Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Be. Kristina Sefcikova

Ireland as a Woman: Female Depictions of Ireland in Nationalist Literature Master's Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: James Joseph Little, M.PhiL, Ph.D.

2021 / declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

Author's signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank dr. Little for his invaluable guidance and kindness throughout the writing process. I would also like to thank my friends and family for always supporting me. Table of Contents

Introduction 5

1. Ireland as a Woman: A Strategy to Discredit Ireland 11

1.1 Ireland as Dependent, Weak, and Passive 11

1.2 Ireland as the Female Other 18

1.3 Ireland as a Promiscuous Seductress 22

2. The Irish Response: Symbol of the Mother 29

2.1 Mother Ireland versus the Imperial Maternity of Queen Victoria 30

2.2 Maud Gonne: Both a Real and a Symbolical Woman 36

3. Irish Womanhood: The Basis of a New National Identity 46

3.1 The Virtuous Irish Woman and the Corrupt Coloniser 47

3.2 Hypermasculinity versus Hyperfemininity 55

Conclusion 64

Works Cited 70

Summary 76

Resumé 77 Introduction

The aim of this thesis is to analyse female depictions of Ireland in Irish nationalist literature in

the period from the 1850s leading up to the Easter Rising of 1916, a pivotal point in the Irish

struggle for independence. The primary sources will include the work of W.B. Yeats, mainly his

influential revivalist play co-written with Lady Gregory called Cathleen Ni Houlihan and his

collections of Irish folklore inspired short stories, The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red

Hanrahan. Further primary texts will consist of writings of the Irish suffragette Maud Gonne,

including her autobiography A Servant of the Queen, her article "The Famine Queen" and the

play Dawn, chosen as a countertext to Yeats's and Gregory's Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Lastly, the

analysis will touch upon patriotic poems of writers such as Patrick Pearse and lames Clarence

Mangan. These works have been chosen because they all employ the depiction of Ireland as a

woman, albeit in various forms, and the thesis will examine how these depictions changed over

the examined time period.

Moreover, depiction of Ireland as female has been utilized in the past by its coloniser, the

British, as well, for their own political purposes. Therefore, the thesis aims to answer two main

research questions. Firstly, what specific forms did these female depictions take on? And

secondly, what were the objectives of both the Irish and the British when using these depictions,

considering the political and cultural context of the time period? Since the Irish situation was a

case of explicitly gendered nationalism, feminist criticism has been chosen as the framework for

analysing the literary depictions and their implications. This will be achieved through a

qualitative analysis of the primary sources, supported by secondary sources also contributing to

the feminist critical discussion surrounding Irish nationalism. Elizabeth Butler Cullingford,

Marion Quirici, Joseph Valente, and Clara Fischer, among other authors, will be referenced

5 when examining the cultural impacts of politicising, (de)sexualising and all in all problematising

the female figure and gender roles. However, these authors do not give enough attention to the

fact that the female depiction of Ireland was used by both the Irish and British, often serving

opposite political ends. This thesis will contribute to the academic discussion by examining how

the same depiction used by the British to discredit Ireland as an independent nation was adopted

and subverted by Irish nationalists into a tool of critique of the British rule, as well as a tool for

rallying the nationalist sentiment of the nation.

The personification of Ireland as a woman can be traced back to the aisling poems of the

late 17th and 18th centuries. This poetic genre disguises nationalist texts as love poems, which

was necessitated by the Penal Laws (1691) enacted in Ireland following the defeat of James II in the Battle of the Boyne by William of Orange's forces (1690) as the culmination of the Glorious

Revolution. The Penal Laws enacted especially against Irish Catholics signalled the transfer of

power to Protestants in Ireland.

The woman of the aisling tradition is an enchanting, beautiful woman in great grief,

imprisoned or harassed by a boorish brute representing the British coloniser and waiting to be

rescued by the Stuart prince. However, the symbolical woman in the time period examined in the

thesis exhibits a change of character - Yeats, Pearse, and Gonne personify Ireland as an old hag

known as the Poor Old Woman or Mother Ireland, or on the contrary, as the sovereign and

sexual figure of the mythological Queen Maeve. The thesis will delve into these diverse

depictions of Ireland and their implications.

An examination of the Irish case has interdisciplinary significance. Research in the area

of nationalist literature, and nationalist movements as such, is very much relevant in today's

unstable world full of political upheaval and unrests, separatist movements and guerrilla wars.

6 Literature and cultural texts in general play a crucial part in these movements, whether in the

form of propaganda from both the side of the nationalists and the side of the powers representing

the status quo, or in the form of the symbols and narratives that drive people to join these

revolutions and unite them under one flag.

The main theoretical framework of the thesis is based on the volume Feminist Critical

Negotiations, edited by Elizabeth Meese and Alice Parker. Published in 1992, its objectives

correspond with the main characteristics of third wave feminism as defined by Claire R. Snyder:

it is intersectional, political, and rejects centrism and determinism due to its postmodernist

influences (175-176). Specifically, the thesis builds on the theory regarding the politics of

assigning gender to textual subjects, as Meese and Parker describe it in the introduction to their volume, speaking of feminist critics: "Another interest of these critics is the belief that one's

subject position is assigned (as well as voluntary in some cases) - it is political - and that it

matters if one is gendered female" (viii). In other words, applying this framework to the thesis'

topic, gendering Ireland as female has profound political implications. The British depictions of

Ireland as female asserted a clear causal relation - to be female meant to be unfit for self-

government. Likewise, when the Irish adopted this imagery and subverted it as a nationalist tool,

their narrative also carried political implications - from an external actor assigning the gender,

Ireland moved on to self-assign it as a signal of retaking control of its own image and, by

extension, its own political affairs.

To grasp the dynamic of the Anglo-Irish struggle fully, it is also necessary to be familiar

with the concept of Otherness, since the British Empire emphasised and often fabricated

differences between the Celts and the civilised British, constructing the Irish, Welsh, and

Scottish as the Other. This was used as justification and a rhetorical basis for the oppression of

7 Celtic peoples. In his entry in the International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography, Jean-

Francois Staszak claims: "Otherness is the result of a discursive process by which a dominant in-

group ("Us", the Self) constructs one or many dominated out-groups ("Them", Other) by

stigmatizing a difference - real or imagined - presented as a negation of identity and thus a

motive for potential discrimination" (2). In the case of Ireland, the estrangement was doubled by

both feminising and othering the nation, merging the two processes. Moreover, as with many

other British strategies, the Irish appropriated this one as well and used othering to establish their

sovereign status, as will be examined in the last chapter.

Anglo-Irish relations had always been an unstable matter. Ireland was continually losing

its independence in favour of England since the 12th century when multiple Irish kings accepted

the rule of Henry II, based on the Treaty of Windsor (1175). The Tudor conquest only furthered

the English dominance and in 1542, Henry VIII became the first English king simultaneously

carrying the title of the Irish king. As was already mentioned, another pivotal point came at the

end of the 17th century when the Protestant king William of Orange defeated the Catholic James

II in the Battle of the Boyne (1690), securing the continuation of Protestant rule in Ireland. But

of course, Ireland never ceased its demands for sovereignty and its history is marked by many

uprisings, albeit unsuccessful ones. One of them, the major Irish Rebellion of 1798, in the end

provoked the Acts of Union of 1800 and the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and

Ireland.

This thesis takes as its starting point the 1850s, when the Irish distaste towards the British

rule was exacerbated even more by the recent Great Irish Famine (1845-49), followed by mass

emigration. Another important discussion at the time revolved around the issue of land

ownership, since most of the Irish land was owned by a small number of families with strong

8 cultural links to England who exploited the Irish tenants, often leading to evictions. Yet another

platform for nationalist sentiment came with the founding of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP)

under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, who however had to step back from public life

due to a personal scandal. In the end, the IPP managed to push Home Rule through and in 1914,

the UK parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act regarding Ireland's self-government,

only to immediately suspend it because of the World War that had just broken out. In the end, the

Irish made use of the British attention being turned towards the continent and organised the

Easter Rising of 1916, which is considered the most controversial event in modern Irish history

by several historians (McGarry 8). The thesis will cover the Irish nationalist literature written in

this period, reflecting the rising Irish dissatisfaction and will to fight for independence.

The thesis consists of three main chapters. In order to fully understand the later

developments of the female representation of Ireland, the first chapter will necessarily examine

how the female depiction was formerly used by the British to discredit Ireland and its claims to

sovereignty, by depicting it as a weak, dependent, sensitive or even deceptive woman. The

chapter sets out to identify three main narratives in these negative depictions, all of which served to justify Ireland's inferior status by ascribing it stereotypical feminine traits. The narratives

include Ireland as dependent, weak, and passive, Ireland as the female Other, and Ireland as a

promiscuous seductress.

The second chapter will explore how Irish nationalists adopted the derogative depictions

and subverted them into a nationalist critique of imperial rule. The causal relation was subverted

- Ireland was no longer depicted as inherently weak, but only in a temporary state of weakness

due to the poor standard of British rule. Special attention will be given to works employing a

new symbol of the Mother, or Mother Ireland, which was created as a contrast to the

9 mythologised figure of Queen Victoria. The second subchapter will be dedicated to a specific

embodiment of the symbolical Mother in both the life and literary work of the nationalist and

suffragette Maud Gonne, whose role in the Irish nationalist movement is examined through the

framework of the dual role of Gone both as a literal and symbolical woman, building on Andrea

Bobotis's article "Rival Maternities: Maud Gonne, Queen Victoria, and the Reign of the Political

Mother".

Lastly, the third chapter will analyse how Irish womanhood ultimately became the basis

for a new Irish national identity and the socio-cultural impacts of this development.

Demonstrated with primary sources, the chapter will show how the nationalist movement

embraced a feminised Ireland figure as their identitary expression, positioning the virtuous,

chaste Irish women against the corrupt British coloniser, drawing particularly on the

considerable influence of Mariolatry at the time. Naturally, this practice created great pressure on

Irish women, and the second subchapter will discuss the desexualisation, hyperfeminisation and

even persecution of Irish women which followed because of their new role in the nationalist

cause.

All in all, the thesis will trace the various forms of the female depiction of Ireland from

the 1850s to the Easter Rising of 1916 - from a degrading depiction of a weak woman which justified the British domination of Ireland, through its subversion as Mother Ireland, a nationalist

tool of critique as well as mobilisation, to an official identitary policy embodied in the image of

the virtuous Irish woman. To give a full picture of this development, the first chapter will start

with examining how gendering Ireland served the British cause, since it provided the foundation

for future versions of the female depiction.

10 1. Ireland as a Woman: A Strategy to Discredit Ireland

Gendering Ireland as female has long served to discredit Ireland and its ability to govern itself

independently. Such female personifications of Ireland in literature share multiple common

characteristics: they depict the nation as weak, passive, emotional, seductive, or even deceitful.

The message was clear: to be feminine was a negative attribute which justified Ireland's position

as a dependent state. The present chapter will analyse these depictions of Ireland as a woman and

will identify three main narratives connecting them. The first narrative involves the

personification of Ireland as a dependent, weak, and passive woman who lets men fight her

battles while she remains tied to a domestic space. The second narrative concerns the depiction

of the whole Celtic race as the female Other, through describing the Celtic race as feminine,

sentimental, simple, and all in all, unfit to govern itself. The last narrative comprises the

personification of Ireland as a promiscuous woman, a seductress luring good men away from

their virtuous lives to sacrifice for her and give in to her often sexual demands. The analysis

builds on the aforementioned claims of feminist critics such as Elizabeth Meese and Alice Parker

about the significance of gendering textual subjects (viii), in that it brings political implications.

The fact that Ireland was depicted as female and simultaneously as passive, dependent, or weak

was not a coincidence, it comprised a clear causal relation. Ireland was not just simply unfit for

freedom; it was feminine and therefore unfit for freedom.

1.1 Ireland as Dependent, Weak, and Passive

The symbol of Ireland as a weak and passive woman served to underline the inability of Ireland to govern and protect itself and justified the "generous protection" of Britain for centuries.

11 Angela Rivera Izquierdo aptly summarises the way the symbol of Ireland as a woman was used to support the inferior status of the country:

Women in Ireland have been traditionally associated with frailty and passivity, qualities

that have been also linked to the nation itself. Ireland has often been represented as a

woman in both song and literature, following a tradition that can be traced back to

eighteenth-century Gaelic poetry. In colonial times, Ireland was portrayed as a woman

victimised by the colonising English male, leading womanhood to be associated with

inferiority and weakness. (105)

Indeed, even in the writings of Irish nationalists themselves, Ireland is usually represented by a woman letting others, namely men, fight for her independence while she obediently waits in her domestic space wailing over the loss of the brave men in battle, as is about to be demonstrated.

