Irish Women and Nationalism

Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags

Louise Ryan, Margaret Ward, Louise Ryan, Margaret Ward

• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781788551113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

Studies of Irish nationalism have been primarily historical in scope and overwhelmingly male in content. Too often, the 'shadow of the gunman' has dominated. Little recognition has been given to the part women have played, yet over the centuries they have undertaken a variety of roles – as combatants, prisoners, writers and politicians. In this exciting new book the full range of women's contribution to the Irish nationalist movement is explored by writers whose interests range from the historical and sociological to the literary and cultural. From the little known contribution of women to the earliest nationalist uprisings of the 1600s and 1700s, to their active participation in the republican campaigns of the twentieth century, different chapters consider the changing contexts of female militancy and the challenge this has posed to masculine images and structures.

Using a wide range of sources, including textual analysis, archives and documents, newspapers and autobiographies, interviews and action research, individual writers examine sensitive and highly complex debates around women's role in situations of conflict.

At the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship, this is a major contribution to wider feminist debates about the gendering of nationalism, raising questions about the extent to which women's rights, demands and concerns can ever be fully accommodated within nationalist movements.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward

Theorising gender and nationalism

In the 1980s the pathbreaking book Nationalism and Sexuality, by George L. Mosse, offered one of the first theoretical analyses of nationalism as a gendered project. Writing primarily about Nazi Germany, Mosse showed that women were a crucial part of nationalism, both as symbols of the nation and guardians of national traditions. According to Mosse, the narrow domestic and traditional roles which nationalist movements have often ascribed to women have been underpinned by the need to preserve the virtue, uniqueness and authenticity of the nation. Mosse argues that nationalism not only idealises men but also represents women as the ‘guardian[s] of the traditional order’.1 He goes on to say that ‘woman as a national symbol was the guardian of the continuity and immutability of the nation, the embodiment of its respectability’.2 The portrayal of women as symbols of the nation defines women’s role in nationalism as passive and secondary.

Since the 1990s a number of feminist scholars have contributed to the increasing theorisation of gender and nationalism. The work of Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias, Anne McClintock, Kumari Jayawardena and collections such as those by Andrew Parker et al., Tamar Mayer, Ruth Roach Pierson and Napur Chaundry,3 to name just a few, have helped to broaden the analysis of nationalism beyond a narrow Western focus. Both Yuval-Davis4 and McClintock5 point out that it is necessary to go beyond narrow, Eurocentric models of nationalism. McClintock states that ‘there is no single narrative of the nation . . . nationalisms are invented, performed and consumed in ways that do not follow a universal blueprint’.6 Nevertheless, she claims that all nationalisms are gendered and contain women in subordinate and domestic roles.7 Anti-colonial nationalist movements have frequently employed gendered ideologies that position women in ‘traditional’ roles within the domestic sphere.

Ailbhe Smyth suggests that Irish nationalist discourse uses woman as a sign ‘in a discourse from which women, imaginatively, economically, politically disempowered, are in effect and effectively excluded’.8 In this way, women become the bearers of the symbols of nation but their everyday experiences and agency are denied. They are ‘excluded from direct action as national citizens, [and] . . . subsumed symbolically into the national body politic as its boundary and metaphoric limit’.9

The primary goal of anti-colonial nationalist movements is to eject the colonial authority and to establish, or re-establish, a sovereign nation-state. Therefore, the postcolonial period of nation-building is of crucial importance in terms of asserting the legitimacy of the nation and the authority of the State. The newly established nationstate has to act quickly to legitimise the cultural authenticity and uniqueness of the nation. The role of women is crucial to this process. As has been pointed out by numerous writers, nationalist movements have usually encouraged women to participate in particular ways.10 However, once the goal of national independence is achieved the newly established state quickly reaffirms ‘traditional’ gender roles and excludes women from the sort of political activity they had experienced during the years of national conflict. As Kandiyoti argues, the association of women with the private domain ‘reinforces the merging of the nation/community with the selfless mother/devout wife’.11 The idealisation of the national mother in the home reinforces the limited role of women in the newly established nation-state. Whatever rights women may have won in the earlier part of the national conflict may be lost later on in the nation-building project.12 Thus one could argue that while nationalist movements seek to mobilise women they do so in strictly limited ways and for strictly limited time periods.

However, as has recently been argued at length by Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert and Louise Ryan,13 it is important to distinguish between nationalist rhetoric and the more complex and diverse realities. As this book demonstrates, many women have shown a remarkable and long-lasting commitment to nationalism. The women who had actively participated in nationalist struggles were not always easily persuaded to return to the domestic sphere; they were not always dupes who could be mobilised in times of crisis and then sent back at the whim of the male leadership. Many of these women believed in the nationalist promises of freedom and justice and they were not about to let male leaders renege on these promises. The fascination of the peace process in Northern Ireland lies not only in attempts to reach an accommodation between the aspirations of nationalists and Unionists but also in the negotiation of gender politics that continues to take place in many different arenas.

