At Home in the Revolution

Lucy McDiarmid

Description

On Monday morning 24 April 1916, Catherine Byrne jumped through a window on the side of the GPO on O'Connell Street to join the Irish revolution; Mairead Ni Cheallaigh served breakfast to Patrick and Willie Pearse, their last home-cooked meal, and then went out to set up an emergency hospital with members of Cumann na mBan; Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh persuaded Thomas MacDonagh to let her into the garrison at Jacob's Biscuit Factory; and Elsie Mahaffy, daughter of the Provost of Trinity, was in her bedroom 'completing her toilet' when her sister came in to tell her that 'the Sinn Feiners had risen.'At Home in the Revolution derives its material from women's own accounts of the Easter Rising, interpreted broadly to include also the Howth gun-running and events that took place over the summer of 1916 in Ireland. These eye-witness narratives -- diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, and official witness statements -- were written by nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, women who felt completely at home in the garrisons, cooking for the men and treating their wounds, and women who stayed at home during the Rising. The book's focus is on the kind of episode usually ignored by traditional historians: cooking with bayonets, arguing with priests, resisting sexual harassment, soothing a female prostitute, doing sixteen-hand reels in Kilmainham Gaol, or disagreeing with Prime Minister Asquith about the effect of the Rising on Dublin's architecture. The women's 'small behaviours', to use Erving Goffman's term, reveal social change in process, not the official history of manifestos and legislation, but the unofficial history of access to a door or a leap through a window; they show how issues of gender were negotiated in a time of revolution.

Sujets

• Catholicisme
• Stephen Ireland
• Ireland
• Military history
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Royal Irish Academy
• Date de parution: 18 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908996947
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

