvation of our own soul and the souls of others’.80 The belief that temporal activities were very much directed towards the spiritual realm was further reiterated by Fr Barrett in 1955, ‘the work the sisters are doing in the hostel is great work and what we do here will be stored up for us in heaven, as we are working for the world to come’.81 Although it is impossible to ascertain to what degree Legion women were motivated by religious fervour, it is clear that their work with unmarried mothers was based on social need. Legion women were out to make a difference to their local community and to individuals in need. Unfortunately, the only records from this hostel that have survived are its minute books. These sources provide a valuable insight into the work of the Legion of Mary, their changing relationship with the state and unmarried motherhood. However, we still know very little about these women, their recollection of unwed motherhood or their experience of hostel life. Sensational documentaries like the Sex in a Cold Climate (1998) and, more recently, The Magdalen Sisters (2002) have attempted to deal with the complex and variegated experiences of unwed mothers.82 These depicted how vulnerable women were subject to abuse and, in some cases, institutionalised by a sinister system of Magdalen Asylums. However, they have also been criticised for over simplifying what was a very personal and complex social issue.83 Needless to say the Legion of Mary’s Mater Dei Hostel was not, nor ever sought to be, a Magdalen Asylum. It was run by dedicated women who believed that they were making a difference to their Church and their community by helping unmarried mothers—a class of individual who were, by and large, socially ostracised. Legion activists did not seek to institutionalise or punish the subjects of their charity. Instead, they provided charitable assistance to unwed mothers who would otherwise have been forced to seek help from disapproving family members, Protestant organisations, the state or worse still, the boat to England.

80

Ibid., 6 July 1953. Ibid., 14 November 1955. 82 Sex in a cold climate (1998), Channel Four (UK) documentary directed by Steve Humphreys and The Magdalen Sisters (2002) directed by Peter Mullan. 83 Leanne McCormick, 'Sinister sisters?: the portrayal of Magdalene Asylums in Ireland in popular culture' in Cultural and Social History, vol.2 (2005), pp 373381. 81

CHAPTER EIGHT MOTHERHOOD AS THEORY AND EXPERIENCE IN THE POETRY OF NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL CAITRÍONA NÍ CHLÉIRCHÍN

‘Mothers don’t write; they are written’. Hélène Deutsch.1

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is an Irish-language poet and also a mother who has been writing about her lived and embodied experiences of motherhood, pregnancy and miscarriage for the last thirty-five years. She has also written about her difficult relationship with her own mother and how this affected her sense of identity. She presents maternity as something to be celebrated rather than as a form of slavery; to be a mother for her is to love, and yet she is aware of the darker side of this love, that the mother can harm as well as nurture, that the mother can kill. In ‘Máthair’, first published in An Dealg Droighin in 1981 and translated in 1988 as ‘Mother’, Ní Dhomhnaill speaks about her painful relationship with her mother and with her own self. The poet desires to be purged once and for all of her mother’s bondage, and to become individuated and free. The matrophobia explicit in the poem can be seen as a splitting of the self in a desperate attempt to carve out a separate identity, free from any trace or gift of the mother. Do thugais dom gúna is thógais arís é; do thugais dom capall a dhíolais i m’éagmais; do thugais dom cláirseach is d’iarrais thar n-ais é; do thugais dom beatha.

1

Susan Rubin Suleiman, Risking who one is: encounters with contemporary art and literature (London, 1994), p. 17.

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Féile Uí Bhriain is a dhá shúil ina dhiaidh. / You gave me a dress and then took it back from me. You gave me a horse which you sold in my absence. You gave me a harp and then asked me back for it. And you gave me life. At the miser’s dinner-party every bite is counted.2

Ní Dhomhnaill has given many frank autobiographical interviews and much of her work is a form of self-representation. Her parents’ opposition (particularly her mother’s) to her relationship with Turkish geologist Dogan Leflef, caused her great conflict and personal trauma. Her parents took extreme measures to prevent Nuala and Dogan from seeing each other. At eighteen, she was made a ward of court and was locked up in her own home. This would prove to be a traumatic period from which Ní Dhomhnaill never seemed to fully recover. She suffered from anorexia and depression, but managed to graduate from University College Cork with a BA and a Higher Diploma in Education. At the age of twenty-one, she left home, married Dogan and went to live in Turkey for eight years, returning to Ireland in 1981. The tone of ‘Máthair’ is vengeful and unforgiving. Ní Dhomhnaill is starkly honest in her depiction of a relationship that has gone very wrong. All of the mother’s gift giving is seen only as a power trick or a resentful sort of half-giving. Yet the process of undoing this very close bond is not simple. It seems that the rejection of the mother and her gifts is the undoing of her own self. Words circulate throughout the poem like a currency of pain and hurt. There is no letting go of wounds inflicted. The daughter here expresses a wish to end her own life as an act of ultimate defiance and rejection of her mother. Cad déarfá dá stracfainn an gúna? dá mbáfainn an capall? 2

Michael Hartnett and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (trans.), Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Rogha dánta/selected poems (Dublin, 1988), p. 41.

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There is hardly a more bitter poem in the Irish language, or one so full of wordwounds. ‘Máthair’ is a testimony to the destructive power of language in the realm of relationship, and especially of the indelible nature of the written word. Yet destructive as it is, the bond here is almost unbreakable in its intensity. The poet though fierce is passionately engaged with her mother and must fight against her from within the context of a very strong foundation/bond. Indeed boundaries between self and mother are blurred, so that hurting oneself also means hurting the mother. In spite of the words, the love is there. In his essay ‘Filíocht Nuala Ní Dhomnaill: An Mháthair Ghrámhar agus an Mháthair Ghránna ina Cuid Filíochta’ which appeared later in English in Repossessions as ‘The Loving and Terrible Mother in the Early

3

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Rogha dánta, p. 41.

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Poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’, the late Professor Seán Ó Tuama quotes Carl Gustav Jung as follows: We could therefore say that every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother, and that every woman extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter … An experience of this kind gives the individual a place and a meaning in the life of generations, so that all the unnecessary obstacles are cleared out of the way of the life stream that is to flow through her. At the same time the individual is rescued from her isolations and restored to wholeness. All ritual preoccupation with archetypes ultimately has this aim and this result.4

Ó Tuama suggests how in her first book, An Dealg Droighin (1981), Ní Dhomhnaill recreates the female/mother archetype in different guises from her own life experience, while in her second book, Féar Suaithinseach (1984), she deals consciously with instinctual feelings. According to Ó Tuama, she operates a ‘Jungian agenda’. He goes on to quote Jung’s comprehensive account of the attributes associated with the mother archetype: The qualities associated with it are maternal solicitude and sympathy; the magic authority of the female; any helpful instinct or impulse; all that is benign, all that cherishes and sustains, that fosters growth and fertility…On the negative side the mother archetype may connote anything secret, hidden, dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces and poisons, that is terrifying and inescapable like fate….I formulated the ambivalence of these attributes as ‘The Loving and 5 Terrible Mother’.

Polly Young-Eisendrath explains the negative mother complex as follows: The negative mother complex, a common cultural problem associated with female identity, is organised around the archetype of the Terrible Mother…. The terrible mother is imaged as a savage goddess, a witch or a hag. These archetypal images are associated with death, suffocation,

4

Sean Ó Tuama, “The loving and terrible mother’ in the early poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’ in Sean Ó Tuama Repossessions: selected essays on the Irish literary heritage (Cork, 1995), p. 53, 5 C.G. Jung, The archetypes and the collective unconscious (Princeton, 1980), p. 77.

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Young-Eisendrath maintains that the prevalence of the negative mother complex in our society is rooted in our collective devaluing of care-giving activities. She also highlights the fact that long-term identification with the negative mother complex in an individual woman can result in a great deal of self-inflicted hatred and isolation. Ní Dhomhnaill is a poet who places great importance on the notion of artistic freedom to explore and express ‘her own deeply turbulent feminine nature’7. Tá máithreacha dorcha, leannáin sí, capaill uisce, maighdeanacha mara agus murúigh istigh ionam agus iad ag lorg slí amach./There are dark mothers, demon lovers, waterhorses and mermaids inside me and all of 8 them are looking for a way out.

What is remarkable is the incredible energy of her poetry. A powerful female voice resounds throughout, whether it is Mór, the goddess of sovereignty and fertility, Queen Medb or ‘Bean an Leasa/The Fairy Woman’. The poet will not attempt to conceal ugly or cruel aspects within the feminine nature but engages instead with the shadow and dares to voice darker elements of the mother/self. Her poem ‘An Bhatráil/The Battering’ deals with violence towards a child. The child here has come back from the fairy fort all ‘red and raw’. Talking about what happened in the fairy fort is perhaps a way of distancing herself from the disbelief and horror at loss of control and broaching this very difficult and taboo subject. Mar atá beidh mo leordhóthain dalladh agam ag iarraidh a chur in iúl dóibh nach mise a thug an bhatráil dheireanach seo dó. /As things stand, I’ll have more than enough trouble trying to convince them that it wasn’t me 6

Polly Young-Eisendrath, Hags and heroes: a feminist approach to Jungian psychotherapy with couples (Toronto, 1984), p. 29. 7 Ó Tuama, “The loving and terrible mother’ in the early poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’, p. 35. 8 Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, ‘Filíocht á cumadh: ceardlannn filíochta, an nuafhilíocht, léachtaí Cholm Cille XVII (Maigh Nuad, 1986).

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who gave my little laddie this last battering.9

It would be a mistake to assume that Ní Dhomhnaill focuses solely on the negative aspects of motherhood. Indeed some of her best poems express the wonderful bond of love between mother and child. ‘Dán do Mhelissa’, is a powerful expression of unconditional motherly love for her child. The rhythm of this poem is like a lullaby, as Tadhg Ó Dúshláine points out in his article ‘Suantraí Nuala: Dán do Mhelissa’ in Feasta November 2004. Like a lullaby, the poem echoes the gentle rhythmic sounds from within the womb. These sounds comfort the baby and put her to sleep. The first verse of the poem creates a picture infused with golden light, the happiness of a child dancing and an innocent joy in being alive. Mo Phaistín Fionn ag rince i gcroí na duimhce, ribín i do cheann is fáinní óir ar do mhéaranta duitse nach bhfuil fós ach a cúig nó a sé do bhlianta tíolacaim gach a bhfuil sa domhan mín mín. /My fair-haired child dancing in the dunes hair be ribboned, gold rings on your fingers to you, yet only five or six years old, I grant you all on this delicate earth.10

The echo of ‘mín mín’ is an idea of softness that is difficult to translate. Within the sound of the word itself is a feeling of tenderness, softness and delicacy and also the idea of being ground small. The mother here wishes to bestow the child with a new world, a utopian place where she will be safe and protected. Ní Dhomhnaill uses references from a passage about peace from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament (Isaiah 11:6-11). Bheadh an damh ag súgradh leis an madra allta an naíonán ag gléachas leis an nathair nimhe luífeadh an leon síos leis an uan caorach sa domhan úrnua a bhronnfainn ort mín mín. /The ox would gambol with the wolf the child would play with the serpent the lion would lie down with the lamb in the pasture world I would delicately grant.11 9

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, The astrakhan cloak, (Loughcrew, 1992), p. 27. Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Rogha dánta, p. 41.

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The world she would give to her daughter would be a place free from shame and threat. The poet is aware however that the world is not so safe. She wishes to protect her child from any suffering and pain. She is willing to go to any lengths to save her child from evil. A iníon bhán, seo dearbhú ó do mháithrín go mbeirim ar láimh duit an ghealach is an ghrian is go seasfainn le mo chorp féin idir dhá bhró an mhuilinn i muilte Dé chun nach meilfí tú mín mín. / Oh white daughter here’s your mother’s word: I will put in your hand the sun and the moon I will stand my body between the millstones In God’s mills so you are not totally ground.12

‘Ag Cothú Linbh’/’Feeding a Child’ also expresses the intimacy of the mother-child bond with rhythms of language influenced by the physical connection of their bodies. As ceo meala an bhainne as brothall scamallach maothail éiríonn an ghrian de dhroim na maolchnoc mar ghiní óir le cur i do ghlaic, a stór. Ólann tú do shá ó mo chíoch is titeann siar i do shuan isteach i dtaibhreamh buan, tá gáire ar do ghnúis, Cad tá ag gabháil trí do cheann, tusa ná fuil ach le coicís ann? / From honey-dew of milking from cloudy heat of beestings the sun rises up the back of bare hills, a guinea gold to put in your hand, my own. 11 12

Ibid. Ibid., p. 136.

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You drink your fill from my breast and fall back asleep into a lasting dream laughter in your face. What is going through your head You who are but a fortnight on earth?13

The mother and the child are delighting in each other and the poetic language here moves between the real and the imaginary, from the underwater world, to the land of Giants to the real world again. There is a sense of the other world in this poem expressed through an ‘otherness’ of language itself, with phrases taken from folklore stories. An eol duit an lá ón oíche …. go bhfuil do bháidín ag snámh óró sa chuan leis na lupadáin lapadáin muranáin maranáin, í go slim sleamhain ó thóin go ceann ag cur grean na farriage in uachtar is cúr na farriage in íochtar? /Do you know day from night …. That your small boat swims óró in the bay with the flippered peoples and the small sea-creatures she slippery-sleek from stem to bow stirring sea-sand up and sea-foam down.14

Written within the feminine element of water, this poem echoes rhythms of the sea and the womb, or the child sucking at the breast. Phrases like ‘lupadáin lapadáin, muranáin, maranáin’, borrowed from the formulaic ‘runs’ of storytelling, are not easily translated, but give us a 13 14

Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., p. 86.

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sense of the gentle sounds of the sea and the comfort of familiar rhythms, both physical and verbal. The mother wonders what the child knows already of the world. It seems that she is unaware of any danger. Compared to the mother, the child is tiny and defenceless. She uses the image of the land of giants to talk about possible conflicts ahead in the relationship between them. She may be anxious about this and yet for the moment mother and child enjoy a peaceful unity. Féachaim san aghaidh ort, a linbh, is n’fheadar an bhfeadaraís go bhfuil do bhólacht ag iníor i dtalamh na bhfathach, ag slad is ag bradaíocht, is nach fada go gcloisfir an “fí-fáidh-fó-fum” ag teacht thar do ghuaille aniar. …. Is mór liom de ghreim thú agus is beag liom de dhá ghreim, is maith liom do chuid feola ach ní maith liom do chuid anraith. Is cé hiad pátrúin bhunaidh na laoch is na bhfathach munar thusa is mise? /I look into your face child not knowing if you know your herd of cattle graze in the land of giants trespassing and thieving and that soon you will hear the fee-fie-fo-fum sounding in your ear …. There’s one good bite in you but hardly two – I like your flesh but not the broth thereof And who are the original patterns of the heroes and giants if not me and you?15 15

Ibid., p. 88.

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Writing about her embodied experience as a mother, Ní Dhomhnaill articulates the maternal body voice. Feminist theorist Julia Kristeva emphasises the importance of motherhood and provides a useful insight into the work of Ní Dhomhnaill. Language for Kristeva is composed of both the ‘symbolic’ and the ‘semiotic’. The symbolic refers to the grammar and structure of language. The semiotic is the bodily drive as it affects language. It is associated with the maternal body, the first source of rhythms, tones and movements for every human being, since we have all resided in that body.16 Language requires both the semiotic and the symbolic because as bodily drives affect language, logic is already operating within the materiality of the body. Kristeva maintains that there is a maternal regulation that prefigures the paternal law. In contrast to Freud and Lacan, Kristeva emphasizes the maternal function and its importance in the development of subjectivity and access to culture and language. She calls for a new discourse of maternity that acknowledges the importance of the maternal function. The poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill is part of this new discourse of maternity, not only because she writes about motherhood, but also because she writes in Irish. To quote the poet herself: Irish is the language of Mothers par excellence. She must be. Every repression it/the language suffered throughout history mirrors the repression of women. We too were beaten down and driven out beyond the social, religious and power structures of the state. We remained hidden, anonymous, without an alphabet while our spirit survived in our speech, cut off from literature and even from literacy. The feminine spirit survived among the ordinary people who had no desire for wealth or status, which was in any case denied them. For that reason, Irish has the potential to be a suitable vehicle for the female imagination and the shape and forms of the 17 language are ideal for women’s literature.

In Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature, Susan Rubin Suleiman asks: ‘What about the writer who is the body of a mother?’. Kristeva too asks us ‘What do we know about the inner discourse of a mother?’ The maternal function is key to Kristeva’s 16

Julia Kristeva, Desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art (New York, 1980), p. 19. 17 Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, ‘Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, ‘Filíocht á cumadh: ceardlannn filíochta, an nuafhilíocht, léachtaí Cholm Cille XVII (Maigh Nuad, 1986), p. 168. 17 Julia Kristeva, In the beginning was love: psychoanalysis and faith (New York, 1987), p. 9.

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psychoanalytical model of the human subject, as is her notion of “abjection”(developed in her book Powers of Horror). Rather than a Freudian insistence on the father and the Oedipus complex, she focuses on the baby’s relation to the mother, which predates these.18 The mother’s body is a place of fragmentation, cleavage and elemental pulsations that exist before language and meaning. It is a place of exile, disorder and extreme singularity in relation to the collective order of culture. Boundaries between self and other become blurred in maternity. Like the maternal body, each one of us is what Kristeva calls a subject-inprocess, never completely the subjects of our own experience. The lack of certainty with regard to the subject position contrasts with the unity of the transcendent ego. We are no doubt permanent subjects of a language that holds us in its power. But we are subjects in process ceaselessly losing our identity, destabilised by fluctuations in our relations to the other, to whom we 19 nevertheless remain bound by a kind of homeostasis.

Influential critic Bríona Nic Dhiarmada has described the psychic journey and the process of individuation in her article ‘Immram sa tSíce: Filíocht Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill agus Próiseas an Indibhidithe’, she maintains that the structure of Feis is based on individuation as the ‘psychological quest for wholeness’. Feis is divided under four main titles; ‘Cailleach’, ‘An Leannán Sí’, ‘Feis’ and ‘Spéirbhean’. ‘Cailleach’, which can mean hag or witch deals with the dark side of the feminine psyche, and confronting the shadow. This section includes the poems ‘Cailleach’ and ‘An Bhatráil’, which speak of devouring and threatening mothers. An Leannán Sí refers to the demon lover who is another aspect of the animus, or the personification of the masculine in the woman’s unconscious. After wrestling with the animus, the images from the unconscious are transformed. This section is divided into three parts; ‘Immram’, ‘Feis’ and ‘Toircheas’. ‘Immram’ refers to an otherworld journey in the discovery of the true self. Feis refers to a union of inner opposites, of the feminine and masculine principles. ‘Toircheas’ refers to birth or rebirth. The final section, ‘Spéirbhean’, deals with nature, motherly love and the blossoming of the true self. Ní Dhomhnaill has written so much on the theme of motherhood and the idea of the mother that it would be impossible to cover every aspect in 18 19

The Guardian, 7 April 2007. Julia Kristeva, In the beginning was love, p. 9.

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this article alone. I would however like to talk briefly about motherhood as an act of creation. Ní Dhomhnaill has a series of ‘toircheas’ or pregnancy poems. Toircheas I and II appeared with translations in Pharaoh’s Daughter, but were originally published as part of a sequence of five poems in Feis, numbered I to V. Sarah O’Connor illustrates how Ní Dhomhnaill experiences herself as a participant in the creative process and examines the parallel between pregnancy and the translation process in her paper entitled: ‘Translation as Textual Pregnant Embodiment in Pharaoh’s Daughter.20 The pregnant body reconceptualises patriarchal notions of subjecthood through its inherent doubleness. This creative process does not always come to fruition, and a baby, just like a poem or translation can be miscarried. In ‘Breith Anabaí Thar Lear’, Ní Dhomhnaill writes about her experience of miscarrying while abroad in Turkey. By doing so, she breaks the silence of thousands of women who have had similar experiences. She speaks to the child who was never born, telling her how happy she had been about her coming. Luaimnigh do shíol i mo bhroinn, D’fháiltíos roimh do bhreith Dúrt go dtógfainn go cáiréiseach thú De réir gnása mo nuamhuintire. /You, embryo, moved in me – I welcomed your emerging I said I’d rear you carefully in the manner of my new people.21

The poet describes all the Turkish customs for protecting the newborn baby. An leabhar beannaithe faoi do philiúr arán is snáthad i do chliabhán, léine t’athar anuas ort is ag do cheann an scuab urláir. /under your pillow the holy book, in your cot, bread and a needle: your father’s shirt as an eiderdown 20

Sarah O’Connor, ‘Translation as textual pregnant embodiment in pharaoh’s daughter ‘, New Voices, Drumcondra 20-21 April, 2001. 21 Rogha dánta, p. 50.

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at your head a brush for sweeping.22

But in spite of all these hopes and plans, the baby never came. Bhí mo shonas ag cur thar maoil go dtí sa deireadh gur bhris na bainc is sceith frog deich seachtainí; ní mar a shíltear a bhí. /I was brimming with happiness until the dykes broke and out was swept a ten-weeks frog – ‘the best-laid schemes …’.23

Miscarriage can be a very painful experience in a woman’s life and yet it is seldom talked about, even today. To go through the physical pain of childbirth and then to lose the baby, very often shatters a woman’s entire sense of self. Ní Dhomhnaill in this poem calls herself an ‘óinseach’/ a foolish woman, for having let this happen. There is a sense of self-blame and guilt here. Everywhere, signs of life around her remind her of what might have been and she finds it difficult to see her friend’s newborn child. Is anois le teacht na Márta Is an bhreith a bhí le bheith in ndán duit cuireann ribíní bána na taoide do bhindealáin i gcuimhne dom, tointe fada na hoinsí. Is ní raghad ag féachaint linbh nuabheirithe mo dhlúthcharad ar eagla mo shúil mhillteach do luí air le formad. / And Now it’s March your birthday that never was – 22 23

Ibid. Ibid.

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and white ribbons of tide remind me of baby-clothes, an imbecile’s tangled threads. And I will not go to see my best friend’s new born child because of the jealousy that stares from my evil eye.24

To quote Kristeva: One does not give birth in pain, one gives birth to pain: the child represents it and henceforth it settles in, it is continuous….But a mother is 25 always branded by pain.

How much greater is the pain without the consolation of the child to hold; to give birth to emptiness and silence. Then there is this other abyss that opens up between the body and what had been inside.26

Ní Dhomhnaill broke the silence of that abyss in speaking about the pain of loss in miscarriage. She also engaged with the plight of the single teenage mother in ‘Thar Mo Chionn’ (Féar Suaithinseach, 1984). This poem is dedicated to Ann Lovett, the fifteen-year-old girl who died while giving birth in a field near her home in Granard, in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary in 1984. Angela Bourke writes on this subject in an unpublished conference paper entitled ‘Silence in Two Languages: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and the Unspeakable’.27 Bourke describes how Ní Dhomhnaill uses traditional fairy narrative in an innovative way to explore female experience. Subjects too painful for public utterance could be approached obliquely and the truth is told with a slant, involving codes and metaphors. In the aftermath of the death of Ann Lovett, subjects such as pregnancies, terminated, carried to term; of infanticide, incest and death in childbirth were being discussed openly for 24

Ibid. Julia Kristeva, ‘Stabat mater’ in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva reader (New York, 1986), p. 167. 26 Ibid., p. 178. 27 Angela Bourke, ‘Silence in two languages’, un-published lecture delivered at the first Graduate Conference in Irish Studies, Harvard University and Boston College, 1993, pp 2-21. 25

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the first time and ‘the silence of generations was broken, as Bourke tells us in her paper. It is difficult for us today to understand the darkness of an Ireland where this kind of tragedy happened. The shame and fear once associatied with pregnancy outside of marriage in an Irish Catholic society of previous decades, has lessened if not disappeared. Huge importance was attached to values of purity, chastity and virginity and an atmosphere of contempt for motherhood and sex. In his poem ‘A Catholic Father Prays For His Daughter’s Abortion’, Paul Durcan reflects on the complexity of the discourse around reproductive rights in Ireland. He captures the contradictions between the public and private spheres, referring to the hypocrisy of a society ‘where women are hard put to get away with life, but men get way with murder day by day’. Angela Bourke speaks of the proliferation after 1954 of statues of the Virgin Mary, who was seen as an ideal figure of womanhood with whom teenage girls identified and tried to emulate. The chasm of difference between the real and the ideal, was too much for them at times. The ordinary human desires of women were denigrated and condemned in a dangerously repressive society.28 Even today, there are residues of this contempt for women and mothers in Irish society and the struggle for equality and respect continues. In a collection of essays ‘Motherhood in Ireland’, Patricia Kennedy, captures the struggles of many women, in a society, which claims to value motherhood. She maintains that while women are often confined and constrained by their reproductive role by a patriarchal State and Church, they are often unsupported in that role. As Adrienne Rich stated in 1977: There has been a basic contradiction throughout patriarchy; between the laws and sanctions designed to keep women essentially powerless and the attribution to mothers of almost superhuman power (of control, of influence, of life-support).29

The poet’s obligation according to Pablo Neruda is to give a voice to the voiceless.30 This is what Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s poetry has always done, speaking about women’s sexuality and many painful experiences on which official discourses often remain silent. Ní Dhomhnaill challenges 28

Paula Meehan too gives voice to the voiceless, allowing the silent figure of the Virgin Mary to speak in her poem ‘The statue of the virgin at Granard speaks’ in The man who was marked by winter (Oldcastle, 1991) 29 Adrienne Rich, Of woman born, motherhood as experience and institution (London, 1977). 30 Pablo Neruda, Fully Empowered (New York, 1995), p. viii.

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the presumptions and contradictions of partriarchy by speaking about her own lived and embodied experiences. Motherhood is one of the main themes of her work, which she celebrates in all its complexity through her poetry.

SECTION IV: RE-DEFINING GENDER

CHAPTER NINE “NO MEASURES OF ‘EMANCIPATION’ OR ‘EQUALITY’ WILL SUFFICE”: EVA GORE-BOOTH’S REVOLUTIONARY FEMINISM IN THE JOURNAL URANIA SONJA TIERNAN

In 1916 a group of radical thinkers led by the Irish poet, playwright, philosopher, and influential political activist, Eva Gore-Booth, established the journal Urania.1 This pioneering journal was privately printed and circulated until 1940, advocating for the elimination of sex/gender and proposing to reform the categories of men and women into one ideal feminine form. This central argument was consistent throughout every issue; challenging mainstream feminism, medical sexology and society’s gender norms. In this article I trace the development of Urania and demonstrate that the existence of this journal challenges our current narrative about the history of feminist activism and theory. The main focus of Urania was the deconstruction of gender and sexuality, which has now become a more integral part of feminist post-modern thinking, though still contentious in political terms.2 This article further illustrates how Urania directly challenged key assumptions and aims of the first-wave feminist movement, a critique which has proved to be far-sighted. While the feminist suffrage movement had honourable intentions, Urania 1

Articles by the editor or Irene Clyde position Eva Gore-Booth as the leader of Urania, a report on the first medical sex change states that this transition ‘entitles us to point with some pride to our former leader Eva Gore-Booth’s illuminating saying: ‘SEX IS AN ACCIDENT!’ Urania, no. 113 & 114 (September/December, 1935), p. 2. 2 Feminist post-modern thinking such as; Judith Butler, Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (London, 1990.) See also, Judith Butler, Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of “sex” (London, 1993.)

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forwarded a prescient critique of it and how it inadvertently contributed to the further marginalisation of women. My research identifies the journal as an alternative archive of radical feminist thought, as the editor of Urania’s centenary issue notes, ‘our contents have provided a record of the feminist movement, of a rather unique sort’.3 The origin of Urania is deeply rooted in a small, revolutionary, feminist organisation, the Aëthnic Union. There is little information relating to the union but a letter sent from Thomas Baty to Millicent Garret Fawcett confirms that it was formed in 1911.4 Baty, representing the Aëthnic Union, asks that the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies ‘would adopt the elimination of gender distinctions as one of its aims;’ Mrs Fawcett, who was the president of the organisation, declined.5 Baty unable to involve conventional suffrage movements with the work of the Aëthnic Union, turned instead to the weekly feminist paper, the Freewoman, to promote the existence of the organisation. The editors of the Freewoman proved to be allies of the union. Established in 1911, the paper was edited by Dora Marsden and Mary Gawthorpe, both of whom had split from the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU.)6 Writer of lesbian history Emily Hamer maintains that they split from the organisation ‘having become virulently opposed to a feminism which concentrated solely on the vote’.7 Marsden and Gawthorpe edited the Freewoman and instigated an assault on the mainstream feminist movement, especially the WSPU and its leaders, the Pankhursts. Suffrage groups were outraged by the paper, according to Millicent Garret Fawcett’s biographer, Ray Strachey, Fawcett was so enraged when she read a copy that ‘she tore it up into small pieces’.8 Baty published articles promoting the Aëthnic Union in the Freewoman, establishing the union as being in opposition to standard feminist movements. One such article provides the clearest account of the organisation, in it Baty states that the Aëthnic Union: Recognises that upon the fact of sex there has been built up a gigantic 3

Urania, no. 101 & 102, (September/December, 1933), p. 1. Millicent Garret Fawcett (1847-1929) was an early feminist and a suffragist, opposed to suffragettes such as the WSPU, who used militancy. Fawcett was president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies from 1897-1919. 5 Archive source in the ‘Fawcett Collection’ in The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University. As cited by Emily Hamer, Britannia’s glory: lesbians after the Great War (London, 1996), p. 68. 6 Hamer, Britannia’s glory p. 265. 7 Ibid. 8 Ray Strachey, Millicent Garret Fawcett (London, 1931), p. 235. 4

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Chapter Nine superstructure of artificial convention which urgently needs to be swept away. And it does not see how it is to be swept away unless sex is resolutely ignored…. The admission of the idea of sex inevitably carries with it a whole flood of associations which rivet on the soul the fetters of a warped ideal. It submerges the mind in a wave of that autocratic sternness which one has been taught is the ideal of the masculine, or of that narrow triviality which one is (less successfully) taught to consider the mark of the feminine. In a word it degrades the soul. Incidentally, it creates an iron 9 barrier between individuals.

The name of the union is explained in the same article, Baty clarifies that, ‘the Greeks have no specific word for sex. Instead, they have genos, phyle, ethnos – but all these terms also have other meanings: genos is more often a “kind”; phyle is more often a “tribe”; and ethnos is more often a “race.” The last term provided the Aëthnic Union with its name’.10 The name of the Aëthnic Union thus evoked the ideal of a single sex/race, which the editors of the journal Urania would later advocate. To date no membership records of the union have been discovered but a flier entitled The Phoenix lists Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper as supporters, while an obituary in Urania confirms that Eva and ‘her companion Esther Roper were associated’ with the “Aëthnic Union.” 11 Researchers including Hamer have suggested that the Aëthnic Union collapsed shortly after its first meeting; there are no further records until the publication of Urania.12 A section in issue 14 of Urania in 1919 is dedicated to defining the ‘object and purpose of the Aëthnic Union from its members’.13 Although it is reported that few replies were received, some responses were printed in the journal, providing an insight into the goals of the organisation. One such letter submitted by M. FitzH offers a comprehensive explanation of the principle and object of the Aëthnic Union: Principle. – (a) The removal of the artificial distinctions which have 9

T. Baty, ‘The aëthnic union’ in Freewoman, 12 February 1912, p. 278. Held in British Museum, London. As cited in Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai, ‘Fantasy and identity: The double life of a Victorian sexual radical’ in Rediscovering forgotten radicals: British women writers 1889-1939 (Chapel Hill, 1993), p. 297, n. 44. 10 Baty, p. 278. 11 The Phoenix (‘Fawcett Collection’, Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University, Box 295 folder 4) See also the obituary of Eva Gore-Booth in Urania, no. 57 & 58, (May/August 1926), p. 1. 12 Hamer, Britannia’s glory, p. 69. 13 Urania, no. 14 (March/April 1919), p. 2.

