Darby O’Gill and the Construction of Irish Identity A Thesis submitted to the School of English at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. September 2017 Brian McManus 1 Declaration I, Brian McManus, declare that the following thesis has not previously been submitted as an exercise for a degree, either in Trinity College Dublin, or in any other University; that it is entirely my own work; and that the library may lend or copy it or any part thereof on request. Signed _________________________ Brian McManus Date _________________________ 27/4/2018 2 Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the generous financial support that this project received through the awarding of an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship and the Yale-TCD Alumni Bursary for Research in Children’s Literature. I also wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance in my archival research that I received from Timothy Young and the staff of the Beinecke Library at Yale University and from Justin Arthur and the staff of the Walt Disney Archives at Walt Disney Studios. I would like to thank Pádraic Whyte for his considerable patience, pragmatism, diligence and dedication in supervising the writing of this thesis over the last four years. I would also like to thank Gavin Doyle, Paul Delaney, David O’Shaughnessy, Máire Ní Bháin, Eoin MacCárthaigh and Sinéad Keogh for their advice and assistance on aspects of this research project. I am also very grateful to Anne Markey, who was extraordinarily generous with her time and expertise. I would like to thank my friends and family for their support over the last four years, most especially Róisín Adams, Conor Linnie, Stephen O’Neill, Rebecca Long, Louise Gallagher, Aoife Dempsey, James Little, Charlie Dunney, Mary McManus, Fionnuala McManus, Ann McManus, Mary Daly, James Wharton and Patrick Grace. I am very grateful to Lydia Groszewski and Richard Smith in particular because I thought such good friends were only true in fairy tales and, happily, they have both proven me wrong. I would like to thank my sister Aoife and my brother Eoin for treating me kindly, for looking out for me and for keeping me laughing. I would like to give special and heartfelt thanks to my mother Maria and my father Seamus, whose unconditional support and loving guidance are the cornerstone of everything that I have ever achieved, continue to sustain me throughout all my endeavours and have been vitally important during the writing of this thesis. Measaim nach bhfuil aon dá sheoid is luachmhaire ná an bheirt acu agus ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Móna Casey, who first taught me my letters at her kitchen table and who enriched my life in so many ways that it is much poorer now for her absence. 3 Summary This thesis investigates the role of the term “Darby O’Gill” in the modern Irish consciousness as a signifier of a pejorative construction of Irish identity and the extent to which it is justified when all cultural incarnations of Darby O’Gill and the version of Ireland that he inhabits are taken into account. This thesis investigates not only whether it is justified to apply this cultural signifier to Darby O’Gill but also whether the emphasis that is placed upon the signifier in Irish cultural discourse obscures a more complex and interesting construction of Irish identity. The introduction establishes the origins of Darby O’Gill and his Ireland in the literary fairy tales of Anglo-Irish-American children’s author Herminie Templeton Kavanagh, which were published in the diasporic space of Irish America at the turn of the twentieth century. It also acknowledges the 1959 live-action film adaptation by Walt Disney Productions upon which Darby O’Gill’s notoriety appears to be founded. The introduction sets out the objective of this thesis to constitute the first sustained and comprehensive scholarly analysis of either Kavanagh’s tales or the Disney film, in order that an extremely thorough investigation into the signifier may be conducted. It explains how this analysis will consist of close textual analysis, socio-historical and cultural contextualisation, the application of relevant literary and cultural theories and relevant, pre- existing scholarship and findings from archival research which has been conducted for this project. The remainder of the introduction explores all previous scholarly analyses of both the literary and cinematic incarnations of Darby O’Gill and provides a detailed account of Kavanagh’s life and career, as this will inform and enhance the readings of her tales that feature in the main body of the thesis. 