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DOROTHY MACARDLE AND THE IRISH MOTHER: FEMINIST WRITINGS AND THE DISRUPTION OF NATIONALIST MYTH
A Master of Arts Thesis presented
by
Céillie Clark-Keane
to The Department of English
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
in the field of
English
Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts May, 2015
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DOROTHY MACARDLE AND THE IRISH MOTHER: FEMINIST WRITINGS AND THE DISRUPTION OF NATIONALIST MYTH
by
Céillie Clark-Keane
ABSTRACT OF MASTER OF ARTS THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University May, 2015
3 ABSTRACT
Dorothy Macardle was an author and activist in early twentieth-century Ireland, during the War for Independence and, after, during the early years of the Free State. Despite her status as a successful writer and her recognized involvement in these political movements at the time,
Macardle and her published works are often overlooked by scholarship today. This thesis attempts to recover Macardle and her works by exploring Macardle’s commitment to feminist ideals in her literary fiction as well as her conservative historical publications. In order to do so, this thesis considers four key texts published by Macardle: “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” (1924),
The Tragedies of Kerry (1923), The Irish Republic (1937), and The Unforeseen (1946). Placing these seemingly disparate texts in conversation with one another, this thesis suggests that, throughout Macarlde’s works, the author-activist focuses on disrupting the problematic nationalist image of the Irish Mother.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract 2
Table of Contents 4
Introduction 5
The Mother in Irish Lore and Literature 7
Colonialism and the Mother 9
Macardle and the Mother 13
Mother-Daughter Relationships in The Unforeseen 21
The Irish Mother and the Father-Son Pair 26
Nan as the Daughter 30
Mother-Daughter Relationships in The Irish Republic 31
Conclusion 36
Works Cited 41
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Dorothy Macardle was a significant figure in the Irish literary revival as well as the political campaign for the independent Irish Republic of the early twentieth century. During her lifetime, Macardle published widely acclaimed plays, novels, and a collection of short stories, and she was commissioned to write The Irish Republic; a documented chronicle of the Anglo-
Irish conflict and the partitioning of Ireland, with a detailed account of the period 1916-1923, the first republican history of Ireland, in order to further then-Taoiseach Éamon de Valera’s campaign for an independent Irish state. Despite the significance of her contributions and these publications, Macardle and her works have remained largely unexplored by contemporary critics.
Prominent Irish studies scholars like Gerardine Meaney and Margaret Ward have noted the potential in further exploring Macardle as a figure and her body of published works, both literary and historical.1 Despite this acknowledged potential, few articles have been published on
Macardle’s writing, and only cursory attention is afforded to Macardle in larger works of literary criticism.
When scholarship does afford Macardle’s writing this limited attention, the complexities of her historical and literary achievements are often elided or overlooked to place Macardle in a simple nationalist narrative. In this simple narrative of Irish history, politically varied nationalist forces fought to free Ireland from English rule, but the politically conservative party Fianna Fáil gained power to form the Free State of the Irish Republic.2 Macardle and her body of works, however, do not fit simply into either political group in this narrative. Her committed involvement with Cumann na Ban and Sinn Féin, as well as her time spent in prison, her participation in the Mountjoy hungerstrike, and her founding of the Women’s Political and
Social League characterize Macardle as a progressive feminist activist. This commitment to
6 progressive, feminist ideals translates into Macardle’s fiction writing. In contrast, Macardle’s historical writing is politically conservative. Significantly, The Irish Republic is the conservative historical text that has remained an authoritative resource on early twentieth-century Irish history, although Macardle herself has been largely overlooked.
Historian and Macardle biographer Nadia Claire Smith suggests that Macardle’s achievements as a progressive activist and author, as well as a conservative historian, require more attention, as they reveal a problem with this simplified national narrative.3 Smith writes,
The career of Dorothy Macardle serves as an interesting and revealing case study
concerning the course taken by politically active republican women after Irish
independence in 1922. Historians have commented on the discrepancy between
the active role played by republican women in achieving Irish independence, and
their apparent silence and disengagement in independent Ireland. Dorothy’s life
and work present a different picture. As an engaged intellectual and feminist, she
represented an alternative face of Irish womanhood that diverged from images
promoted in mainstream discourse, and took on those images in her fiction. (3)
Smith challenges the “discrepancy between the active role played by republican women in achieving Irish independence, and their apparent silence and disengagement in independent
Ireland,” and she does so using Macardle’s career “as an interesting and revealing case study.”
While Smith’s use of Macardle and her career as a “case study” does not completely reconcile the conflict in this national narrative, it does present reconciliation as a possibility and, in doing so, call for further exploration. Smith uses Macardle’s career to disrupt the nationalist narrative with Macardle’s exemplary “alternative face of Irish womanhood,” which she suggests Macardle
7 features as “images in her fiction.” Smith thus points to Macardle’s fiction as historical evidence of her challenging the national narrative with “an alternative face of Irish womanhood.”
If Macardle’s commitment to feminist groups such as Cumann na Baan mark her as a significant activist, and her integration of feminist ideals characterizes her fiction writing, how can this “alternative face of Irish womanhood” be entirely absent in Macardle’s historical writing? By placing Macardle’s literary works in conversation with her historical texts, I contend that this “alternative face of Irish womanhood” is not completely absent. Instead, this thesis reconsiders Macardle’s works for their feminist potential. I posit that Macardle features the folkloric Irish Mother in each of her writings in an attempt to engage with the nationalist figure.
Through this engagement, Macardle challenges the simplistic nationalist figure of the Irish
Mother in order to present, or at least provide space for, an “alternative face of Irish womanhood.”
The Mother in Irish Lore and Literature
The Irish Mother, also known in folklore as Mother Ireland or the Irish Mammy, has persisted as a trope in Irish literature, as well as Irish history and politics. The female figures of
Irish myth depend upon woman’s familial connections. For example, the banshee is a supernatural female figure that followed families to predict imminent deaths; the legend of
Óebfhinn’s dream features a mother bathing her sons and, in doing so, determining their temperaments; Irish mothers came upon changeling babies; and plot of the myths of “The Deaths of Lugaid and Derbforgaill” and Fedhelm in the Ulster cycle depend upon the wives in each.4
This historical preoccupation with the figure of the woman in the family directly connects to the more recent religious beliefs, mainly Catholic society’s worship of the Virgin Mary.
8 With women in myth and religion tied directly to their role as mothers, women in Irish literary tradition were deeply connected to this maternal role, as well. Diane Stubbings suggests that the end of the nineteenth century was a turning point for the figure of the Irish Mother. As
Stubbings explains, “The myth of the mother was essentially a constructed figure,” which was
“subjected to censorship and distortions by well-meaning revivalists” (4-5). While the Irish
Mother as a “constructed figure” is a logical explanation of myth as a social construct, this mythic figure’s “subjection to censorship and distortion” in its nineteenth-century construction is significant. Stubbings attributes the “censorship and distortion,” or change in the myth, to its employment as a political image by the “well-meaning revivalists” with nationalist agendas (4-
6). Stubbings goes on to point specifically to the re-inscribed, re-purposed Irish Mother as a national figure celebrated for her domestic, maternal contributions. While Stubbings uses Irish modernism to nuance her argument, this re-inscription of the folkloric Irish Mother is more widespread in literature during the literary revival and the early years of the Free State.