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resulted in the over sexing of men and women, in a subjected womanhood, a vicious manhood, and a diseased race. (b) The affirmation of a belief in the essential oneness of humanity, duality of sex being possibly a mere passing phase in the evolution of the race. Object. - To spread this theory by means of all the usual methods of propaganda.14

The Aëthnic Union’s intention was clearly presented, advocating the elimination of ‘artificial distinctions’ based on sex. The object of the union to spread this theory through propaganda was achieved by privately circulating a printed journal containing these principles; Urania thus emerged as an instrument of the union’s propaganda. Although the unnamed editor of the above piece is clear to point out that Urania has no formal connection with the Aëthnic Union, the links between the two are obvious. It is evident that at least three co-founders of Urania were original members of the union; that is Gore-Booth, Roper and Baty. Many issues of Urania specifically stress the importance of Gore-Booth’s contribution to the journal; her obituary states that she ‘was an inspiration and a constant support to this paper’.15 The mission statement printed on every issue of Urania clarifies the journal’s ethos in line with the Aëthnic Union: Urania denotes the company of those who are firmly determined to ignore the dual organisation of humanity in all its manifestations. They are convinced that this duality has resulted in the formation of the two warped and imperfect types. They are further convinced that in order to get rid of this state of things no measures of ‘emancipation’ or ‘equality’ will suffice, which do not begin by a complete refusal to recognise or tolerate the duality itself. If the world is to see sweetness and independence combined in the same individual, all recognition of that duality must be given up. For it inevitably brings in its train the suggestion of the conventional distortions of character which are based on it. There are no ‘men’ or ‘women’ in Urania. “All’ eisin hôs angeloi.”

14 15

Ibid. Urania, no. 57 & 58 (May/August 1926), pp 1-2.

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Many articles in Urania quote the adage of Gore-Booth’s that ‘sex is an accident’, as the simplest explanation of the journal’s philosophy.16 A prime example is an unsigned article in a 1921 issue, ‘Eva Gore-Booth formulated a concise statement which we have adopted ever since as the nearest and clearest expression of our views. It declared that sex was an accident and formed no essential part of an individual’s nature’.17 Urania was privately printed and circulated between the years 1916 and 1940, initially it was published bi-monthly however, publication was reduced due to printing costs in 1921 to three times a year; there are eighty two issues in total. The journal boasted a circulation of over two hundred and fifty, one article cites university libraries which subscribed to Urania ‘Girton, Newnham and Lady Margaret (Oxford) Colleges in Britain, and Vassar and Wellesley in America’.18 These are impressive women’s colleges, Girton and Newnham form part of Cambridge University, they were opened during the late 1870s while Vassar was opened just north of New York City earlier in 1861, followed by Wellesley women’s liberal arts college, near Boston in 1875. The principles expressed in Urania thus reached hundreds of intellectuals with every issue. By the centenary issue Urania claimed an average circulation for each issue of, ‘a little over two hundred, as a rule.19 Although it has not been possible to source a distribution list, five people were listed as ‘contacts’ on every issue; Eva Gore-Booth; Esther Roper; Dorothy H. Cornish, a Montessori educator; Jessey Wade, an animal rights campaigner and Thomas Baty, an international legal scholar. The fact that Urania was privately printed and circulated means that it is very difficult to source, Hamer states ‘neither a complete run nor the mailing list appears to have survived’.20 I have to date, been able to source the entire collection except eleven of the earliest issues.21 The fact that women’s colleges were reading and possibly 16

Many articles quote Eva’s saying that ‘sex is an accident!’. Urania, no. 113 & 114 (September/December, 1935), p. 2. 17 Urania, no. 29 & 30 (September/December, 1921), p. 1. 18 Urania, no. 14 (March/April 1919), p. 3. 19 Urania, no. 101 & 102 (September/December, 1933), p. 1. 20 Hamer, Britannia’s glory, p. 67. 21 I have been in contact with the University libraries mentioned in the circulation of Urania, in search of the eleven earliest issues. Kate Perry, archivist in Girton College, Cambridge has searched the archive holdings and the library, there is no record that Urania was ever received. An intensive search of current holdings, relevant accessions registers, numbers of the Girton Review (including gifts to and purchases made by the Library for the period) and historical library records such as lists of periodicals held at various dates, correspondence about gifts and sales of books/periodicals, have all been searched to no avail.

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contributing articles to the journal, may lead one to surmise that Urania was a vehicle of current feminist discourse of the day. However, on close examination Urania offered a unique strand of feminism which was not deemed suitable by all female intellects. An unnamed editor of the journal notes that ‘one or two of the Oxford “Ladies” colleges surprised us by declining what Cambridge willingly accepts. And we had one very pepper letter from an unmarried lady whose eagle – (or shall we say, vulturine?) – eye detected untold horrors in our refined pages’.22 The title Urania establishes the journal as advocating something beyond mainstream feminism of the time. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘Urania’ or ‘Uranian’ as a homosexual ‘from the reference to Aphrodite in Plato's Symposium’.23 The German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs first coined the term to describe homosexuality in a series of booklets published between 1864 and 1879 Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (Research on the Riddle of Male-Male Love.)24 Sexologists believed that the Uranian was an intermediate sex, which reflects the ideal of Urania, a society with one intermediate gender. The term ‘Uranian’ was filtered through English texts by Edward Carpenter who used the term frequently in his writings on homosexuality, an extract from his book The Intermediate Sexu indicates how he applied the term. ‘I use the word Uranians to indicate simply those whose lives and activities are inspired by genuine friendship or love for their own sex’. 25 The term was further ascribed to a group of poets who celebrated manboy love, ‘Uranian poetry’ is used to describe the works of poets such as William Johnson, Lord Alfred Douglas and John Addington Symonds. Angela Ingram and Daphne Pati explain how the term came to be used in Roberta Staples, archivist at Lady Margaret College, Oxford has also searched the library holdings and the archives but has failed to find any reference to Urania. With the exception of issues 1 through 12, I have now sourced a complete run of the remaining issues. Issues 13 through 141 are available in the archives of three libraries; Glasgow Women’s Library, the London School of Economics, and the Women’s Library in London. Many thanks to Genevieve Curran, Lesbian Resource Developer in the Glasgow Women’s Library for helping me to source issues. 22 Urania, no. 101 & 102 (September/December, 1933), p. 1. 23 ‘Uranian’ in Oxford English dictionary (Oxford, 1989). 24 Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Forschungen über das Räthsel der mannmännlichen Liebe the riddle of "man-manly" love, a series of pamphlets 1864-1879. See also: Reprint Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, The riddle of “man-manly” love: the pioneering work on male homosexuality, Trans Michael A. Lombardi-Nash, 2 vols (Buffalo, 1994). 25 Edward Carpenter, The intermediate sex (London, 1916), p. 108.

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this way, they describe two different stories of the birth of Aphrodite, godess of love. ‘These accounts – from Plato to Ulrichs – depict Aphrodite as born either of a male and a female deity or of Uranus alone, after his genitals were cut off by his son Cronos. In this latter instance, she is Aphrodite Urania, the godess of pure or intellectual love’.26 This description befits the content of Urania, as the journal attempted to blur boundaries between the sexes, including biological differences, while portraying the feminine as superior in purity and intellect. The goal of the journal was to eliminate sex distinctions so that individuals could achieve their full potential, employing a systematic plan to prove that gender is socially constructed. Urania has been described by Ingram and Patai as ‘multigenre’, they list the content as a ‘fascinating array of interrelated concerns: information about spontaneous sex-changes or wrongly ascribed sexual identity, about instances of parthenogenesis, and about women (and, less frequently, men) contravening gender stereotypes in their lives’.27 The content can be broadly grouped into three main categories, firstly, newspaper articles which featured accounts of individuals who behaved in a manner outside socially expected gender norms. Secondly, instances of sex changes, either medical or natural, were reported to highlight that sex is a fluid rather than a fixed state. Finally, stories of people who passed their lives as a member of the opposite sex were printed; gender confusion and masquerade was applauded as a positive social development. Within these categories heterosexuality was challenged, while same-sex relationships, most specifically female, were presented as an ideal model. It has been generally assumed by scholars that Urania was a reproduction of press clippings. Two specific studies on Urania both maintain that the journal simply reproduced newspaper clippings with no comment or only minor editorial analysis. Emily Hamer states, ‘Urania contained very little editorial or analytical commentary; all the press clippings were reproduced without comment. Original articles were published infrequently and were usually unsigned’.28 While Alison Oram maintains, Urania’s ‘contents consisted mainly of reprinted selections from books and the international press, with some occasional editorial comment’.29 However, my research has shown that this is not the case, 26

Ingram and Patai, p. 294, n. 18. Ibid., p. 273. 28 Hamer, Britannia’s glory, p. 70. 29 Alison Oram, ‘“Sex is an accident”: feminism, science and the radical sexual theory of Urania, 1915-40’ in Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds), Sexology in culture: labelling bodies and desires (Cambridge, 1998), pp 214-5. 27

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indeed Urania is a carefully written and edited journal composed of various sections, and most issues contain original articles, in some cases accounting for at least half the content of journal. Original articles are either unsigned, signed simply ‘Ed’ or by the pen names Irene Clyde, I. C. and Theta, most probably pseudonyms used by the editors. Indeed it is plausible that all five editors wrote original articles in the journal at some stage; they were all published authors in their own right. Eva Gore-Booth authored nineteen volumes of published poetry, philosophical prose, and drama, as well as contributing to many feminist and theosophical magazines.30 Esther Roper published three student texts on Florentine life, as well as editing Eva’s complete works and Countess Markievicz’s prison letters (who was Eva’s Sister.)31 Dorothy. H. Cornish published a novel, a fictional account of the life and times of the Brontë sisters.32 Jessey Wade was editor of an animal welfare magazine and wrote an advice book for cat owners.33 Thomas Baty wrote several books on international law, the legal consequences of war and one book on heraldry.34 In his book Vital Heraldry posthumously published and edited by a friend, Julian Franklyn 30

Eva Gore-Booth’s published works: Poems (London, 1898); The one and the many (London, 1904); Unseen kings (London, 1904); The three resurrections and the triumph of Maeve (London, 1905); The Egyptian pillar (Dublin, 1907); The sorrowful princess (London, 1907); The agate lamp (London, 1912); The death of Fionavar from the triumph of Maeve (London, 1916); Broken glory (Dublin. 1917); The sword of justice (London, 1918); A psychological and poetic approach to the study of Christ in the Fourth Gospel (London, 1923); The shepherd of eternity (London, 1925); The house of three windows (London, 1926); The inner kingdom (London, 1926); The world’s pilgrim (London, 1927); Collected poems of Eva Gore-Booth (London, 1929); The buried life of Deirdre (London, 1930). 31 Esther Roper’s published works include: Esther Roper, Select passages illustrating Florentine life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (London, 1920); Esther Roper, Select extracts illustrating Florentine life in the fifteenth century (London, 1920); Esther Roper and Florence Bowman, Traders in east and west: some aspects in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Dublin, 1924); Esther Roper (ed.), Poems of Eva Gore-Booth (London, 1929) and Esther Roper (ed.), Prison letters of Countess Markievicz (London, 1987). 32 Dorothy Helen Cornish, These were the Brontës; a novel (New York, 1940). 33 Jessey Wade, The animals’ friend cat book (London, 1917). 34 Thomas Baty’s published works include: International Law (London, 1909); Polarized law: with English translation of the Hague Conventions on Private International Law (London, 1914); Thomas Baty and J.H. Morgan, War: its conduct and legal results (Dutton and Company, 1915); The commercial code of Japan: translated by the Codes Translation Committee of the League of Nations of Japan (Tokyo, 1932), and Julian Franklyn (ed.), Vital Heraldry (Edinburgh, 1962).

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states in his introduction that Baty ‘even identified himself with a female “double,” Irene Clyde, in whose name he wrote Beatrice the XVIth and Eve’s Sour Apples’.35 Therefore, we may assume that the Irene Clyde who wrote in Urania, was Baty. Beatrice the Sixteenth can be categorised as feminist utopian fiction, it is novel based on a fictitious genderless land which was published in 1909.36 A series of essays entitled Eve’s Sour Apples attacked the construction of sex (gender) and critiqued heterosexual intercourse, was later published under Clyde’s name in 1934.37 Original articles were also submitted from readers to Urania and in later issues editors names were ascribed, such as Cornish.38 Each issue of Urania followed a similar pattern, the journal usually opened with a quotation. The earlier issues contained the line, “Let us break their bonds in sunder, and cast their cords away from us,” an extract from a Psalm which begins as follows; Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed saying, Let us break their bonds in sunder, and cast their cords away from us.39

This extract presents the Uranian ideal, to break free of the bonds of gender. After Eva’s death in 1926 virtually every issue of the journal was headed with an extract from her poetry collection, ‘The Shepherd of Eternity’: Life that vibrates in every breathing form, Truth that looks out over the window sill, And love that is calling us home out of the storm.40

After the opening quote Urania continued with an editorial commentary, followed by a letter box section, book reviews, progress reports on co-educational schools and various reprinted articles from England, India and Japan. Most issues included a star dust section, which 35

Julian Franklyn, ‘Introduction’ in Vital Heraldry, p. 2. Irene Clyde, Beatrice the sixteenth (London, 1909.). 37 Irene Clyde, Eve’s sour apples (London, 1934.). 38 For example see Dorothy. H. Cornish, ‘Correspondence’ in Urania, no. 113 & 114 (September/December, 1935), pp 9-10 and J. Griffin, ‘I shall be a happy spinster’ in Urania, no. 101 & 102 (September/December, 1933), pp 5-7. 39 Dom Bernard and Revd R. C Fuller (eds), ‘Book 1, Psalm 2’ in The Holy Bible (Middlesex, 1965.) 40 Eva Gore-Booth, Collected poems of Eva Gore-Booth (London, 1929), p. 599. 36

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I will detail later in this article. Finally the mission statement was printed, reflecting the objective of Urania; to expose gender as a negative social construct, which resulted in the creation of two unequal and warped types. The editors demonstrated a unique analysis, rather than attacking the constructs of both genders, ‘masculinity’ is presented as unpleasant while ‘femininity’ is the desired choice of having just ‘one’ gender – the female gender, leading to a Utopian society such as the fictitious land in Irene Clyde’s novel Beatrice the Sixteenth. In the novel Mary Hatherley, the protagonist, emerges in a mysterious land, Armeria, where gender does not exist; however, all the characters in the novel appear female. This female society is best described through a scene in the novel when Mary Hatherley first realises that there is no language to differentiate between men and women, she asks the queen. ‘“How do you distinguish,” I observed, in despair, “between the people who fight and wear moustaches?”’41 In this extract men are clearly defined as the gender that fights; violence is viewed as the main negative aspect of masculinity in Urania. The journal points to the masculine training of boys in schools as a precursor to violent wars, ‘so long as the male arrogant and torturetolerant spirit is inculcated in schools, so long will channels be found for its exhibition in life’.42 In a later issue Irene Clyde clearly states Urania’s philosophy, that masculinity should be replaced by the superior characteristics of femininity; ‘as regards the comparative merits of the masculine and feminine ideals, we have never made any secret of our conviction that the latter is immeasurably superior’.43 This statement does not claim that women are superior to men, rather that feminine characteristics are the desired attributes of one gender. A book review in a 1924 issue communicates this principle; I. C. reviewed The Dominant Sex written by Mathilde and Mathias Vaerting.44 I.C took great exception to the book’s content and, in an issue of Urania only nine pages long, the book review took up nearly four pages of the entire issue. The review demonstrates Urania’s unique conviction to eliminate gender, which in turn would eliminate dominance and oppression relating to sex distinctions. It is an ungrateful task to criticize a book like this, with the main drift of which we are in such hearty agreement. Messrs. Vaerting are convinced and thorough-going feminists. We think, however, that their main 41