Any analysis of Irish nationalist literature would not be complete without Lady Gregory's and W.B. Yeats's play Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902). This one-act play, revolving around themes of nationalism and martyrdom, had a profound impact on the Irish nationalist psyche.

Yeats himself even pondered its influence in his poem "Man and the Echo" (1938): "Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?". Whether the play is or is not responsible for Irish lives, it shows that Gregory and Yeats embraced the idea of Ireland in a frail and weak state. They personify the country as Cathleen, a poor old woman wandering the roads, slow and alone. The sight of her induces great pity in the other characters:

BRIDGET. The poor thing, we should treat her well.

PETER. Give her a drink of milk and a bit of the oaten cake. (Yeats, Cathleen 46)

The woman is shown in a very sorry state calling for help and protection of others. She is also depicted as a passive figure; although she actively wanders the country, her objective is to recruit

12 young Irishmen to fight and die for her: "It is a hard service they take that help me. Many that

are red-cheeked now will be pale-cheeked" (50). As P.J. Mathews says: "this is a rather disabling

notion of female possibility. The only option open to the female character in this instance is to

inspire male heroic action". All in all, not much agency is given to Cathleen or the other women

in the play.

Significantly, the play culminates when Michael, the young hero of the play, agrees to go

with Cathleen and join her fighters. Only after this male sacrifice does the old hag turn into a young woman with "the walk of a queen" (Yeats, Cathleen 53). As Marion Quirici comments:

"In Cathleen ni Houlihan a performance of masculine valor and strength purchases and defends

feminine youth and vigor. In the nationalist reading of the play the reclamation of such feminine

ability validates masculine participation in violence and war, even unto death" (89). Ultimately,

the play remains a celebration of male resistance and martyrdom. The female Ireland reaches

transformation and symbolical independence, but it takes male action for this to happen.

Cathleen is left as a passive beneficiary of this help.

Similar themes appear in Yeats's collection of short stories inspired by Irish folklore

called Stories of Red Hanrahan (1904). In the final chapter, "The Death of Hanrahan", the main

character stumbles upon an old woman in the woods: "Her face was of the colour of earth, and

more wrinkled than the face of any old hag that was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in

wisps, and the rags she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by all

weathers". This depiction, much like the one in Cathleen Ni Houlihan, follows the tradition of

depicting Ireland as an old hag or the Poor Old Woman, evoking pity or even ugliness. On top of that, in "The Death of Hanrahan", the hag seems to be a madwoman living in an illusion of

eternal youth. The narrator recounts her shouting: "I am beautiful, I am beautiful; the birds in the

13 air, the moths under the leaves, the flies over the water look at me, for they never saw any one so

beautiful as myself. I am young; I am young: look upon me, mountains". Similarly, in Cathleen

Ni Houlihan, there are also indications that the old woman might be out of her mind: "Her trouble has put her wits astray" (45). The depiction of Ireland as a madwoman unable to tell

illusion and reality apart adds to the overall image of the country as unfit for freedom and

ineligible to have political power in its own hands, which the British Crown takes away for

Ireland's own good.

One more parallel between Cathleen Ni Houlihan and Stories of Red Hanrahan is the

moment of transformation of the old hag into a young woman conditioned by the death of the

male hero. In "The Death of Hanrahan", when Hanrahan lies on his death bed, he observes: "the

rising of the dawn was filling her with pride and a new belief in her own great beauty". The

dawn brings about two events: the death of Hanrahan and the change of the old madwoman into

a supernatural being which enters a union, a wedding of sorts, with the dying man. Again, this

transformation and improvement of the woman's condition is necessitated by the male hero's

death.

Another picture of female Irish passivity and domesticity is drawn in the poem "The

Mother" (1915) by Padraic Pearse who would later become the leader and martyr of the Easter

Rising of 1916, a revolt that led to the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and the creation

of the Irish Free State. However, the mother in Pearse's poem is of no revolutionary character:

But I will speak their names to my own heart

In the long nights;

The little names that were familiar once

Round my dead hearth.

14 Lord, thou art hard on mothers:

We suffer in their coming and their going;

And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary

Of the long sorrow - And yet I have my joy:

My sons were faithful, and they fought, (lines 8-16)

The mother matches the narrative of passivity: she remains in the domestic environment of her hearth where she mourns her sons who died fighting and passively watches them come and go.

All her helpless sorrow makes her weary, weak, and frail.

These images of a dependent and incapable Ireland were further proliferated through caricatures like those in the Punch magazine, a British satirical weekly magazine particularly influential during the 1840s and 1850s. In these caricatures, Ireland is frequently personified by

Hibernia, the younger sister of Britannia, constantly leaning on her older sister in need of protection. Hibernia is portrayed as weak and vulnerable, eyeing the ground, crouching, and clinging to Britannia who stands proud and tall protecting her sister from the "Fenian pest" (see fig. 1 and fig. 2). Hibernia is the embodiment of a damsel in distress. These images further supported the idea of Ireland being unfit for freedom and dependent on Britain's protection from the Irish nationalists whose caricatures are often dwarfish, degenerate brutes threatening the sisters with a gun. Another frequent theme in these caricatures involves Hibernia being wooed by pretty flowers by both the British and Irish nationalist side. In these pictures, Hibernia looks hesitant but inclined to take the bribe (see fig. 3 and fig. 4). This is another unflattering representation, since Ireland is presented as a gullible, naive young girl with a hint of greediness who can be easily persuaded to give in with pretty gifts.

15 HOW NOT TO 1)0 IT. L.- - .\ i]>.M\ Til IV IF V 'ITflEMV TUIIUMX • TIT HI IKMU f ATI MOT* OS. U num. ILL—-

Fig. 1. "How Not to Do It." Punch, punch.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Ireland-

Cartoons/G0000tcWkXyP4OHo/I0000tz5QYSn74_I. Accessed 9 April 2021.

TIIK I'KNIAS-PEST. mamtu. "0 in MAI 1UIU. WHAT AMI WI TO DO WITII TfllMl THC!l,'U.on*t HWU'- B. -..-1. _Til BOLinOX lot HT I i 11 AX» m "

Fig. 2. "The Fenian-Pest." Punch, punch.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Ireland-

Cartoons/G0000tcWkXyP4OHo/I0000j5zaTOzl8oA. Accessed 9 April 2021.

16 HE RIVALS.

Fig. 3. "The Rivals." Punch, punch.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Ireland-

Cartoons/G0000tcWkXyP4OHo/I0000ykvCiM0ulW4. Accessed 9 April 2021.

THE WOOING. MM I'UIM -AN' WHAT'S THE GOOD OF HIM SEX MX MB FLOW EH VDIN I 'VB TOLD BIH -DO' A Lit RAPT * " I I I. . NOW. COMB MY DKAR-WONT VOII JL'W TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT TOKM I J.1 .1 XOV BTAKT TUBKIKO LP YQVK PRinTY NOSH*-

Fig. 4. "The Wooing." Punch, punch.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Ireland-

Cartoons/G0000tcWkXyP4OHo/I00001_nisjyQj2o. Accessed 9 April 2021.

17 1.2 Ireland as the Female Other

Another form of the strategy to discredit Ireland was to combine two symbols, that of a woman

and of the Celtic Other, resulting in the narrative of the female Other. The Celts had long been

presented as a separate race from the English and ascribed all possible negative characteristics that were supposed to distinguish them from the honourable Englishmen: "On the side of beauty

and taste, vulgarity; on the side of morals and feeling, coarseness; on the side of mind and spirit,

unintelligence" (Arnold 4). This is how Matthew Arnold recounts the representation of the

"Celtic race" in his book On the Study of Celtic Literature, a volume from 1867 which

influenced many writers, including Yeats.

Ernest Renan also promotes this view in The Poetry of the Celtic Races, and Other

Essays (1890), a similarly important work in terms of Anglophone cultural heritage: "no race has

so delicately understood the charm of littleness, none has placed the simple creature, the

innocent, nearer God. The ease with which the new religion took possession of these peoples is

also remarkable" (45). Renan describes the Celts as easily influenceable people, which seems to

imply that they are easy to conquer. His analysis of Celtic literature also hints at the

otherworldliness of its creators: "This fantastical nature created expressly for another humanity,

this strange topography at once glowing with fiction and speaking of truth, make the poem of St.

Brandan .. . perhaps the completest expression of the Celtic ideal" (53). His use of the words

"another humanity" underlines the alleged absolute differentness of the Celtic people and their

supposedly alien nature. Furthermore, both Arnold and Renan recount a common notion of the

Celtic people as backward and that, as a consequence, Britain assigned itself with the chivalrous

task of bringing civilisation and progress to the Celtic lands (Arnold 8; Renan 59). All in all,

18 Celtic otherworldliness grew to be a deep-rooted narrative in the British imperial discourse which designated the Celts as lesser humans who needed the leading hand of Mother Britain.

On top of that, feminine attributes and characteristics stereotypically connected to women were frequently ascribed to the Celtic race. Renan mentions "the exquisite sensibility of the

Celtic races" and their domestic character (45). He even outwardly calls Celts "an essentially feminine race" (8). Likewise, Arnold claims that: "sentimental, if the Celtic nature is to be characterised by a single term, is the best term to take" and identifies Celts with "passionate, penetrating melancholy" (57). Emotionality and domesticity are concepts traditionally associated with the female gender. The poem "The Mother" by Padraic Pearse analysed in the previous subchapter provides one example of this narrative, in which the female personification of Ireland is a sad, grieving woman stuck in the domestic space of her hearth.

Further example can be found in the poem "An Old Woman of The Roads" (1907) by

Padraic Colum, a prominent figure of the Irish Literary Revival. Colum uses an image of an old woman who dreams of having her own house as a metaphor for the Irish people dreaming of owning their land:

O, to have a little house!

To own the hearth and stool and all!

The heaped up sods upon the fire,

The pile of turf against the wall! (lines 1-4)

The poem continues by the woman recounting how she misses running her own household:

I could be busy all the day

Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,

And fixing on their shelf again

19 My white and blue and speckled store! (9-12)

The theme of domesticity permeates this poem and Ireland is shown in the traditional role of the

woman as a housekeeper or a housewife, or at least yearning for the fulfilment of this role. In this

regard, Joseph Valente gives an apt explanation in his book The Myth of Manliness in Irish

National Culture, 1880-1922: "Irish unmanliness thus serves as alibi for the primal aggressor of

imperial manhood, showing it to be sanctified and beneficial by comparison" (15-16). Thus, Irish

people were left to take care of their households since that was what they were supposedly fit for,

while the Empire assumed the male role of taking care of the matters of the state.

The intersection of the Celtic and female Other is likewise visible in Cathleen Ni

Houlihan, which is also pointed out in Quirici's analysis: "The folk expressions used by Bridget

and Peter imply that the Old Woman is for them a supernatural figure. When Bridget asks, 'Is

she right, do you think? or is she a woman from the North?' she pits right-mindedness against

otherworldliness" (86). Quirici explicitly uses the word otherworldliness in connection to

Cathleen. The figure is both female and otherworldly and that is what makes her the ultimate

personification of Ireland.

To examine the depiction of Ireland as the female Other further, it is useful to recall

Staszak's terminology concerning the concept of Otherness. He says: "The second geographical

form of otherness does not oppose civilizations. Rather, it opposes civilized (meaning fully

human) humanity and humanity still out in nature (or almost animal). It is the Savage,

etymologically the Man of the Forest, opposed with man of cities and fields" (4). Importantly,

Staszak's definition works with the notion of humanity, namely the extent of it. This is precisely

what the imperial narrative was based on - the Celtic people were considered as not fully human,

or at least as lesser humans whose nature required the steady upper hand of the Empire. The

20 Celts came to be identified as the savage Other. However, in the case of Ireland, the Man of the

Forest turned into the Woman of the Forest. Indeed, many female figures appear in the forests of

Irish literature, for example in Yeats's book The Celtic Twilight (1893), a collection of stories

dedicated to the Irish folklore and myths, or in the Stories of Red Hanrahan. The aforementioned

madwoman from "The Death of Hanrahan", roaming the forest and shouting about her non•

existent youth, is one of such embodiments of the Celtic female savage.

Furthermore, characterising the Celts as female did not only serve to discredit them but

also their attempts at resistance. On this point, Declan Kiberd remarks: "Irishmen had been told

that when they protested their voices rose to an unflattering female screech: and so they were off

loading the vestigial femininity of the Celtic male onto icons like Cathleen ni Houlihan or

Mother Ireland" (183). The powerful negative connotations of femaleness were therefore used as

a tactic to humiliate and silence Irishmen calling for their rights.