Macardle’s focus on the maternal engages with this larger literary fixation on the figure prevalent in Irish literature. Iconic nationalist works such as William Butler Yeats’ play Cathleen ni Houlihan and activist-author Patrick Pearse’s poem “The Mother” celebrate the role of the
Irish Mother.5 Significantly, these representative texts construct the role of the Irish Mother based on the interactions with the male characters. In the poem Pearse lauds the role of the women in war; however, the access to this role in war is available to women exclusively in relation to male participants or, more specifically, male family members. The Mother recognizes the distinction between her own internal memory of her sons and the external memory of her sons that will continue in history, and she identifies her space as the domestic hearth. The play similarly locates the Cathleen ni Houlihan figure in a domestic space as the Old Woman
9 approaches the cottage to gain entrance. Even more, the play depicts the maternal figure as sexually appealing as she is seen as a young, beautiful woman who inspires men to go to war fighting for her and, in doing so, fighting for Ireland.
This figure of the Irish Mother paradoxically relies on the connection between the Mother and the domestic space of the nation, as well as the construction of the maternal figure as a sexual figure. According to Smith, Macardle was sensitive to the contrasting invocations of the
Irish Mother with the “feminized images of Ireland as the Sean Bhean Blocht (“poor old woman”) or as Dark Rosaleen, a beautiful young woman. Both images were heavily politicized, and were used to inspire men to fight for Ireland, but men seemed to pay little attention to the realities of women’s lives which lay beyond the images” (49).
Colonialism and the Mother
The paradoxical figure of the Mother is significant in the post-colonial Irish context, but the fixation on the maternal is not exclusive to Ireland. In her discussion of nineteenth-century colonialism, Anne McClintock argues that the idea of the nuclear family superimposed on colonial relations reveals the dynamics of the colonial hierarchy and, in doing so, highlights the inextricable factor of gender in this power dynamic.6 McClintock explains that the superimposition of this familial relationship helped to justify imperial expansion, casting the imperial powers as fathers and their wards as children. As a result, as McClintock explains, anxiety about mothers was a definitive attribute of colonialism.
For McClintock, the application of the family metaphor onto colonialism manifests in a twofold anxiety surrounding motherhood. First, women are connected with the space or land of the colony, first virginal and then generative. McClintock asserts that, “Women are the earth to
10 be discovered, entered, named, inseminated and, above all, owned,” and, as such, women are
“[s]ymbolically reduced, in male eyes, to the space on which male contests are waged” (31).
Second, after being “discovered, entered, named, inseminated, and, above all, owned,” women were responsible for producing more children in this colonial context. McClintock argues that, because of this, controlling colonial motherhood was a common fixation for empire-builders:
“Motherhood became rationalized by the weighing and measuring of babies, the regimentation of domestic schedules and the bureaucratic administration of domestic education” (47). The result was a paradoxical fixation on colonial motherhood: “Mothers were often the objects of remote adoration or abstract awe” (86). With this familial metaphor for the imperial relationship, then,
McClintock identifies a paradoxical anxiety and fixation on motherhood as commonplace in colonialism.
This paradoxical reaction to motherhood explained by McClinktock holds true in the context of Irish colonialism, as well as post-colonial Ireland. As previously mentioned, the paradoxical reaction to motherhood is evident with the figure of the Irish Mother in folklore and literature, but this complicated fixation on motherhood is also evident in Irish history and politics. In his re-visiting of Ireland’s history, Declan Kiberd pursues this post-colonial familial metaphor to describe the different national narratives for the roles of men and the roles of women during the War for Independence and the resulting new nation. According to Kiberd, as a new nation fighting for Independence from England, Ireland was defining itself as a “society pervaded by male values,” with Irish “sons” rebelling against their British “fathers” in a necessary struggle for masculine independence (396). Scholars like Kiberd, including both historians and literary critics, have explored this definition of Ireland as a nation of fathers and sons during this period of forming the Free State. Kiberd also notes, that during the same time
11 “radical women of the time believed in an Ireland not merely free but feminist, not merely feminist but free” (398). This belief inspired women to participate in the rebellion: over ninety women participated in the Easter Rising of 1916, and more joined women’s groups like Cumann na mBan, and some even committed to “serv[ing] as Sinn Féin magistrates” (399-401).
Kiberd notes that, despite this widespread involvement, women were not allowed in the national narrative of (masculine) rebellion against their fathers. Instead, they were daughters fighting against a pre-defined, male-constructed mother: “Even the more radical thinkers of the modern age defined the revolt of women in terms of the attempt by wives and daughters to break free of the constricting images of the female devised by men, and devised as often by men of national resistance movements as by men of the occupying power” (395). The constricting image of the female was thus re-inscribed by the new nation as it had been by the colonial power, reinforcing, if repurposing, the nationalist mythology of the Irish mother. As Kiberd explains, during “the decades after the Civil War, woman’s role was redefined in purely maternal and domestic terms” (403). Here, Kiberd uses the singular “woman” to denote the limitation of the gender role: “woman” was inscribed as synonymous with “mother,” and, with this, there is no possibility for a plurality of roles for Irish “women.” The anxiety surrounding colonial motherhood that McClintock explains thus carries over into a post-colonial Ireland that, as
Kiberd makes clear, relies on the familial metaphor to establish national independence and, as an indirect result, rigid gender roles.
These rigid gender roles established by the familial metaphor contribute to the fixation on the role of motherhood, or the role of the Irish Mother, that has persisted into even modern Irish literature and history and has been explored by scholars and activists alike. Most agree that the dynamics of gender and nation, although similar to other post-colonial nations, are particularly
12 intertwined in Ireland.7 For example, in her pamphlet written and distributed to “to challenge the assumptions made by and about the women’s movement in Ireland,” Meaney argues that, “in
Ireland, sexual identity and national identity are mutually dependent” (3). Although this pamphlet addresses the contemporary issue of the eighth amendment of the Irish Constitution,
Meaney claims that this mutual dependence is rooted in the self-definition of Ireland as a nation throughout the twentieth century. She points specifically to the “identification of the family
(rather than, for example, the individual) as the basic building block of society” as preeminent in
Irish society (6). Meaney traces this “identification of the family” over the individual back to colonial Ireland, and she casts the nationalist symbol of the Irish Mother as a reactionary, though problematic, move in Ireland’s campaign for independence. Echoing McClintock’s claims that, in colonialism, women are associated with space, Meaney suggests that, with the nationalist myth of the Irish Mother, women “are not merely transformed into symbols of the nation, they become the territory over which power is exercised” (7). The Irish Mother is a cause for the Irish to fight for; the Irish Mother will help to perpetuate the new nation’s fighting forces and, alternatively, mourn her fallen (male) family members.
In recognizing the problems rooted in the nationalist myth of the Irish Mother, Meaney asserts that these limited roles for women in the nationalist campaign, and later the nation, further “serve to obliterate the reality of women’s lives” (3). Meaney goes on to claim that, with this obliteration, “Women have been denied a role in the life and history of nations and been reduced to symbols of the nation” (22). In turn, she calls for the recognition of this role and, even more, a revision of the historical attention to women in the nation instead of woman as the nation. While Meaney herself suggests that Macardle’s body of work calls for more scholarly attention, she does not go on to pursue Macardle’s position on this matter. This thesis, however,
13 argues that Macardle’s work had previously engaged with discourse on this same issue by recognizing and revising the nationalist figure of the Irish Mother.