Clyde, p. 7. Urania, no. 95 & 96 (September/December, 1937), p. 3. 43 Urania, no. 123 & 124 (May/August, 1937), p. 3. 44 Urania, no. 45 & 46 (May/August 1924), pp 1-4. 42

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Chapter Nine contention is dubious and even dangerous. It is this, that throughout human history, the so-called sexes have alternated in dominance over each other – of course over long periods of time, considerably transcending historic record.45

The book in question is a sociological study of sex differentiation first published months before this review in 1923, the book questions whether there are ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ characteristics. The Vaerting's conclude that what society regards as ‘masculine’ characteristics are actually the characteristics of the dominant sex and ‘feminine’ are the characteristics of the subordinated sex. They argue that in previous historical eras women were the dominant sex and as such exhibited traits which are now labelled ‘masculine, such as engaging in tough physical work and providing for a family. While men as the subordinate sex exhibited what is now perceived as ‘feminine’ characteristics, such as childcare and household tasks. I. C describes this contention as ‘dangerous’, the Vaerting’s thesis could be used to argue that gender is necessary to order society, with one gender occupying the superior position at a given time in history. Urania does not advocate that women should dominate over men but that sex distinctions should be eradicated and replaced with the female ideal. In order to demonstrate that the female gender is superior, every issue of Urania concludes with a section entitled ‘Star Dust’, comprising republished newspaper articles from around the world; mainly Japan, India and England. These articles are placed under different headings such as the following from issue 13; military, business, athletics, academic, dress, art and music. The most common topic relates to women who have achieved perceived ‘male’ success in the relevant areas, the first woman to receive a BA in science, the first female doctor in a certain speciality area and so on. In a 1929 issue the ‘Star Dust’ section includes an article entitled ‘Government and Politics’, this extract emphasises the goal to have women in power making positions and of a country governed by feminine ideals: The day when Britain will be governed mainly by women is declared to have been brought a step nearer with the simultaneous announcements that a woman has been appointed Assistant-Principal at the Ministry of Transport, and that women, sitting in open competition with men, have won twenty-eight of eighty-seven highly prized positions in other 45

Mathilde and Mathias Vaerting, The dominant sex: a study in the sociology of sex differentiation (New York, 2002). This book was first published in 1923.

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Government departments.46

Articles in this section do not simply list an increase of women in certain occupations, they are carefully chosen to highlight that innate differences do not exist between the sexes; one such article listed under ‘Athletics’ exhibits Urania’s unique approach. The case of nineteen-yearold girl, Mitsuko Sakamoto who woke to discover a burglar in her room, is republished from the Japan Advertiser. With a deft twist of her soft hands took him off his feet and placed him on a quite unrelated part of his anatomy. Not caring for this pose, she tried him in another position, which brought his face into violent contact with the mat… Sakamoto, as the burglar now knows, has devoted much of her time to the study of jujutsu.

Although a humorous inclusion for an athletics section, the message is significant; women can achieve the positive aspects of masculinity, such as assertiveness and strength, while overcoming the negative feminine characteristics of passivity and weakness. In addition to republished items there are many original articles, some of which strike directly at the aspirations of the mainstream suffrage movement; one such article strikes at the heart of the Women’s Social and Political Union, founded in 1903. The WSPU employed militant action in their campaign to gain votes for women, led by Christabel Pankhurst members heckled politicians and staged public rallies, which resulted in much publicised suffragette imprisonments.47 Eva was Christabel’s mentor from 1901 to 1903 and the pair split due to irreconcilable differences. Eva a dedicated pacifist abhorred the militant actions of the WSPU, which sometimes resulted in tragedy, such as Emily Davison’s death after she threw herself under the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1903.48 The article in Urania relates to the British general election of December 1918, a turning point for both suffragettes and Irish nationalists. This was the first time that women were allowed to vote in an English general election and it was also the first time that part of the election took place in Ireland. Esther Roper discusses the results of the election in her biographical sketch of Constance Markievcz, she states that, ‘the old Irish Party was wiped out and Sinn Fein triumphed at the polls. Constance was returned 46

Urania, no. 77 & 78 (September-December, 1929), p. 11. For more information see David Mitchell, Queen Christabel; a biography of Christabel Pankhurst (London, 1977). 48 Ann Morley and Liz Stanley, The life and death of Emily Wilding Davidson (London, 1988). 47

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as a Member for St. Patrick’s Division of Dublin and thus became the first woman M.P.’.49 In line with Sinn Fein policy, Constance refused to swear allegiance to the King of England and therefore, revoked her seat.50 Irene Clyde begins by announcing with delight that Countess Markievicz, Eva’s older sister, was elected as an M.P, Clyde continues with self-assured pleasure, that Markievicz will not be bothered to attend Westminster. The mood of the article alters as Clyde attacks the leader of the militant WSPU: Entry into the polling-booth of course meant entry into Parliament. For the Coalition relied on the feminine vote and saw that it got it. Christabel Pankhurst nearly won: the most sedate publicists are to be found wishing she had quite won. They would like to have had the novel and inexpensive sensation of a lady member. Perhaps they were without hope that Christabel would sooner or later do something wild which would set 51 back the feminine clock.

The election was won by a Coalition of Conservatives, Liberals and a minority number of Labour and Independent MPs, forming a government led by Lloyd George as Prime Minister. The article in Urania was published in January 1919 directly after the vote count. Clyde points out that gaining votes for women was not a suffragette victory, rather it was a political move in an election campaign; as the Coalition ‘relied on the feminine vote’ to gain entry into government. Clyde continues by referrring to the fact that the leader of the WSPU, Christabel Pankhurst, ran for election in Smethwick but was defeated. There is a definite attack on Christable’s often outrageous actions, by stating that her victory would have made entertaining reporting. From this article it is evident that Urania did not support the WSPU, the Pankhursts, or their militant actions; indeed Urania appeared to delight in their downfall. Christabel left England and moved to the United States shortly after her defeat. The WSPU disbanded shortly after female franchise was obtained, however, the NUWSS continued working on various campaigns, believing the vote for women was merely the first step in gaining equality between the sexes. An article by Irene Clyde entitled ‘The League of Nations and 49

Esther Roper, ‘Biographical kketch’ in Prison letters of Countess Markievicz (London, 1987), p. 88. 50 The Prime Minister, Lloyd George, wrote to Constance, ‘exhorting her to be present in the House of Commons on the opening day of the coming important session. It was evidently sent to all M.P.s indiscriminately… She much enjoyed answering this letter.’ Ibid. 51 Urania, no. 13 (January/February, 1919), p. 2.

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the League of Little Women’, highlights that Urania did not approve of the NUWSS’s strategy for equality. The League of Nations – although every office within its organisation is supposed to be accessible to ‘women’, they now propose a women’s section…We are sure the suffragists are inspired by perfectly good motives, but they strike at the root of true and sincere Equality.52

‘The root of true and sincere equality’ is put forward in the mission statement of Urania, as the removal of sex distinctions. Urania’s ethos was clear, that equality would only be achieved by ignoring ‘the dual organisation of humanity in all its manifestations’.53 By creating a women’s section in the League of Nations, suffragists actually cemented differences between men and women. Once female franchise was achieved, suffragists campaigned to include women in social, political and economic organisations. This often resulted in the creation of minority spaces for women within organisations, such as the League of Nations. Irene Clyde notes that instead of achieving equality, the suffragists would only achieve the opposite, by actually marginalising women.54 The conventional feminist movement resisted Urania’s ethos, adopting instead a political stance to gain equality for women, with men. An editorial entitled ‘Enfranchisement’, addressed the issue by calling on suffragists, ‘to refuse to wear the shackles of sex’.55 The unnamed editor responds to the opposition encountered by feminist groups: ‘Why not accept the fact of sex, and make the best of it!’ people tell us. Its acceptance cuts us off from the dazzling completeness. It makes us the cringing slaves of convention. It stifles the urge towards wholeness. It forces us to look on the sea, on the forest, on the ruby, with the deflected eye of a “man’ or a ‘woman’. ‘Why not accept the fact, and make the best of it!’ It is not ‘making the best of it’ to let it twist our nature.56

52

Urania, no. 24 (November/ December 1920), pp 2-3. Mission statement in Urania. 54 ‘The League of Nations was an international organization created after the First World War. The Covenant establishing the League was part of the Treaty of Versailles. The aims of the League were to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security…the League of Nations formally came into existence on January 10, 1920.’ Blandine Blukacz-Louisfert (ed.), League of Nations Archives, (http://www.indiana.edu/~league/intro.htm) (4 July 2006). 55 Urania, no. 109 & 110 (January/April, 1935), p. 1. 56 Ibid. 53

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While the majority of feminist organisations worked for emancipation through equality between the sexes, few feminist groups adopted principles in line with Urania, to achieve equality by eliminating sex distinctions altogether. Urania did acknowledge the work of the ‘Open Door International’, a group established from the ‘Open Door Council’. The Council’s objective was to, ‘ensure a woman’s opportunities, right to work and to protection at all stages of her life were the same as those of a man’.57 An international sector was formed in 1929 which was called the Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Women Worker, with Chrystal Macmillan as the first president.58 The O.D.I. took a radical step in 1933 to remove name prefixes which denoted gender and marital status. Urania noted the move as a step towards abandoning gender differences and printed an unsigned article in a 1933 issue, entitled ‘A Sign of the Times’, praising the organisation: The Open Door International, to which reference has often been made in these columns, has adopted the decisive step of suppressing distinctively masculine and feminine prefixes to denote its Members. We hail with delight the suppression of “Mr, Mrs And Miss” – the hard “Mr”, the subordinate “Mrs”, the silly “Miss.” The O.D.I., it may again be observed, is actively working for the recognition of the equality of employed persons, irrespective of sex, its eminent President being Chrystal Macmillan and its offices at Iddesleigh House, Caxton Street.59

Eva Gore-Booth and the co-founders of Urania created a journal, which set itself apart from conventional politics of the day. The journal survived for over twenty-four years, spanning three decades; the editors privately printed and circulated eighty-two issues. This was a remarkable feat considering the Freewoman also in opposition to mainstream feminism, was only in existence for less than one year, the paper was discontinued due to lack of finances in 1912. Hamer clarifies that: The Freewoman first appeared in November 1911 and ran weekly up until October 1912, when it closed through lack of funds. Its insolvency had been exacerbated by W.H. Smith withdrawing the paper from its shops the

57 The Records of Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman 1929-1974, accessed at (http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=6854&inst_id=65) (3 Feb 2006). 58 Ibid. 59 Urania, no. 101 & 102 (September/December, 1933), p. 2.

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previous month – ostensibly because of the paper’s discussion of sex.60

Urania was not offered for sale, no doubt the editors were aware that while the Freewoman was not accepted on the shelves of W.H. Smith, their journal would most certainly be banned. Instead the journal was offered free to any person who agreed with Urania’s ethos, a distributors note printed after each mission statement exclaimed that ‘a register is kept of those who hold these principles, and all who are entered in it will receive this leaflet while funds admit’.61 Therefore, there was no revenue earned to keep the journal in print, the editors must have financed Urania themselves, which would have created a hefty financial burden over twenty-four years; covering printing costs and international postage. However, even when funds were at a low, the editors were not deterred from spreading their message, rather than abandon Urania, publication was reduced to three times a year after 1921. A notice appeared on the back cover of the journal each year thereafter stating; Owing to the continued high level of prices, it has been decided to go to press three times in 1928 as in recent years, instead of six times. For convenience of reference, each issue will be treated as a double number…It is hoped that normal conditions will be resumed in due course.62

The central argument for the elimination of gender was consistent throughout every issue; challenging mainstream feminism, medical sexology and perceived norms of society. The challenge to deconstruct gender, sexuality, and biological sex are assumed to be part of a postmodern movement, when in fact the founders and editors of Urania had begun this radical approach some ninety years ago. In this article my discussion highlights how the existence of Urania questions the history of feminist movements and thought. Mainstream feminism during this era was working towards a goal of equality between the sexes, while Urania challenged their approach as the editors declared: ‘“no measures of “emancipation” or “equality” will suffice, which do not begin by a complete

60 The paper reappeared in June 1913 as the New Freewoman, now irrevocably a literary journal’. See Hamer, p. 267. 61 A Distributors note continues, ‘Will those who are already readers and who would like us to continue sending them copies, kindly do us the favour of sending a post-card to one of the above addressed?’ Urania, no. 69 & 70 (May/August, 1928), p. 10. 62 Urania no. 69 & 70 (May/August, 1928), p. 10.

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refusal to recognise or tolerate the duality itself.”’63 Urania offered an alternative ethos to achieve equality, perhaps it is only now in this postmodern globalised era that Eva’s assertion ‘sex is an accident’ can be fully appreciated.64

63

Mission Statement printed on every issue. I would like express my thanks to my PhD supervisor and friend, Katherine O’Donnell, for her comments on this paper and for her constant encouragement. Also to Noreen Giffney, who, as always provided helpful remarks. Finally, thanks to Suzanne Coogan for her enthusiastic interest in Urania and her continuous support. 64

CHAPTER TEN LA BELLE – KATE O’BRIEN AND FEMALE BEAUTY AINTZANE LEGARRETA MENTXAKA

There is a crucial detail about the protagonist of Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle (1936).1 As her name indicates, ‘la belle’ is… absolutely gorgeous, yet the apparent lack of subtlety here is no such thing, as we will see. The novel tells the story of Mary, a young Irish woman who travels to Altorno (Bilbo, in the Basque Country, in the north of Spain) to work as a governess for the Areavagas, a wealthy Basque family, and a most peculiar bunch. The father Don Pablo, is a financier, a historian, an intellectual, and a devoted anarchist; the eldest son Juanito, is a political leader, a communist who hopes to bring about revolution in Spain; the three young daughters, Mary’s charges, are free-thinkers; and the mother, Doña Consuelo, is a posh and conservative aristocrat totally puzzled at how she ended up with this crew. Mary is equally puzzled when she lands in the household, coming as she does from Limerick to take a year out from trying and failing; first, to feel any passion for her fiancé, and secondly, to get any intellectual stimulation from her subscription to a magazine called The Irish Rosary. The novel is set in 1922, with Mary as the embodiment of the Irish ‘free state’, a clueless woman searching for direction in her life. She discovers one possible direction after she falls in love with Juanito, the sexy rebel. Given that he is a married man, and that he is passionately committed to politics, can they have a future together? I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which has made possible the research that went into the writing of this essay. My thanks to Jagoba Legarreta Mentxaka, who helped me obtain some material. I am indebted to Patricia Coughlan is the only critic who has analysed in depth the treatment of beauty in O’Brien; without her pioneering work I would not have been inspired to take on this topic. 1 Kate O’Brien, Mary Lavelle (London, 2000).