As we shall see from what follows, it is necessary to distinguish between how women have been represented in national histories and cultural and symbolic repertoires on the one hand, and, on the other, how they have actually negotiated and challenged their roles and contributions to nationalism. This book shows how, at different times in history, women have engaged with nationalism in many varied and complex ways, and it uses a range of sources to reveal the extent of women’s active participation in Irish nationalism. While nationalist symbols, images and texts have continued to depict women within a narrow range of cultural stereotypes, women’s roles within nationalism have been, and continue to be, diverse, multifaceted and dynamic.

One of the enduring difficulties in analysing women’s relationship to and role within nationalism is the fact that they are frequently located in the private sphere and thus are either invisible and outside the main focus of analysis, or are perceived as the victims of nationalist conflicts. A number of chapters in this book attempt to overcome this problem by using oral history interviews as a means of uncovering women’s experiences of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Looking beyond 1916–23

In a recent book Linda Connolly has argued that ‘the relationship between anti-colonialism and feminism has received much attention in both historical and contemporary Irish studies’.14 She is critical of the tendency to reduce the Irish experience of feminism to nationalism and colonial oppression. Connolly points out that feminism has in fact often had a somewhat problematic relationship to nationalism. While this is undoubtedly true it is also true to say that feminism in Ireland has always had to engage with nationalism and colonialism in particular ways, whether through the state nationalism of the Southern Irish state or the colonial authorities in Northern Ireland. In addition, as this book illustrates, Irish women have had a long, complex and dynamic relationship with nationalism which has often intersected with feminism in ways that have proved challenging and, at times, fruitful.

The relationship between nationalism and feminism is the subject of much theorising within feminist scholarship worldwide but, as Lois West has pointed out, much of this depends on how one defines feminism and what it means to be a feminist.15 It is not the aim of this book to argue that nationalist women have always been feminist or that their nationalist activism has brought them to a feminist consciousness. Neither do we wish to suggest that nationalism was the only movement in Irish society to mobilise and politicise women. Nevertheless, unlike Connolly, we suggest that women’s involvement in nationalism has not been over-studied and that there is still a great deal to be learned about this significant and influential movement in Irish society, North and South, and the women who actively participated in it.

Although it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that any aspect of Irish women’s history has been over-researched, it is probably fair to suggest that the period between 1916 and 1923 has received more attention than many other periods. Women’s involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising, and the role of Cumann na mBan in the War of Independence (1919–21) and the Civil War (1922–23), have been the subject of several books and a few dozen academic articles. This could hardly be considered overexposure. However, one of the difficulties involved in focusing on this particular period of nationalist militarism is that it tends to reinforce the notion that women were mobilised only as required, and were then disbanded and instructed to return to domesticity. While many of the male leaders of the movement attained positions of power in the newly established Southern Irish state, women were simply pushed out of public life. However, as many of the essays in this book make clear, women’s relationship to nationalism is far more complex and long lasting than this simple representation would suggest.

In this book we have deliberately chosen to focus on a long time frame, from the 1600s to the 1990s. This is not to suggest that we have no interest in nationalist women between 1916 and 1923. Indeed several essays in the book do engage with that period. Obviously it is important, not least because it witnessed the large-scale mobilisation and militarisation of nationalist women. However, we suggest that it is important also to look beyond it to examine the long-term role of women in Irish nationalism. The book shows that women have been a continual part of nationalism, not just occasional players who can be easily summoned and dismissed. In fact, nationalist women have often found themselves in disagreement with male leadership about what their roles and level of involvement should be. Such disputes and tensions indicate that nationalist men have not always understood or sympathised with the particular experiences and aspirations of women within the movement. The gender politics of nationalism is a theme running through many of the essays. It can be argued that current developments in Northern Ireland can only be fully appreciated by an understanding of the past, an observation which holds true equally for an appreciation of the efforts by women to remain actively involved within their communities and within the wider political landscape. Local studies of women’s experiences in the North over the past thirty years have begun to be researched and published. The Dúchas oral history project in West Belfast, discussed here by Claire Hackett, is one such venture. Others, such as the Ardoyne Project, are also providing insights into the experiences of women in tightly knit, highly politicised, working-class communities.16 Informed reassessment of women’s contribution to the nationalist cause during the past thirty years of conflict will surely follow. Of equal importance is the opportunity provided for those within their communities to reflect on the vital roles performed by women – an essential part of the process of ensuring that women do not become marginalised in the years to come.