Macardle and the Mother
Macardle’s activist efforts with the formation of the Women’s Social and Politcal League in response to the 1937 Citizenship Debates, as well as her frequent publications in The Irish
Press, exemplify her deep concern with the status of women in Irish society, both throughout the war and in the early years of the Free State.8 Because of her commitment to feminist activism and the status of women, Macardle’s preoccupation with the nationalist female figure of the Irish
Mother in her writing is logical if not expected. By looking at Macardle’s literary and historical texts together, this thesis explores the figure of the Irish Mother as a trope in Macardle’s writing and attempts to answer questions about Macardle’s conflicting identities: How does Macardle use the Mother differently in her historical writing and literary fiction? Does Macardle, in both literary and historical works, remain critical of the Irish Mother? Does Macardle offer literary or historical readers, or even both, an “alternative face of Irish womanhood”?
Because this thesis cannot be an exhaustive reconsideration of Macardle’s published works, I will focus here on asking these questions of two shorter, exemplary works that have been explored previously by literary and historical scholars. Macardle’s “The Portrait of Roisin
Dhu,” published in her collection of short stories titled Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland.9 In this gothic tale, which also appears in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volume 5: Irish
Women’s Writing and Traditions, Anglo-Irish artist Hugo Blake seeks, finds, and paints his own
“Roisin Dhu,” Nuala. The second work is Macardle’s pamphlet titled The Tragedies of Kerry, in which she recounts the casualties of the War of Independence in County Kerry between the fall
14 of 1922 and the spring of 1923. This text was at first controversial and not widely distributed, but is regarded by historians today as an authoritative, and rare, account.10 Although the genre and subject matter of these pieces are strikingly different, Macardle’s engagement with the role of the
Irish Mother remains consistent. Moreover, while Macardle overtly challenges the role in the short story, her use of the maternal presence in the war-time pamphlet parallels this disruption.
In “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu,” Maeve helps despondent painter Hugo Blake as he struggles for inspiration, and with Maeve’s support, Hugo embarks on a project to paint his own
Roisin Dhu. Hugo travels to find a suitable subject, and he settles on Nuala, a princess from the
West of Ireland. As Hugo paints, the portrait becomes beautiful and vivid, but Nuala deteriorates physically and emotionally until, upon completion of the portrait, the Nuala dies. This theme of the enchanted painting recalls Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and Edgar Allen
Poe’s short story “The Oval Portrait,” which at once brings attention to both the international resonance of Macardle’s work and her employment of this plot for the nationalist critique. With the use of this plot in “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu,” the short story reads as a thinly-veiled allegory: Macardle is warning the reader of the dangers of using woman as national symbol.
Scholars like Meaney and Molidor agree that the short story expounds the dangers of woman as nationalist symbol, and go on to suggest this as the reason for the short story’s importance.
According to Meaney, “Macardle was not the only woman writer who participated in and interrogated the ideology of Irish nationalism,” but she points to “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” as an exemplary challenge of this ideology of Irish nationalism. Because of this explicit engagement with the Irish Mother and the preceding scholarly attention, “The Portrait of Roisin
Dhu” is an ideal starting place for a feminist recovery of Macardle’s works.
15 Specifically, in the story, Macardle interrogates this nationalist ideology by emphasizing the sensuality of the character Nuala. While Maeve relates the tale of Blake’s “Roisin Dhu” to an audience within the story, “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” opens with an unnamed narrator, who tells the reader that, “No woman in the world, we said, had been Hugo’s Roisin Dhu; no mortal face had troubled him when he painted that immortal dream—that ecstasy beyond fear, that splendour beyond anguish—that wild, sweet holiness of Ireland for which men die” (997). With the breathless, elated sensation achieved with the abrupt dash and the parallel syntax of “that ecstasy beyond fear, that splendour beyond anguish,” Macardle emphasizes the sensuality first
“woman” and then “Ireland,” with “that wild, sweet holiness” that echoes the breathless, abrupt
“that” phrases marked off by the dashes. The language she uses to describe “woman” and
“Ireland” here suggests a similarity between the person and the nature; even more, this sensual description suggests a conflation of the two figures.
This conflation is further established with the contrast that Macardle creates between the city of London and the country of Ireland. Maeve tells the readers that she insisted Hugo travel to gain perspective, or dissatisfaction, in order to creative inspiration: “I took him to London to give him something to hate. After two days he fled back to his tower and breathed the smell of the peat and sea-wind, and the sweet, home-welcome of burning turf, and looked out on Ireland with eyes of love” (998). In contrast to London, a city or “something to hate” for Hugo, Ireland is attractive with sensory appeal: “the smell of the peat and sea-wind,” and the rural image that
Hugo took in “with eyes of love.” This attraction, as Maeve expects, invigorates Hugo, who sets off “to walk the west of Ireland seeking a woman for his need” (998). Introducing Nuala, this
“woman for his need,” Macardle emphasizes Nuala’s lack of sexual agency as she stresses
Nuala’s sensual appeal. Even more, Macardle’s description of her appearance mirrors that of
16 Ireland, particularly the description cast against London. When Hugo brings Nuala back with him, Maeve remarks that “her beauty was so delicate and so remote” (998). Nuala is thus presented to the reader as “delicate” like the details of Ireland in contrast to those of London, and
“remote” like the idealized countryside of Ireland.
With these descriptions of Nuala and Ireland, Macardle connects the figure of the woman with the figure of that nation. In her analysis of this short story, Molidor suggests that female characters who are not mothers are cast in these maternal roles because of the male characters:
Roisin, and Nuala, are not literally mother, but women in such nationalist stories
become maternal figures in their relation to men; it is because they are
desexualized that their motherliness becomes transparent. The maternal role is
constructed as the most virtuous female role, and the mother’s willingness to
console others while sacrificing herself transfixes her worshippers. (54)
Molidor points to Macardle’s engagement with the maternal as significant in characterizing
“such nationalist stories.” However, she goes on to claim that the “maternal role is constructed as the most virtuous female role” because of her relation to the male characters. While the figure of the Irish Mother does contribute to characterizing “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” as a nationalist tale, this construction of the maternal does not occur through relationships to male characters.
Despite Molidor’s claims, Macardle does not construct “desexualized” Nuala as one of the “women in such nationalist stories [who] become maternal figures in their relation to men.”
For Hugo, the central male character, Nuala is the subject of his portrait and, based on the sensual descriptions, the object of his aesthetic admiration, if not sexual desire. Instead, it is
Maeve, overlooked by Molidor, who is “not literally mother,” but fills the maternal role in the story. It is Maeve who “is constructed as the most virtuous female role,” and it is Maeve’s
17 “willingness to console other while sacrificing herself [that] transfixes her worshippers,” which is made evident with Maeve’s double audience in the story-within-the-story construction.11
Maeve’s characterization as maternal, however, troubles the standard construction of the
Mother in Irish literature; unlike Pearse’s Mother and Yeats’ Cathleen Ni Houlihan figure,
Maeve’s characterization as maternal is not constructed through her relationship with the male character, Hugo. Instead, Maeve’s maternal role in “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” is more clearly constituted through her interactions with the female character of Nuala. After Nuala’s arrival,
Hugo tells the story of his meeting the King of the Blasket Isles and how he had intended for
Nuala to come back accompanied by a brother “to take care of her,” but was refused (998). With the implication that this duty of caring for Nuala now lies on Maeve, the two women retire to bed. Maeve explains, “She slept in my room and talked to me, softly, in the dark, asking me questions about Hugo’s work” (999). During this intimate conversation with Nuala, Maeve “told her about his childhood, his suffering, and his genius: she listened and sighed” (999). While
Nuala sighed for Hugo’s misfortune, Maeve recognized Nuala’s impending downfall; as it became clear that Nuala intended to love Hugo, Maeve worried, her “heart heavy with dread for her” (999). The next morning Maeve is resolved and maternal: “I gave up all thought of going home. Nuala would need me” (999).