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Love for Juanito, love for his ideals, and love for Spain, are treated as interchangeable in this novel, the subtitle of which could have been ‘A romantic parable on decolonisation, federalism, and the nation-state’. O’Brien’s attempt at publicising revolutionary politics has one important casualty, however, as Mary Lavelle for the most part ignores the uniqueness of Basque culture and the ‘colonial’ operations affecting her ‘Spanishized’ characters. Defending a radical freedom for individual women and for national communities (in the novel, Spain and Ireland) in the same breath is not something we often hear about. On the 8th of April of 2006, in the Basque Country, following the announcement of a permanent ceasefire by E.T.A., a collective of women from twenty five unions and political groups presented a manifesto called ‘Ahotzak’ (‘the voices’) demanding dialogue without prejudice or preconditions, participation of women at all levels, and the right of Basque people to decide their collective future, while insisting that ‘peace’ is not simply “absence of violence” – peace is real democracy and social justice.2 The ‘Ahotzak’ group were partly inspired by similar collective efforts in Northern Ireland. Mary Lavelle is an interesting example of interweaving inter/national politics and feminism, and its investigation on the limits to self-expression, and the joys and perils of free-association, were as relevant in 1936 as they are today. In the novel, Mary learns that there are no limits to her freedom other than those she may impose on herself, and she decides to form a brief ‘alliance’ with Juanito, himself the embodiment of a new Spain, full of revolutionary ardour. By the end of the book, she has decided to end the affair so that it wont interfere with Juanito’s political career, and she returns to Ireland, perhaps ‘pregnant’ with socialism and the revolution to come. O’Brien didn’t write the sequel. What is clear is that Mary will never be the same, after she has taken the first step towards her childhood dream: ‘perpetual self-government’.3

Patriarchal Beauty Mary Lavelle is Kate O’Brien’s first female bildungsroman. Patricia Coughlan points out that ‘O’Brien gradually comes to invent more and more self-aware central characters: Agnes in The Anteroom improves on 2

The manifesto is available online in Basque, French, and Spanish (the three languages in the Basque Country). ‘Ahotsak’ (www.ahotsak.blogspot.com) (25 July 2006). 3 O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 27.

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Caroline Considine, and Mary Lavelle on Agnes, and Helen Archer in The Land of Spices on Mary’.4 Adele Dalsimer sees Mary as a turning point in O’Brien’s work, in that she is ‘a protagonist who consciously violates the tenets in which…previous characters so assiduously believed’, and ‘the first of Kate O’Brien’s characters strong enough to crack the foundation that supports her identity’.5 Strength of character is often measured in O’Brien’s novels in terms of self-perception, aided by a feature repeated in female protagonists—beauty. Kate O’Brien’s approach to beauty has been seen as problematic, by critics who read it as an expression of her own politically irresponsible rampant lesbian aesthetics. Declan Kiberd, for example, says with irony that he discerns in some descriptive passages ‘the rhetoric of the connoisseur’ meaning a ‘connoisseur of women’.6 Patricia Coughlan was one of the first critics to publicly address the relevance of O’Brien’s sexuality (at a time when there seemed to be a ‘pact of silence’ on the issue) to her work. Never afraid of asking difficult questions, Coughlan was later also the first scholar to analyse in depth the treatment of beauty in O’Brien. Coughlan took issue with her seemingly stereotypical female portraits: I wish to ask what may seem to be a rather simple-minded question, but is nevertheless a necessary one. Why does a woman novelist, and at that a writer of well-attested lesbian orientation in her own life – and therefore someone whom one might have expected to see women as active or desiring subjects on their own account–perpetuate the representation of 7 women in this objectified way?.

To Coughlan, our awareness of O’Brien’s lesbianism contributes to “[t]he inevitable surprise and dismay of a feminist reader at the apparently

4

Patricia Coughlan, ‘Kate O’Brien: feminine beauty, feminist writing and sexual role’ in E. Walshe (ed.), Ordinary people dancing (Cork, 1993), p. 65. 5 Adele Dalsimer, Kate O’Brien: a critical study (Dublin, 1990), pp 33, 42. 6 Declan Kiberd, Irish classics (London, 2000), pp 563-4. Kiberd is paraphrasing a passage that exposes the conceit of a character in O’Brien’s novel The Anteroom where we are told that ‘Sir Godfrey was a connoisseur of women up and down the social scale’. See Kate O’Brien, The anteroom (London, 2006), p. 176. Kiberd may be paraphrasing Lorna Reynolds, Kate O’Brien–a literary portrait (Gerrards Cross, 1987) when she stated: ‘Kate O’Brien was many things – bon viveur, connoisseur of beauty, traveller…literary critic, journalist, and feminist. But she was primarily an artist…’. See Reynolds, Kate O’Brien, p. 51. 7 Coughlan, ‘Kate O’Brien: feminine beauty, feminist writing and sexual role’, p. 62.

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patriarchal conventionality of her physical descriptions of female characters”.8 Beauty is never decorative in an O’Brien novel, but rather it functions as a reliable prop. Physical beauty is imposed on the female protagonists (‘thrown’ at them, in a sense), and it is in their response to it that the reader can delineate their spiritual and intellectual worth. Lorna Reynolds titled her analysis of Mary Lavelle ‘A Girl and her Beauty’, and her beauty is clearly the most relevant thing about Mary – together with her contempt for it.9 This seems to me absolutely crucial – yet critics do not as much as mention it. ‘La Belle’ is not even aware of her beauty; her beauty is therefore irrelevant to her. In this context, one of the most striking moves in O’Brien’s work is how often beauty equates wealth. In O’Brien’s novel The Flower of May, for example, the protagonist, Lucille looks at Lilian: ‘How absolutely beautiful she is’, she thought coldly, ‘how much she is mistress of her beauty. She wears it like a weapon, like a coat of arms. Already she has mastered it completely; she knows it to be her state; she 10 will invest it for sound dividends all her life’.

Mary’s contempt for her beauty functions on the same level as the socialism of the upper-class Areavagas in Mary Lavelle, and the austerity of the princess of Eboli in the novel That Lady.11 It also functions on the same level as the Prima Donna’s singing voice (Rose) in As Music and Splendour, a voice which she will not force, refusing to show off; or Reverend Mother’s power, in The Land of Spices, a power which she will not abuse.12 Beauty, like inherited wealth, artistic ability, fame, or authority, is an accident. Incidentally, so is one’s belonging to any given

8

Ibid, p. 62. O’Brien, Mary lavelle, p. 59. It is also relevant that la belle drops her surname and asks to be called Mary, breaking with the conventions of the governess community, after she becomes friends with the unconventional Irish governess Agatha Conlan. In As music and splendour we are told that the nuns of the order of the Daughters of Sainte Helene ‘kept and used their surnames for political reasons’ See Kate O’Brien, As music and splendour (London, 2005), pp 8-9. Here we can read Mary’s dropping of hers as the opposite political gesture, a renouncing of privilege. 10 Kate O’Brien, The flower of may (London, 1953), p. 206. 11 Kate O’Brien, That lady (London, 1985). 12 Kate O’Brien, As music and splendour (Dublin, 2005); Kate O’Brien, The land of spices (London, 2000). 9

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group, be it an intellectual or artistic Avant Garde.13 The same applied to nationality since O’Brien often referred to Irishness as ‘accidental’.14 All these things do not make us who we are but, rather, it is the way we deal with them that is the measure of our character. As Lorna Reynolds points out, ‘Catholic Ireland [in the thirties and forties] seemed not to know…that without freedom to choose there can be no virtue’.15 O’Brien’s heroes are given ‘riches’ so that their integrity has a background to shine on. Beauty is, then, a recurrent ‘accident of wealth’ in O’Brien’s female characters. And in her novels there is a clear pattern, with two young women, linked by an erotic undercurrent, who represent two types: the self-conscious urbanised pretty girl, and the unaware, introvert beauty.16 Marie-Rose and Agnes, Luisa Carriaga and Mary Lavelle, Lilian and Fanny, Luisa and Clare, are all encores from the same pair. In the novel The Anteroom, for example, a male character (Dr Curran) is contrasting the pretty Marie-Rose to her sister Agnes, and he reflects: [Marie-Rose] was in his eyes as completely unlike Agnes as it was possible for another female creature to be. Fair, small, and most delicately made, she might nevertheless have been almost commonplace in her extreme prettiness were it not for the dazzling accuracy of her ‘chic’ and a 13 According to O’Brien, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats, Synge, O’Casey, Joyce, Becket, were ‘sheer Avant-Garde unschooled Avant-Garde [sic]. Simply the thing itself – accidental. Individual – a new way of crying out loud.’ O’Brien returns to the idea of ‘accidental’ avant-garde at several points in this lecture, giving Jean Paul Sartre’s thinking as the supreme example of Avant Gardism. Kate O’Brien, ‘Ireland and Avant-Gardisme’ [unpublished lecture, May 1966 (Dublin?)] in (Kate O’Brien Papers, University of Limerick). 14 See for example her reference to ‘my accidental nationality’ in My Ireland (London, 1962), pp 15-16. O’Brien referred to her lack of ‘national passion’ for Ireland in a lecture of 1971, a telling turn of phrase given that it is shortly followed by her admission to having been ‘in love with Spain’ for most of her adult life. Kate O’Brien, ‘La Prosa Imaginativa o Fictional en Irlanda a partir de 1800’ (unpublished lecture, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, December 1971) in (Kate O’Brien Papers, University of Limerick). 15 Reynolds, Kate O’Brien–a literary portrait, p. 105. 16 Karin Eva Zettl also highlights the recurrence of two interdependent female characters in O’Brien. Zettl credits the writer with the introduction of a female version of a trope in canonical Anglo-Irish literature: the pair of male protagonists. See Karin Eva Zettl, ‘In search of a personal position’ – women’s quest for individuality in Kate O’Brien’s novels: The anteroom (1934), Mary Lavelle (1936), and That lady (1946)’ [MA Thesis. University College Dublin, 1993], p. 59.

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In Mary Lavelle, the same analysis is repeated, when another male character (Don Pablo) is looking at the sophisticated Luisa and the country pumpkin Mary as they talk to each other: [E]xquisite and virtuous, she [Luisa] was marked out always for victory. Save only here. This girl [Mary] who took nothing from Spain but her wages, and who would vanish soon into the decent, obscure unphotographed society she came from, this nonentity who had no notion at all of the nonsensical things that he and, perhaps in another way Luisa were thinking–this girl exploded his daughter-in-law as thoroughly as Quixote the wine-skins…Poor Luisa! And what a pity in a way that absolute beauty must be, to be itself, all that Luisa was not, and this 18 harmless destroyer of her was!

This is no patriarchal objectification, but a dismantling of convention. O’Brien would have agreed with Oscar Wilde, when he claimed that: ‘Beauty has as many meanings as a man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world’.19 The world is not concerned with what Don Pablo calls ‘absolute beauty’–that is, the world doesn’t care about beauty detached from a cultural and/or emotional context. This notion of beauty as a malleable trope, was already evident in O’Brien’s first novel, where the ‘idea’ of beauty was stretched, twisted, and darkened: [Caroline] tilted her face upwards to the light and was resting it on her linked fingers. Superficially she was all straightforward beauty now, just a lovely woman, a bright minute in a spring day…To complete and lighten her pretty moment, so that a man could forget, having enjoyed it, she wanted the gleam of coquetry. Of that she had none. There was no selfconsciousness whatever in Caroline’s face for Richard, no hint of invitation. And that was why his eyes dwelt gravely on her. It was the shadow behind her beauty that made her imperfect now and held him

17

O’Brien, The anteroom, p. 81. O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 169. 19 Oscar Wilde, ‘The critic as artist’: the complete works of Oscar Wilde (London, 2001), pp 1009-1059. 18

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musing.20

Crucially, we learn about the temperaments of many characters in O’Brien through their judgement of—or beyond—physical appearance.21 Juanito Areavaga’s first impression of Mary is a mismatch of mytholyrical excess, peaking in ‘oh impossible marvel!’.22 Coughlan quotes Juanito’s excesses at length, and uses them as evidence of O’Brien’s own conventionality, omitting the paragraph that follows that overblown description.23 It is an important paragraph, because Juanito immediately checks himself, realising the absurdity of his assessment: Absurd, unfair and comical. Juanito felt something shudder in him, and almost heard himself laugh. Tricks of encounter, tricks of thought – what was there to be afraid of in them? A fulfilled man was master of himself, and a few flowery meditations on a lovely face were no more important than a reading of poetry. All in the day’s work. This girl had not risen from sea-foam. She was made in the common human shape, and like Luisa, like his sisters, would go her natural way of uneven happiness and unhappiness, to satisfy a man, bear his children and die. There she was, more beautiful than was necessary, but pitifully human. Look how shy and 24 lonely she could seem, like any other!

The author is not speaking through Juanito’s voice – O’Brien did not endorse the view that it is ‘natural’ for a woman ‘to satisfy a man, bear his children and die’ – but she is putting forward a critique of stereotypical beauty, realistically framed within the consciousness of a sensitive, intelligent young man soaked in canonical art and literature, limited by his prejudices but able and willing to rise above some of them. While Juanito muses the reflections just quoted, Lavelle is also scrutinizing him and, unsurprisingly, she also reviews her first impression: and she wondered now…why on earth on that first evening in the salon 20

Kate O’Brien, Without my cloak (London, 1986), p. 176. In Mary Lavelle, we need no other introduction to the members of the Areavaga family after we have been told what their reactions are to the new governess Mary. Doña Consuelo declares that she is ‘certainly prettier than we require’ (p. 45), and Milagros that she is ‘a simpleton’, while Don Pablo says: ‘I think, my dear [Consuelo], as I gather Nieves does, that [Mary] is very beautiful and that she is not a simpleton’ (Ibid., 48). 22 O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 167. 23 Coughlan, ‘Kate O’Brien: feminine beauty, feminist writing and sexual role’, p. 64. 24 O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, pp 167-8. 21

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It is likely that Mary the governess had read Jane Eyre, and she may be forgiven for expecting a Mr Rochester to be lurking around the corner. Juanito is in fact unaffected, simple, untidy, helpful, friendly, and, contrary to Mary’s expectations, definitely not ‘an Adonis’.26 Another woman in an earlier O’Brien novel, Agnes in The Anteroom, goes through exactly the same realisation as Mary and Juanito, using very similar terms. On first meeting Vincent, [Agnes] had sometimes thought that he was a demigod, a creature destined for unchanging gaiety and triumph and success…and on whom even the commonplace of being in love lay like a celestial illumination. He had seemed remote, Hellenic, in his perfect balance of gaiety, intelligence and beauty. Now…she saw no demigod at her right hand, but only a man who, for all of his power and comeliness, resembled other men in seeming older than his years and, at the roots of his heart, much disappointed…From gay he had grown sulky, from intelligent bored, from heavenly beautiful to 27 mortally, so that time and pain could scar him.

