Notes 1 Introduction 1. Jo Slade, ‘Waterfall’, The Vigilant One (Galway: Salmon Poetry, 1994), p. 21. 2. Works that address the issue of women’s changing status are cited within the following chapters as specific subjects become pertinent. One can find useful summaries of general changes in the Republic in Ailbhe Smyth, ‘States of Change’, Feminist Review 50 (Summer, 1995): 25–43, and Gemma Hussey, ‘Women and Life in Ireland’, Ireland Today: Anatomy of a Changing State (London: Penguin Books, 1995), pp. 417–44. Important works from the 1980s, like Crane Bag (Special Issue: Images of Irish Women, ed. Christina Nulty, 4:1 (1980); Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, ed., Irish Women: Image and Achievement (Dublin: Arlen House, 1985); Ailbhe Smyth, Women’s Rights In Ireland (Dublin: Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Ward River Press, 1983); Ursula Barry, Lifting the Lid: Handbook of Facts and Information on Ireland (Dublin: Attic Press, 1986); Jenny Beale, Women in Ireland: Voices of Change (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1986); Eileen Evason, Against the Grain: the Contemporary Women’s Movement in Northern Ireland (Dublin: Attic Press, 1991); Ruth Hooley, ed., The Female Line: Northern Irish Women Writers (Belfast: Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement, 1985) have achieved nearly historical status because the changes have been so rapid that even works written a decade ago may be dated. One needs to consult a variety of recent sources, including journals devoted to the topic of gender and Irish women: Irish Journal of Feminist Studies and Women’s Studies Review (National University of Ireland, Galway); special issues or regular features in such journals as Women’s Studies International Forum, Feminist Review, Writing Women, Graph, Krino, HU/ The Honest Ulsterman, Journal of Women’s History, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Feminist Studies, The Colby Quarterly, Canadian Women’s Studies/Cahiers des femmes. Most useful might be such texts as Ailbhe Smyth, ed., Irish Women’s Studies Reader (Dublin: Attic, 1993), Anne Byrne and Madeleine Leonard, eds, Women and Irish Society: a Sociological Reader (Dublin: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1997). 3. Julia O’Faolain, Women in the Wall (London: Faber & Faber, 1975, rpt. London: Virago, 1985) and The Judas Cloth (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992); Dolores Walshe, Where the Trees Weep (Dublin: Wolfhound, 1992). 4. This study examines only fiction written in English. Very little fiction has been published in Irish although some is available in dual-language trans- lation. See ‘Beleaguered but determined: Irish Women Writers in Irish’, Mary N. Harris, Feminist Review 51 (Autumn 1995): 26–40. 5. For a study of major women poets writing today, see Patricia Boyle Haberstroh, Women Creating Women: Contemporary Irish Women Poets (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996; Dublin: Attic Press, 1996). 6. Ann Owen Weekes, Irish Women Writers: an Uncharted Tradition (Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1990). Page 170 Notes to pages 3–10 171 references are cited in the text. 7. Mary O’Donnell, Virgin and the Boy (Dublin: Poolbeg, 1996), pp. 14–15. Other page references are cited in the text. 8. Mary Dorcey, ‘The Spaces between the Words’, The Women’s Review of Books, 8:3 (December 1990): 22. Page numbers are cited in the text. 9. Edna O’Brien, Mother Ireland (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976; rpt. London: Penguin, 1978), p. 87. 10. In this case, a 14-year-old raped girl was denied permission to leave Ireland for the purpose of obtaining an abortion in England because of the prohi- bitions built into the Irish Constitution in 1983, as a result of a Republic-wide referendum. For a feminist discussion of this ruling and its aftermath, see Ailbhe Smyth, ed., The Abortion Papers (Dublin: Attic Press, 1992). 11. Ailbhe Smyth, ‘Introduction’, Wildish Things: an Anthology of New Irish Women’s Writing (Dublin: Attic Press, 1989), p. 8. 12. See, for example, Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, ed. ‘Introduction’, Voices on the Wind: Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight (Dublin: New Island Books, 1995) and Ann Ulry Colman, A Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Irish Women Poets (Galway: Kennys Bookshop, 1996). To discover a rich harvest of studies on Irish women’s lives and works, see the Irish Journal of Feminist Studies for lists of the graduate theses being produced on feminist topics within Women’s Studies Programs in Irish universities. 13. Eavan Boland, Object Lessons: the Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (London: Carcanet Press, Ltd., 1995; rpt. London: Vintage, 1996), p. 254. 14. Katie Donovan, Irish Women Writers: Marginalized by Whom? (Dublin: The Raven Arts Press, 1988), p. 7. Other page references are cited in the text. 15. John Boland, ‘And Let’s Not Forget the Men’, the Irish Times, Saturday, 28 June 1997:8. 