In “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu,” Maeve’s maternal resolve to protect Nuala as best she can is strong. Smith indicates that, in contrast to Patrick Pearse specifically, “Dorothy preferred images of strong, assertive mothers whose love empowers their children, especially their daughters, to live rather than sacrifice themselves” (49). Here, Smith notes that Macardle promotes “images of strong, assertive mothers,” but she also emphasizes the empowering love of a mother for “especially their daughters.” Elsewhere, Molidor briefly summarizes Macardle’s
18 body of literary work: “Macardle’s other stories interrogate the representation of women as muses for self-absorbed painters, or focus on the mother-daughter relationship, themes also encountered in her novels” (51). It is this final focus, a theme not only “encountered in her novels,” but predominant in each of their plots, that connects the descriptions and subversions, if subtle, of the Irish Mother in Macardle’s works. Because of this, I argue that, in her disruption of the Irish Mother, Macardle presents daughters as the prescription for the problem, as a future solution for Irish women not confined to the role or the myth of the Irish Mother.
In The Tragedies of Kerry, Macardle includes the mother-daughter relationship in her account of the war in County Kerry. Similar to “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu,” this pamphlet has received consistent, if limited, scholarly attention: considered a rare accurate, in-depth account of the Civil War’s devastation in County Kerry, The Tragedies of Kerry has remain an authoritative text for historians. Because of its prominence in her collection of published texts, the pamphlet is ideal for a feminist recovery of Macardle. While she begins the pamphlet with an overview of the violence that transpired and an evaluation of the injustices incurred, Macardle quickly moves toward the focus of her short book: the people who suffered in Kerry. Macardle opens the text with a description of her intent for the project, identifying her intended audience and addressing the readers to state that these people are central to the account of the violence:
Those who, sensitive to the sufferings of other yet tenacious of their own peace of
mind, love to solace themselves with incredulity, will put down this book half
read. To those who have any eagerness to understand that time in Ireland it is
offered as an infinitesimal fragment of the truth. It is in Kerry, among the proud
and undefeated people that they will hear all the history told. (4)
19 With the convoluted clauses like “love to solace themselves with incredulity,” the first sentence dismisses those readers who “will put down this book half read.” In the following sentence,
Macardle privileges the “eagerness to understand” in her ideal audience. She carefully qualifies the text as only “an infinitesimal fragment of the truth.” The real source for “all the history told” is not only the site of the action, but also the community of “the proud and undefeated people.”
With “among,” Macardle identifies the existence of history, the residual knowledge of the tragedies as placed throughout and in between the people, interspersed but not communally claimed; the history is among the people, rather than within or of, emphasizing the importance of the individuals that constitute this “proud and undefeated people” and share “all the history told.”
Throughout the book, Macardle relates stories of these individuals in order to present the historical record of this year in Kerry. In the section “Frank Grady of Glenbeigh,” Macardle writes about Grady, “a great leader of men,” who had fallen ill and was forced into hiding; despite his removal from aiding the nationalist cause due to this illness, the Free State troopers remained in pursuit of the “great leader” and raided his family’s home frequently. Directly following her description of Grady as “a great leader of men,” she also characterizes him as a typical Irish son: “He was their only boy, loved with the deep, vehement love given in Ireland to a kind of son of whom his people are proud” (33). With this description, Macardle classifies
Grady as an item in a series: he was “kind of son” because he was “loved with the deep, vehement love given in Ireland.” This nationally exclusive series is further emphasized with the repetition of “loved”/”love” and the recalling of this euphonic “v” and “l” in “vehement,”
“given,” and, most significantly, “Ireland.” Although Grady is itemized in a series here, he is next individualized, as he is “a kind of son of whom his people are proud.” Here, “people” refers ambiguously to both family and larger community ties, both in County Kerry and Ireland; either
20 way, Macardle stresses with the distinctive “of” that Grady is one individual in a group of “his people.”
Macardle’s description of Grady’s death involves the violent details, but her following depiction of the aftermath appeals to similar filial affection. In the telling of this story, Macardle uses “father,” “mother,” and “daughter,” instead of any other family names for the other Gradys; in doing so, Macardle echoes the itemized serialization of the “kind of family members” of
Ireland that are, in actuality, discrete individuals, except for the women involved. Beyond the grief-stricken mother and the daughter who is shielded from the sight of the body, Macardle does allude to female involvement. This involvement occurs in the burial: “Father O’Reilly found his body in the cowshed; women had strewn clean hay over the blood-soaked ground and lit a candle and said litanies for his soul” (35). Macardle’s “women,” not marked as a collective by a definite article, did not clean, but covered. The “clean hay over the blood-soaked ground” and the candle- lit chorus of litanies are reminiscent of burial rites in which women were able to claim ownership and autonomy historical and literarily from classical times.12 Here, Macardle’s inclusion allows for female participation in the nationalist cause.
Macardle’s use of the Irish Mother in each of these shorter works suggest a pattern in her engagement with the figure of the Irish Mother. In the short story, Macardle uses the sensual descriptions of “land” and “woman” to evoke the myth the Irish Mother; however, by connecting
Nuala’s demise to this lack of independent sexual agency, Macardle critiques this nationalist image challenges the conflation of woman and nation. Even more, though, this use of the power of the erotic complicates critical characterizations of Macardle as politically conservative.
Although Meaney references anecdotal evidence to suggest later in life Macardle held
“conservative views of women and sexuality,” her writing suggests otherwise, and this further
21 confirms a need to reconsider Macardle.13 If her later characterization as holding “conservative views of women and sexuality” is perhaps mistaken, then the understanding of her work to be politically conservative should also be reconsidered.
In this reconsideration of both of these short texts, it is evident that Macardle constructs the Irish Mother through her interactions with other female characters, specifically the daughter.
If these two shorter pieces are representative of Macardle’s body of work, then this construction of the Irish mother through mother-daughter interactions, as well as her critique of the lack of sexual agency as in the character of Nuala, is significant in her disruption of the nationalist myth.
Moreover, it raises the question, does this pattern appear, perhaps with more development, in
Macardle’s longer works?
Mother-Daughter Relationships in The Unforeseen
Of the five novels Macardle published during her lifetime, only The Unforeseen is set in
Ireland. While all novels feature Irish characters and consequently engage with similar nationalist themes, The Unforeseen’s exclusive Irish setting suggests its significance in the context of this thesis. Even more, The Unforeseen, like some of the other novels, features a mother-daughter pair that is central to the supernatural plot.14 Nan Wilde is a young illustrator living on her own in London when she enters a tumultuous relationship with a Sicilian sculptor,
Carlo.15 She returns home to the cottage in Derreen where her mother, Virgilia, lives for the summer to finish her illustration assignment in the country. Virgilia Wilde, a widowed sketch artist, introduces Nan to Dr. Perry Franks, the son of the doctor Virgilia has sought to help her treat her visions. In these visions, which the mother hides from her daughter, Virgilia sees Perry and Nan, who soon become engaged, meeting an untimely death; however, because Virgilia
22 ultimately shares her visions with Nan, the mother and daughter are able to avoid the anticipated tragedy.
This novel links the supernatural with the figure of the Irish Mother and relies on this link, and its contrast against the rational daughter, to drive the plot. Even more, though, throughout the novel Macardle’s construction of Virgilia as the figure of the Irish Mother is based on her interactions with her daughter Nan. Although these interactions most often present the mother-daughter pair as opposing figures, Macardle does make similarities clear for the reader. Macardle connects each to similarly sensualized land, as she does with Nuala; in contrast to Nuala, however, Macardle constructs both Virgilia and, even more so, Nan as sexual agents.