O’Brien persistently, even stubbornly, signals that heterosexual women are as likely to be smitten by good looks as men. In Mary Lavelle, for example, Juanito’s outburst ‘It’s a dream; it’s impossible—your beauty!’, is immediately followed by Mary’s thinking: ‘But she must have his beauty too’.28 The striking similarity between the descriptions in The Anteroom and Mary Lavelle has partly to do with the fact that the later novel rewrites the same triangle of characters, but ‘misreadings’ and ‘rereadings’ of beauty are a recurrent preoccupation in O’Brien. To her, beauty in men and women, seen by men and women, is, like Virginia Woolf’s Lily Briscoe suspected in To the Lighthouse, no more than a mask, a ‘golden mesh’ that obscures our understanding, that distances us from the real person underneath.29 In O’Brien’s novels, witnesses’ 25

Ibid., p. 176. Ibid., p. 175. 27 O’Brien, The anteroom, pp 27-8. 28 O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 310. 29 In To the lighhouse, the detached observer Lily Briscoe wonders of the effect of the unselfconsciously beautiful Mrs Ramsay on her: ‘Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one’s perceptions, half-way to truth, were tangled in a golden mesh?’. Virginia Woolf, To the lighthouse (Harmondsworth, 2000), p. 57. 26

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erroneous impressions cause much unhappiness. For example, in The Anteroom Marie-Rose tells her sister Agnes: ‘You’ve turned out a tremendous beauty…in the poetic style, you know—like those legendary sorts of women’.30 All Agnes can do is smile a sad smile, disappointed at her sister’s, as she puts it, ‘unsatisfactory’ assessment.31 The unnamed referent, the ‘legendary sort of woman’, is of course Helen of Troy, a figure whose legend Kate O’Brien would rewrite for a 20th century setting in her play Gloria Gish.32 Gloria Gish was never produced, has never been published, and it has not received critical attention.33 Its protagonist Gladys is another example of the parading, ‘cultivated’, narcissistic beauty routinely derided in O’Brien’s fiction, where ‘detachment’ is invariably the highest form of praise (it is one of the key words in O’Brien). The surviving typescript of the play is dated ‘1950[s]’, but I don’t think this is accurate.34 Eibhear Walshe, in his biography of O’Brien, suggests it was written between 1926 and 1931. The play is set in London possibly in the late 20s or early 30s, and it seems most likely to me, for a number of reasons, that O’Brien wrote in the early 30s. The story: Gladys Woodford is rich, bored, and pretty. She has acquired her wealth through marriage to a business man who has built an empire despite of his humble origins. A gentleman claiming to be a film producer comes along, and tells her he can turn her into a star, into the next ‘Gloria Gish’, the famous American actress (possibly a composite of Gloria Swanson and Lilian Gish).35 All that it’s required for stardom is that they spend a lot of time together to ‘study’ this fabulous ‘script’, and 30

O’Brien, The anteroom, p. 207. Ibid., p. 207. 32 Helen of Troy is invoked by Agatha in Mary Lavelle, see p. 88. While, in Without my cloak, Eddie sings ‘La Belle Hélène’ as he waits for Caroline’s arrival in London. Kate O’Brien, Without my cloak (London, 1986), p. 154. 33 It is subtitled ‘A Comedy in three acts,’ although the play is more notable for the ironic distance than for any raucous humour. 34 The typescript of Gloria Gish at the National Library of Ireland, is undated, but the National Library of Ireland catalogue gives 1950s as the date of composition. 35 Gladys is from Ealing, and it is tempting to see the character as an allegory of mainstream cinema, in all it’s -perhaps vacuous- allure. The Ealing Studios were established in the early 1930s in Ealing Green in West London. The golden era of Ealing is said to have begun after 1938 (when Michael Balcon joined the team as head of production), and the studio became associated with popular and critically acclaimed comedies in the late forties and early fifties. Ealing Studios closed in 1957, was bought by the BBC in 1959 to produce TV series for twenty years, and was then bought again to be re-opened as a film studio in the present century. 31

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that Gladys’ husband signs off a few checks regularly to make the film. As it turns out, his abilities as a producer are non-existent and, to borrow the title of a hit song from the 1930s, he is merely interested in the ‘ants in her pants’.36 Gladys has an affair with him, and eventually returns to the fold. Of course, the ‘script’ is a very old one, as this is ‘Troy’ all over again, except in O’Brien’s version the battle scenes only take place in the hearts and minds of the characters. Gladys will never make it as a superstar, because she is not ‘a vamp’, as her husband’s secretary Judy, the detached bystander in the piece (another ‘type’ that recurs in O’Brien’s fiction), explains to both Gladys and her husband.37 Judy is asked to elaborate. Judy: (standing up and moving towards the window). Well - a vamp’s a rather battered, tragic sort of soldier; absolute beauty wins its battles by merely peeping out of the tent. Gladys: (bewildered) What tent? Oh Judy, you are silly! Judy: (turning to face her) Helen of Troy was a raving beauty; seems to me she was also a very simple woman, a hundred per cent feminine, kind, but busy—busy, you see, with being beautiful. She liked her own way— who doesn’t? She was matter-of-fact, I expect, about admiration. After all, it was her right. Didn’t have to bother about vamping—obviously—she just followed her impulses – a very healthy creature!38

Here, O’Brien draws a distinction between ‘prettiness’, which requires hard work and turns any woman into ‘a battered, tragic sort of soldier’, and ‘absolute beauty’, which doesn’t need to be looked after and gives a lucky woman the freedom to ‘follow her impulses’. Gladys is not the hero of the piece, however. This is one of the reasons why I think this play was written before 1934 (that is, before the publication of The Anteroom), because the usual contrasting ‘pair’ of beauties in O’Brien is not clearly delineated here, and her very particular use of ‘unselfconscious beauty’ is still not developed.39 In any case, we are told that Helen of Troy was ‘a 36 Valaida Snow, 1933 recording of ‘I can’t dance (I’ve got ants in my pants),’ by Williams/Gains. 37 Perhaps the all-seeing Judy is meant as a modern version of Cassandra. Rivalling in unsubtleness with Mary Lavelle, the self-sacrificing Judy’s surname in the play is ‘Guilchrist’ 38 Judy continues: ‘She was fond of comfort and contentment round her, I daresay, but sometimes she liked to – to express herself. If she was a bit unobservant – well, she wasn’t made to observe but to be observed.’ 39 Gloria Swanson and Lawrence Olivier starred in the Ealing film Perfect Understanding in 1933. Ealing movies were filmed in East Ealing, and Gladys’s

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very simple woman’, an egotist, and that’s the worst kind of villain in O’Brien’s books. O’Brien’s heroes follow their impulses despite opposition. If the battle has been won before hand, there is no merit in victory.

Angelic Beauty In O’Brien’s last novel As Music and Splendour, Paddy describes Clare as ‘an angel or a virgin from some Sienese canvas’, and as someone reminiscent of ‘annunciations and heavenly messengers’.40 Paddy’s limited vocabulary for beauty is the legacy of the male O’Brien characters preceding him in the last thirty years. Agnes in The Anteroom, Fanny in The Flower of May, and Mary Lavelle, for example, are all compared to angels in the same terms. One of the most important associations of the image is androgyny. For example, Vincent’s description of Agnes’ face in The Anteroom: ‘a divine triumph of a face, to be learnt and re-learnt in many lives; a boy’s face and a woman’s, the face of an archangel and of a lost little girl’.41 Or Martin’s description of the aptly named Angèle in The Last of Summer: ‘You’re like something on the walls of Chartres. One of those great angels, or perhaps it’s a Saint John the Beloved’.42 Here we see the added trademark O’Brien naughtiness, describing a young woman by invoking the homoeroticised representations of John. In Mary Lavelle, the protagonist is regularly compared to an angel, but there is a twist, as ‘Mary the angel’ happens to be a visitor in a foreign, unholy city, Altorno/Bilbo, a place described by O’Brien in another book as ‘a match of greed and misery’.43 The city is doomed, we’re told, and if this may seem reminiscent of the story of Sodom in the Bible, O’Brien is determined that we will see the connection, and drops a number of hints throughout. Mary ‘La Belle’ is a messenger, the guest of Lot and his family in Sodom, an angel who has arrived to announce the impending collapse of the capitalist metropolis. Her message seems to be: there is only hope for the socialists among ye. Half way through the novel, the head of the household apologizes for the distress that the music tutor (the association with the area, as well as the references to ‘Gloria [Swanson] Guish’ may have been inspired by that film. If this is the case Gloria Gish may have been written in 1933, but The anteroom came out the following year, so this timeline is perhaps too tight. Cyril Gardner, Perfect understanding (1933). 40 Kate O’Brien, As music and splendor, p. 104. 41 O’Brien, The anteroom, p. 234. 42 Kate O’Brien, The last of summer (London, 1990), p. 85. 43 Kate O’Brien, Farewell Spain (London, 1985), p. 34.

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priest Don Jorge) may have caused with his sexual advances to Mary and her charges, and he makes an astonishing declaration: ‘I am more angry for the insult to you – for you are after all a sort of guest in Spain – than for the cruel cheapening of my daughters’.44 This is an exact repetition of Lot’s willingness to sacrifice his daughters to the mob in the biblical account (Genesis 19:6-8), and has a double effect: on the one hand, it links the narrative to the most popular literary precedent of depiction of homosexuality.45 On the other hand, it reminds readers that (despite the homophobic interpretation of the story disseminated by Catholic theologians) the ‘sin of Sodom’ was lack of hospitality.46 It is a merciless rewrite, with the Sodomites being replaced by a heterosexual priest who is a child molester, but it also brings into the current narrative the idea of impending apocalypse, and suggests that Mary, rather than a seeker of truth, is in fact its bearer.47 Juanito and his wife Luisa, who are visiting in the house when the incident occurs, are also described at various points as ‘angelic’, ‘haloed’, etc, as are the bullfighters Pronceda and Pepe, Mary’s friends Rose and Agatha, and some minor characters such as the waitress in the Café Alemán.48 This is an important allegorical thread in the novel, and Mary’s visit to the city allows her -as in Genesis- to establish who is worthy of survival (or alternatively, who is truly alive, and human), on account of a kind and generous heart.49 44

O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 174. ‘Genesis’, The new Jerusalem Bible – study edition (London, 1994), pp 17-80. 46 The biblical reference also operates as a link to Marcel Proust’s Sodome et Gomorrhe, published on the same year as Mary’s visit to Altorno/Bilbo, and alluded to a number of times in the text. It is likely that a newly printed copy of the novel (in the original French) arrived in the household during Kate O’Brien’s stay in the Basque Country, a visit which inspired Mary Lavelle. Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe (Harmondsworth, 2003). 47 Hermes was the name of the most important cultural journal in Bilbo/Altorno (and in the Basque Country) at the time of Mary’s stay in the city (founded in 1917, Hermes published its last issue in 1922). Enrique Areilza, the model for Don Pablo, was a collaborator. 48 Although the ‘frozen’ Consuelo may also be read in biblical terms (as Lot’s wife). 49 The waitress at the Café Alemán is called Angeles. ‘Talk of angels…!’ is O’Toole’s outburst as Agatha enters the Café and is introduced to the reader (O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 84), as well as Clare’s outburst (‘speak of angels!’) as Thomas appears in As Music and Splendour (p. 138). The expression was to become the title of the 1998 film version of the novel (scripted by Ann Guedes and Frank McGuinness). This is not a coincidence since, in the two novels Agatha and Thomas function as doubles of Mary and Clare respectively, and Clare is a 45

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Modern Beauty Mary Lavelle was inspired by the revolutionary ideas that were sweeping across all layers of society in Spain (and, to an extent, the rest of Europe) in the 1930s. O’Brien had lived in Bilbo in 1922 (and the Areavaga family are a portrait of the actual Basque family she lived with for a year) and she visited northern Spain regularly in the 1930s.50 Scandalising the Irish Censorship Board for her graphic description of the sexual encounter between Mary and Juanito, O’Brien’s spelling out of anarchist and communist agendas must have also raised one or two eyebrows. Mary Lavelle is regularly marketed as a ‘romance’ novel, when it is also a feminist novel, an anti-capitalist novel and a documentary novel of Bilbo in 1922 (among other things). Romantic conventions are twisted into unrecognisable shapes—the chapter called ‘Romance’, for example, turns out to be about interracial marriage (Rose) and lesbian desire (Agatha), not about Mary’s affair with Juanito. And Mary falls in love with the city, despite the fact that the place is ‘ugly as sin’, so the Sodom analogy is not taken to its final apocalyptic conclusion either.51 That is, not in the time-frame of the narrative, although O’Brien was writing about the period immediately preceding the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera with the retrospective knowledge of the impending military coup and the Spanish revolutionary upsurges that followed the collapse of his regime in 1930.52 reworked version of Mary Lavelle. O’Brien not only rewrote The anteroom in Mary Lavelle, she also rewrote Mary Lavelle in As music and splendour—and dropped numerous hints to draw attention to the fact. See Nick Hammer, Talk of angels (1998). 50 Enrique Areilza (1860-1926), who appears in the novel as Don Pablo, was a leading surgeon and intellectual (see Mentxaka forthcoming). He was portrayed as a communist doctor in Vicente Blasco Ibañez’s novel, El Intruso (1904), a novel that O’Brien seems to have been aware of, although there is no evidence that she read it. Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka, ‘Girl meets politics’ – The ‘Don Pablo’ chapter in Mary Lavelle; PaGes journal, forthcoming. Vicente Blasco Ibañez, El Intruso. (1904); Barakaldo: Ediciones de Librería San Antonio, 1999. 51 The allegorical plot ends here (there is no apocalypse, no escape, no seduction of the father), but there are other references to the story. For example, Mary is reminded of a line by Kipling as she considers the governesses in the Café Alemán: ‘from the legions of the lost ones, from the cohorts of the damned’ (London, 2000), p. 92. 52 See O’Brien, Farewell Spain, p. 201. After the publication of Mary Lavelle (1936) and O’Brien’s subsequent book Farewell Spain (1937) in which she sided herself with the leftists in the Spanish Civil War, the Bilbo described in the novel

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When reading Mary Lavelle we should avoid preconceptions, including those set out by the novel –from its very title onwards- like so many landmines. Above all, we should avoid preconceptions of ‘beauty’. In The Land of Spices, Helen Archer derives ‘aesthetic beauty’ from the town square where she lives in Brussels.53 In Without My Cloak, Denis Considine has an epiphany of ugliness as he considers the summer-house that is his father’s pride and joy, an ‘exact reproduction to scale of a Chinese temple’.54 Characters like these are able to set up their own individual standards of beauty in opposition to given notions. Trite assumptions are invariably questioned. For example, if Juanito sees Mary’s beauty ‘unfurl from her as from a rose’, he also reflects that she seems the incarnation of ‘[a] myth from a long outmoded heaven’.55 Don Pablo sees Mary in similar terms, borrowed from the poet Pierre de Ronsard, which he later quotes, only to make him fear that he is turning ‘senile’.56 This example shows that O’Brien is in dialogue with a specifically European tradition of depicting female beauty, which is deemed inadequate to the realities of modern life.57 effectively ceased to exist, in a development that neither O’Brien not the angelMary could have foreseen: the city was taken over by fascist troops, and José María Areilza (one of the Basque children O’Brien tutored in English in 1922) appointed himself Lord Major and went on to become one of the main figures in Franco’s regime. 53 O’Brien, Land of spices, p. 152. 54 O’Brien, Without my cloak, p. 134. 55 O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 167. 56 Ibid., p. 170. Mary’s beauty is equated to that of a rose is at several points (see for example pp 66, 267), an image often used by Ronsard. Upon meeting the new governess, Don Pablo wonders: ‘Ronsard’s girl they might as well have sent – ah, those poets whom he had in his good sense foresworn!’ (p. 67), to add: ‘Ah, Consuelo, you know you can trust me, even with Ronsard’s Helen in the house. There is no Ronsard left in me, if there was ever any’ (Ibid., p. 68); he later quotes ‘Mignonne, allons voir si la rose’, p. 170). In Ronsard’s autobiographical Sonnets for Helen, the ageing poet reflects on his unrequited passion for a young woman who is compared to Helen of Troy on a number of occasions (see for example, sonnet IX (2002, p. 50); Don Pablo’s quote is from ode 56 in Ronsard’s Odes, (2002), p. 78. The two male protagonists in Mary Lavelle share their passion for Ronsard with Vincent in The anteroom (see p. 88). The pair of Dr Curran and Vincent was reworked as father and son in Mary Lavelle, while Clare also quotes Ronsard in As music and splendour when describing the beauty of Rose (see p. 72). For Pierre Ronsard; Selected poems (Harmondsworth, 2002). 57 The Rose was popularised as a symbol of Ireland through James Clarence Mangan’s poem ‘Dark Rosaleen’ (1849), but there are no direct references to it in Mary Lavelle, although Mary functions as a personification of her country. The

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Those assuming ‘conventionality’ in Kate O’Brien’s depictions of beauty should perhaps consider that, in Farewell Spain, she declares that: ‘functional rightness is beauty, beauty is functional rightness’.58 This idea resonates in Mary Lavelle’s expectations, and her hopes, that during her term of employment, she would be to everyone ‘a foreign and more or less satisfactory machine’, a statement that wouldn’t look out of place in a Futurist manifesto.59 It is certainly expected of her that she will not ‘impose or reveal personality; she was their tool, something paid for to be used by them for their benefit and, in reason, according to their whim’.60 Interestingly, Mary is the only person in the Areavaga household confident enough in her mastery of new technology as to attempt to assemble a set of ‘contraptions’, the latest novelty in the capital: a wireless set. Mary studies the ‘sheaves of printed instructions’, and decides that it will have to wait until morning, because ‘there’s the aerial and the earth, you know’.61 The Areavagas are absolutely puzzled. They don’t understand her English terms, and they can’t handle what looks like ‘a lot of mousetraps’. Only Mary can master the intricate idiom of ‘coils and wires’.62 She is the only one at home here. What could be a more modern aspiration? What could be a more post-modern aspiration than to be an efficient machine and to help assemble other machines.63 Furthermore, what could be more timeless, more spiritual than to let go of the self, to connect Land of spices presents Father Hartigan singing ‘Dark Rosaleen’ (see p. 181), as part of a programme that includes European classics from poetry, theatre, and song. James Clarence Mangan, ‘Dark Rosaleen,’ The collected works of James Clarence Mangan – poems: 1845-1847 (Dublin, 1997), pp 167-170. 58 O’Brien, Farewell Spain, p. 62. If this sounds like the credo of the Bauhaus school, it is in fact a reversal of it, as in the passage O’Brien is describing Romanesque architecture’s suitability to specific geographical and meteorological contexts. O’Brien found the contemporary (1934-6) trend for importation of ‘international’ architectural design odious, functionally and aesthetically: ‘Horrors are springing up everywhere’, she declares. See O’Brien, Farewell Spain, pp 51-3. 59 O’Brien, Mary Lavelle, p. 37. Similarly, in The anteroom, Agnes is described as ‘a dutiful machine’. See O’Brien, The anteroom, p. 158. The character Mary Lavelle is partly a reworking of Agnes in the earlier novel. 60 Ibid., p. 71. 61 Ibid., p. 156. 62 Ibid., p. 155. 63 Donna Haraway, ‘A manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s’ in Linda Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/postmodernism (London, 1990). Similarly, what could more natural than to assist those who are in many ways the opposite (in this case, the Areavagas) of oneself, in their incorporation to the ‘integrated circuit’ that the wireless represents.

