‘Sinful Singleness’? Exploring the Discourses on Irish Single Women’s Emigration to England, 1922–1948

Review of periodical literature published in 2008

“…The active lives of working‐class women were also given attention. Redmond examines female migration from Ireland to Britain, demonstrating that young women were attracted by better wages and the support provided by chain migration, and also discussing the responses of the Catholic Church to the phenomenon. McDermid considers the autobiography of Louise Jermy, a domestic servant who in later life was encouraged to tell her life story by the Women's Institute.…”

Gender, Nation, and the Politics of Shame: Magdalen Laundries and the Institutionalization of Feminine Transgression in Modern Ireland

“…As Sally Munt describes it, nationalism "depends upon a homogenizing, idealizing process that tells a proud story of origins dependent upon selective denial, or repression" (2008,59). For the other of nation-28 For further work on women's migration and tensions around class, sexual, and economic freedom, and perceived disloyalty to the nation, see Howes (2002) and Redmond (2008). 29 That is not to claim that Irish women emigrants were not also subject to patriarchal norms and strictures when abroad nor that they were able to entirely escape the Irish version thereof.…”