While Macardle links Virgilia to an idealized, pastoral Ireland, she connects Nan to a broader, international space. Macardle also casts both Virgilia and Nan as single women with love interests, though she contrasts Virgilia’s comfortable intimacy with Nan’s quick, passionate relationship. Thus, I argue that, in looking at The Unforeseen, Macardle’s presentation of the daughter as a revision on the outdated Irish Mother becomes apparent.
In the beginning of the novel, Macardle connects Virgilia to Ireland while suggesting Nan occupies a more transgressive, international space. The novel opens during Virgilia’s appointment with Dr. Ada Sack, her physician and her old friend. Dr. Sack remarks that, “I thought, when England disgorged you, we’d see you occasionally, but you’ve vanished out of the blue. How’s your mountain solitude suiting you?” (1-2). Here, Dr. Sack refers to Nan’s move to
London as the time “when England disgorged” Virgilia, immediately setting up a contrast between Virgilia and Ireland and Nan and England. This word choice emphasizes the bodily connection, at least once present, between mother and daughter. While “disgorged” could mean that England ejected Virgilia, the novel makes it clear that Virgilia never lived in England. The
23 only other possible meaning of “disgorged” as a transitive verb is to empty; thus, England emptied Virgilia, of her daughter Nan, and this phrase emphasizes the once-present bodily connection between the mother and daughter.
With this opening emphasis on the physical, bodily connection and subsequent disconnection between mother and daughter, Macarlde enforces the understanding of the unique familial experience between the mother and daughter. Adrienne Rich theorizes that this unique experience relies on the unique bodily connection, first established in gestation and later, after disconnection, in similarity. Rich explains,
Mothers and daughters have always exchanged with each other-beyond the
verbally transmitted lore of female survival-a knowledge that is subliminal,
subversive, preverbal: the knowledge flowing between two alike bodies, one of
which has spent nine months growing inside the other. (220)
Rich theorizes that the shared biology of mother and daughter, not only because the daughter has
“spent nine months growing inside” the mother, but also because of the “two alike bodies,” transfers to a shared, “alike” biology that defines this bond. With this explanation, Rich suggests that the mother-daughter relationship is characterized by both physical connection, as indicated with the reference to gestation, and physical identification with “alike bodies.” The physical connection between Virgilia and Nan is here established with “disgorged,” framing the relationship with the disconnection between the mother and daughter with “alike bodies.”
In the novel, Virgilia recognizes this disconnection between her daughter and herself, and she contributes to creating the contrasting connections by emphasizing her own connection to
Ireland and her daughter’s international movement in England. For the new Irish Free State, this connection to England would have carried residual connotations to colonial oppression, but
24 Macardle is very careful in expressing the international implications of the connection to
England that do not automatically constitute a change in national allegiance. During the same visit, Dr. Sack asks Virgilia if her daughter is “becoming a Londoner,” and Virgilia proudly tells
Dr. Sack about Nan: “She loves London. She says Ireland’s the ideal country to be home-sick for!” (5). Dr. Sack suggests that in moving abroad Nan may have relocated both her physical space and her national allegiance, but Virgilia’s response rejects this change in identification, further suggesting Nan’s spatial connection as transgressive, international. Nan is in England, for the time being, and she “loves London.” However, Nan, as Virgilia ventriloquizes, recognizes that “Ireland’s the ideal country to be home-sick for,” which suggest a predominant, lasting allegiance to Ireland that supersedes her physical placement and, here, her love for London.
By placing Nan in an international context in contrast to Virgilia’s seclusion in rural
Ireland, Macardle also engages with the figure of the Irish Mother and conflicting lore that characterizes this colonial and early post-colonial figure as at once virginal, rural land and an urban, city setting of possibility. As McClintock contends, the woman is connected to the colonial land as a space to be claimed and conquered, but within this connection is the implication of the generative potential of woman and land. As she does in “The Portrait of Roisn
Dhu,” Macardle establishes this connection with the sensual, evocative descriptions of the surrounding landscape. In the novel, these descriptions first come from the perspective of
Virgilia as she leaves Dublin and reaches the countryside of Glencree:
The flowing range of the hills sink down, here; rises to the Sugar Loaf’s shapely
cone; dips and lifts and curves, to where Bray Head lies out on the water like a
half-closed hand. That scene had been dazzling at noon; now it lay softly shining
25 and warmly coloured, with hollows and contours appearing where none had
shown, the sea and sky holding depth beyond the depth of blue. (10)
Macardle’s use of words like “shapely” and quick-moving polysyndetonic phrases like “dips and lifts and curves,” and the image of the “half-closed hand” to describe the scene as “it lay softly shining and warmly coloured” before Virgilia creates a sensual visualization that hints, or teases, tactile sensation that is ultimately unfulfilled.
These descriptors, as well as this unfulfilled tactile sensation, also suggest the ephemerality of the scene, which troubles the dichotomy between the rural idyllic that Virgilia admires as she leaves the urban setting. Virgilia remarks, after the sensual description, that it is no wonder “if Irish people are nervous and variable. Nothing we look at remains long the same”
(10). While Virgilia remarks here on both the quickly changing surroundings and the effect seasons have on the respective visuals, Macardle uses this moment to transition between
Virgilia’s reflection on her own meeting with Dr. Sack and their discussion of her supernatural visions and her struggle between maternal concern for Nan and confidence in her daughter’s capability. Virgilia concedes that her daughter “was an essentially reasoning creature who prided herself on being a realist,” but she still worries that “London must be a furnace and Nan had always begun to wilt in a city as soon as warm weather came” (11). This particular worry relates directly to Virgilia’s musing description of her sensualized surroundings, affected by the seasons as drastically as she believes her daughter will be.
With this transition, Virgilia connects the seasonal change of the sensual landscape to herself and, from there, to her daughter. Macardle’s use of the sensual landscape description to connect the mother and daughter suggests a similar connection between each woman and the sensualized land; however, in depicting Virgilia as more closely connected, Macardle makes
26 Nan’s association with sensualized land more tenuous than her mother’s. Even more, Nan’s own seasonal change, though discussed with metaphoric terms like “wilt,” is a direct result of the urban location. Thus, with this quick movement through contrasting rural and urban associations, as with their divided respective associations with Ireland and England, the mother and daughter are further characterized by their spatial connections as alike, but with significant revisions.
The Irish Mother and the Father-Son Pair
Through these spatial connections that emphasize at once the similarities and differences between the mother and daughter, Macardle constructs the mother based on her interactions with, or conversations about, her daughter, relying on the same female-based character construction as in “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” that troubles the precedent of the Irish Mother dependent upon her male family members. In the novel, however, Macardle unsettles this precedent further. With the contrast between the mother in Ireland and the daughter abroad established with this mother- daughter characterization in the beginning of the novel, Macardle then presents the daughter as a successful, modern revision by using a father-son pair of male suitors to cast both the mother and daughter as sexual agents. In using the father-son pair, Macardle engages with the national definition based on this masculine relationship noted by scholars like Kiberd and Joseph Valente.
As previously mentioned, Kiberd recognized Ireland’s republic as a nation built by fathers and sons. Valente, similarly, points to this familial struggle as critical in constructing Irish manliness.
In his discussion of the role of the mother in masculine, nationalist tales like Pearse’s poem and
Yeats’ play, Valente claims that, “The double woman motif of the Sovereignty drama takes this strategy a crucial step further, openly placing female agency at odds with national agency,” which is determined by, or conflated with, male agency (109). Macardle, in contrast, uses male
27 agency in to bolster female agency, particular through the figure of the mother and her daughter, further challenging the nationalist image of the Irish Mother.