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heaven and earth. Mary surrenders to the city, she desires its impersonality, its relentless, directionless advance. She falls in love with Altorno/Bilbo, the ugliest place on Earth. In O’Brien’s work, there is also another kind of beauty. As Henry Archer says in The Land of Spices, there is also ‘the beauty of personal freedom’, and it is that ‘beauty’, what Mary learns to cherish.64 Transmuted into an angel, a messenger, a machine, a city, La Belle is also a double of Agatha, a secondary character in the novel who is an ugly, awkward, poor, antisocial, death-obsessed, homeless and country-less Irish exile, as well as an intellectually arrogant, fiercely independent, and proud -yet ‘excommunicated’- lesbian. As the critic Wanda Balzano noted, surely it can be no coincidence that, in a novel about Mary La Belle, ‘Agatha’, in Greek, means nothing other than ‘good and beautiful’.65

64

O’Brien, Land of spices, p. 151. Wanda Balzano, ‘The question of the foreigner – Mary Lavelle’ (unpublished paper, University College Dublin, 5 December 2002). By this I mean Agatha functions as a double of Mary in the subtextual lesbian bildungsroman that presents Nieves, Mary, and Agatha as three stages in the life of the same person. See Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka, ‘Outing Mary’ in Gay Community News [Dublin] (September 2000).

65

CONTRIBUTORS

Mary McCarthy is a Government of Ireland Higher Education Authority Scholar. Her research concerns women and public policy, focusing on housing in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka’s is a former coordinator of the Dublin Queer Studies Group and has completed a PhD in Anglo-Irish literature on the topic of Kate O'Brien and the Basque Country at University College Dublin. Jenny O’Connor is a PhD student of the School of English, University College Dublin. Her research is based on Deleuzian readings of sexual and violent imagery in the work of Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodovar and Neil Jordan. She has been published in the Irish Film and Film Culture journal and is a member of Waterford Film For All and Waterford Institute of Technology’s Centre for Excellence in Film Studies. Caitríona Ní Chléirchín is a Government of Ireland Research Scholar (IRCHSS) based in the School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Folklore and Linguistics, UCD. She is currently completing a PhD on Irish-language Women’s Poetry. Her thesis is entitled ‘Teanga na Dúile: Filíocht na mBan sa Nua-Ghaeilge’/’The Language of Desire: Contemporary Irishlanguage Women’s Poetry’. In it she examines how poets Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Biddy Jenkinson articulate language as a function of the body and speak of their embodied experiences of womanhood. Ríona Nic Congáil is a Government of Ireland Research Scholar (IRCHSS) in the School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore & Linguistics in University College Dublin. Donna Maria O’Connor is a PhD student based at the Department of Modern History, NUI Maynooth. Her research is a biography of the political life of Jennie Wyse Power, 1858-1941.

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Sarah O’Connor is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Celtic Studies, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. A former Government of Ireland Higher Education Authority Scholar, her doctoral research explored the subject of ‘bilingualism, regionalism and translation in Irish women’s writing and film, 1960-2006. She was also the Irish language researcher on the AHRC funded Women in Modern Irish Culture Database project under the direction of Gerardine Meaney (UCD) and Maria Luddy (University of Warwick). Clíona Rattigan is a Government of Ireland Research Scholar (IRCHSS). She is currently completing her doctoral research on the subject of ‘unmarried mothers and infanticide in Ireland, 1900-1950’. Based at Trinity College Dublin, her research compares infanticide trials in Ireland, both north and south, during the first half of the twentieth century as well as cases in England and Scotland where single Irish women were charged with the murder or concealment of birth of their illegitimate infants. Christopher Shepard was a Government of Ireland Higher Education Authority Scholar based at Queen’s University Belfast. His doctoral dissertation, entitled ‘Women activists and women’s organisations in Ireland, 1945-68’, examined the role of female activism in promoting social and legislative change in Ireland during the middle decades of the twentieth century. He is currently researching and teaching at Queen’s University Belfast. Sonja Tiernan is a former Teaching and Research Scholar in Women’s Studies at the School of Social Justice, University College Dublin. Her research focused on the literature of Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926). She is now training as an archivist in National Library of Ireland.

INDEX

Addington Symonds, John, 171 Adoption, 129 and England, 130 and Catholic teachings, 130 1952 Adoption Act, 130 and Republic of Ireland, 130 1929 Adoption of Children Act in NI, 130, 131 1950 Adoption of Children Act in NI, 131, 132 and Dáil Éireann, 130 and Adoption Society of Ireland, (1948) 130 and Mater Dei Hostel, 131 and Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council, 131, 133, 136 and Northern Ireland, 136 and fostering, 133, 136 Aëthnic Union, 167-9 Alcock, Mr., 46 Alexandra Women’s College, Dublin, 57 and Pearse, 57 Allebery, Harry, 32 Anarchist, 4, 193 Anglo-Celt, The, 119 Anglo-Irish, 11, 63, 187 Anti-Deleuzian, 93 Aphrodite, 171-2 Aran Islands, 52-3 Archbishop Byrne Papers (Dublin Roman Catholic Diocesan Archives), 126 Arcon Chartered Architects of London, 40 and Arcon hous, 41

Ardscoil Cholumcille (see Coláiste Uladh) Ashbourne, Lord, 58 Atkins, Bowman, 4, 71 Atkins and O’Barr and sex-based dialect, 71 Badiou, Alain, 94 Balzano, Wanda, ‘The question of the foreigner - Mary Lavelle’, 198 Basque, 181-2, 192-4, 197 Baty, Thomas, 167 ‘The Aëthnic Union’, 167 International law, 173 Polarized law: with English translation of Hague Conventions on private international law, 173-4 War: Its conduct and legal results, 173 and Clyde, Irene, 166, 173-9 Beatrice the sixteenth, 174 Eve’s sour apples, 174 Vital heraldry, 173 ‘The League of Nations and the League of Little Women’, 179 Beauty, and Kate O’Brien, 183-98 Belfast, 80 Bell, The, 116 Bergin, Osborn, 64 Bernard, Dom, 174 Bilbo, 194, 195 Bildungsroman, 4, 184, 198 Bland, Lucy, Sexology in culture: labelling bodies and desires, 172 Blowick, Joseph, 46 Blythe, Ernest, 12, 13, 15

202 Braidotti, Rosie, 1, 2, 7, 91-4, 97101 Braithwaite, Edward K. and Jamaican dialect, 72 Berthon Waters, Mrs B, 49 Blasco Ibañez, Vincente, El Intruso, 195 Blukacz-Louisfert, League of Nations Archives, 179 Bourke, Angela, ‘Silence in Two Languages: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and the Unspeakable’, 161-2 Bowman, Florence, Traders in East and West: Some Aspects in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 173 British, 28 Army, 61 colonial influence, 53 colonisation, 54 Easter Rising, 62 Executions of Pearse and Casement, 62 Government, 75 Welfare State, 125 Brooke, Sir Basil, 47-8 Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre (1847), 56 Browne, Kathleen, 11, 22 Buckland, Patrick, The factory of grievances: devolved government in Northern Ireland, 1921-39, 131 Burntollet Bridge, 84 Butler, Eleanor, 45 Butler, Judith, 95-6 Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of ‘sex’, 94, 164 Gender trouble, 93, 164 Butler, Mary, 54, 65-6 Irish women and the home language, 54 Camogie, 58-60 Association, 60 Intervarsity Camogie Championship, 60

Index Ashbourne Cup, 60 O’Farrelly Cup, 60 and UCD (see UCD Camogie Club) and Hockey, 60 Gráinne Mhaol [Grace O’Malley] Camogie Club, 59 Ethna Carberry Camogie Club, 59 Canon Peter McNe lis, 133 Cantwell, Wilfred, 45 Cardinal D’Alton, Archbishop of Armagh, 134 Carpenter, Edward, The intermediate sex, 171 Carr, Ruth, 70 Carrigan, William, 25 Casement, Rodger, 58 Catholic (see Roman Catholic) Catholic Arts Guild, 145 Catholic Young Men’s Society, 146 Catholic Boy Scouts, 146 Catholic Billiards League, 146 Celtic Congress, 63-4 Censorship of Publications (1929) Act, 25 Census of Ireland, 29 Central Criminal Court, 106, 107 Christian Brothers, 95 Civic Guard (see Garda Síochána) Citizenship, 12, 18-9 Citizenship rights, 18 An Claidheamh Soluis [the Sword of Light], 52, 55, 58 Clann na Poblachta, 48-9 Clare Champion, 111 Clarence Mangan, James, The collected works of James Clarence Mangan, 194 Clarke, Kathleen, 18 Clarke, Thomas, 11 Coffey, Dr, 64 Collins, Michael, 13 Collins-O’Driscoll, Margaret, 13 Coláiste Laighean [the Leinster College], 58

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices? Coláiste na Mumhan [the Munster College], 57 Coláiste Uladh [the Ulster College], 58 Constitution of Ireland (1922), 1221 Connacht Tribune, 123 Coogan, Suzanne, 180 Coombe Hospital, 25 Cornish, Dorothy, H., 170, 173-4 These were the Brontës; a novel, 173 Costello, Eileen, 11, 13, 20 Costello, John A., 46 Countryworkers Ltd., 34, 36 Coughlan, Patricia, 183, 185-6, 189 Court of Criminal Appeal, 106 Criminal Law Amendment (1885) . Act, 25 Criminal Law Amendment (1934) Bill, 25-7 Criminal Law Amendment committee (1930) minute book, 116 Criminal Law Amendment Acts (1880-1885), and Juvenile Prostitution, (committee report), 117 Cú Chulainn, 59 Cumman na mBann, 61 Cumman na nGaedheal, 29 Curran, Genevieve, 171 Cyborg, 5, 101, 197 Dáil Éireann, 14-27 Debates, 14 March 1996, 130 Dalkey Hill, 107 Dalsimer, Adele, Kate O’Brien: a critical study, 185 Dance Halls, 116 Flann O’Brien, ‘The dance halls’, 116 Davidson, Emily, 177 Deleuze, Gilles, 89-102 Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 89 Deleuzian, 91-3, 96, 99, 101, 199

203

De Ronsard, Pierre, Sonnets for Helen, 196 Odes, 196 Selected poems, 196 Derry, 67, 83-5 Desart, Ellen, Contess Dowager, 11, 13 De Valera, Eamon, and ideal of womanhood, 19 as Taoiseach, 30 De Van, Rev. R. S., ‘The unmarried mother: some legal aspects of the problem’, 105, 120 Devlin, Joseph, 131 Dodder, The, 116 Donegal, 58 Douglas, Alfred (Lord), 171 Dowling, R.H., 45 Doan, Laura, Sexology in culture: labelling bodies and desires, 172 Dublin, 17 Dublin Builder (see Irish Builder and Engineer) Dubliners, 82 Dublin Union Hospital, 126 Duff, Frank, 126, 127 Durcan, Paul, ‘A Catholic father prays for his daughter’s abortion’, 162 Ealing Studios, 191 Earner-Byrne, Lindsay, ‘The boat to England: an Analysis of the official reactions to the Emigration of single expectant Irishwomen to Britain, 1922-72’, 124, 138, 146 Easter Rising, 62 Equal rights Evans, Richard, 16 Europe, 16 Feasta, 153 Feminism Fianna Fáil, 29, 48-9 Fine Gael, 48-9 Fitzgerald-Kenney, James, 23

204 Fitzpatrick, Rev. M., 116 Fr. Flanagan, John, 116 Fournier d’Albe, Dr, 63 Fraiman, Susan, 1 Franklyn, Julian, 173 Freewoman, The, 167-8, 180-1 Freudian, 95 Freud, Sigmund, 96, 157 Fuller, Revd R.C., 174 Gaelic Athletic Association (G.A.A.), 59, 60 and ban on foreign games, 60 Gaelic League, 51-66 Craobh na mBann [Women’s branch], 53 Coiste na bhFoilseachán [publishing sub-committee], 54, 55 Dáil Uladh, 57 Educational Committee, 57 Executive, 53-4, 62, 65 Gaelic Leaguers, 53 Feiseanna, 54 London branch, 57 National Oireachtas Literary Competitions, 54 Gaelic Revival Garda Síochána, 13 Women police, 13-14 Bridewell Station, 87 Gardner, Cyril, Perfect Understanding, 193 Garrett, Paul Michael, ‘The abnormal flight: the Migration and repatriation of Irish unmarried Mothers’ in Social History vol. 25, no. 3 (Oct. 2000), 124 Garret Fawcett, Millicent, 167 Gay Community News, 198 Gawthorpe, Mary, 167 Gibney, F., 32 Gildea, Fr Denis, 26 Girton Review, 170 Glentoran, Lord Minister of Agriculture, 47 Gleeson, Dermot, 118

Index Glasgow Women’s Library, 171 Gore-Booth, Eva, and Urania, 1, 166-82 Poems, 173 The one and the many, 173 Unseen kings, 173 The Egyptian pillar, 173 The sorrowful princess, 173 The agate lamp, 173 The three resurrections and the triumph of Maeve, 173 The death of Fionavar from the triumph of Maeve, 173 Broken glory, 173 The sword of justice, 173 A psychological and poetic approach to the study of Christ in the fourth Gospel, 173 The shepherd of eternity, 173 The house of three windows, 173 The inner kingdom, 173 Collected poems of Eva GoreBooth, 173-4 The buried life of Deirdre, 173 Griffith, Arthur, 11 Guttari, Felix, 89-102 Hallack, Cecily, The Legion of Mary, 126 Hamer, Emily, Britannia’s Glory: Lesbians after the Great War, 166-81 Hammer, Nick, Talk of Angels, 195 Hannon, John S.J., 25 Haraway, Donna, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, 198 Hayden, Prof. Mary, 18, 64-5 Heinrich Ulrichs, Karl, Forschungen über das Räthsel der Mannmännlichen Liebe (The riddle of ‘man-manly’ love), 171 Henebry, Rev. Richard, 55 Henrietta Street Convent, 122 Hetero-social, 96