16. Emma Donoghue, ‘Noises from Woodsheds: Tales of Irish Lesbians 1886–1989’, Ide O’Carroll and Eoin Collins (eds), in Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland: Towards the Twenty-First Century (London: Cassell, 1995), p. 159. 17. Medbh McGuckian, ‘Birds and Their Masters’, Irish University Review 23:1 (Spring/Summer 1993): pp. 29–30. 18. Maeve Kelly, ‘Making a Space’, Unpublished speech delivered at the Women Writers Circle, Fourth International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Hunter College, New York, July 1990, p.2. 19. Frances Molloy, No Mate for the Magpie (London: Virago Press, 1985), p. 170. 20. Nuala O’Faolain, Are You Somebody? The Life and Times of Nuala O’Faolain (Dublin: New Island Books, 1996), p. 77. 21. Caroline Walsh, ed., Virgins and Hyacinths: an Attic Press Book of Fiction (Dublin: Attic Press, 1993), p. 6. 22. Poet and novelist Juanita Casey might be considered an exception to the silence of Traveler women, and she is often claimed as an Irish writer because her Traveler mother, who died at Casey’s birth in England, was Irish. She was raised by a ‘settled’ English family, but in her adult life followed the Romany pattern of her biological parents’ lives. (Freda Brown Jackson, ‘Juanita Casey’, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Detroit: Bruccoli 172 Notes to pages 10–13 Clark Book, 1983). Casey’s Horse of Selene, partially set in Ireland, is a beau- tiful rendering of the excitements and possibilities of the liminal life between ‘civilization’ and solitary freedom. (Portlaoise, Ireland: The Dolmen Press, 1971.) 23. Maeve Kelly, ‘Orange Horses’ in Orange Horses (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1990); Clare Boylan, Black Baby (New York: Doubleday, 1989); Ronit Lentin, Night Train to Mother (Dublin: Attic Press, 1989) and Songs on the Death of Children (Dublin: Poolbeg, 1996). 2 Authorship, the forbidden country 1. Mary Dorcey, Moving into the Space Cleared by Our Mothers (Galway: Salmon Press, 1991), p. 26. 2. Anne Le Marquand Hartigan, Clearing the Space: a Why of Writing (Knockeven, Co. Clare, 1996), p. 14. 3. Nuala O’Faolain, ‘Irish Women and Writing in Modern Ireland’, Irish Women: Images and Achievements, ed. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Dublin: Arlen Press: 1985), p. 130. Other page references are cited in the text. 4. Nuala O’Faolain has subsequently disavowed these statements and, in her remarkable memoir Are You Somebody? The Life and Times of Nuala O’Faolain (Dublin: New Island Books, 1996) talks of freeing herself from internalized sexism. Yet even so, when she discusses the dozens of writers she admires, she still includes only four women among them. 5. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, ‘Woman as Writer: the Social Matrix’, Crane Bag 4:1 (1980): 101, 105. 6. Luce Irigarary, Speculum of the Other Woman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 135. While some feminist and poststructuralist critics may fault Irigarary for using dichotomous divisions in her thought (e.g., mono- lithic discourse and fluid female opposition), the term ‘economy of the same’ is not an inaccurate way to describe the historical situation in the Republic of Ireland in the twentieth century, although I myself am uneasy about her homology between female sexuality and women’s language. For further discussions of these problems see Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 7. Luce Irigaray, ‘Power of Discourse’, This Sex Which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 76. Other page references are cited in the text. 8. Molly Hite, The Other Side of the Story (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 144–5. 9. A valuable book length study of one possible tradition is Ann Owen Weekes’s Irish Women Writers: an Uncharted Tradition (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1990). Page references are cited in the text. 10. Ailbhe Smyth, ‘Ireland’, Bloomsbury Guide to Women’s Literature, ed., Claire Buck (London: Bloomsbury, 1992), p. 37. 11. Ailbhe Smyth, Lecture, University of Victoria, Canada, 3 March 1992. 12. Ann Owen Weekes, Unveiling Treasures: the Attic Guide to the Published Works of Irish Women Literary Writers (Dublin: Attic, 1993). Notes to pages 14–18 173 13. Eavan Boland, A Kind of Scar: the Woman Poet in a National Tradition (Dublin: Attic Press, 1989), p. 8. Page references are cited in the text. 14. Eavan Boland, Lecture, Conference of the International Association of Anglo-Irish Studies, Trinity College Dublin, 13 July 1992. 15. ‘An Interview with Eavan Boland’ by Jody Allen Randolph, Irish University Review 23:1 (Spring/Summer 1993): 130. Pertinent to my argument here, this interview is published in an issue wholly devoted to the work of Eavan Boland, who is the only woman poet so honoured up to that time in the seventeen issues dedicated to individual Irish writers. Fiction writer Mary Lavin is the other woman thus featured. 16. Both these terms are problematic. There is obviously no single essence of Irish, but I am using here the poet’s own conflicted designation.