Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title Nineteenth-century Irish fiction: Irish identity, O'Connell and the transnational Author(s) Corcoran, Mark Publication Date 2015-05-29 Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/5056 Downloaded 2021-09-27T00:43:19Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. Nineteenth-Century Irish Fiction: Irish Identity, O’Connell and the Transnational Name: Mark Corcoran Student Number: 10232946 Award: PHD Institution: National University of Ireland Galway Supervisor: Nicholas Allen Submitted to the University of Ireland, Galway, September 2014 Dedication This work is dedicated to my mother Kathleen, father Gerry, brothers Sean and Gerard, and my sister Caitriona. My gratitude is to Nicholas Allen for his guidance, challenges, positivity, humour, and direction. Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis represents original work and has not been submitted, in whole or part, by me or another person, for the purpose of obtaining any other qualification. Signed: ___________________ Date: 29/09/2014 Summary of Contents: This project contributes an analysis of the representation of Irish identity in the novel post-Catholic Emancipation (1829) to the turn of the twentieth century. The thesis focuses on the works of Gerald Griffin, William Carleton, and George Moore. The construction of Irish identity by the authors and O’Connell is focused on the use of transnationalist elements. The main theme is the transnational and anti-transnational response in fiction to the construction of Irish identity in politics, literature, and culture particularly the image propagated by Daniel O’Connell’s political narratives. Additionally, a chief interest of Irish fiction post-Catholic Emancipation was a satirical treatment of the political culture. The spectre of Daniel O’Connell features heavily in the satire. In turn, both the authors and O’Connell are portrayed in a nationalist vein in the Freeman’s Journal. The narratives of O’Connell’s politics have a role in the political manufacturing of these authors’ images in newspapers. The transnational identity of the O’Connell and Moore family provides a context for the transnationalist narratives created by the authors and politicians. The response of Moore to his father’s politics and the narratives of Catholicism in Irish culture showcase Moore’s knowledge of the European novel. The reconfiguration of Irish tenant and landlord character moulds throughout the work of Griffin, Carleton, and Moore’s fiction is framed within the evolution of Irish satire in the nineteenth century. Newspapers are used to trace the available narratives of political and transnational clout which are present in Irish satire. Pointedly, political satire whether in literary or political narratives, offer a transnational dimension to Irish identity. Consequently, the far-reaching transnational legacy of Daniel O’Connell, as his narratives of Irish identity reverberated throughout the nineteenth century, modifies in representation in fiction, newspapers, and criticism as the requirements of Irish identity changed. Furthermore, the focus of this thesis is to branch out from the hereto defined historical narratives of the Catholic and Anglo-Irish novel. This is achieved through detailing the nuanced transnational characters that the authors used to construct Irish identity beyond the confines of a relation to the British Empire. Table of Contents Summary of Contents.......................................................... Introduction..................................................................................p. 1. Chapter 1: The Transnationalism of Daniel O’Connell...............p. 33. Chapter 2: Gerald Griffin and Daniel O’Connell: Constructing identity in a changing Society..........................................................................................p. 79. Chapter 3: William Carleton: Politics, Narrative, and Ulysses....p. 115. Chapter 4: G.H. Moore: The shift away from O’Connell............p. 167. Chapter 5: A Rebellious Transnationalism: Reinventing the Traditional Novel .....................................................................................................p. 215. Conclusion...................................................................................p. 247. Bibliography................................................................................p. 261. Introduction: A Changing Society Ireland in the early part of the nineteenth century was changing rapidly due to altering economic and social structures. The expanding nature of Irish industry in the late eighteenth century was created by the ports of Cork, Dublin, and Belfast.1 Protective tariffs ensured that the business of importing and exporting was maintained. The population of Dublin increased by 50% from 1750 to the end of the century.2 The