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices? Hiberno-English (see Molloy) Holy Child Society, 146 Homosexuality, 4, 171, 194 Homo-social, 96 Housing and women, 28-50 Housing of the Working Classes Act (1890), 29 Humphries, Steve, Sex in a cold climate, 146 Hyde, Douglas, 51-2, 62 Illegitimate Affiliation Orders (1929) Bill, 22 In camera, 22 Inghinidhe na hÉireann, 60 Inglis, Tom, ‘Origins and legacies of sexual prudery: sexuality and social control in modern Ireland, 104 Ingram, Angela, Rediscovering forgotten radicals: British women writers 1889-1939, 168, 171-2 International Labour Organisation, 18 Ireland (see Irish Free State) Irigaray, Luce, 92, 94-5 Irish Builder and Engineer, 31-50 Irish Catholic Almanac and Directory, 133 Irish Censorship Board, 4, 195 Irish Countrywomen’s Association, 46 Irish Economic and Social History, 138 Irish Independent, 130 Irish Free State Carrigan Committee, 25-7, 114, 117 Carrigan Report, 26-7 Civil Service Commissioners, 12 Women, 12 Customs and Excise, 12

205

Police, 12 Infanticide trials, 104, 105, 106, 114, 116, 117, 120, 123 Civil Service Regulation (Amendment) Bill, 12, 17 Conditions of Employment Bill (1934), 15 Department of Local Government and Public Health, 30 Executive Council Juries Bill (1927), 18, 20-4 Seanad, 14 Constitution (1922), 12, 18 Irish Housewives Association, 45 Irish Journal of Feminist Studies, 114 Irish Land Commission, 46 Irish Labour Party, 48 Irish Parliamentary Party, 62 Irish Rosary, The, 183 Irish Women Citizen’s and Local Government Association, 14, 15, 25 Irish Women Graduates Association (IWGA), 57 and the Robertson Commission on University Education in Ireland, 56 Irish Times, 21, 49, 113 Irish Volunteers, 61 Irish Women Workers Union, 15, 21 Jacob, Rosamund, 21 Jackson, Joseph, An instrument in the hands of the Church: A brief history of the Legion of Mary, 128 John, E.T., 63 Johnson, William, 171 Jordan, Neil, 2-3, 89-93, 96, 98-100, 199 The crying game, 90-100 Dil, 2, 90, 94, 97, 99, 101 Jude, 2, 91, 96, 100-2 Fergus, 96 Jody, 97

206 Breakfast on Pluto, 90-6 Braden, Patrick ‘Kitten’, 90Bergin, Eileen, 91, 94-5 Jury service and women, 18-21 Jubilee Maternity Hospital, 140 Jung, Carl Gustav, The archetypes and the collective unconscious, 151-2 Keir, David Lindsey, 47 Kempis, Thomas The imitation of Christ, 77 Kennedy, H.B. (Dean, Christchurch, Dublin), 25 Kennedy, Finola, ‘Frank Duff’s search for the neglected and rejected, 127 Kennedy, Patricia, Motherhood in Ireland, 162 Kiberd, Declan, Irish classics, 183 Kilkenny, 33 Kirwin, Elizabeth, 126 Kristeva, Julia, 157 Symbolic and semiotic, 157 Desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art, 157 Powers of horror, 157 In the beginning was love: psychoanalysis and Faith, 157 ‘Stabat Mater’, 161 Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, 142 Labov, William, 72 Lacan, Jacques, 157 Labourers Act (1883), 28 Lancaster, England, 67 Land War, 10 Lawless, Emily, 56 League of Nations, The, 173, 179 Leflef, Dogan, 149 Lemass, Sean, 15, 18 Lesbianism (see homosexuality) Legarrata Mentxaka, Aintzane, ‘Outing Mary’, 198

Index “Girl meets politics’ – The Don Pablo chapter in Mary Lavelle’, 195 Legion of Mary, 7, 80, 124-47, Handbook, 126, 129, 141 Limerick, 50 Limerick County Council, 38 Lincoln, Abraham, 23 Little, Patrick T.D., 25 Lloyd George, David, 176 Local Government, 14 Logan, William and Sons, 42 London, 29, 97 London School of Economics (see University of London) Londonderry (see Derry) Loyalists, 84 Luddy, Maria, ‘Moral rescue and unmarried mothers in Ireland in the 1920s’, 105, 124 Women surviving: studies in Irish women’s History in the nineteenth and twentieth Centuries, 117 Lyder, Hazel, ‘Silence and secrecy’: exploring female sexuality during childhood in 1930s and 1940s Dublin’, 114 Lyons, J.J., 31 McBride, Sean, 49 MacCumhaill, Fionn, 58 McEntee, Sean, 31 McKay, Enda, 32 MacMillan, Chrystal, 180 Mac Néill, Eoin, 51-3 MacRory, Joseph Dr (Bishop of Down and Connor), 127 Magdalen Asylums, 80 Donnybrook, Dublin, 111 Ormeau Road, Belfast, 125 Magdalen Laundries (see Magdalen Asylums)

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices? Maguire, Moira, ‘Foreign Adoptions and the Evolution of Irish Adoption Policy’, 129 Marsden, Dora, 167 Mater Dei Praesidium Minute Books, 128, 129 1955, 132 1945-6, 132-3, 135, 146-7 1950, 138-9 1951, 141, 143 1953, 144, 146 1954, 137, 142-5 1955, 134, 138, 139, 147 1956, 140 1957, 140 Markievicz, Countess, 173, 178 Mater Miscordiae, 132, 136 McEntee, Rose, 142 Meehan, Paula, The man who was marked by winter, 162 ‘The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks’, 162 Mercy Nuns, 126 Milote, Mike, Banished babies: the secret history of Ireland’s baby export business, 130 Milligan, Alice, 58, 65 Milroy, James, 69-70 Mitchell, David, Queen Christabel: a biography Of Christabel Pankhurst, 177 Mogey, John, 41 Moi, Toril, The Kristeva reader, 162 Molloy, Frances, 3, 68No mate for the magpie, 3, 68-88 McGlone, Anne Elizabeth, 68-88 Martha McGlone, 73 ‘Korea’, 74, 85 Sectarianism, 74-5 Internment, 75

207

and institutions, 78-80 and N.I.C.R.A., 83 and R.U.C., 83 anti-Vietnam war demonstration, 87 and Dublin, 86-88 and dialect, 69 and Hiberno-English/Northern Hiberno-English, 69-70, 72 and Standard English, 72 Women are the scourge of the Earth, 70 Moore, Colonel Maurice, 62 Morgan, J.H., War: Its conduct and legal results, 173 Morley, Ann, the life and death of Emily Wilding Davidson, 177 Morrin, Francis J., 25 Motherhood (see also unmarried motherhood), 148-62 Mother archetype, 151 Mountjoy Jail, 111 Mullagh, Co. Cavan, 52 Mullan, Peter, The Magdalen Sisters, 146 Murphy, Cillian, 93-4 Murphy, Cliona, Women surviving: studies in Irish women’s history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 117 National Union of Women Graduates, 15 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, 165 National University of Ireland Irish lectureship, 58 National Volunteers (see Irish Volunteers) Neruda, Pablo, Fully Empowered, 162 Newcastle, 80 New Zealand, 49

208 Nic Dhiarmada, Bríona, ‘Immram sa tSíce: ‘Filíocht Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill agus Próiseas an Indibhidithe’, 158 Ni Dhomhnaill, Nuala, 148-162 An Dealg Droighin, 148, 151 Máthair, 148-52 and Michael Hartnett, Rogha Dánt/ Selected Poems, 150, 159 -60 Dán do Mhelissa, 153-4 Ag Cothú Linbh, 154-6 Breith Anabaí Thar Lear, 15961 Feis, 158 Toircheas I-V, 159 Pharaoh’s daughter, 159 Toircheas I and II, 159 Féar Suaithinseach, 151, 161 Thar Mo Chionn, 161 The Astrakhan cloak, 152 An Bhatráil, 152 ‘Filíocht á Cumadh: Ceardlann Filíochta, An Nuafhilíocht: Léachtaí Cholm Cille XVII, 153 and education, 149 and motherhood, 148-62 Nicholson, Linda, Feminism/postmodernism, 197 North Dublin Poor Law Union, 10 Northern Ireland Minister for Health and Local Government, 42, 46, 49-50 Ministry of Home Affairs, 31, 1312, 139 Planning Advisory Board, 47 Rural Development Council, 47 Child Welfare Council, 131, 132, 133, 137 National Assistance Board, 137 National Health Service, 139 Ministry of Commerce, 138

Index Ministry of Health and Local Government, 140 Ministry of Labour, 143 Northern Ireland Hospital Committee, 139 Northern Ireland Hospital Authority Special Care Service, 144 and housing policy, 40-8, 132 and Legion of Mary, 128 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (N.I.C.R.A.), 83 Northern Ireland Labour Party, 48 Northern Whig, 47-8 O’Barr, William, 71 O’Brien, Kate The anteroom, 184, 187-8, 190-5 Mary Lavelle, 4-5, 183-98 Farewell Spain, 193, 197 The land of spices, 185-6, 196-8 Without my cloak, 188, 191, 196 That lady, 186-7 The flower of May, 186, 193 As music and splendour, 186-7, 193-5 Gloria Gish, 191, 193 The last of summer, 193 O’Broin, Leon, Frank Duff, 126, 127 O’Carroll, Ms. V, 25 Ó Conaire, Pádraic, 56 O’Connor, J.J., 114 O’Connor, Fionnuala, In search of a state: Catholics in Northern Ireland, 145 O’Connor, Sarah, Odem, Mary E., Delinquent daughters: protecting and policing adolescent female sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920, 108 O’Duffy, Seán and Camogie, 60 Ó Duinín, Rev. Pádraig, 55 Ó Dúshláine, Tadhg, ‘Suantraí Naula Ní

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices? Dhomhnaill: Dán do Mhelissa’, 153 Oedipus complex, 158 Ó Grianna, Séamus, 58 O’Higgins, Kevin, 18-9 Oireachtas, 11, 54 O’Farrelly, Agnes, 51-66 The Reign of Humbug, 51, 65 Smuainte ar Árainn, 53 Grádh agus Crádh [Love and Torment], 55 An Cneamhaire [The Rogue], 55 Leabhar an Athar Eoghan: the O’Growney memorial volume (1904), 55 Sorcha, 56 Out of the Depths, 62 Áille an Domhain [Beauty of the World], 63 and Coláiste Laighean, 58 and nationalist politics, 61 and Ulster Camogie Council, 60 as Honorary General Secretary of the Celtic Congress, 65 as president of the Celtic Congress, 65 Ó Laoghaire, Rev. Peadar, 55 Old Testament, 153 O’Neill, Terence, 43 Open Door International, 178 Oram, Alison, ‘“Sex is an accident’: feminism, science and the radical sexual theory of Urania, 1915-40', 172 Orlit (Northern Ireland), Ltd., 42 Ó Túama, Seán, Repossessions: selected essays on the Irish literary heritage, 150-1 Oxford University Girton College, 170 PaGes, 195 Paisley, Rev. Ian, 80 Paisleyites, 84 Pan-Celtic Association, 63

209

Pankhurst, Emily, 167, 178 Pankhurst, Christabel, 167, 177-8 and the United States, 178 and England, 178 Parker, Dehra, 42-3, 46, 47, 49 Patai, Daphne, Rediscovering forgotten radicals: British women writers 1889-1939, 168, 172 Pearse, Pádraig, 51, 55 Execution of, 62 People’s Democracy, The, 84 Perry, Kate, 168 Phoenix, The, 166 Plunkett, Josephine, 127 Poor Law, 11 Portobello, 17 Post-independent Ireland, 117 Private and public sphere, 162 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 11 Protestant, 81 Rafferty, Oliver, Catholicism in Ulster, 146 Rathmines, 17 Redmond, John, 62 Revivalist (Gaelic revivalist), 66 Reynolds, Lorna, Kate O’Brien – a literary portrait, 185-7 Rich, Adrienne, Of woman born: motherhood a experience and institution, 162 Ripley, Terrible as an army set in array, 126, 140 Rising, 1916, 17 Robertson, Dorothy, 47 Rockett, Kevin, 100 Roman Catholic, 7, 27, 52, 60, 69, 73-5, 80, 84-7, 111, 124-32, 1357, 139-41, 143-7, 162, 187, 194 Roman Catholic, Mater Hospital, 144 Roper, Esther, 168-70, 173, 177

210 Select passages illustrating Florentine life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 173 Traders in east and west: some aspects in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 173 Poems of Eva Gore-Booth, 173 Prison letters of Countess Markievcz, 173, 177 Roughneen, Rev. P. J., 117 Royal Ulster Constabulary (R.U.C.), 83-5 Detective Inspector Harrison, 84 County Inspector Kerr, 84 ‘B Specials’, 84 Rubin Suleiman, Susan, Risking who one is: encounters with contemporary art and literature, 148, 157 Russell, Mrs, 45, 50 Ryan, Louise, ‘Irish female emigration in the 1930s: transgressing space and culture’ in Gender, Place and Culture, vol. 8, no 3 (2001), p. 124 Scratton, Rose, 127 Seanad Éireann, 10-27 Senator, 12, Sex Disqualification Act (1919), British, 18 Sexuality (see also homosexuality), 2, 4, 7, 90, 97, 103-5, 108, 114, 164, 171, 181, 194 Sheahan, P., 34 Sheehy-Skeffington, Hanna, 15 Sinn Féin, 10-11, 53, 61, 177-8 Sligo Jail, 110 Snow, Valaida, ‘I can’t dance (I’ve got ants in pants), 193

Index Socialism, 184, 186 Somerville and Ross, 56 Spain, 183-98 Spanish Civil War, 195 Stanley, Liz, The life and death of Emily Wilding Davidson, 177 Staples, Roberta, 171 St. Enda’s Boys School, 59 St. Mary’s Dominican College, Dublin, 52 St. Mary’s Literary Academy, Dublin, 51 St. Vincent de Paul, 126, 127 Strachey, Ray, Millicent Garret Fawcett, 167 Studies, 127 Swift, Jonathon, 56 Synge, J.M., 53 The Aran Islands, 53 Taoiseach, 30 Thatcher, Margaret, 96 Thorndale Home, 125 Transgendered, 95 Woolf, Virginia, 56 Women and organisations, 18 and rights and employment, 16-18 and elections, 48-9 Women’s Library in London, 167 World War Two, 29, 47, 49 Wyse Power, Jenny, 11-27 University College Dublin Camogie Club, 58 University of London, London School of Economics, 171 Ulster, 80 Ulster Camogie Council, 60 and ban on Hockey, 60 Ulster Cottage, 42-6, 50 Ulster Yearbook 1953, 137 Unionist, 47-8 United States, Adolescent female sexuality, 107

Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Dissenting Voices? Unmarried motherhood, 125-47 Homes for unmarried mothers Hopedene Hostel, 125, 139 Mater Dei hostel (Belfast), 125, 127, 128, 131, 146 Malone Place Rescue and Maternity Home, 125, 145 Morning Star Hostel, Dublin, 127 Nazareth House, Belfast, 136 Nazareth Lodge, Belfast, 136 Regina Coeli Hostel, Dublin, 127, 137, 142 145 Sancta Maria Hostel, Belfast, 128 Urania, 166-82 Virgin Mary, 161-2 Wade, Jessey, 170, 173 The animals’ friend cat book, 173

211

Walsh, Eibhear, Ordinary people dancing, 183, 189 Wexford People, 123 Whyte, John H., Church and state in modern Wilde, Oscar, 186 Wimperis, The unmarried mother and her child, 138 Ireland, 1923-70, 130, 131 Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, 133 Woolf, Virginia, To the Lighthouse, 188-9 Young-Eisendrath, Polly, Hags and Heroes: A Feminist approach to Jungian psychotherapy with couples, 151 Journal of Social History, 129 Zettl, Karin Eva, 187 Žižek, Slavoj, 90-2, 95-6, 100, 102