the professionalization and medicaliza- pointing to the gendered difference be- Frank Ryan. Jacob was also something of tion of midwifery services. Cormac Ó tween “therapies.” LEEANN LANE an anomaly: in an era which privileged a Gráda’s very analytical take on the influ- woman’s role within the domestic sphere, ence of the socioeconomic, cultural and Sexuality was another important theme Rosamond Jacob: she possessed neither children nor hus- environmental factors on infant and child addressed in this volume. Laurence M. band; in a time when Catholicism was mortality in the area of Pembroke did not Geary tackled the institutional treat- Third Person Singular considered a defining aspect of Irish cul- explore gender per se, but made signifi- ment of venereal disease pointing to the ture, Jacob’s views remained solidly anti- Dublin: University College Dublin Press, cant points regarding ethnoreligious dif- unjust social discourse which placed clerical. Born in 1888, Jacob came of age 2010. 324 pages. ferences noting that economic factors women as the locus of the disease, thus in an era which would later be known as ISBN 978-1-906359-54-6 (paper) were most influential in infant and child excusing men’s sexual activity. Susannah a turning point both for Ireland and for €30.00 mortality. Ciara Breathnach examined Riordan and Leeane McCormick ex- middle-class women. However, consid- the challenges faced by Lady Dudley’s amined the costs of venereal disease in ering the fact that single, middle-class Reviewed by Madolyn Nichols District Nursing Scheme pointing to the the twentieth century. Riordon, in her women have so infrequently been the difficulties of funding and staffing the chapter, calculates the difficulties and focus of study, women like Jacob have scheme and the tensions between ethno- limitations of the venereal disease poli- Despite Rosamond Jacob’s role as author tended to fall through the cracks: “Jacob,” medical practices. Greta Jones explored cies in the Republic of Ireland 1943-1952 (of three novels, a children’s book, a his- Lane suggests, “offers a key into lives the incidence of tuberculosis, which oc- laying the main responsibility for its tory of the United Irishmen, and a fic- more ordinary within the urban middle curred more frequently in females than ineffectiveness on politicians and ad- tional biography of the wife of Theobald classes of her time, and suggests a new males (33) pointing to the importance of ministrators. McCormick’s work on Wolfe Tone), her importance to research- perspective on female lives” (4). the “inner dynamic of families” (48) and the implementation of venereal disease ers of Irish history has heretofore been the important role that women played. policies in Northern Ireland during the in her role as chronicler, specifically her Lane explores Jacob’s literary ambitions Mel Cousins moved the readers firmly Second World War highlights local at- prolific and sedulously-kept diaries re- and sense of failure at her lack of com- into the twentieth century examining titudes and beliefs that again placed lating the major events of the early years mercial success, and documents how national insurance records after the the blame squarely on women. Sandra of the twentieth century. Though an ac- Jacob, who viewed herself quintessen- formation of the Irish Free State high- McAvoy dissected the arguments for the tive participant in a variety of nationalist tially as a writer, employed events in her lighting the gendered nature of claims introduction of the 1935 Criminal Law and feminist organizations, Jacob held personal life as material for her novels. but also the difficulties of taking these influence of religious discourses. an ancillary place in the history of the records at face value. revolutionary period, and was ultimately Preston and Ó hÓgartaigh conclude that eclipsed by better-known personalities Moving on to the realm of mental the social history of medicine has “come like Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Dorothy health, Pauline Prior examined crimi- of age” (8), which hopefully means that Macardle, Constance Markievicz, and nal lunacy, but from the vantage point historians will continue to explore Frank Ryan. Lane’s study addresses the of psychiatry, showing how medical new and old themes in the history of lacunae of both Jacob’s personal history knowledge was used to support socially medicine, using a variety of historical and of the historiography of unmarried, acceptable gendered notions of femi- approaches as well as gender, as a cat- heterosexual, middle-class women in ninity and masculinity. The short-lived egory of analysis. As this edited collec- Ireland pre- and post-independence. institutions for inebriates were exam- tion demonstrates, gender matters. And ined by Elizabeth Malcolm who noted understanding how gender influenced Lane clearly establishes Jacob as a con- gendered attitudes to chronic drunk- medical services and