A question might arise regarding why Irish authors embraced these stereotypical

depictions of the Celtic race, women, and Ireland as such in their writings. The answer is at least

partially outlined by Elizabeth Butler Cullingford:

Ireland's long history of oppression, rebellion, and failure, combined with the Arnoldian

imperialist rhetoric which insisted that failure was an essential part of the Irish character

('they went forth to battle but they always fell'), caused many Irish writers to invert the

model by insisting that defeat was in fact more desirable than success. (11)

Therefore, when fighting the hostile imperial narratives proved fruitless, the Irish chose to adopt

them and subsequently to subvert them. Cullingford sees this as the reason why so many

nationalist stories involve the female character getting better at the expense of the male death

(11). This interpretation seems to agree with Kiberd's view about Irish nationalist authors:

21 "Seeing themselves as martyrs for beauty, they aestheticized their sacrifice. Most of all, they followed the gospel which asserted 'the triumph of failure', the notion that whoever lost his life would save it" (201). The analysis from the previous subchapter proves how much this narrative of the triumph of failure permeates nationalist writings and the extent to which the Irish authors embraced and adapted this Celtic stereotype for their own use.

1.3 Ireland as a Promiscuous Seductress

The third image used to undermine Ireland was the personification of the country as a seductress who enchants young virtuous Irishmen to leave their honest lives for her. This woman has the power to bewitch men and play with their minds, which makes her seem untrustworthy and deceptive, a woman whom good men should avoid. The trope is connected with sexuality and promiscuousness - this version of Ireland lies with many men and is usually described as sexually attractive and forward. Such sexual themes have been present in Irish mythology for a long time, as Proinsias Mac Cana remarks when discussing the role of Irish female goddesses in mythology: "But while the goddess depended upon the advent of a worthy prince for the preservation or recovery of her beauty and youthful vigour, hers was the discretion to decide whom she would legitimize by mating with him in the hieros gamos or sacred marriage" (9).

An important mythological figure in this regard is Queen Maeve, who often serves as a personification of the goddess of sovereignty and makes multiple appearances in Irish nationalist writings. However, from a critical feminist point of view, the claim of Maeve's sovereignty could be contested. Cullingford further describes the myths surrounding Maeve as following:

"When unable to find her proper mate, the goddess becomes old, ugly, and crazed, but she is miraculously restored to youth and beauty when she persuades some intrepid male to make love

22 to her. His reward is kingship" (4). Thus, in the end, even the sovereign Queen Maeve's fate

depends on a male figure. Male presence is the key to her youth and beauty. However, in contrast

to the theme from the first subchapter, her transformation is not tied to the male hero's death, but

his going to bed with Maeve.

Many examples of this sexual narrative can be found in Yeats's collection of stories The

Celtic Twilight. In the chapter "Regina, Regina Pigmeorum, Veni", the narrator and his female

acquaintance stumble upon a fairy cave and they speak to the queen of the faeries. She is

described as a tall, glimmering figure of overwhelming beauty and she puts both characters into a trance: "I too had by this time fallen into a kind of trance, in which what we call the unreal had

begun to take upon itself a masterful reality, and was able to see the faint gleam of golden

ornaments, the shadowy blossom of dim hair" (Yeats, Twilight). Gendering in this case is

important: the ruler of the faeries who enchant, deceive, and lure people into the woods from

which they never come back is female. Her femaleness is underlined by the fact that the male

narrator can mostly communicate with her only through his female companion who must

interpret the queen's words to him and vice versa. Overall, the queen and her demeanour give the

impression of ruthlessness and untrustworthiness. This had implications for the image of the

whole gender and therefore Ireland as well.

In another story in The Celtic Twilight called "And Fair, Fierce Women", the narrator

collects accounts of the mythological Queen Maeve, this time spelled Maive, from Irish people

who claim to have seen her. These people associate her with "heroic beauty, that highest beauty"

and even "voluptuous beauty", hinting at her sexual allure. Her promiscuousness is further

highlighted by her appearance:

23 I asked the old woman if she had seen others like Queen Maive, and she said, "Some of

them have their hair down, but they look quite different, like the sleepy-looking ladies

one sees in the papers. Those with their hair up are like this one. The others have long

white dresses, but those with their hair up have short dresses, so that you can see their

legs right up to the calf.

Women like Queen Maive have their hair up, exposing the bare curves of their necks and furthermore, they wear short dresses exposing their bare legs which is quite a provocative picture for Yeats's time (1865-1939). These descriptions of Maive identify her as openly sexual. The symbolism of innocence of the white dress she wears is eliminated by how much of her body the dress does not cover. Maive is put into contrast with other Irish women with long dresses, dressing in a chaste manner, as women were supposed to be.

The end of the story represents the culmination of Maive's scandalous image:

And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who remembered an old

poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he was young, the young man said,

one who called herself Maive, and said she was a queen "among them," and asked him if

he would have money or pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her

love for a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful. The young

man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he made, but could only

remember that it was "very mournful," and that he called her "beauty of all beauties."

Maive openly offers herself sexually to a young man and gives in to his desires. She enchants him with her "beauty of all beauties" and after she mercilessly leaves him, he will never be the same again; she corrupts him forever and leaves him to mourn for the rest of his life. Indeed, an investigation into the etymology of the name Maive shows that one of its versions, Medhbh,

24 literally means "she who intoxicates" (Mac Cana 9). All these findings support Garry Kearns's

claim that "[t]he myths of the Iron Age Queen of Connacht, Maeve, represent her as sexually

adventurous and ruthless" (460). Her sexual forwardness, fickleness and corruption of young

male lives add multiple dimensions to her negative image.

The play Cathleen Ni Houlihan can serve as an example of this narrative as well.

Cathleen might not be the typical alluring seductress, but she still manages to enchant Michael in

such a way that he forgets about everything else and looks at his fiancee as if she was a stranger

(Yeats, Cathleen 52). His mother even comments that "he has the look of a man that has got the touch" (50), hinting at his enchanted looks. Moreover, the character of Cathleen stands in stark

contrast to Michael's fiancee Delia, who is the perfect Irish pure and chaste daughter. Cathleen

almost seems to steal Michael from her:

In sacrificing his body to rehabilitate Cathleen, Michael shatters his mother's hopes and

breaks his promise to his fiancee. Ultimately, masculine action, and female

submissiveness on the part of Bridget and Delia, enable Cathleen to walk with "the walk

of a queen." The blood sacrifice initiative of Cathleen ni Houlihan therefore bolsters

conventional norms of gender and ability even while obscuring sex itself. (Quirici 90)

In this way, it is not only the imperial patriarchy that undermines women in this story but women themselves are positioned against each other. Cathleen's transformation and independence are

not only reached at the expense of Michael's life but also at the expense of his mother's and

fiancee's happiness.

Delia and Michael are indeed the perfect Irish couple in the play. Michael mentions that the priest "said it was a very nice match, and that he was never better pleased to marry any two

in his parish than myself and Delia Cahel" (Yeats, Cathleen 35). Michael is a young honourable

25 man that brings pride to his family and Delia is the ideal future bride. But then the mysterious

Cathleen Ni Houlihan enters their lives and "the Old Woman arouses a nationalist madness that

corrupts otherwise sane young men" (Quirici 88). Cathleen corrupts Michael and basically acts

as a homewrecker in this story who brings chaos into proper Irish households. She manages that

all even in her desexualised state.

More investigation of the mythology surrounding Cathleen ni Houlihan shows a similar treatment of the figure across the years. Yeats's inspiration for the character can be traced back

to a poem from the beginning of the 18th century written by Aodhgan O'Rathaille (1675-1729)

called "Gile na Gile" which has been translated as "Brightness of Brightness" or "The

Glamoured". O'Rathaille is credited with one of the first aisling poems, vision or dream poems

in which Ireland appears as a woman. On the origin of the aisling, Seamus Heaney summarises:

Politically, the aisling kept alive the hope of a Stuart restoration which would renew the

fortunes of the native Irish. Symbolically, this was expressed in the ancient form of a

dream encounter in which the poet meets a beautiful woman in some lonely place. This

woman is at one and the same time an apparition of the spirit of Ireland and a muse figure

who entrances him completely. She inevitably displays signs of grief and tells a story of

how she is in thrall to some heretical foreign brute, but the poem usually ends with a

promise - which history will not fulfil - of liberation in the form of a Stuart prince

coming to her relief from beyond the seas. (O'Rathaille and Heaney 132)

As was briefly mentioned in the introduction, this nationalism in disguise of a love poem was

necessitated by the Penal Laws (1691) which were enacted especially against Irish Catholics

following the Glorious Revolution and the defeat of James II Stuart in the Battle of Boyne by

26 William of Orange's forces (1690). The Penal Laws marked the rise of Protestant power in

Ireland.

To return to the analysis, the translation of "Gile na Gile" by Seamus Heaney, who opted

for the title "The Glamoured", shows that the narrative of Ireland as a seductive woman has been

present at least since the 18th century:

My head got lighter and lighter but still I approached her,

Enthralled by her thraldom, helplessly held and bewildered,

Choking and calling Christ's name: then she fled in a shimmer

To Luachra Fort where only the glamoured can enter. (O'Rathaille and Heaney 131)

The poet is enchanted by the figure of this woman who is very fickle, almost like an illusion,

which adds to her untrustworthy image. The poet acts as the ever-present male hero, rushing

after the seductively beautiful woman to save her from villainous brutes and he tries to help her

seal her fate with another man on which her life depends, a Scottish prince:

I tried then as hard as I could to make her hear truth,

How wrong she was to be linked to that lazarous swine

When the pride of the pure Scottish stock, a prince of the blood,

Was ardent and eager to wed her and make her his bride. (131)

As Garry Kearns rightly remarks: "In many of these representations the female figure is

passive: violated, avenged or inseminated, she rarely acts on her own behalf (459). Ireland is

not in a position of agency in the poem and gets violated by a brute personifying the British

male. While being harassed by Britain, Ireland waits for the Scottish prince to end her suffering.

It is visible that the origins of the narrative of the seductress were still marked by Ireland's image

as a woman who needs the protection of a man.

27 All in all, this chapter firstly showed that the Irish were presented as an ultimately

incapable nation, as a damsel in distress in a dire need of the competent male upper hand of the

British Crown. Ireland's feminine weakness, passivity and domesticity rendered it unfit for the

privilege of political power. Secondly, the chapter showed how prejudice against the Celtic race

combined with feminising strategies designated Ireland as the female Other. The overemphasised

and often fabricated differences between the English and the Celtic people aimed to represent the

Irish as lesser humans, who were discredited even more by the ascription of feminine attributes.

This put them in an inferior position even further. Lastly, Ireland was depicted as a figure who

could not be trusted and who corrupted young innocent men through her seductive allure and

psychological manipulations. However, even the image of the sovereign and promiscuous Queen

Maeve did not escape the patriarchal framing of her fate as ultimately tied to male figures. All

these three strategies were part of the imperial discourse that kept a firm hand over its subjects

by supporting these unflattering images of the Irish people.

28 2. The Irish Response: Symbol of the Mother

The present chapter will analyse how Irish nationalists engaged with the derogatory stereotypes

of Ireland explored in the previous chapter and subverted them into nationalist symbols which

countered the imperial narratives. A significant outcome of this subversive practice was the

symbol of the Mother, which served as a contrast to the mythologised imperial maternity of

Queen Victoria. The unflattering image of Ireland as a Poor Old Woman therefore turned into a

powerful critical statement about the impact of the British rule of Ireland. The first subchapter

will be dedicated to the various manifestations of the symbol of the Mother in Irish nationalist

literature and the ways in which the symbol was used to criticise British rule while mobilising

Irish patriotic sentiment. The second subchapter will deal with a particular embodiment of this

symbol in Maud Gonne (1866-1953), a female Irish activist and nationalist who, as both a literal

and a symbolical woman, played a significant role in the Irish nationalist movement.

This chapter will demonstrate an alternative application of Meese's and Parker's

gendering of political subjects (viii). In the case of the symbolical Mother, the subject's position

was not assigned by an external actor - the English - but self-assigned by the subject itself.

Through self-assigning the female gender and therefore redefining what had been determined by

others, Ireland signified its reclamation of power. The subversive nature of this practice was

strengthened even more by the fact that Ireland adopted the very symbolism that was previously

used to discredit it and turned it into a powerful nationalist tool.