4 This thesis concerns the construction of Irish identity through representation and, thus, it is divided into four chapters as an acknowledgement of the four main areas of representation which can be identified in the tales and the film. The first chapter explores the representation of the Irish people in Kavanagh’s literary fairy tales, focusing, firstly, on Kavanagh’s appropriation of the cultural construction of Irish identity referred to as the “roguish hero” and, secondly, showing how this sympathetic, celebratory representation was facilitated by place of publication and by the form of the literary fairy tale. Thirdly, this first chapter discusses how the attitudes and preoccupations of the Irish diaspora in America at the turn of the twentieth century permeate her representation of the Irish people and, lastly, it will examine Kavanagh’s critique and repudiation of the cultural construction of Irish female identity in the diasporic space known as the “henpecking wife” through her representation of Irish women and their relationships with men. The second chapter of this thesis concerns the innovative and subversive representation of the fairies of Irish folk tradition, or Good People, in Kavanagh’s tales and it shows how Kavanagh entirely reconstitutes their role in the lives of the Irish people. Firstly, it will explore their reconstitution as “roguish heroes” and the firm and loyal friends of the Irish people before, secondly, exploring the reconciliation that Kavanagh orchestrates in her work between the Good People and Roman Catholicism and, thirdly, exploring the consequences of their newly acquired benevolence. Lastly, this second chapter will consider how such a radical re- interpretation of the fairies from Irish folk tradition may have impacted upon Kavanagh’s target diasporic readership and its understanding and appreciation of Irish folklore. The third chapter of this thesis focuses on the representation of the Irish people in the film adaptation of Kavanagh’s tales, Darby O’Gill and the Little People, and it suggests 5 that this representation was influenced and determined by a variety of factors, including the literary source material, established modes of representing Irish people in mainstream American cinema and the dominant themes and tropes in Disney products of the period. The four sections discuss the representation of Irish life, the Irish character, Irish class identity and Irish female identity respectively. The fourth and final chapter of this thesis focuses on the representation of the fairies from Irish folk tradition, or Little People, in the Disney film. It begins by exploring every aspect of their representation within the film before, secondly, exploring the paratextual representation of the Little People in the film’s extensive and sophisticated marketing campaign, which testified to the actual existence of real leprechauns, not only in Ireland but also in the film. Thirdly, this chapter provides a detailed analysis of the relationship between Walt Disney Productions and the Irish Folklore Commission, as the former sought help from the latter in making the film, and, finally, this chapter considers the film’s representation of the Little People in the context of Irish folklore and its global transmission. The conclusion of this thesis will return to its starting point as an investigation into the use of “Darby O’Gill” as a cultural signifier, whilst also establishing what else has been discovered throughout the course of the project. It will conclude by suggesting the wider implications of the findings of this research project for literary and cultural discourse in the immediate future. 6 Contents Introduction 8 Chapter One: Kavanagh’s Representation of the Irish People 33 Chapter Two: Kavanagh’s Representation of the Good People 116 Chapter Three: Disney’s Representation of the Irish People 192 Chapter Four: Disney’s Representation of the Little People 258 Conclusion 321 Bibliography 328 Filmography 348 7 Introduction The term “Darby O’Gill” serves a particular function in the modern Irish consciousness as a signifier of a pejorative construction of Irish identity that originates in the United States of America and promotes an inauthentic view founded upon an over-emphasis of certain aspects of Irish life and regressive behavioural stereotypes. There are many recent examples of the term being used in this manner by both Irish cultural commentators and Irish cultural practitioners. It was used by film critic Donald Clarke in a provocative article that was published in The Irish Times on the 19th of February 2010, in which he denounced the forthcoming Leap Year, an American romantic comedy that was largely set and filmed in Ireland,1 as “offensive, reactionary, patronising filth”.2 Clarke concludes the article, which was entitled “Enough, begorrah!”, by reflecting “the fact that, 50 years after Darby O’Gill, Hollywood studios are still belittling the nation in trash such as Leap Year is genuinely depressing”.3 An article that was published on the satirical news website Waterford Whispers News on the 9th of March 2016 again uses the term “Darby O’Gill” as a signifier of the kind of pejorative construction of Irish identity that it is ridiculing.4 Entitled “Chilling: Did Darby O’Gill Predict 9/11?”, the article ridicules such constructions of Irish identity, which it locates as originating in the United States of America, by endowing them with what is clearly being perceived as unwarranted significance.