practices not only tradictory figure: though a Quaker paci- enness despite the growing medical- helps us understand the past, but also the fist, she supported many aspects of the ization of excessive drinking. Oonagh present. violence in the Irish Revolution; though Walsh’s chapter examines the custody outspoken in her views regarding wom- versus cure dilemmas faced by asylums – Birkbeck, University of London en’s rights, she was nonetheless entirely passive in her intimate relationship with 300 | CJIS Vol. 38, Nos. 1+2 Book Reviews | 301 Lane, for instance, details the way in history nor even as the chronicle of the Only three cookbooks of Irish origin which Jacob records her affection “like a failed career of a political understudy; in- were published before 1847, but Dorothy man” for Tony Farrington (i.e. physically stead Lane compellingly tells the story of Cashman, writing in “That delicate rather than emotionally) and how her a woman who, though she was in many sweetmeat, the Irish plum,” has been feelings led her to interrogate normative ways at the heart of the events around the able to find useful food references in values which prescribed sexual passivity revolution, continued to feel isolated and Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent for women (197). Jacob would later voice different, “singular” as a result of her ide- and The Absentee, as well as in the this ambivalence through her protago- ology and personal status. Through her, National Library’s collection of culinary nist Constance in her unpublished novel Lane conveys the sense of servitude that manuscripts. The excellence of Irish Third Personal Singular. Lane also details was so much a part of many women’s lives foodstuffs shines through Cashman’s Jacob’s tireless work behind the scenes in Catholic Ireland in the years surround- essay: the orchard fruit, the salmon from throughout the exhilarating years of the ing independence—the thanklessness Sligo (she finds a manuscript reference revolution and her sense of disappoint- and lack of recognition that frustrated and connects it with kin of Edgeworth). ment at the anti-climactic nature of life Jacob but continued to drive her to work Flicka Small’s essay, “Know Me Come Eat in independent Ireland. In her later life, for nationalist and feminist organizations with Me: What Food Says about Leopold Jacob felt compelled as a single woman and in the service of individual friends. Bloom,” describes the eaters, eating to look after those women that the Irish While Jacob serves as the topic of this places, foodstuffs, and the acts of eating Free State had forgotten (Meg Connery volume, it is also in many ways a study in James Joyce’s Ulysses on June 16, 1904. and Mrs. Mellows are mentioned in some of a frequently-overlooked stratum of It is no travel-writer’s dream day: Bloom apple is descended from a tree that had detail, among many other friends and Irish society: single, middle-class women. sees a Christian Brother buying sweets not yet been domesticated in those early colleagues), and notes frustratingly that Lane’s work makes an important contri- and mentions a malnourished child, centuries. Flanagan also discusses the she would not have been expected to do bution to the history of women in Ireland encounters a vegetarian and thinks of importance of children’s periodicals, par- so had she been married. and is a welcome addition to the field. cannibals. Many kinds of hunger are ticularly Boy’s Own and Our Boys. evoked, and some threats: “Unless you The highlight of this excellent study is not – University of Warwick eat weggibobbles and fruit, the eyes of Eamon Maher, in “The Rituals of Food and in the rich detail of an era central to Irish the cow will pursue you through all Drink in the Work of John McGahern,” eternity” (qtd. 41). shows that the author sets many scenes in his novels around meals that are often In “Cowpie, Gruel and Midnight Feasts: tense, fearful, or sorrowful. The food and The Representation of Food in Popular drink often sound delicious, but the con- In ‘Tickling the Palate’: Gastronomy in Children’s Literature,” Michael Flanagan texts in which they are eaten are painful. MÁIRTÍN MAC CON IOMAIRE Irish Literature and Culture Máirtín Mac takes on the enormous topic of food in Rhona Richman Kenneally’s essay, “The AND EAMON MAHER, EDS. Con Iomaire and Eamon Maher have giv- English and Irish books and magazines, Elusive Landscape of History: Food and en us an excellent collection of essays. Its many of which were read in all English- Empowerment in Sebastian Barry’s Annie ‘Tickling the Palate’: three sections deal first with fictional rep- speaking countries, in particular the writ- Dunne” (2002), is based on Barry’s early resentations and memoirs of Irish foods, ings of Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Graham, childhood memories of farmstead life in Gastronomy in Irish second with real-life culinary and dining and Maurice Sendak.