The second subchapter will explore Maud Gonne's role in the nationalist movement

through the framework of the dual role of a literal and a symbolical woman as introduced in

Andrea Bobotis's article "Rival Maternities: Maud Gonne, Queen Victoria, and the Reign of the

Political Mother". This framework will help to demonstrate how Gonne represented Ireland and

29 embodied the Mother symbolically through her appearances in nationalist literature and her own literary work, while being a woman and a mother herself. The chapter will support these interpretations with biographical accounts, Gonne's autobiography, articles, and fictional work.

Moreover, the literal and symbolical woman framework will help to understand the full extent of how Maud Gonne subverted the propagandist strategies of Queen Victoria who herself inhabited both the literal and the symbolical female space.

2.1 Mother Ireland versus the Imperial Maternity of Queen Victoria

One of the primary uses of the symbol of the Mother was to show the destitute state of Ireland as a direct consequence of the destructive British rule over the country. The symbol became a device for critique for the Irish nationalists and contradicted the images of Ireland propagandised by Britain. That means that Ireland was not unfit for self-government, it was instead paralysed by the colonial rule. Such a use of the symbol can be traced in Patrick Pearse's poem "Mise Eire"

(1912), which translates as "I am Ireland":

I am Ireland;

I am older than the Hag of Beare.

Great my glory;

I who bore the brave Cuchulain.

Great my shame; My own children who sold their mother. (284) 30 Pearse emphasises the former glory of his country and juxtaposes it with the current miserable state of Ireland brought upon it by its oppressor. This is an important shift in the narrative: the unfortunate state was no longer presented as inherent to the Irish race. Such a claim was part of the imperial narrative which served to justify and seemingly necessitated the British administration of Irish land. Nationalists, however, reversed the causal relationship - Ireland's miserable state was an outcome of the British rule, not vice versa. The sad image of Ireland was no longer a tool of Britain to reinforce its grip of the country - it became a rhetorical weapon for the Irish to undermine the legitimacy of their oppressor.

A different kind of critique can be found in Ethna Carbery's poem "The Passing of the

Gael" (1902). Carbery, known as an Irish journalist, nationalist, and writer, focuses on the Irish people who have been driven out of their country in search of a better life due to the destitution the British caused in Ireland. The trauma from the Great Irish Famine and the following mass emigration and population decline is palpable in the poem:

So some must wander to the East, and some must wander West;

Some seek the white wastes of the North, and some a Southern nest;

Yet never shall they sleep so sweet as on your mother breast.

The whip of hunger scourged them from the glens and quiet moors,

But there's a hunger of the heart that plenty never cures;

And they shall pine to walk again the rough road that is yours. (110)

Carbery underlines the irreplaceability of one's motherland, or "mother breast", in her own words. "The whip of hunger", symbolising the famine brought on by the British rule, is shown as a transient situation and contrasted with homesickness, which is unrelenting. Therefore, the

31 British rule represents a temporary state which can be overcome while the motherland stands for an everlasting foundation of the Irish nation. This contrast supports hope for a better future and loyalty to one's motherland.

The last stanza and final exclamation underline the Irish affliction: "They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them stay; / The fields are now the strangers' where the strangers' cattle stray. / Oh! Kathaleen Ni Houlihan, your way's a thorny way!" (Carbery 110).

Carbery mentions the stranger driving the Irish out of their own land, a frequent metaphor for the

British coloniser. It reinforces the idea of the separateness of these two nations, bolstering the contrast between the alienness of the British stranger and the domestic familiarity of Mother

Ireland. Indeed, the symbolical distance between Britain and Ireland grew even wider after the famine, which might have been directly caused by a potato blight, but was intensified mainly by political circumstances, especially Ireland's single-crop dependence, absentee ownership of the

Irish land by families with strong ties to Britain and the British government's economic policies.

Yeats likewise reflected the Irish frustrations in his poem "Easter, 1916" (1921), following the historic uprising. To illustrate the Irish tragedy, Yeats envelops it into an image of a mother murmuring names of her dead sons who perished in the fight for their country:

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

That is Heaven's part, our part

To murmur name upon name,

As a mother names her child

When sleep at last has come

32 On limbs that had run wild. (Yeats, "Easter")

Yeats expresses his uncertain views about the uprising and the sacrifices of Irish lives which seemed at the time to be to no avail. The image of a mourning mother serves as a powerful, touching image which magnifies the Irish tragedy and makes the conflict feel personal to the reader.

The second way the symbol of the Mother was used was to mobilise the national sentiment and will to fight. The mothers in Irish nationalist literature wake their children up from an apathetic slumber and ask them to fight. The female figure gained certain agency in this regard - she was still tied to the domestic space but acted as the primal catalyst in the mobilisation of the Irish. Such a reading can be applied to Cathleen Ni Houlihan. The previous chapter read the character of Cathleen as enchanting Michael into fighting for her and putting him in a trance. However, a different interpretation of the play offers itself - of Cathleen as the

Mother, or even a queen, who wakes Michael up from indifference towards his country and summons him to join her army when he only cares about his wedding. This reading agrees with the historical context of the play provided by P.J. Mathews:

It was largely to neutralise the mystique of the British monarch with an Irish equivalent,

that [Yeats] and Lady Gregory exhumed the old Gaelic sovereignty goddess, Cathleen Ni

Houlihan. This figure embodied the nation in the form of a woman (as Queen Victoria

did in Britain) who could inspire the loyalty of the people, and the bravery of young men.

When the ageing Victoria came to Dublin in 1900 her mission to recruit young Irishmen

to fight in the Boer War was widely commented upon. Cathleen Ni Houlihan was

performed on the Dublin stage shortly afterwards to remind Irishmen of their duty to

reclaim the sovereign nation.

33 As can be seen, the Irish response was based on mimicking British strategies, namely by

creating a maternal symbol to represent the country and strip Queen Victoria of that role, to

induce loyalty and to recruit Irishmen for its cause. Quirici also remarks: "She who had appeared

as a beggar is revealed as a queen, with her sovereignty signified not by dress or appearance but

by her walk" (81). Therefore, Cathleen's transformation can be interpreted as another strike back

at the derogatory British images, embodied among other things in the aforementioned

caricatures. Ireland was no longer the shy Hibernia crouching behind Britannia - now, Hibernia

walked her land with her head high. What is more, the play underlines that the Old Woman's

state is not inherent but caused by "[t]oo many strangers in the house" (Yeats, Cathleen 43). As

Quirici says: "[H]er fatigue is the result of dispossession and exile. Significantly, her disabilities

are presented as the result of nationally specific social and political circumstances" (81). In other

words, the play draws a clear connection between the British government and the pitiful state

Ireland found itself in. Once Mother Ireland gains her independence from the suffocating British

control, she is able to stand straight and surely on her own feet.

Similar themes can be found in Yeats's poem "The Old Age of Queen Maeve" (1903).

Here, he modifies the promiscuous Queen Maeve into a mother to match the current narrative.

He also emphasises her former glory, as Pearse does in "Mise Eire":

Though now in her old age, in her young age

She had been beautiful in that old way

That's all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,

And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all

But soft beauty and indolent desire.

She could have called over the rim of the world

34 Whatever woman's lover had hit her fancy,

And yet had been great bodied and great limbed,

Fashioned to be the mother of strong children; (Yeats, "Maeve" 51-52)

Again, Maeve's spoilt and worn-out beauty is attributed to colonisation. However, Yeats refocuses Maeve's figure from her attractive physical appearance and "emphasized instead her biological suitability for motherhood" (Cullingford 7). The body of Queen Maeve changes from an object and a scene of sexual desire into a body for bearing children - she acquires a new symbolical role. Her seductive beauty is a thing of the past, of another life, and now she is devoted fully to her maternal and royal duties. In Cathleen Ni Houlihan, Cathleen also emphasises: "With all the lovers that brought me their love, I never set out the bed for any"

(Yeats 47). Thus, the symbol of the Mother seems to go hand in hand with desexualising the female figure.

The desexualised female figure that connects these texts is not accidental. Joseph Valente claims this strategy was an intentional counter-practice against the British strategy to depict

Ireland as Britain's wife, instead of its equal ("Sovereignty" 196). Whether a wife or a younger sister as in the Punch caricatures, all these images put Ireland into an inferior position. The symbol of the desexualised Mother therefore preserved the female depiction of Ireland but at the same time freed her from her inferior status and depicted her in a space free of male presence and dependence on it, which in turn gave her more authority and sovereignty.

At the beginning of "The Old Age of Queen Maeve", Maeve still matches the traditional image of the Poor Old Woman: "Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall, being old" (Yeats 53).

But like Cathleen Ni Houlihan, Maeve undergoes an invigorating transformation. In this case, a

35 god asks her for help with his star-crossed love. Maeve grants his request, and this step seems to revive her:

But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot,

Came to the threshold of the painted house,

Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud,

Until the pillared dark began to stir. (Yeats, "Maeve" 55)

Not only does she acquire Cathleen's "walk of a queen" (Yeats, Cathleen 53), but she also wakes her grandchildren up and summons them into action. Likewise, Cathleen wanders the country, tells her stories to people willing to shelter her and summons young Irishmen to help her drive the stranger out. The mothers in these texts become recruiters, muses, and initiators of action whose old age and withered state is just a temporary illusion.

2.2 Maud Gonne: Both a Real and a Symbolical Woman

Any feminist-approached analysis of Irish nationalist literature would not be complete without mentioning Maud Gonne (1866-1953), the suffragette and nationalist who was in Yeats's mind when he was writing the character of Cathleen Ni Houlihan and who even got to play the character onstage. Maud Gonne's contribution to the Irish cause was singular in that she represented both a real and a symbolical woman (Bobotis 69). She was a real woman in her very existence and personal experience; her symbolical role arose thanks to her embodiment of symbols like Queen Maeve or Cathleen Ni Houlihan in nationalist writings and onstage, and maybe most importantly, through her symbolical opposition to Queen Victoria.

Maud Gonne's symbolical presence is especially palpable in works of Yeats, whose unrequited love for Gonne inspired many texts. However, he also played a hardly negligible part

36 in building up Gonne's real-life popularity, or rather a "cult" as Foster calls it: "He planted out articles in United Ireland, the Boston Pilot and elsewhere, describing Gonne's speaking-tours on behalf of the evicted Irish tenants, stressing her 'Irish nationality' and Celtic qualities of poetic insight, and describing aristocratic Parisian audiences reduced to tears" (A Life 93). In this way,

Yeats helped to build up the public image of the literal aspect of Maud Gonne's presence.

However, she frequently appeared in his poetry and fiction as well, which helped to magnify her symbolical presence. In these texts, Yeats often personifies her in some version of

Queen Maeve, the Mother or other nationalist symbols already embedded in the nation's consciousness. "The Old Age of Queen Maeve", analysed in the previous subchapter, provides one of multiple examples. The depiction of Gonne as a queen summoning her children to battle says a lot about the general perception of Gonne as an inspiring character and the success of her real-life public rallying speeches.

This symbolical story truly mirrors Gonne's real-life activities. Bobotis remarks that

Gonne worked on presenting women, particularly mothers, with an active role and a chance for political influence by supporting their children to acknowledge British misrule and to refuse to serve England (72). Gonne helped to repair the passive feminine image of Ireland propagandised by the Empire by giving women an active and crucial role in the Irish fight for freedom.

Furthermore, according to Cullingford: "[Yeats] also saw her symbolically as the mother of Irish political prisoners" (7). Gonne's concerns for the Irish prisoners are also expressed in her autobiography A Servant of the Queen (1938): "I could never look at an Englishman without seeing prison-bars" (Gonne Macbride 124). Thanks to her public activities, standing up for the wronged Irish people and taking care of them, so to say, Gonne became a symbolical, or rather a

37 surrogate mother for all kinds of oppressed Irish people: prisoners, evicted tenants, or women

harassed by English soldiers.

Gonne made a point of demonstrating the cruel English treatment of political prisoners

and used their own narratives as a critique of the establishment. In A Servant of the Queen, she

documents an instance when she had a chance to witness a prison environment herself: "It was

exactly like the cage of wild animals at the zoo, with iron bars in front giving onto a passage

about four feet wide" (Gonne Macbride 127). Gonne alludes to the British images of the Irish as

the savage Other and shows the ugly real-life impact of such attitudes. She manages to take

images from the symbolical realm and to problematise them by demonstrating their real-life

forms.

To return to Gonne's connection to the symbol of the Mother, it is worth noting that

Gonne herself even explicitly refers to the Irish as "my children" (2) in "The Famine Queen"

(1900), her article published in the United Irishman in the light of Queen Victoria's visit to

Ireland in 1900. All in all, Gonne's physical embodiment of the symbolical mother was

acknowledged and used as a rhetorical device by other Irish nationalists as well as Gonne herself.