AT HOME IN THE REVOLUTION
WHAT WOMEN SAID AND DID IN 1916
LUCY M C DIARMID
At Home in the Revolution
First published 2015 Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 www.ria.ie
Text Lucy McDiarmid
ISBN 978-1-908996-94-7
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owners.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
for all my Irish friends Do mo chairde cro in irinn Ar sc th a ch ile a mhaireann na daoine
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Author s note
Introduction Jumping into the GPO
Chapter One Provision for girls
Chapter Two Mary Spring Rice, Elsie Mahaffy and domestic space
Chapter Three Flirtation and courtship
Chapter Four Women and male authority
Chapter Five Women among women
Chapter Six The Kilmainham farewell
Chapter Seven Emotions in 1916
Conclusion Working the revolution
Endnotes
List of illustrations
Bibliography
Biographical appendix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Professorship at Montclair State University has provided generous financial support for all aspects of my work on this book. As the first person to hold this professorship, I am grateful to the Department of English for honouring me with it. Three department chairs-Emily Isaacs, Johnny Lorenz and Wendy Nielsen- have encouraged my research and teaching, and I thank them all.
Over the last few years, the descendants of some of the people I ve written about have been kind in expressing interest in my work, patient in answering my many questions and generous in offering family photos. I would especially like to thank Helen Litton (the Clarke and Daly families); Honor O Brolchain and Eil an N Chuillean in (the Plunkett family); Helen Bacon (the Ryan family); Charlie Spring Rice (Mary Spring Rice); Patrick Comerford, Joe and Hilary Comerford (M ire Comerford); Deirdre McMahon (Thomas Weafer); Micheline Sheehy Skeffington (Hanna and Frank Sheehy Skeffington); Christina McLoughlin (Mary McLoughlin); Dave Foley and Fred Loane (Catherine Rooney, n e Byrne); Emer Greif (Eily O Hanrahan O Reilly); Sarah Mahaffy, Henrietta Usherwood and Charles Baker (Elsie Mahaffy). Gertrude Parry (n e Bannister), Roger Casement s cousin, had no direct descendants, but fortunately for me Jeff Dudgeon knows as much about her life as any grandson would and has given me information I could not have got otherwise. More recently, exchanges with Gerry Griffin (Eilis O Brien and Emily Ledwith, n e Elliott) and Cormac O Malley (Ernie O Malley) have also been useful.
I often found myself wishing that the leaders of the rebellion had waited until 1917 so I could have had another year to work on this book. Fortunately for me, many scholarly friends enabled me to complete the manuscript before 2016. The wise critiques and detailed suggestions of Nicholas Grene, Deirdre McMahon, Senia Pa eta, Linda Connolly and Patricia Coughlan improved the manuscript significantly. Fionnuala Walsh has been altogether a wonderful research assistant, and her skill in finding obscure information in tricky databases and websites has been of great use. Several close friends (and one close relative) devoted serious thought to possible titles for this book: thank you to Angela Bourke, Pat Coughlan, Nicholas Grene, Frank Miata and Lucy Schneider. I m especially grateful to all the people who hosted talks or organised conferences where I spoke on any of the topics covered in this book, because the urgent need to produce ideas and analysis for presentation enabled me to do the thinking that went directly into my chapters, and the comments and questions I got helped me revise those ideas. My thanks to Eunan O Halpin and Deirdre McMahon (Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College Dublin); Margaret O Callaghan (Department of Politics and Institute of Irish Studies, Queen s University Belfast); Margaret Mills Harper, Muireann O Cinneide and Tina O Toole (Symposium on Women, War and Letters, 1880-1920, University of Limerick); Michael Kenneally and Rhona Richman Kenneally (International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, Concordia University, Montreal); Eamonn Hughes (International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, Queen s University Belfast); Brian Conchubhair (Roger Casement 1864-1916: The Global Imperative, Tralee, Co. Kerry); Tony Tracy (National University of Ireland, Galway); Mary McAuliffe (Women s History Association of Ireland); Linda Connolly and Piaras Mac inr (Gender, Sexuality and Culture: A Symposium in Honour of Professor Patricia Coughlan, University College Cork); Alexandra Poulain and Fiona McCann (plenary lecture at the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, Universit de Lille); Helen Beaumont and Edith Andrees (The Howth Gun-running: 100 Years On, National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks); Margaret Mills Harper and Matthew Campbell (Yeats International Summer School, Sligo); Roy Foster and Senia Pa eta (Seminar in Irish History, Hertford College, Oxford University); Andrew McGowan (Yeats Society of New York, Glucksman Ireland House, New York University); Matthew Campbell (International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, York); Linda Connolly (Merriman Summer School, Ennis, Co. Clare).
In conversations over drinks of various kinds in Buswells or on the Upper West Side or in any number of places in Ireland and New York, many friends have offered ideas, information and gossip. They brought delight to my life as I figured out what to say and how to think about the wonderful women in this book. Remembering such pleasant occasions, I would like to thank Margaret MacCurtain, Angela Bourke, Beatrice S. Bartlett, Patricia Coughlan, Nuala N Dhomhnaill, Margaret O Callaghan, Deirdre McMahon, Tina O Toole, Joe Lee, Eve Morrison, Eunan O Halpin, Fearghal McGarry, Adrian Frazier, Nicky Grene, Theo Dorgan, Paula Meehan, Claire Bracken, Elizabeth Grubgeld, Bill Decker, Tony Tracy, James E. Kennedy, Meg Harper, Alice Kelly, Wendy Nielsen and Lauren Arrington. I am very sorry that the late Margaret h gartaigh did not live to see this book completed; she and Eimear O Connor led me on a somewhat furtive tour of the provost s garden in Trinity College, an escapade that enabled me to visualise many of Elsie Mahaffy s diary entries. Table talk over many years with Declan and Beth Kiberd and the late Eithne Kiberd often paused at 1916, and I thought of them all as I wrote this book, especially when I quoted Louise Gavan Duffy. For gifts of books, for sources of quotations and for all kinds of practical help, I am grateful to James Ryan, Gerardine Meaney, Arin Gilbert, Adam Hochschild, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Gillian McIntosh, Keith Jeffery, Mike Lee, Philip O Leary, Mary Helen Thuente, Maureen Murphy, Margaret Kelleher, Hilary Pyle, Niamh O Mahony, Julie Dalley and Margaret Ward.
The introduction lists some of the many books on related subjects that preceded and aided my work, but five excellent recent books (and conversations with their authors) have enriched my understanding of 1916: Fearghal McGarry s The Rising: Ireland: Easter 1916 , Senia Pa eta s Irish nationalist women 1900-1918 and Sin ad McCoole s Easter widows , which I read as I was writing At home in the revolution ; and Diarmaid Ferriter s A nation not a rabble and Roy Foster s Vivid faces , both of which I kept for dessert and read as I revised the manuscript.
Discussion and analysis of manuscript material has been important to my vision of this book from the beginning, and so I am indebted to the friendly help given me by many librarians and archivists: Rosemary King (Allen Library); Ken Bergin (Special Collections, Glucksman Library, University of Limerick); Catriona Crowe (National Archives of Ireland); James Harte (Manuscripts and Rare Books, National Library of Ireland); Harriet Wheelock (Royal College of Physicians of Ireland); Felicity O Mahony and Aisling Lockhart (Manuscripts and Archives Research Library, Trinity College Dublin); Seamus Helferty and Orna Somerville (University College Dublin Archives); historian Samantha Brook, who consulted materials for me at the Bodleian and Rhodes House Libraries, Oxford University; and Susan Schreibman for the Letters 1916 project. I am also indebted to Joe and Hilary Comerford for a copy of the beginning of M ire Comerford s fascinating 1916 memoir.
I had long wanted to have this book published in Ireland. I am very lucky that Catriona Crowe suggested the Royal Irish Academy, because it has been a great pleasure to work with Managing Editor Ruth Hegarty. I appreciate all the good advice she has given me about this book. And without the support of my assistant, Janet Dengel, an expert in accountancy as well as in research, this book would have been a very late commemoration indeed. For wise and careful help with the proofs of this book and for years of friendship, I am grateful to Nancy Pepper.
Writing can sometimes be lonely, but work on what women said and did in 1916 generated (as these acknowledgements make clear) a lively social life. Frank Miata s amusing, affectionate and learned presence meant that I always had someone close by to critique and improve my ideas. Although he never quite came to love the Bureau of Military History website as much as I did, he was always willing to look up from Heidegger or Bicycling Magazine and contemplate a moment in 1916.
PERMISSIONS
For permission to quote from unpublished texts, grateful acknowledgement is made to the National Library of Ireland for quotations from works by Mrs Arthur (Mary Agnes) Mitchell and Mary Spring Rice; to University College Dublin Archiv