citizenry of Ireland numbered 2.5 million in 1767 and rose to over 4 million in 1781.3 By the beginning of the nineteenth century the population was 5 million. Fifty years later 800,000 people died in the Famine of 1845 to 1851.4 The frequency of marriage dropped and the marriage age rose.5 Daniel O’Connell, Gerald Griffin, William Carleton and the Moore Family were products of this hastily changing population and culture. They were intellectuals trying to capture and shape a changing identity through narrative. David George Boyce in Nineteenth-century Ireland: the search for stability wrote of the advent of the Catholicity of Irish identity as organised and directed by Daniel O’Connell.6 For Boyce, this religious fulcrum at the heart of Irish nationalist identity made O’Connell a more important figure than republicans or separatists. Boyce emphasised the multiplicity of 1 Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, Ireland before the famine, 1798-1848 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1972.) p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. 4. 3 Ibid., p. 5. 4 Joseph Lee, The modernisation of Irish society, 1848-1918 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1989) p. 1. 5 Ibid., p.3. 6 David George Boyce, Nineteenth-century Ireland: the search for stability. (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2005) p. 132. 1 O’Connell’s nationalism and viewed O’Connell’s ambition for government as tied to performance rather than severance from Great Britain. The political aspiration was the improvement of Irish society and life, coupled with the removal of the Protestant stranglehold on political and economic power.7 Catholic Emancipation gathered clout as a campaign, led by Daniel O’Connell, in 1823.8 A transformation in British public opinion alongside the work of O’Connell’s Catholic Association resulted in the success of Emancipation in 1829.9 The Emancipation of the Catholics was a historical milestone that set in motion a shift in the feudal nature of Irish society. Emancipation concerned removing and lessening the constricting laws surrounding the rights of Roman Catholics.10 The removal of the penal 7 Kevin Whelan’s The Tree of Liberty maps the emergence of various events and institutions such as Maynooth College, The Orange Order, separatism, loyalism, and popular republicanism in the 1790s which redefined relations between Ireland & Britain (Whelan, p. i.). Burgeoning pressure on Protestants in terms of leases was reflected in the notices against Catholics bidding for leases. Whelan traces this to the areas of Oulart and Blackwater after the rebellion of 1798. In the 1820s and 1830s Catholicism was gaining power and Protestants were beginning to feel uncomfortable: ‘As an agonised Protestant observed to the French traveller Alexis de Tocqueville: ‘They want to put us in the position of a conquered people, in which we long held them. That is what we are not able to endure.’ Kevin Whelan, The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism and the Construction of Irish Identity, 1760-1830 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996) p. 50. 8 On Catholic Emancipation, see Denis Gwynn, The struggle for Catholic Emancipation (1750- 1829), (London: Longmans, 1928), Denis Gwynn, A hundred years of Catholic Emancipation (1829-1929) (London: Longmans, 1929), Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland before and after the famine: explorations in economic history, 1800-1925, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). 9For a record of the development of Catholic Emancipation, see, James A. Reynolds, The Catholic emancipation crisis in Ireland, 1823-1829 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954). Timothy O'Herlihy, Catholic emancipation: reviewed a century after (Dublin: Gill, 1928), Suzanne T. Kingon, ‘Ulster Opposition to Catholic Emancipation, 1828-9’, Irish Historical Studies, 34, 134 (2004), pp. 137-155, and Desmond Bowen, The Protestant crusade in Ireland, 1800-70: a study of Protestant-Catholic relations between the Act of Union and disestablishment (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978). 10 Boyce argued that the aggression towards the Protestant Ascendancy was based on absenteeism and xenophobia. The two major problems for Catholics were the Penal laws, and the corrupt and unrepresentative nature of the eighteenth century Irish Parliament. Boyce likened the Parliament and the aims of the Penal Laws to South African apartheid. This is where the power of the Protestant Ascendancy was made manifest. David George Boyce, Nineteenth- century Ireland: the search for stability. (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2005) p. 94. For a discussion of the Penal Laws, see: Eamon O'Flaherty, Ecclesiastical Politics and the Dismantling of the Penal Laws in Ireland, 1774-82, Irish