However, Gonne's version of the symbolical Mother Ireland was a very particular product of

multiple, often personal factors. One of those personal motivations was the fact that Maud Gonne

was English born. Bobotis claims: "Seeking to severe her ties dramatically with England in order

to lay claim publicly to legitimate Irishness, Gonne conceptualised her revision of Mother

Ireland in relation and in opposition to Queen Victoria's own embodiment of maternal

sovereignty" (65). So, since Gonne needed to make a symbolical break with her English heritage,

she positioned herself against the ultimate embodiment of the English nation - the Queen.

38 In "The Famine Queen", Gonne does not hesitate to vilify Victoria and underlines her evil nature by singling out her femaleness:

for after all she is a woman, and however vile and selfish and pitiless her soul may be,

she must sometimes tremble as death approaches when she thinks of the countless Irish

mothers who, sheltering under the cloudy Irish sky, watching their starving little ones,

have cursed her before they died. (1)

Bobotis reads this statement as Gonne assigning a double role to Victoria as well - the role of the symbolical female monarch and a literal woman (73). Such an interpretation suggests that

Victoria, as a woman and a mother herself, failed fellow women and mothers while in a position of power, just as she failed as a monarch whose rule drained the Irish land. Not supporting her sisters in gender made her crimes all the more fatal. As Bobotis says: "In this way, Gonne judges

Victoria against these Irish mothers to emphasize their moral superiority and to demonstrate the

Queen's failure as 'mother monarch'" (74). The British have constructed themselves as superior in many aspects, but Gonne brings the argument of Mother Ireland's moral superiority into play, presenting the Irish as spiritually unrivalled.

Victoria's criminal nature is alluded to multiple times in "The Famine Queen": "Who will aid the pirates to keep their spoils? In their terror they turn to Victoria, their Queen" (Gonne

1-2). Victoria is presented as the mother of pirates, thugs, and criminals as opposed to Irish women mothering starving children. Such a contrastive practice suggests opposition of the good

Mother and the evil Mother, embodied respectively in Mother Ireland and Queen Victoria. This attack on Victoria's capacity for motherhood, which used to be seen as the most important role of women in the examined time period, magnifies the critique - Victoria fails at the ultimate female task. This suggested a question of whether Victoria could be a good ruler if she failed

39 even at her fundamental role. Thus, Gonne undermined Victoria's legitimacy in both her real and

symbolical roles and subverted the well-known question of Ireland's capacity for independence:

rather than Ireland being unfit for freedom, Victoria was unfit for ruling.

In fact, there is even more emphasis on Victoria's failure as a woman in "The Famine

Queen". Gonne invokes the virtue of female solidarity, or more specifically, the lack of it in

Victoria's case:

Every eviction during sixty-three years has been carried out in Victoria's name, and if

there is a Justice in Heaven the shame of those poor Irish emigrant girls whose very

innocence renders them an easy prey and who have been overcome in the terrible struggle

for existence on a foreign shore, will fall on this woman, whose bourgeoise virtue is so

boasted and in whose name their homes were destroyed. (1)

Firstly, Victoria failed the Irish girls as a fellow woman and reinforced the oppression of her own

gender - she failed as a literal woman. Secondly, she failed Irish girls as the mother monarch

whose subjects were her symbolical children. She failed to provide them with a safe space, a

home, and care - she failed as a symbolical woman as well. This appeal is further strengthened

by invoking the especially strong bond between mothers and daughters which Victoria allowed

to be severed. The image of a homewrecker was now transferred from the Irish women to the

British queen herself - she broke up families, evicted them and left young Irish girls and their

innocence defenceless, taking away their chance for a content future family life.

In fact, Gonne herself wrote a nationalist play called Dawn (1904), not dissimilar to

Cathleen Ni Houlihan, although more realistic in tone. Through the story of two women, a

mother and daughter which herself has a son, the play straightforwardly illustrates the suffering

of the Irish - starvation, evictions, and deaths. Joseph Valente asserts that the play employs a

40 strategy which he calls "the double woman" ("Sovereignty" 198). This strategy is Valente's rendition of the dual role of a symbolic and a literal woman and differs from Bobotis's approach in that the dual role is actually divided between two women. In Dawn, the older, unyielding woman, named Bride, is the symbol of the nation, while her daughter Brideen, likewise unyielding but slowly being overcome by death, is the literal woman (Valente, "Sovereignty"

198).

Bride represents the resilience of the Irish nation and the hope it maintains: "Bride wouldn't have gone; she never goes far from her land; each day she wanders round the fields that was hers - it's that which angers the Stranger against her" (Gonne, Dawn 1). She is a well- respected person in her community and inspires the people around her to mimic her resilience, including her daughter: "Mother will not go, and I will never leave her" (2). Brideen refuses to leave her mother even though it would bring her a better life or at least survival. However, this play proves that Gonne also participated in the desexualisation of the female characters. The regal figure of Bride does not transform into a young, beautiful girl - all focus is on her maternal role without mentions of any sexual or even romantic relations.

Brideen, on the other hand, embodies the Irish victims of the British regime: her son moves away to America after years of starvation and Brideen herself dies at the end of the play.

However, her death does not come in vain and inspires the men in the community to take action:

SEUMAS. [Rising] Mother, forgive me for Brideen's sake. Let me, too, die for you. Dead

Brideen shows me what I have to do. I have vengeance to take on the Stranger, for her,

for Patrick, for my father, and I have vengeance, Mother, to take for all that you have

suffered. (Gonne, Dawn 6)

41 Both the literal and the symbolical women in this play succeed in inspiring nationalist sentiment

and action in their own ways. Gonne shows the readers that even if these two roles are not

embodied in the same person, this strategy brings the biggest success when the literal and the

symbolical women work together. It should be noted that such ideas in fact predate Maud Gonne.

Karen Steele ascribes the female-focused nationalist themes proliferated by Gonne to her "belief

in the old prophecy that Ireland will be saved by a woman" (97). Gonne alludes to the prophecy

in multiple texts, including Dawn: "Brian Ruadh's prophecy is true enough, it is what he said that roads would be made with meal in the famine year" (1). This shows that the symbol of a

female national saviour was already established and embedded in the nation's consciousness

before Gonne revived it.

As was already said, Dawn bears certain resemblance to Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Valente

notes that the framework of the double woman can also be traced in Yeats's and Gregory's play

- particularly to Cathleen and Delia who metaphorically compete for Michael's loyalty, and

Cathleen and Bridget, Michael's mother ("Sovereignty" 199). Cathleen and Bridget represent the

symbolical and the literal mother, respectively. However, the indirect conflict between Cathleen

and Delia draws much more attention. As noted in the previous chapter, the relationship between

Cathleen and Delia is presented as a negative sum game. Only one can claim Michael's loyalty

and he ultimately forgets his fiancee in favour of fighting for Cathleen. Such positioning of

women against each other instead of them working together to overcome their common

oppressor is a frequent patriarchal practice.

We can see a progressive departure from this model in Dawn. The double woman

embodied in Bride and Brideen does not induce a conflict or a competition but a mutually

cooperative relationship. They support each other in their fight against the Stranger and the male

42 community's loyalty belongs to both women. In this way, Gonne presents the readers with a

much better representation of the female gender and once again emphasises the importance of

female solidarity which in turn serves as a point of criticism about Victoria. Gonne uses the

double woman strategy to demonstrate the moral superiority of Irish women. She shows what

can happen when women forget their differences and unite against a common enemy.

Dawn also reflects many ideas from "The Famine Queen", especially through the

character of Brideen, who serves as a double example. Firstly, she represents the Irish mothers

helplessly watching their children starve: "What could he do by staying here, only starve and see them starve" (Gonne, Dawn 2). Hence, Gonne draws a concrete and realistic example of "the

victims of the criminal policy of her reign, the survivors of sixty years of organised famine"

(Gonne, "Famine" 1). Brideen's son then represents the Irish emigrants and their difficult lives.

Moreover, Brideen's tragic death and her own status as a daughter reminds the reader of the

"poor Irish emigrant girls" ("Famine" 1). This is another jab at Victoria's failure as a mother to

feed her Irish children and also a critique of her as a woman who let fellow women die on her

watch.

But Maud Gonne was an inspirational and agentive figure even without her symbolical

presence in the Irish nationalist ethos. Her wide range of nationalist activities serves as proof: she

became a compelling public speaker, collaborated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and

spoke out against the Queen's visit to Ireland in 1900 and against the Boer War to which

Victoria was trying to recruit the Irish. Foster, in his book Vivid Faces, adds: "Above all, her

energies were thrown into the nationalist women's organization Inghinidhe na hEireann and its

attendant theatrical enterprises" (59). This can be regarded as a particular achievement since, as

Gonne used to point out, women were not welcome in the Irish nationalist organisations even if

43 they wanted to assume a more active role: "But you don't want women's work. None of the

parties in Ireland want women; the National League, the Fenians, the Celtic Literary Society, the

Contemporary Club, have all refused me membership because they accept no women members,

so I have to work all by my lone, till I can form a women's organisation" (Gonne MacBride

119). Such a rejection of female nationalists comes across as puzzling since it was precisely the

symbolical woman the Irish nationalists centred around.

Gonne's strategies particularly resided in mimicking those of Queen Victoria and

creating competitive symbols for the imperial ones. More specifically, she created her own

image as "nurturer and caretaker of Ireland", in Bobotis's words (79). One such instance was the

"mythologized 'Patriotic Children's Treat', which Gonne masterminded as a counter-

demonstration to the royal visit in 1900" (Foster, Vivid Faces 72). This event was a response to a

1900 gathering in Phoenix Park in Dublin during Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland, where sweets

were given out to Irish children. Bobotis remarks how this event shows that Victoria equally

relied on public displays of her maternal nature (77). Gonne responded by organising the

Patriotic Children's Treat where Gonne and a group of women organised in the Patriotic

Children Treat Committee fed the children who did not attend the Queen's gathering. In this

way, Gonne clearly presented herself as Mother Ireland in opposition to the mother monarch and

re-asserted the moral superiority argument. It adds to the examples of Gonne applying symbols

to real life in a literal way, which in turn reinforces the symbols with their materialisation and

real-life referents. That might be what Foster means by referring to Gonne as a mastermind

(Vivid Faces 72) - she launched a double attack on the imperial narratives.

The first part of this chapter showed how Irish nationalists managed to reverse the

imperial narratives painting Ireland in a negative light. Ireland was no longer presented as unfit

44 for self-government - it was just rendered weak by the British rule. It was only a temporary state, not an inherent characteristic of the nation. The Irish demonstrated this new image by appropriating the symbolism that was used for their negative representation, creating a subversion of the Poor Old Woman as the symbol of the Mother. The new symbol had two primary functions - one to offer a striking critique of the British rule in Ireland and its impacts, the second to inspire and mobilise the Irish in the name of their motherland.

The second subchapter dedicated to the activist Maud Gonne explored her role in the nationalist movement through the framework of the dual role of a literal and a symbolical woman. Gonne's figure turned out to be surrounded by a lot of duality - both her real and symbolical presence, the strategy of the double woman traceable in her own literary work, her double critique of Queen Victoria as both a woman and the mother monarch, and even the oppositional pairing of Maud and Victoria as such. At the same, she was able to unite all this duality by transgressing the symbolical realm and the real world, pairing symbols with real-life referents. Moreover, Gonne succeeded in subverting the imperialist passive image of Irish women by writing agentive characters and being one herself - a female activist, owning her narrative, and providing the female Irish nationalist with a platform for organisation.

45 3. Irish Womanhood: The Basis of a New National Identity

The time period leading to the Easter Rising of 1916 and the following pivotal points in Ireland's

struggle for independence required not only unification on the battlefront, but also on the

identitary and cultural level. And so, after centuries of depicting Ireland as a woman, it might not

come as a surprise that Irish womanhood became the basis of a new Irish national identity. The

present chapter will examine the formation of this identity and its traces in Irish nationalist

literature. The first subchapter aims to pinpoint its main characteristics which derive mainly from

the contrast of the virtue of Irish women and the brutish British coloniser. The influence of

Mariolatry and the values of the Catholic church in this process will be addressed and traced

mainly in Yeats's work and James Clarence Mangan's poetry.

The second subchapter will delve into the inevitable socio-cultural consequences of

Ireland's politicisation of the female gender. It will address the Irish tendencies to dwell on

hypermasculinity and hyperfeminity in order to uphold the image of their new identity which

resulted in adopting the practice of othering, previously used to discriminate against Ireland as a

whole. But this time, the othering concerned women as potential enemies of the emerging state

and its values once their behaviour did not conform to the ideal image of Irish womanhood. In

this relation, the chapter also aims to discuss the prosecution and institutionalisation of these

"deviant" women as the darker side of the history of the Irish fight for independence. It will also

elaborate on the process of desexualising the female figure introduced in the previous chapter

and the use of women as tools of a new patriarchal society which saw women as sites of

production of children and keepers of the national cultural heritage. Finally, tying back to the

first chapter of the thesis, the present one will analyse the recurring tendency of nationalist

46 literature to downplay the trope of the seductive enchantress in favour of putting women in a

domestic and passive position, this time in order to emphasise the masculinity of Irish men.