Significantly, Virgilia meets this father-son pair when she seeks treatment for her visions of future events, an affliction that Macardle uses to contrast the mother-daughter pair. Instead of telling Nan about these visions, Virgilia decides that, “Hers was an ailment… that she would have to cure for herself” (11). Here, Virgilia announces for the first time that her visions were
“an ailment” or an illness that she needs “to cure,” especially “for herself,” instead of entertaining the idea that her visions might qualify her as clairvoyant. After unsuccessfully attempting to distract herself with “manual jobs,” she seeks medical care on her own. In Dr.
Franks’ first consultation with Virgilia, he tells her that she should be commended for her
“uncommonly equable temperament” (11, 33). These experiences would have made many people a little hysterical” (34-35). With Virgilia’s visions and her attempts to “cure” them, it becomes evident that Virgilia is rational, just like Nan, and the stark contrast between the clairvoyant mother and the rational daughter, or the superstitious, folkloric Mother and the modern, reasonable daughter, begins to break down.
By connecting Virgilia medically with both father and son through supernatural visions,
Macardle seemingly casts Virgilia in a desexualized, maternal role, like Maeve’s in “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu.” However, this is quickly undone. After a consultation with the two doctors,
Virgilia brings the men to meet Nan’s ship as she returns to Ireland for the summer. Nan sees
Virgilia on the docks and remarks, “Her mother had obeyed orders; she was wearing a dress of gentian blue. She looked sunburnt and well and young” (62). This remark is immediately apparent as a reversal of roles, as Virgilia has “obeyed orders” from Nan. Moreover, the “gentian blue” connects Virgilia at once to floral imagery and the Virgin Mary; the repetitive conjunctions
28 in the following sentence creates a quick pace that reinforces the vibrancy that Nan is describing.
With this description, then, Virgilia is no longer constructed in contrast to Nan. Instead, as with the spatial connections, the mother and daughter are constructed as more alike, although different.
This is further established with the interactions with the father-son pair. Immediately following her remarks on her mother, Nan notes the doctors standing with her mother: “It was unexpected to discover that her mother had not come alone but had two good-looking men in attendance with a resplendent car” (62). Here, Macardle emphasizes Virgilia’s central positioning: she “had not come alone,” but instead “had two good-looking men” in her attendance. The “resplendent car” also becomes central to the plot: as Virgilia foresees Perry hurting Nan in a car crash, and the novel ends with Dr. Franks driving this same “resplendent car” to gather Nan, Perry, and Virgilia at the cottage. The prominence of the car in these later moments in the novel makes its noted presence here and its use as a setting in the following scenes significant.
Beginning in the car in the following scene, Virgilia and Dr. Franks are cast against the younger couple, Perry and Nan, who are soon romantically involved. Instead of bringing Virgilia and Nan directly to the cottage as planned, Perry suggests a scenic drive around Glencree. Both
Virgilia and Dr. Franks agreed that the drive would be enjoyable, though it would have to be quick, and “Perry interpreted that as a permit to speed” (64). Nan enjoyed it and identified with
Perry as he did, too: “The road was rough and Perry drove fast, but Nan loved it. She felt what
Brigid called ‘aeriated’ and needed speed. So, it appeared, did he” (64). As Perry and Nan are paired in their enjoyment of the speed, Dr. Franks and Virgilia are paired in their uneasiness during the drive: “In the back of the car, their parents had been quiet for some time, their silence
29 deepening as Perry’s speed increased” (65). Despite their apparent wariness, both agree that they should not impede the enjoyment of their children, as Virgilia states, “I hate slowing people down” (66). Perry’s misinterpretation of the “permit to speed” suggests to parental permission, and Virgilia and Dr. Franks as “their parents” in the back of the car with a suggestively shared
“silence deepening” confirms this arrangement. Although Perry and Nan’s shared state of exhilaration “called ‘aeriated’” in the speeding car evokes an erotic connection, the “silence deepening” between Virgilia and Dr. Franks emphasizes the sensual intimacy between the pair that is also characterized by movement, if not by speed.
Throughout the novel, this sensual intimacy becomes more established just as Perry and
Nan’s romantic involvement becomes more serious. At a dinner party before the younger couple decides to marry, “Dr. Franks rose, smiling. His young guests needed no more attention from him. He crossed the room, turned Perry off the chesterfield and took his place by Virgilia” (107).
A clear progression from the earlier scene, Dr. Franks recognizes “his place” to be “by Virgilia,” apart from the “younger guests” and without their distraction of required attention. In the conversation that followed this gesture, “Virgilia’s quiet voice reached no one but the doctor” as the pair connects in a shared intimate silence, yet again set apart from Nan and Perry (107). By contrasting the interactions and connections between these couples, Macardle emphasizes the generational differences between the individuals involved. Moreover, in presenting the father- son pair as suitors and intimates, Macardle identifies both the mother and daughter, or Mother and daughter, as sexual agents. By constructing the Mother as a sexual agent, Macardle challenges the separate notions of the Mother as the desexualized Irish Mammy and as the virginal land of Mother Ireland; in doing so, she challenges the myth of the Irish Mother.
30 Nan as the Daughter
Macardle’s challenging of the myth of the Irish Mother throughout the novel is evident in the mother-daughter pair as sexual agents, as well as the physical connections between mother and daughter despite the contrasting spatial associations. More importantly, however, each of these challenges contributes to Macardle’s presentation of the daughter as a revision, or an
“alternative face of Irish womanhood.” By the end of the novel, the central conflict becomes a struggle between Virgilia and Nan because she will not tell her daughter the cause of her affliction. Nan reacts with frustration at being left out and, more importantly, being treated like a child:
Nan leaned against the sofa where her mother’s hand could rest on her shoulder.
She felt that she wanted never to let her mother out of her sight again. She felt
young and ignorant, like a child surrounded by grown-up people who move in a
universe of their own, at whose nature she can only guess: and they were all being
gentle and kind to her, as grown-up people are to a child. (179)
Beginning with a physical touch between the mother and daughter, this passage moves from
Nan’s protective impulse, as she “felt that she wanted never to let her mother out of her sight again,” to her separation from “grown-up people who move in a universe of their own to her frustration with being treated as she was “young and ignorant, like a child.”
Nan’s quick revisions on her feelings about being treated as a child are contrasted by the constancy of her position, leaning “against the sofa where her mother’s hand could rest on her shoulder.” This position further confirms the likeness of the two women in the physical connection, but maintains Virgilia’s role as maternal with her comforting hand on her daughter’s shoulder. However, Nan’s lean instigates the initial contact and comfort, which shifts the role of
31 the daughter away from the role of child and towards the characterization of woman. This moment, with this shift, occurs during the turning point in the plot of the novel; with this important location in the text, Macardle confirms the necessity of recognizing Nan as more than a child, and recognizing the potential for an Irish Daughter beyond the connection to the outdated, problematic Irish Mother.
Mother-Daughter Relationships in The Irish Republic
While this mother-daughter relationship is central to the plot of Macardle’s novel The
Unforeseen, it is obviously not central to, or even expected in, the history of The Irish Republic.
