Women's history and the Irish Revolution - Part 3


The historian Dr Cliona Murphy of California State University, Bakersfield. Photo taken from CSUB website.

 Continued from previous post.

 The chronology of the revolutionary period in Ireland viewed through the lens of women’s history does not necessarily look the same as that of traditional or mainstream history of the period. For example, Senia Pašeta describes the period from 1900 to 1918, not usually thought of as a distinct historiographical phase, as “a discreet [sic] period…in which women built the foundations for the liberation of their sex and their country”.[1] It is also the case that some of what Cliona Murphy calls “the traditional landmarks in nationalist history”[2] take on new significance when viewed from the standpoint of women’s history. The proclamation of the Irish Republic by the leaders of the Easter Rising in 1916, for example, while traditionally considered important for its role in the development of a nationalist consciousness in Ireland at the time, was also very significant for its guarantee of “equal rights and equal opportunities” for all citizens and its promise that a future Irish government would be “elected by the suffrages of all her men and women”,[3] clauses which helped to strengthen the commitment of many Irish feminists to the nationalist cause. Similarly, the Treaty debates in 1922, while significant in mainstream history as precursors to the split that eventually led to the civil war, are described by Senia Pašeta as “the final public battle over women’s suffrage”,[4] since the issue of whether to extend the franchise in Ireland to women over the age of 21, in line with the age requirement for men (a measure which was enacted as part of the Free State constitution in 1922), was one aspect of these debates.

The War of Independence, the civil war and the eventual establishment of the Irish Free State form the foundation story of what was to become the Republic of Ireland and, as such, it is often portrayed, at least to some extent, as a story of successful struggle. The women’s history narrative of these events and their aftermath is often more critical in its assessment of what was achieved. The new era they heralded was, institutionally, a deeply conservative and patriarchal one. Women had won the vote, but women’s rights in general were not high on the agenda of the governments that held power in the decades following independence. Cliona Murphy gives the following description of the attitude of the state towards its female citizens: “The Ireland which gradually evolved after independence was imbued with a Catholic ethos, glorifying the family and the institution of marriage, and though it considered it had elevated women to a revered position it had no time for the women who strode a very independent path. Rather, it told them their place was in the home as wives and mothers.”[5]

Finally, women’s history alters the historiography about the political activity of women themselves. Senia Pašeta has pointed out that all campaigns involving Irish women in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods were wedded to the idea that the female character was different from that of the male and that women in general possessed certain character traits, or “particular skills and sensitivities”, that, when allowed their full expression, would enrich the political environment and “civilise the public sphere”. This insight about how conceptions of egalitarianism in that period did not necessarily match those of the late twentieth or early twenty-first centuries enables us to better understand the feminist motivations of “the women who taught children the Irish language, raised money for male militias and administered first aid to Volunteers”.[6]

In summary, just as the revisionist approach to history writing had led, with the works of Roy Foster, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ruth Dudley Edwards and others, to a change in both the public and academic perception and interpretation of the revolutionary period, so the writing of women back into the history of the first quarter of the twentieth century in Ireland does not merely constitute a change of emphasis or another side to the story of the Irish revolution, but fundamentally alters the narrative of both the revolutionary period and of the events and circumstances that led up to and fed into it. Indeed, the development and growth of women’s history has, in the words of historian Cliona Murphy, created “a silent revolution in Irish historiography”.[7]  
Andrew Suzmeyan (September 2017)


[1] Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, p. 16.
[2] Murphy, ‘Women’s History, Feminist History or Gender History?’, p. 22.
[3] T. Clarke et al., The Proclamation of the Irish Republic (Dublin 1916), http://the1916proclamation.ie/ (Accessed: 4 September 2017).
[4] Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, p. 267.
[5] C. Murphy, ‘Suffragists and Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland’, History of European Ideas, 16.4-6 (1993), pp. 1009-1015, p. 1014.
[6] Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, pp. 9-10.



Bibliography





Bock, G., ‘Challenging Dichotomies: Perspectives on Women’s History’ in K. Offen, R. Pierson and J. Rendall (eds.), Writing Women’s History: International Perspectives (Basingstoke, 1991), pp. 1-23.

Clarke, T. et al., The Proclamation of the Irish Republic (Dublin 1916), http://the1916proclamation.ie/ (Accessed: 4 September 2017).

Coleman, M., The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (Oxford, 2014).

Cullen Owens, R., Smashing Times: A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1889-1922 (Dublin, 1984).

Foster, R., Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890-1923 (London, 2014).

Hart, P., The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (Oxford, 1999).

Jackson, A., Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800-2000 (London, 2003).

Laffan, M., The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916-1923 (Cambridge, 1999).

Matthews, A., Renegades: Irish Nationalist Women 1900-1922 (Cork, 2010).

Murphy, C., ‘Women’s History, Feminist History or Gender History?’, The Irish Review, 12 (1992), pp. 21-26.

Murphy, C., ‘Suffragists and Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland’, History of European Ideas, 16.4-6 (1993), pp. 1009-1015.

Pašeta, S., Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland's Catholic Elite, 1879-1922 (Cork, 1999).

Pašeta, S., ‘Ireland’s Last Home Rule Generation: The Decline of Constitutional Nationalism in Ireland, 1916-30’ in M. Cronin and J. Regan (eds.), Ireland: The Politics of Independence, 1922-49 (Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 13-31.

Pašeta, S., Irish Nationalist Women, 1900-1918 (Cambridge, 2013).

Perry, R., ‘Revising Irish history: The Northern Ireland conflict and the war of ideas’, Journal of European Studies, 40.4 (2010), pp. 329-354.

Ryan, L., ‘A Question of Loyalty: War, Nation and Feminism in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 20.1 (1997), pp. 21-32.

Townshend, C., ‘Historiography: Telling the Irish Revolution’ in J. Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution, 1913-1923 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 1-16.

Townshend, C., Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London, 2005).

Ward, M., from ‘Marginality and Militancy: Cumann na mBan, 1914-36’ in A. Morgan and B. Purdie (eds.), Ireland: Divided Nation, Divided Class (London, 1980), pp. 96-110 in A. Hayes and D. Urquhart (eds.), The Irish Women’s History Reader (London, 2001), pp. 58-63.

Whelan, K., ‘The Revisionist Debate in Ireland’, boundary 2, 31.1 (2004), pp. 179-205.

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