3.1 The Virtuous Irish Woman and the Corrupt Coloniser

The goal of creating a new Irish identity was to clearly and irretrievably distinguish Ireland from

the British coloniser. Womanhood, already a symbol deeply embedded in the Irish national

psyche, as proven in the previous chapters, became not only a suitable stepping-stone, but also

the actual basis for the new national identity. The argument on which the distinction between the

two countries was formed was a moral one - chastity, purity, and the virtuous nature of Irish

girls and women was supposed to distinguish Ireland from the brutish, violent, and morally

corrupt British administration.

This depiction of Irish women was heavily influenced by the powerful Irish Catholic

church and at the time prevalent cult of the Virgin Mary, also termed Mariolatry. Karen Steele

explains the religious situation in late 19th-century Ireland as follows: "Post famine Irish culture

was infused with a devotional revolution: the number of priests and nuns went up dramatically,

and there was a marked increase in shrines dedicated to Mary" (100). On top of that, the

religious imagery was just another way of insisting on binary distinctions between Ireland and

Britain. It was an open attempt to oppose Catholic and Protestant: "Mariolatry in Ireland must be

understood as the deliberate identification of a conquered people with a cult which was anathema

to their Protestant oppressors" (Cullingford 2). Therefore, purity and chastity of Irish women was

venerated not only for religious reasons anymore - it became a political tool and helped to assert

Ireland's moral superiority over Britain.

47 Naturally, the depictions of Ireland as female in nationalist literature started to reflect these values as well. It was apparent as early as in the work of James Clarence Mangan (1803-

1849), an Irish patriotic poet who later served as a source of inspiration for writers like W.B.

Yeats (Merritt 646) or James Joyce. Mangan's poem "Dark Rosaleen" (1846), which employs another symbolical female representation of Ireland along the likes of Cathleen Ni Houlihan or the Hag of Beara, gives a good idea of the set of values associated with women in the examined time period:

Over dews, over sands,

Will I fly for your weal:

Your holy, delicate white hands

Shall girdle me with steel.

At home in your emerald bowers,

From morning's dawn till e'en,

You'll pray for me, my flower of flowers,

My dark Rosaleen!

My fond Rosaleen!

You'll think of me through daylight's hours,

My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,

My Dark Rosaleen!1 (lines 49-60)

There is an apparent emphasis on delicateness and grace, on beauty inside and out. A proper woman was supposed to be God-honouring, devoted to praying, and importantly, a pure untouched "virgin flower", which is emphasised by employing the symbolism of the colour

1 The original indentation has been preserved in all the cited poems.

48 white. Last but not least, Rosaleen helps the man dress into steel for battle, embracing her role of

a muse and an ideal Catholic woman worth fighting for. She supports the Irish fight for freedom,

but only from the periphery of the battlefield - she leaves agency up to men and rather provides

moral and spiritual support.

Yeats also employs these themes in his work, as can be seen in the story "The Queen and the Fool" in The Celtic Twilight. Interestingly, he identifies women as queens in this story: "It is

natural, too, that there should be a queen to every household of them, and that one should hear

little of their kings, for women come more easily than men to that wisdom which ancient

peoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom". Here, Yeats shows quite a

respectful approach to women. He emphasises their role as bearers and keepers: not only as

bearers of children, but also keepers of wisdom and of the burden of ruling the symbolical

kingdoms which are their households. Yeats even suggests the superiority of the domestic queen

to the king in some respects ("and that one should hear little of their kings"), underlining the

essentiality of women for the nation and preservation of its values. However, he also draws clear

lines between the female and the male space: the woman might be a queen, but only of the very

limited territory of her household; the outside world is an arena for male affairs. Women and

their importance were tied to the domestic space while men were free to roam the imaginative

space and cross the lines of the domestic and the external.

Furthermore, Yeats also addresses Mariolatry and Christian subjects in this story,

revoking the popular nationalist theme of martyrdom and further playing the morality card:

And I know of another woman, also not a peasant woman, who would pass in sleep into

countries of an unearthly beauty, and who never cared for anything but to be busy about

her house and her children; and presently an herb doctor cured her, as he called it.

49 Wisdom and beauty and power may sometimes, as I think, come to those who die every

day they live, though their dying may not be like the dying Shakespeare spoke of.

Women, according to Yeats, should be of ascetic nature and make sacrifices every day. The theme of martyrdom seems to apply not only to the Irish patriots executed for rebellions. Since women had entered the symbolical battlefield of cultural and national identitary struggles, they became soldiers of their own and with it came their share of heroic glory. All in all, Irish women were defined by their devotion to others - their children, husbands, households. This motif of selflessness represents another trace of Mariolatry in Irish nationalist work.

The new role of women as symbolical soldiers can also be found outside Yeats's stories.

Going back to James Clarence Mangan, it is worth looking at his poem "Kathleen-Ni-Houlahan"

(1833), which actually served as an inspiration for Yeats's take on this symbolical figure.

Although Mangan still emphasises traits like youth and beauty in his verses, he paints a curiously powerful image of Kathleen:

Sweet and mild would look her face, O none so sweet and mild,

Could she crush her foes by whom her beauty is reviled;

Woollen plaids would grace herself and robes of silk her child,

If the King's son were living here with Kathleen-Ni-Houlahan!

Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of Thrones

Vassal to a Saxoneen of cold and sapless bones!

Bitter anguish wrings our souls - with heavy sighs and groans

We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathleen-Ni-Houlahan! (lines 9-16)

50 Mangan suggests that there is more to Kathleen than her "sweet and mild" appearance. Not only

does she abound with the capability to overcome her enemies on her own, but she is also called

"the Arbitress of Thrones". Mangan's Kathleen has an air of authority and sovereignty around

her and under the surface, which is not unlike to the Virgin Mary, she hides a personality more

alike to Queen Maeve. Mangan manages to combine traditional religious imagery with Irish

mythology that gives the female figure far more agency. This is not the most usual representation

of the new version of the female national symbol; however, its influence can be traced in Yeats's

writings, among others, which proves Mangan's approach still managed to make an impact on

nationalist authors. It seems that even though there was a palpable return to the passive and

domestic version of the female figure in nationalist literature, the more powerful mythological

figures of Queen Maeve and other goddesses retained their presence in the nationalist ethos.

However, it must be said that Yeats gave in much more to tradition and conservativism.

In the story titled "Hanrahan and Cathleen the Daughter of Hoolihan", a part of Stories of Red

Hanrahan, the main character composes a poem dedicated to Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan

who is truly an epitome of the holy image of the Virgin Mary:

But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes

Of Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.

But we have all bent low and low and kissed the quiet feet

Of Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.

But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood

Is Cathleen the daughter of Hoolihan.

The symbolism of purity and the Holy Rood is fairly straightforward, and veneration of the

divine woman is obvious from the way the narrator kneels and kisses her feet. What is more

51 important is the quietness of the female figure. To go back to Karen Steele's research, she

remarks that "Mary's presence was explicitly defined by her silence" (101). This trait is deeply

interwoven in Irish writings celebrating Irish womanhood. Whether in Yeats or Mangan, the

former of Protestant and the latter of Catholic background, the female figure is mostly described

by the male author and seldom given a voice of her own. Her silence becomes a steady presence

as a tribute to the Virgin Mary. But as can be seen, this depiction only led back to the passive and

domestic images of femininity which were used against Ireland by the British in the first place.

In this particular story, Yeats also utilises contrasts to underline Cathleen's purity. As

Cullingford says: "Employing the stereotypical idea that all women are either virgins or whores,

Hanrahan chooses the disreputable house of Mary Gillis and Margaret Rooney in which to evoke the purity of Kathleen" (10). While Cullingford puts it more boldly, Yeats carefully hints at the

questionable past of the women the poet Hanrahan decides to stay with for a while:

He chanced one day to overtake on the road to Collooney one Margaret Rooney, a

woman he used to know in Munster when he was a young man. She had no good name at

that time, and it was the priest routed her out of the place at last. .. She had been

wandering about, she said, selling herrings and the like, and now she was going back to

Sligo, to the place in the Burrough where she was living with another woman, Mary

Gillis, who had much the same story as herself. (Hanrahan)

These women's mysterious but clearly not representative past serves as a contrastive tool which

positions the literal women against the ideal example of the symbolical Cathleen. Mary,

Margaret, and their beggar life were a deterring and didactic example for Irish women of what

would become of them if they did not live up to Cathleen's example. The unspoken model of the

Virgin Mary against which all of these characters are judged is also revoked by the choice of

52 naming one of the prostitutes Mary, a character who could not be more different from the holy

idol.

Yeats also offers a critique of the lack of faith he perceives among Irish people and

emphasises the need to follow Mary's holy example. In a story from The Celtic Twilight, titled

"Our Lady of the Hills", he centres the narrative around "a young Protestant girl, who was both

pretty herself and prettily dressed in blue and white". This girl wearing the Virgin's colours

wanders the mountains around her village and often stumbles upon people, both children and

adults, who do not believe her to be "the Virgin out o' the picture". They shy away from her and

show distaste towards Christ: "Finding explanation of no avail, she asked had they ever heard of

Christ? 'Yes,' said one; 'but we do not like Him, for He would kill us if it were not for the

Virgin.'". Moreover, Yeats also hints at the moral corruption still persistent in Irish society and

at its the lack of upholding Christian values. The Protestant girl encounters a child who cries:

'"Dad's a divil, mum's a divil, and I'm a divil, and you are only an ordinary lady,' and having

flung a handful of mud and pebbles ran away sobbing". Yeats shows how sometimes entire Irish

families were still in need of guidance in the religious aspect of their lives.

Yeats then proceeds to preach about the necessity of following the examples of Christian

idols. After those unfortunate encounters with unbelievers, the girl, overcome with sadness,

continues her lonely wandering and the narrator lectures the reader: "It is indeed fitting that man

pray to her who is the mother of peace, the mother of dreams, and the mother of purity, to leave

them yet a little hour to do good and evil in, and to watch old Time telling the rosary of the

stars". This final sentence of the story aptly illustrates the essence of the cult of the Virgin Mary

that predominated in Ireland at the time.

53 However, it is worth noting that women were not completely sentenced to be nothing but passive symbols in the turn-of-the-century Irish society and a door of opportunity opened for them with the onset of the cultural revival in Ireland. Frank A. Biletz draws attention to how developments on the Irish cultural scene benefited Irish women:

By diminishing the importance of achieving mere political independence and making

cultural de-Anglicization the primary focus of their efforts, the Irish-Ireland movement

tacitly acknowledged that Irish women, even if limited to their traditional roles as

homemakers and teachers, had a crucial contribution to make in building the Irish nation.

(59)

As was mentioned in the previous chapter, Irish nationalist organisations used to exclude women from their membership and activities, including public figures like Maud Gonne, and women were believed to be more useful as national symbols rather than as actual people, which led

Gonne to found her own organisation. But the cultural revival allowed the domestic space, to where women were practically exiled, to give women at least some role in the Irish political struggle: "All of the priorities of the Irish-Ireland ideology - including the revival of the Irish language, the education of Irish children in the national history and literature, and the use of

Irish-made products to strengthen the national economy - largely pertained to the domestic sphere, where women were recognized as pre-dominant" (Biletz 59). Yeats's domestic queens, even though their territory was limited to a household, proved to be not only carriers of children, but also of wisdom once again - in the sense of cultural wisdom and heritage embodied in the rural cottage and in the education of children about their own culture which was fighting off suffocation by the British Empire. Just like bringing up and educating children, women brought up the nation - the symbolical child of Mother Ireland.

54 3.2 Hypermasculinity versus Hyperfemininity

Naturally, the nationalist focus laid on the representative role of women created considerable pressure on the female populace and produced mainly negative socio-cultural implications for them. Women who did not conform to the pure and virtuous ideal of Irish womanhood were practically deemed enemies of the state which resulted in their oppression and even containment in specialised institutions. Moreover, the gendering of Irish nationalist politics produced high expectations both ways and both genders were forced into hyperbolical, unrealistic, and idealist versions of themselves. This subchapter will address the problematic nature of gendered nationalism.