Despite this apparent lack of connection, the disruption of the Irish Mother in The Tragedies of
Kerry suggests a pattern in Macardle’s body of works. In order to determine whether or not this pattern holds true, it is necessary to consider Macardle’s most politically conservative publication, and arguably her most successful book, The Irish Republic. In The Irish Republic,
Macardle addresses her readers to state that this is new, alternative view of Irish history: “This narrative is an attempt to supply what has been too long lacking: an account of the Irish
Republican struggle from the viewpoint of an Irish Republican” (23). Macardle, identifying as an
Irish Republican first and foremost, frames the history as a Repubublican supplement, but ensures the reader that the facts, dates, and names remain accurate, if not completely unbiased
(23-24). Regardless of bias, this new Republican history was successful: with an endorsement and foreword by de Valera, the book went through four editions before 1950. The history’s political framing, as well as its success, necessitate and exploration of The Irish Republic in order to recover, or even reconsider, Macardle and her works.
32 Beginning with early modern Ireland and moving quickly to focus on the years of the war and early nationhood, Marcardle recounts a Republican Irish history that is concerned with the individuals involved in the formation of Ireland as a nation. While she acknowledges the significance of battles and includes dates and names, Macardle unapologetically states that her primary focus is the “political over military” activities of Irish revolutionaries (24). In the acknowledgements, Macardle states that writing this history “would not have been possible to reconstruct the story of the years of the Revolution without the help of men and women who took part in the events described” (24). With this focus on individuals, Macardle sets up The
Irish Republic similar to her shorter pamphlet, The Tragedies of Kerry. Although to a significantly lesser extent, Macardle also challenges the trope of the Irish Mother in this longer historical text as she includes the mother-daughter relationship and suggests its potential for the
“alternative face of Irish womanhood.”
Macardle’s most significant subversion of the Irish Mother in The Irish Republic is her expansion of the colonial familial metaphor in discussing Ireland’s transition from British colony to the Free State of the Irish Republic. Macardle describes “the barbarities of Elizabeth’s agents in Ireland,” but remarks that there “was a sort of magnificence” to this “devastation on a wide scale” (31).16 After commending the honest, efficient violence with which Elizabeth’s agents claimed the land and conquered the people, Macardle moves on to comment on how the Irish people persevered: “The Irish, sheltered and aided by their native mountains and bogs, found means to resist, or at least to harass the invader—not very different from those resorted to by their descendants three hundred years later” (31-32). Macardle’s description of the landscape that
“sheltered and aided” approaches a depiction of a Mother Ireland, but the latter part of the sentence moves quickly away from the metaphor. Macardle connects the rebellious efforts in the
33 sixteenth century to “those resorted to by their descendants three hundred years later,” particularly during the Easter Rising of 1916. Macardle thus stresses familial or generational inheritance to bring the reader through Irish history and the nation’s prolonged fight for independence, expanding the familial metaphor to suggest Ireland as a nation built not only by fathers and son, but also by mothers and daughters.
Macardle makes it clear throughout the history that women, though often excluded from the particular politics and warfare, were included in this familial or generational inheritance.
Macardle begins the text with a description of the Easter Rising:
About twelve hundred men and women took part in the Rising in Dublin in 1916,
and in the country a few hundred more. It is not strange that the Rising was
interpreted in England as the irresponsible act of a group of fanatics who in no
way represented their nation’s mind. Even the leaders themselves, going to
execution or to penal servitude, could not foretell what the immediate reaction in
Ireland would be. (29-30)
In establishing the description of Irish history from the point of view of the Irish Republic,
Macardle emphasizes that the people involved “could not foretell the immediate reaction.” Here, the term “immediate” is key for Macardle’s description: although the “immediate reaction” might have been unclear, Macardle insists that resistance was enduring.
According to Marcardle, Irish history had been defined by exploitation generation after generation. She writes, “As the centuries succeeded one another more enlightened doctrines were accepted in theory, so that new pretexts were required for exploitation; but exploitation remained” (30). With this enduring exploitation came reactionary resistance of an oppressed people. Macardle suggests that this is definitive of the people of the Irish Republic:
34 No one who knew the meaning of nationality found it difficult to understand that
the Irish had, in past centuries, resisted conquest and absorption by another race;
what caused astonishment, whether hostile or sympathetic, was the passion and
tenacity with which the resistance had been maintained. (30)
Macardle contends here that the “passion” and “tenacity” of the Irish people bolstered an unquestionably unique sense fierce nationality, which contributed to the prolonged maintenance of the resistance.
Macardle’s closing of this history suggests that this prolonged resistance, and this generational inheritance, would not stop. Lamenting the partition of Northern Ireland, Macardle writes that,
The Irish people had created their Republic and sustained it with as much courage
and devotion as any people have brought to the defending of their national
inheritance. Those who surrendered it, surrendered it because they were deceived
and bewildered, and under a threat of renewed aggression which they believed
they had not the strength left to endure. (897)
Macardle attributes the creation and sustainment of the Irish Republic to the tenacity and passion of Irish nationalism. Even more, however, Macardle identifies this Republic and this resistance as the “national inheritance.” This “national inheritance” was mistakenly surrendered by a generation that “believed they had not the strength left to endure,” but this subtly suggests that a potential for future generations, with “strength left to endure” the efforts of resistance for “their national inheritance.”
This subtle suggestion becomes more overt as Macardles nears the end. After she establishes the present upward mobility of Irish people, culture, and economy, Macardle asserts
35 that “a new generation of Englishmen” will be coming into power (897). In the final sentence of the text, Macardle hopefully proposes a possibility for this future generation: “Perhaps this generation may make anew the opportunity that, in 1921, was so tragically wasted, and may see an Irish Republic make, with the British Commonwealth of Nations, a compact of amity and peace” (897). If Macardle is hopeful that the next generation of Englishmen will “make anew the opportunity that, in 1921, was so tragically wasted,” she is expecting the next generation of Irish to continue their national inheritance of resistance that will equip them with the tenacity and passion to fight for the opportunity to make the “compact of amity and peace.”
While the above examples, particularly of the Englishmen, feature exclusively male or ambiguous participants in the generational inheritance, Macardle’s emphasis on women’s participation in the War for Independence throughout her text suggests that this is not the case. In the opening description of the Easter Rising, Macardle notes that it was approximately “twelve hundred men and women,” and she does not go further into detailing the ratio of male to female participants. Macardle also highlights the specific efforts of the Women Workers’ Union in organizing a protest against the conscription of Irish men to serve in the British Army for World
War I. As Macardle explains, “its members marched through Dublin where they signed a promise to support the men in their resistance” in the days leading up to a government strike planned for April 23, 1918 (251). By April 21st, the Women Workers’ Union’s “pledge against conscription was signed by nearly all Nationalist Ireland” (251).
In addition to commending the nationalist efforts of women and men equally, Macardle also treats their repercussions as equitable.17 Macardle discusses the jail sentences and trials of participations in the rebellion throughout the text, including details of both men and women. In particular, Macardle relates the August 1918 incarceration of Hannah Skeffington,
36 deported from Ireland as being ‘a person likely to act or about to act in a manner
prejudicial to the State.’ She had earned her arrest, having completed a tour of the
United States where at not less than two hundred and fifty meetings she had
expounded Ireland’s claim to independence and related the story of Easter
Week.18 (258)
Macarlde goes on to include Skeffington’s personal appeal to then-president Woodrow Wilson, before moving seamlessly along to discuss the number of Sinn Féin members sentenced to jail time in September and October of the same year. With this inclusion, Macardle insists on women’s participation in, and their importance in, the effort for the Republic. The Fianna Fail political party, and de Valera specifically, were politically unconcerned with the status of women in society and failed to acknowledge female participation in the efforts for Irish Independence, which Macardle herself even noted.19 By insisting on women’s participation throughout the text,
Macardle does not completely abandon her feminist ideals in writing this seemingly conservative text. In contrast to her political alignment, Macardle emphasizes women’s inclusion in this generational inheritance by insisting on women’s participation in the nationalist in creating and maintaining Irish Republic in conjunction with the enduring inheritance of Irish nationalism.