The peace process

The subject of women and nationalism has been of vital interest to feminist activists, particularly in Northern Ireland over the past three decades – where political pressures were often so acute that discussion on the issue quickly descended into acrimony. Those times, we hope, are over, never to return. There has been some rapprochement between different political tendencies within the women’s movement at large, although this remains tentative, conditional on the overall political situation. We have not arrived at a position where feminist interests provide for cohesive unity. In some respects, the same trajectory of mutual hostilities later shading to some acceptance of mutual concern can be discerned within the works of feminist scholars, who have not been immune to the impact of revisionism on their work. The dominant view within the academy (influenced by the bitterly fought war between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British state) has been that research that was not critical of republicanism was suspect, and the notion that feminist scholars could interrogate republican history and practice while retaining some sympathy with its political goals was inimical to the ethos of scholarship.

The contributors to this book are Irish, English, Welsh and American. Some work in universities, some are independent scholars. Although some originate from the Republic, it is significant that none of the contributors is from an educational establishment in the Republic. We believe that this says much about the nervousness with which Northern Ireland has been regarded, its potentially destabilising influence on a rampant Celtic Tiger an undoubted factor in this attitude. It is to be hoped that, with greater North-South engagement and with Sinn Féin now a significant all-Ireland political party, such attitudes will be replaced by a recognition on all sides that mature analysis and reflection are required before we can progress to a society based on equality. The editors of this book (as feminist scholars both critical of, and sympathetic to, Irish republicanism) have experienced the discomfort of the academic world. At the same time, they remain insistent that such research, reassessing the contribution made by countless nationalist women to the cause of Irish political independence, has not only brought women back into the history books and into the imaginations of many, but also has provided essential knowledge, without which there could be no realistic evaluation of the changing relationship women have had to Irish republicanism.

We believe that the continuing peace process in Northern Ireland, encapsulated by the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998, with its support for ‘the right of women to full and equal political participation’, provides us with space for reflection. Unionists and nationalists signed up to that Agreement, and while genuine support for women’s political participation might be confined to a few, given the male-dominated nature of our political institutions, it has given us a valuable opportunity for retrospective appraisal of centuries of past endeavours by Irish women who asserted their right to have a voice in the affairs of the nation. While some of the essays provide assessments of revolutionary moments, others are concerned with appraising the cultural milieu in which nationalist women acted, wrote or reacted to what was written about them. Other chapters reflect on the activities of working-class women striving to defend their communities during the last decades of intense communal strife, and consider the strategies used by republican women prisoners to maintain and develop their sense of identity as women and as political prisoners. The range of disciplines, perspectives, political views and methodologies contained within this collection is great, providing us with a kaleidoscope of different insights and examples. Each contributor has used her particular discipline and expertise to reveal some part of the experience of women in Ireland who have worked over the centuries in many different ways for political autonomy.

Chapter summaries

The essays in this book are divided into three sections. The first section focuses on historical perspectives and brings together new archival research to reveal the complex and varied involvement of women activists in early phases of Irish anti-colonial conflicts. These chapters focus in particular on uprisings in 1641, 1798 and 1848. In ‘Testimonies to history: reassessing women’s involvement in the 1641 rising’ Andrea Knox examines Irish female resistance to the growing English and Scottish colonial authority in Ireland during both the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and in particular the period of the 1641 rising. Popular contemporary views portrayed the Irish as barbarous and violent, with women having a particular talent for aggression and rebellion. Indeed Irish women were viewed as barely within control. Irish court records and testimonies of women reveal the ways in which female rebellion, aggression and violence developed specific forms. Irish women were involved in rebel networks (including working with some Scottish women) and female regiments; they worked as fences in towns and as maverick individuals. This is an area of both Irish and women’s history that has received little academic scrutiny. The essay focuses on the nature of women’s involvement in rebel networks, gender identification and the developing sense of loyalty towards Ireland rather than local loyalty. Resistance was evidenced in the form of outright revolts, violence and aggression meted out to settler communities, but also towards colonial functionaries and army personnel. Women also organised trade in illegal armaments and used proceeds from urban prostitution to finance revolts. Knox, using a variety of sources, examines the actions of rebel women from all social strata.

In ‘Revolution in Ireland, evolution in women’s rights: Irish women in 1798 and 1848’, Jan Cannavan examines the participation of women in two important nationalist movements. Women’s agency is stressed in her analysis, which rejects accusations that such women colluded in a patriarchal agenda. Her argument is that women’s active participation in these two major episode...