Firstly, great emphasis was put on the perceived binary nature of gender, which was represented in its extremes. Hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity became the main tools in the endeavour of constructing a new national identity. These hypergendering processes stemmed from the national memory, or rather trauma of Ireland always being treated like the woman in the relationship with England. Valente comments on this:

The sexual inflection of socio-economic dominance was unusually explicit in the case of

Ireland. First of all, its hybrid status as a metropolitan colony left Ireland especially

susceptible of familial metaphors. Long nicknamed the Sister Isle, Ireland was

increasingly imaged in wifely terms as the century wore on, the implied connubial

connection with England serving to naturalize that long-standing bone of contention, the

Union. ("Sovereignty" 189-190)

In the end, this centuries long trauma motivated Ireland to prove its manliness, which would simultaneously signal its capability of self-government. It was to be achieved by hypermasculation, in other words exaggeration of masculine stereotypes. Necessarily, this

55 strategy proved to be the most effective when accompanied by the parallel process of

hyperfeminising the female populace.

Therefore, the damsel in distress and the delicate female figure from the aisling poems

proved to be more than suitable for the narrative that characterised the attempts to prove

Ireland's re-established manliness. Expressions of male heroic action and sacrifice in order to

save their women, children, and country were supposed to prove that Ireland was not the wife of

Britannia after all but was perfectly qualified to be a husband. Valente mentions the activities of

the Irish Republican Brotherhood as an example of the more extreme side of such Irish

endeavours ("Sovereignty" 192). The organisation behind the Easter Rising and its

"masculinized predilection for violent action" (Valente, "Sovereignty" 192) exemplified the

internalised trauma stemming from the long gendered political discrimination from the British

side and the ensuing extreme attempts to prove manliness characterised by often unnecessary

aggression and violence which sometimes took their toll on civilian lives. Declan Kiberd also

notices these extremities which accompanied the crucial years leading to Irish independence:

"They were hardening themselves into hypermasculinity, in preparation for an uprising, rather

than adopting the more complex strategy of celebrating their own androgyny" (184). The issue of

national, and above all, masculine pride was at stake and establishing a clear line between Irish

women and men was a crucial issue.

The choice of a female-based national identity thus served as a contrastive tool - to

underline the manliness of Irishmen with the images of their perfect wives and daughters, pure

and innocent. Against the white dress of the Irish maiden, the contrast of the male Irish soldier

stained with dirt and blood from the fight for independence was all the more apparent. Going

back to the tropes examined in the first chapter, it can be concluded that the trope of the domestic

56 and passive woman was employed again, but this time not to represent the whole nation but only

a half, to underline the oppositeness of the male half. From the British othering the whole Irish

nation as feminine, the strategy was adopted by the Irish themselves who chose to other their

own women to make a point. To further that aim, another trope needed to be downplayed, if not

eliminated - the trope of the seductress and enchantress. While beauty was still a valued female

asset, it was beauty in the delicate, innocent sense, but not in terms of sexual attraction. On the

contrary, expressions of female sexuality became demonised.

This resulted in the practice of a careful desexualisation of symbolical female figures, as

was demonstrated with the examples of "The Old Age of Queen Maeve" and Cathleen Ni

Houlihan in the last chapter. However, the negative aspect of this practice, namely its impact on

real women needs to be considered as well. Katharina Walter draws attention to the fact that, due

to the weaponisation of the symbol of the Mother, maternity became politicised as a source of

manpower for the fight for freedom (318). Mothers became sites of production and children

became weapons - the product. This symbolism reinforced gender roles and reduced the role of

women to motherhood and the literal production of children. Walter remarks: "Together, these

figures present generic and simplified images of women, who can be oversexed or desexualised,

and whose motherhood, where applicable, is depersonalised and politicised" (314).

Desexualisation became a common practice which tasked mothers with producing defenders of

the nation while censoring the sexual aspect of this process, presenting women as beings without

desires and creating profound societal constrictions.

Of course, mothers were not the only part of the Irish female population influenced by

these cultural politics. On the contrary, young single women with sexual desires almost became the ultimate enemies of the state. Sabina Sharkey explains in her article "Gendering Inequalities:

57 the Case of Irish Women" how in gendered politics, a sexual woman, or simply a woman with

any kind of agency, is perceived as a threat to the male superior. This dynamic worked in the

colonial relationship of Britain and Ireland (8) which led to the trope of female depictions of

Ireland as a seductive, deceptive enchantresses. These downgrading depictions echoed the

colonial fear of the disruption of the status quo. Sharkey elaborates: "The analogous threat to

land was a consideration here, but more so, the threat to the colonizer's regimen of identity. For

women might negate the difference between colonial and local, equating both as possible sexual

partners. Through indifferent acts of gendering, they could de-gender the colonial male" (8).

In other words, women were perceived as a potential source of subversion and this

realisation led to their persecution. However, it did not only apply to the colonial relationship of

Britain and Ireland anymore. It became an internal issue of Ireland. Since its new identity was

built on the image of an ideal Catholic woman, what ensued was the demonisation of sexual

women (Sharkey 11). This dynamic could also be seen through the prism of power relations -

non-conforming Irish women would undermine the carefully rebuilt Irish authority. Irishmen

could not appear particularly masculine if women were not following their rules. Because if their

women were out of control, they could not possibly give the impression of the capability of

controlling an entire country and thus, they would not be able to prove that the upper hand of the

British Empire was not needed anymore.

Needless to say, the perceived jeopardy of the new fragile national identity built on a

renewed patriarchy led to restriction and de facto persecution of non-conforming women. One of the more covert practices included what Clara Fischer terms "the politics of shame":

Insofar as Ireland's national identity was premised on moral purity and virtue, women

and girls who constituted threats to this identity were constructed as bringing shame onto

58 themselves, their families, and their nation, and were therefore deemed to be deserving of

punishment and confinement. (827)

So, while Ireland was working on building a modern independent state, more often than not, it built on highly conservative foundations which discriminated and put unequal pressure on different parts of its population.

When Fischer talks of confinement and punishment, she does not only mean ostracisation from polite society. The restrictive system aimed at women became institutionalised and embodied the ugly side of the Irish struggle for political sovereignty. Fischer explains: "For each of these sets of institutions, then - industrial and reformatory schools, Magdalen asylums, and mother and baby homes - there is evidence of harsh, if not extremely abusive, treatment of those kept in religious congregations' 'care' and of state denial or indifference to same" (827). All in all, the Irish case of Magdalen laundries illustrates the harsh consequences of politicising genders and bodies and treating women as carriers and producers of cultural and national identity and not as actual people.

All these cultural developments naturally left their traces in literature and can be demonstrated through the example of the genesis of the symbol of Cathleen Ni Houlihan, especially in Yeats's rendition. According to Henry Merritt, Yeats's Cathleen from his and Lady

Gregory's play is actually a combination of two older female symbols and the play's specific constellation was heavily influenced by suggestions from Gregory herself (644), as well as the cultural demand of different time periods. One of the influences on Yeats was the poetry of

James Clarence Mangan (Merritt 646) who, as noted earlier in this chapter, depicted the national ideal of a beautiful, almost holy woman in his work. Yeats's older poetry shows that at least for a time, he also opted for this version of the female symbol. In the poem "Into the Twilight" from

59 the end of the 19 century, Yeats explicitly identifies the female figure representing Ireland as young: "Your mother Eire is always young" (line 5), as Merritt points out (647). However, the

protagonist of Yeats's and Gregory's iconic patriotic play is an opposite of Mangan's Dark

Rosaleen in many aspects.

According to Merritt, while creating the character of Cathleen, Lady Gregory pitched in

with the inspiration from "the legendary 'Poor Old Woman' and the Cailleach Bhearra, the 'old

woman of Beare', an ancient nun who laments her lost youth and who retains vestigial traces of the goddess of sovereignty" (647). This at the time novel choice made sense for two reasons.

Firstly, the lamenting nun embodied Ireland's lament for its lost sovereignty and showed

Ireland's weariness, often confused with old age, due to the exhausting and neglectful British

rule. But most importantly, Gregory and Yeats seem to have given in to the period cultural

demand for strictly desexualised female figures. The choice of the Poor Old Woman could be

interpreted as an attempt at hyperdesexualisation in order to carefully maintain the female

national iconography while adhering to the strict rules imposed by the cult of Virgin Mary. This

is also underlined by the version of the myth of Cailleach Beara that ended up being utilised by

Gregory and Yeats. Ioana Mohor-Ivan remarks: "As such, Yeats not only conflates the two

principal images of the feminine Ireland into one, but also re-writes the regenerative myth of

Cailleach Beara (The Old Woman of Beara), a queen who supposedly lived seven lifetimes, each time with a new husband" (101). The careful choice of a nun instead of a sexually active queen

satisfied the period cultural demand and evoked the target imagery of Virgin Mary.

What is more, in the endeavour to prove the masculinity and valour of Irishmen, it was

important to depict women as in dire need of such male protection. Agata Szczeszak-Brewer

offers some commentary on this matter: "'Nation' is inherently gendered because those who are

60 responsible for creating its narrative often describe it as in need of patriarchal protection,

invoking an image of a vulnerable woman, passively waiting to be conquered and penetrated"

(3). So, whether it was Cathleen, Dark Rosaleen or Cailleach Beara, it was important to point out

their need for male protection and the capability of Irishmen to provide it. Virtually, this is a

twist on the British practice of depicting Ireland as feminine in order to justify colonial rule -

only now, ridding symbolical women of agency served to prove that Irishmen can take over the

role of the British. As can be seen, Irish nationalists still utilised subversion of British oppressive

tools.

Merritt draws attention to another of Gregory's contributions that helped shape future

national symbolism built on the female depiction of the country. Specifically, Gregory is the one

that introduced the link between sovereignty and peasantry in Cathleen Ni Houlihan (Merritt

648). This is worth noting since rural images, mainly of Irish rural cottages, became a staple in

Irish national symbolism. In this regard, Catharine Nash notes: "The cottage in the landscape

came to carry the cultural weight of the idealization of traditional rural, family life and its fixed

morality and gender roles. It became a surrogate for the depiction of the rural Irish woman and the values of motherhood, tradition and stability" (47). Although this symbol gained prominence

later in the independence period, it can already be found in works like Yeats's and Gregory's

Cathleen Ni Houlihan or Maud Gonne's Dawn. This setting clearly mapped out the physical

place of the Irish woman as well as her role in society and illustrated the humble and honest life

Irish families lived and the British tried to spoil. Moreover, the cottage also served as a

distinguishing tool in othering the British way of life: "The cottage was also considered as the

basic unit of a distinctive Irish settlement pattern and therefore symbolic of Irish social

organization in opposition to English culture" (Nash 49).

61 All in all, a pattern becomes visible when it comes to the Irish practice of building their new national identity - namely inspiration through former British tactics that actually worked against the idea of Ireland as a separate nation. Sometimes subversion in a sense discussed in the second chapter is employed but more often than not, the oppressive nature of the tactics was preserved and just aimed at a specific part of the Irish population, namely women. Even if the more and more persistent othering of Irish women contributed to the common and ultimate goal of establishing Ireland's potential for independence, as this subchapter illustrates, Irish women had to suffer a lot of consequences for the role that was imposed on them by others in the first place. Declan Kiberd comments on these questionable processes when discussing Irish nationalism of the period:

Yet the nationalism to which it appeals is modern in the sense that it rejects a dynamic

traditionalism and seeks to abort the historical process. The inappropriate forms left by

the occupier lead the nationalist to violate the rights of minority groupings, and also the

customs and familial structures of the people. By way of compensation, nationalism then

learns how to mythologize the very values which it has been helping to destroy. (294-95)

Thus, a problem arose because, while fighting against the tradition that oppressed them, the Irish internalised it, though it might have been mostly unintentional, and they became oppressors of their own. The symbolical role of women became so prominent that the nationalist movement started treating real women in the same way as they did Cathleen, Rosaleen, or Maeve - the line between literal and symbolical women became blurred. In either case, while Irishmen bled in rebellions and guerrilla fights, women also paid their own toll for pushing the nationalist cause forward.

62 To summarise, this chapter has tied together the development of the female depiction of

Ireland from an increasingly important symbol in the Irish nationalist movement to an officially adopted basis for a new national identity. It showed how the cult of the Virgin Mary and the influence of the Catholic Church helped to construct the ideal of an Irish woman, chaste and virtuous, proving the moral superiority of Ireland over the aggressive and ill-ruling British coloniser. Women served not only as bearers of children, but also carriers and keepers of national and cultural heritage, characterised by purity, innocent beauty, Catholic values, and a humble life in the rural cottage. The symbolical woman was returned to the domestic space and reduced to a passive but supportive wife, a picture of a perfect female companion.

