Perspectives on Women during the Great Irish Famine from the Oral Tradition

Lysaght, Patricia

doi:10.2307/20522462

Cited by 4 publications

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“…9 'The image par excellence of the horror and injustice of Famine', writes Patricia Lysaght, 'is that of a dead mother with a child at her breast'. 10 When post-Famine Irish nationalists talked about 'Mother Ireland', they alluded to these representations, linking women's maternal roles and mothers' self-sacrifice with emerging national identities.…”

Section: Gender and Nation In Irish History And Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Wrong for womankind and the nation: Anti-abortion discourses in 20th-century Ireland

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2019

J Mod Eur Hist

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This article asks how anti-abortion discourses and dialogues engaged with ideas about motherhood, national identity, and women’s reproductive decision-making in 20th-century Ireland, particularly from 1967, when abortion was decriminalized in Britain, to 1983, when Ireland’s Eighth Amendment became the law of the land. It assesses the ways in which ‘pro-life’ advocates rejected the notion that women were independent adults capable of reproductive decision-making. Indeed, throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, anti-choice activists defined all Irish women as innately innocent, moral, and naturally desirous of domesticity and motherhood. Abortion, they argued, was encouraged, coerced, and even forced by outsiders or ‘others’. The arguments of some anti-abortion activists utilized meaningful themes in Ireland’s colonial and nationalist history, including the historical notion of Irish sacrificial motherhood, the depiction of Irish women as young and vulnerable, and the explanation of abortion as foreign, anti-Irish, and reminiscent of British colonial repression.

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Section: Gender and Nation In Irish History And Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Wrong for womankind and the nation: Anti-abortion discourses in 20th-century Ireland

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2019

J Mod Eur Hist

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“…82 In Ireland, women managed the space of the kitchen and determined what took place in it. 83 Hospitality and socializing within kitchens were part of home and community life. Indeed, through the mid-twentieth century, the kitchen retained its place as the center of all things related to domestic life and women's social networks, including health care.…”

Section: Kitchens and Kettlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kitchens and Kettles: Domestic Spaces, Ordinary Things, and Female Networks in Irish Abortion History, 1922–1949

Delay¹

2018

Journal of Women's History

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Cara DelayThis article explores the material culture of abortion in Ireland, North and South, from 1922 to 1949. Focusing on spaces and things, it demonstrates the continuing importance of Irish women's domestic health care traditions and networks even during decades of enormous political, economic, and cultural change. By using ordinary household items in their abortion attempts, Irish women made their homes sites of medical care and ensured that women's roles as health care givers persisted. These women's determination to manage their reproductive health care mirrors the efforts of other European women in similar circumstances, suggesting that Irish sexual and reproductive health history should be placed in a broader comparative context. D uring a 1935 County Antrim criminal trial, the court asked a woman accused of giving an illegal abortion to explain the presence of certain items in her home. The woman responded, "The small bottle contains quinine powder, which is used for washing out and kills the seed. The two bottles of tablets I use for preventing colds after the wash out . . . Condy's Crystals I use for washing my hands . . . The cotton wool is for bathing with, and the rubber sheet is for keeping the bed clean." 1 Tablets, disinfectant, and cotton wool-here we find concrete evidence for the material culture of domestic abortion in early twentieth-century Ireland. Many abortions, as this account reminds us, took place not in the "backstreet" but in ordinary women's homes. These words also reveal that some Irish women, by using common household items-basins, soap, bottles, and rubber sheets-attempted to manage their own reproductive health care within the domestic sphere and with whatever they were able to access.This article investigates the spaces, networks, and material culture of illegal abortion and women's domestic health care in Ireland, North and South, from 1922 to 1949. 2 Moving from rural to urban areas across different parts of the island with additional references to mainland Britain, it highlights the experiences of both married and single women, primarily of the urban working classes or from poorer rural areas. Demonstrating continuities in women's reproductive health care, this research provides evidence for the ordinariness of abortion, which, for many, was woven into the fabric of everyday life. 3 When they attempted abortion in their

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“…As Patricia Lysaght has argued, women are frequently represented in folklore for their benevolence and good will. Here, in particular, the horror stories of the Famine are counter‐balanced with the generosity of women (Lysaght, 1996, p. 77). Anthropologist Eileen Moore Quinn's examination of language—both English and Irish—and the transmission of oral traditions through the words and expressions passed down by immigrant mothers and grandmothers to their children, also provides a unique insight into how individuals experienced and remembered the Famine (Moore Quinn, 1996, pp.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Modest Proposal: New directions in researching and understanding Ireland's Great Famine

Kinealy

2022

History Compass

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The Great Irish Famine of 1845–1852 was a defining event in the development of modern Ireland. As a result of large‐scale and sustained emigration, it was also a transnational event, creating diasporas that regarded the Famine as their foundation story. Following decades of silence and limited scholarship, the 150th anniversary of the first appearance of potato blight in 1995 triggered a global interest that extended far beyond academia. This overview of the historiography and recent debates concerning the Great Famine suggests a vibrancy and an interest that shows no sign of abating. It has resulted in an ever‐growing body of scholarship that is constantly providing fresh and nuanced ways of understanding this tragedy, through the use of new methodological and theoretical approaches and partnerships with professionals outside the academy.

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Perspectives on Women during the Great Irish Famine from the Oral Tradition

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Wrong for womankind and the nation: Anti-abortion discourses in 20th-century Ireland

Wrong for womankind and the nation: Anti-abortion discourses in 20th-century Ireland

Kitchens and Kettles: Domestic Spaces, Ordinary Things, and Female Networks in Irish Abortion History, 1922–1949

A Modest Proposal: New directions in researching and understanding Ireland's Great Famine

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