With this inclusion in the national narrative, and the expansion of the familial metaphor,
Macarlde challenges the myth of the Irish Mother and, even more significantly, stresses the potential in the mother-daughter relationship.
Conclusion
After looking at two of Macardle’s short works, “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” and The
Tragedies of Kerry, for a pattern in her use of the Irish Mother, the exploration of this pattern in
37 The Unforeseen and The Irish Republic makes Macardle’s method in challenging the Irish
Mother clear: Macardle stresses the importance of, and the potential within, the mother-daughter relationship. These texts are representative of Macardle’s writing, particularly with her engagement with outside influences of Irish folklore, politics, and other literary trends. These texts are also exemplary, with “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” and The Irish Republic as two rare examples of Macardle’s work still receiving substantial scholarly attention. Because of this,
Macardle’s disruption of the myth of the Irish Mother in these texts is significant.
Despite the significance of this disruption, though, this thesis represents only a preliminary exploration of Macardle’s body of works. In pursuing the questions of Macardle’s feminist nationalism in her fiction and historiography, the pattern that becomes evident only inspires further questions. Is this disruption with the mother-daugther relationship consistent throughout Macardle’s body of work? Are there parallels between this subversion and
Macardle’s activist efforts? Does Macardle present the daughter as a hopeful future “alternative face of Irish womanhood” in her other texts, even ones with a more international focus? Does
Macardle elsewhere challenge the myth of the Irish Mother with female sexual agency? These questions, like this thesis, offer a place to begin considering Macardle’s literary fiction and historical works, as well as her disruption of the myth of the Irish Mother, with the scholarly attention deserved of these varied texts and this important historical figure.
1 For more information, see Meaney’s Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change (New York: Routledge, 2010), Ward’s In their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism (Dublin: Attic Press, 2001), as well as the The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volume 5: Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions. 2 This is, of course, a simplification of a complex political history of the formation of the Irish Republic. For more information on the intricacies, particularly of the contrasting politics of
38 different nationalist groups, see R. Foster’s Modern Ireland: 1600-1972 (London Penguin, 1990). 3 Nadia Smith’s text Dorothy Macardle: A Life was the first biography written on Macardle, and, published in 2007, this biography remains the only full-length publication devoted to Macardle. While the biography is significant in advancing studying Macardle as both a political figure and an acclaimed author, it does not represent any significant publication exploring Macardle’s texts at length. 4 In his book Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), Diarmuid Ó. Giolláin discusses these examples, and more, in an exhaustive exploration of Irish folklore and its relevance throughout Irish history. While he does not explicitly connect each folk tradition to literature, he does maintain that this connection is present. 5 According to Smith, Macardle’s relationship with Countess Markievicz and Maude Gonne allowed her the opportunity to meet Yeats at the Abbey Theater (26). Significantly, these women also influenced Macardle’s early political involvement, which was primarily in feminist groups (29-30). 6 Although McClintock’s nineteenth-century focus precedes Macardle’s works, her theories help to establish the state of colonial Ireland that instigated the War for Independence and, as a result, both Macardle’s activism and writing; for these reason’s, McClintock’s work is essential for theorizing this thesis. 7 These scholars include Meaney and Ward, as well as historians like Mary O’Dowd, Phil Kilory, and Maryann Gialanella Valiulis. 8 Maria Luddy explains that the restrictive clauses in the 1937 draft of the constitution elided not only women’s recognition as Irish citizens, but also as political participants in the efforts for the Free State; with the limited recognition of women’s work occurring “within the home,” Luddy claims that women were legally confined to the role of wife and mother, with their value as a citizen otherwise in question. This troublesome wording prompted the “high profile feminist campaign” on the part of various women’s groups, and even incited the formation of the Women’s Social and Political League in November of that year (194, 193). It was Macardle who orginially proposed the formation of this League; she lamented publically in the Irish
39
Independent that, despite hers expectations of equality in the Irish Free State, the need for the League “had arisen because men had organized the sexes separately and to the detriment of women.” According to Luddy, the feminist campaign of the 1937 Citizenship Debates was “a protest against the discursive construction within the constitution that all women, whatever their marital status, and whether they were mothers or not, were enmeshed in traditional families” (194). Macardle’s public involvement this particular campaign confirms her commitment to critiquing the role of the Irish Mother, as both a nationalist myth and as a restrictive reality for Irish women. 9 This text is politically significant because Macardle wrote these stories during her imprisonment at Mountjoy. Even more, each short story is dedicated to one of her fellow inmates. 10 See, for example, Gavin Foster’s The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class, and Conflict (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 11 The name “Maeve” is also particularly resonant in Irish folklore as an Anglicized spelling of
Méabh, a queen from Irish mythology. 12 Macardle’s familiarly with classics as well as Shakespeare, as explored by Smith in her biography of Macardle, suggest that she would have been aware of this tradition, which is explored further in works such as Pierre Brulé’s Women of Ancient Greece (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003) and Theresa D. Kemp’s Women in the Age of Shakespeare (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2010), and is also referenced in an Irish context by Giolláin. 13 In her analysis of Jacobs’ diaries, Meaney shares the anecdote: “The relationship between art and politics, and the apparent conflict between women’s intellectual ambitions and sexual desires, were as hotly debated in Jacob’s milieu as they are in the novel Jacob tended to despair of what she saw as Macardle’s conservative views of women and sexuality. Macardle infuriated her by telling her that she ‘should be content to be intellectual and not want people to dance with my as well. She has this notion about women, that it is unreasonable of them to wish both body and mind to be used and pleased-of course a man may always cultivate both’” (72). 14 This also occurs in The Uninvited (1941) and Dark Enchantment (1953).
40
15 It is worth noting here that the last name “Wilde” is another reference to Oscar Wilde, further suggesting the significance of the plot similarities between “The Portrait of Roisin Dhu” and The Picture of Dorian Gray. 16 Macardle’s admiration for Elizabeth I seems out of place in her forgiving treatment of the English invasion of Ireland here, but it is consistent with Macardle’s other literary interests. Macardle references works of William Shakespeare in many of her literary works. Additionally, she lived in Stratford-upon-Avon to study the works and life of Shakespeare, and her book Shakespeare, Man and Boy was published posthumously in 1961. See Smith (2007) for more information on Macardle’s time in England. 17 It is also significant to note that, while Macardle treats women and men equally in the historical account of their participation in the rebellion, she does recognize the problematic inequality. This is perhaps best evidenced in her description of voting: “Women had at last secured the franchise, though not yet on terms of equality with men. Women over the age of thirty could vote and could stand for Pariliament. In Ireland this meant an access of strength to Sinn Féin” (262). 18 Skeffington was a significant figure in early feminist movements, particularly with labor recognition, the Gaelic Language Revival, and the publication of the first Irish women’s newspaper, Bean na hEireann. For more information, see Ward’s Unmanageable Revolutionaries. 19 According to Luddy, “Macardle, a respected writer and intellectual, member of Fianna Fáil, a staunch supporter of de Valera, and the author of The Irish Republic, a major work on the fight for Irish freedom, wrote privately to de Valera arguing against those clauses which appeared to limit women in society. She concluded that ‘as the constitution stands, I do not see how anyone holding advanced views on the rights of women can support it, and that is a tragic dilemma for those who have been loyal and ardent workers in the national cause’” (190).
41 Works Cited
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