The second subchapter was dedicated to the numerous negative impacts of politicising the female gender and body. Symbolical women became prominent over the real ones who had to suffer the pressure of embodying the nation on a representative level. Expressions of sexuality was forbidden and demonised and women who did not follow the idealised image of Virgin

Mary were considered deviant and enemies to the national cause, all as a part of the project of hyperdesexualisation. Institutions like Magdalen laundries and reformatory schools were created to contain such women and shaming became a tool of an Irish society keen to keep up decorum.

The binary extremes of hyperfeminisation and hypermasculination were employed - women needed to maintain an idealistic image in order to elevate the masculinity of Irishmen, characterised by bravery, strength, and martyrdom, which had been underestimated and mocked by the British for years with their feminine and downgrading depictions of Ireland. By othering their own female population, the Irish attempted to prove their capability to govern their country.

Thus, the Irish fight for independence became a case of gendered nationalism.

63 Conclusion

The aim of this thesis was to analyse the prominent depiction of Ireland as a woman in Irish nationalist literature in the period from the 1850s to the controversial Easter Rising of 1916.

A qualitative analysis was carried out on primary sources chosen from the work of leading Irish nationalist authors including W. B. Yeats, Patrick Pearse, James Clarence Mangan, and Maud

Gonne. The main research questions were concerned with the specific forms of these female depictions of Ireland and what objectives laid behind them, considering the complex political and cultural climate the analysed literary work was written in. Since the female depiction was also used by Ireland's political superior and opponent, the British, and influenced the later use of the depiction by the Irish themselves, this aspect of the depiction also needed to be taken into account to fully understand the development of this literary device.

The thesis built mainly on the theory of gendering subjects from the feminist critical tradition, taking the third-wave volume Feminist Critical Negotiations edited by Elizabeth Meese and Alice Parker as its theoretical basis. The thesis's focus, literary manifestation of Ireland's gendered nationalism on the brink of the 20th century, confirms Meese's and Parker's theory - gendering subjects is indeed political and feminising Ireland carried profound political implications for Anglo-Irish relations. Another crucial concept connected to Ireland's road to independence was the Other and the thesis employed Jean-Francois Staszak's terminology in this regard. The concluding observation is that the process of othering accompanied Ireland every step of the way - at first used against Ireland by the British to show its otherworldliness in an inferior sense, underlining this claim by the representation of Ireland as the female Other. But as the thesis has proved multiple times, Irish writers were proficient in taking these imperial weapons and turning them against their oppressor. Othering was no exception, especially when

64 Ireland othered itself from the British as the morally superior subject, but also othered its female

population in the process.

The first chapter showed how the female depiction of Ireland was formerly used by the

British to justify Ireland's inferior political position by propagandising the depiction of a

dependent, passive, deceitful, and uncivilised woman. Three main narratives, or forms of this

representation, were identified in the primary sources, each explored in a separate subchapter.

The first narrative concerns a passive, weak, dependent woman, unable to take care of herself,

symbolising Ireland's need for Britain's upper hand. This version of Ireland is often embodied in

the symbol of a Poor Old Woman, as in Cathleen Ni Houlihan or Pearse's poem "The Mother".

What these women have in common is that they are rid of all agency and depend on acts of male

heroism. This subchapter also examined popular caricatures from the Punch magazine, which

depict Ireland as the younger, vulnerable sister of Britannia or as a naive girl easily wooed by

pretty gifts. In other words, Ireland was recurrently depicted as dependent on the protection of

the mighty Britain.

The second narrative concerns the way Ireland was constructed as the female Other by

pioneers of English literary and cultural theory such as Matthew Arnold and Ernest Renan. These

authors depicted the Celtic "race" as otherworldly, savage, and unreliable, further emphasising

Ireland's unfitness for sovereignty. At the same time, the Celtic race was ascribed feminine

characteristics, such as sensitiveness, domesticity, and an impressionable mind. Applying a little

wordplay to Staszak's terminology, it can be concluded that Ireland became the embodiment of

the Woman of the Forest, as the crazy woman running around the woods in Yeats's Stories of

Red Hanrahan.

65 To add to Ireland's negative image, the third narrative represents Ireland as an enchanting, deceitful seductress. This depiction of the country lures good men from their honest lives and families with spells, manipulation, and a scandalously uncovered body. The female figure, often embodied by the mythological sovereign Queen Maeve, is openly sexual and attractive, as in Yeats's collection of stories The Celtic Twilight. The thesis has traced the origins of this depiction to the 18th-century aisling poems of Aodhgan O'Rathaille, which show that the female figure has retained one trait despite all its evolutions over the years - its ultimate dependence on a male saviour. All in all, each depiction explored in this chapter represents a facet of a strategy which was used to discredit Ireland and its claims to independence. The gender relation was made clear - being female meant being unfit for freedom.

The second chapter examined how Irish nationalists subverted those derogatory depictions and created their own female symbols which contributed to the nationalist cause.

Specifically, the first subchapter analysed the use of the symbolical Mother Ireland which served two functions: firstly, it was a tool of critique of the British administration which showed that

Ireland was, in fact, not inherently weak and dependent but only brought into this state by the unfair British rule, as is shown in the poetry of Patrick Pearse and Ethna Carbery. Secondly,

Mother Ireland became a muse, a recruiter who wakes Irishmen from their apathetic slumber and sends them to fight for her, as in Cathleen Ni Houlihan or "The Old Age of Queen Maeve".

Through this mobilising role, the female figure regained some agency.

The second subchapter was dedicated to a particular figure from the Irish nationalist movement who came to embody Mother Ireland, the activist and suffragette Maud Gonne. Her role was examined through the framework of the literal and symbolical woman, since Gonne furthered the nationalist cause both by her real-life activities such as public speeches, activist

66 work, and providing organisational platforms for women, but also by her symbolical presence in

nationalist literature. Most importantly, she became a competitive symbol for the mythologised

motherly figure of Queen Victoria who herself inhabited both the literal and symbolical space.

Gonne showed that Victoria failed both as a mother and a monarch, when she let her Irish

subjects - her symbolical children - live in destitute conditions. Through her activist as well as

literary work, including Dawn, A Servant of the Queen and "The Famine Queen", Gonne

undermined the Queen's legitimacy and turned the narrative from doubts about Ireland's

governmental capabilities to doubts about Victoria's ability to rule. She accomplished this by

blurring the lines between the literal and symbolical, problematising images from the symbolical

realm of literature by presenting their real-life referents. By employing the device of the double

woman in her own writing and launching a double attack on Victoria as a woman and a monarch,

Gonne subverted the imperial narratives of a dependent Ireland.

The third and last chapter concluded with the analysis of Irish womanhood as the basis

for a new national identity, a logical development after years of the symbolical female presence

in Irish nationalist ethos. The ideal Irish woman - pure, chaste, and virtuous, a result of the

Catholic influence and cult of the Virgin Mary at the time - became a differentiating sign from the morally corrupt, colonising Britain, and asserted Ireland's moral superiority. Women were

employed in the identitary battle against Britain, but at the same time pushed away to their

clearly delineated domestic space once more. This time period was characterised by

hyperfeminisation of the female Irish population, accompanying the hypermasculinity ascribed

to Irishmen who finally wanted to prove the derogatory feminine stereotypes about Ireland

wrong. Proving their manliness also meant proving their ability to govern themselves.

67 Women were judged against the idealistic images of Mangan's Dark Rosaleen and

Yeats's and Gregory's Cathleen and any deviations from these holy pictures were demonised.

The results of this mindset surfaced after independence, when women were radically

desexualised and closed up into carceral institutions such as Magdalen laundries and mother-and-

baby homes if they did not submit to the cultural, and in the end also political, demand. Women

were venerated for their roles of children bearing as well as bearing the cultural heritage of the

nation, but at the same time strictly controlled and silenced. In other words, Irish women became the target of othering in the effort to underline Irishmen's masculinity. The third chapter

discussed all these cultural implications of the gendered nationalism. All in all, the thesis

contributes to the critical tradition around Irish nationalist literature and its use of female

depictions by putting them into a wider context, mapping out their development and changing

forms over the years, while each served a particular political objective. In particular, the

subversion of former British strategies used for the exact opposite purpose was addressed.

This thesis has shown how certain writers worked with the female depiction of Ireland

and it should be taken into account that the findings might not apply to their other work or the

work of other nationalist authors. Although the selected primary sources have their established

place in the Irish nationalist ethos, they do not represent all the variants of the female depictions

of Ireland that could possibly be found in the period from the 1850s. Due to the expected extent

of the diploma thesis, the analysis had to be narrowed down to the three most frequent themes.

However, this thesis prepares the ground for further research of the employment of this

depiction of Ireland. Future work could focus on the later development of female Ireland after

the Easter Rising and what new themes entered the nationalist literature in the political and

cultural climate surrounding the following Irish War for Independence, the Irish Civil War, and

68 the creation of the Irish Free State. Since nationalist movements and small nations claiming their right to independence are still current topics, and the intersection of gender and politics is more pressing than ever, further examination of the Irish case would provide valuable insights into these issues.

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75 Summary

The aim of this thesis is to analyse female depictions of Ireland in nationalist literature from the

1850s to the Easter Rising of 1916. The primary sources include work of prominent Irish

nationalist writers such as W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne, and the poetry of Patrick Pearse and James

Clarence Mangan. The thesis aims to answer two main research questions: firstly, what specific

forms did these female depictions take on and secondly, what were the underlying objectives of

these depictions, considering the cultural and political climate of the examined time period. The

primary sources are analysed using the theoretical framework of feminist criticism and the

concept of the Other.

The first chapter examines how at first, female depictions of Ireland were used by the

British to discredit Ireland's claims to independence. Three main narratives can be identified

here: Ireland as dependent, weak, and passive, Ireland as the female Other, and Ireland as a

promiscuous seductress. The second chapter explores how Irish nationalists adopted and

subverted these derogatory stereotypes as nationalist symbols. The analysis focuses on the

symbol of Mother Ireland which turns out to have two primary functions: it provided critique of

the unfair British rule and served as a mobilising tool for the nationalist sentiment. The chapter

also explores Maud Gonne's unique role in the nationalist movement as both an activist and a

writer whose achievements include creating competitive symbols to the mythologised figure of

Queen Victoria, the mother monarch. The last chapter explains how womanhood became the

basis of a new Irish national identity: the image of virtuous and pure Irish women was supposed

to differentiate Ireland from its morally corrupt coloniser. However, this responsibility thrust

upon Irish women led to great pressure, discrimination, and even persecution, all of which are

addressed in this chapter.

76 Resumé

Cílem práce je analýza ženských vyobrazení Irska v nacionalistické literatuře od 50. let 19.

století do Velikonočního povstání roku 1916. Primární zdroje se skládají z děl prominentních

irských nacionalistických spisovatelů včetně W. B. Yeatse, Maud Gonne a poezie Patricka

Pearse a Jamese Clarence Mangana. Cílem práce je odpovědět na dvě hlavní výzkumné otázky:

za prvé, v jakých specifických formách se tato ženská vyobrazení objevovala, a za druhé, jaké

cíle se za nimi skrývaly v kontextu kulturního a politického prostředí zkoumané doby. Primární

zdroje jsou analyzované pomocí teoretického rámce feministické kritiky a konceptu jinakosti.

První kapitola zkoumá, jak byla tato ženská vyobrazení nejdříve používána Brity k

diskreditaci irských nároků na nezávislost. V tomto směruje možné identifikovat tři hlavní

narativy: Irsko jako závislé, slabé a pasivní, Irsko jako žensky jiné, a Irsko jako promiskuitní

svůdkyně. Druhá kapitola se zabývá tím, jak Irští nacionalisté přebrali tyto ponižující stereotypy

a pomocí subverze z nich udělali nacionalistické symboly. Analýza se tu soustředí na symbol

matky Irska, ve kterém nachází dvě základní funkce: poskytoval kritiku nespravedlivé britské vlády a sloužil také jako nástroj mobilizace nacionalistického cítění. Tato kapitola také zkoumá jedinečnou roli aktivistky a spisovatelky Maud Gonne v irském nacionalistickém hnutí. Její

úspěchy zahrnují vytváření konkurenčních symbolů pro mytologizovanou osobnost královny

Viktorie, matky-panovnice. Poslední kapitola vysvětluje, jak se ženství stalo základem nové

irské národní identity. Vyobrazení ctnostných a nevinných irských žen mělo odlišit Irsko od jeho

morálně zkorumpovaného kolonizátora. Tato zodpovědnost, která byla ženám vnucena, však vedla k velkému tlaku, diskriminaci, a dokonce i k jejich pronásledování, čemuž se tato kapitola

také podrobněji věnuje.

77