Women Writers in Ireland

Women’s writing in early modern Ireland constitutes a multifarious and multilingual category. The island’s population was comprised, broadly speaking, of four ethnic groups. The native, Gaelic, or Old Irish were the indigenous inhabitants, who adhered to the Catholic religion and spoke Irish Gaelic. The Old English descended from 11th-century Normans; they remained Catholic and were often bilingual. The New English—Protestant and English-speaking—settled during the 16th and 17th centuries; the Ulster Scots, northern settlers, were largely Presbyterian and spoke English and/or Scots. Thus, the writing produced by women who lived on the island reflected these often-conflicting identities. It emerged from social and political circumstances forged by competing allegiances during a time of great turmoil. Tudor policies of conquest and colonization led to upheaval and military conflict, as existing Gaelic systems of regional governance were attacked and, ultimately, dismantled, not without sustained resistance. A series of grueling wars—the Munster rebellions (1569–1573, 1578–1583, and 1598), the Nine Years’ War (1594–1603), the 1641 Ulster rising, the Confederate Wars of the 1640s, Cromwellian Wars of the early 1650s, and Williamite Wars of the 1690s—resulted in widespread displacement, colonial plantation, emigration, and immigration. But these circumstances also stimulated women to write. The pattern of recurrent upheaval generated large numbers of emigrants. Refugees fled to France and Spanish territories in pursuit of employment and support. Their letters, petitions, and accounts of exile offer a gendered perspective on political activism and Irish identities in Europe. Women’s participation in Gaelic bardic culture has been extensively mapped since the beginning of the 21st century; although less plentiful than that surviving from Gaelic Scotland, it is clear that women were culturally active, engaged in poetic composition and patronage. Anglophone writing was produced mainly by women of the settler class, for whom Ireland was a land of opportunity. Female planters wrote letters home and adapted English coterie models to their construction of literary networks. Second-generation women also recorded their experiences. Some rose in the social ranks to join English aristocratic society and became writers of distinction now established in the English literary canon. The Irish contexts for such women’s writing have, until recently, been neglected by literary scholars; the works cited here are those that address the Irish dimensions of an author’s work. This is a burgeoning field of scholarship that is developing and diversifying as further texts and archival material come to light.

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