Alternative Geographies: Uncovering the New Woman in Irish Literature
thesis
posted on 2009-04-17, 00:00authored byHeather Elaine Edwards
This dissertation challenges prevailing critical views of the New Woman by investigating the colonial and rural dimensions of the New Women in Ireland and Irish literature. Although depicted differently by individual fin de sicle authors, the New Woman became synonymous with demands for increased access to education and the public sphere as well as critiques of sexual double standards and the institution of marriage. Critics have tended to discuss the New Woman as a British, and to a lesser extent American, phenomenon. However, such a focus perpetuates the misconception that the New Woman is produced only within geographies associated with certain experiences of modernity. Looking at the Irish authors Emily Lawless, Rosa Mulholland, George Moore and M.E. Francis, I outline how Ireland's particular situation as a British colony seeking cultural and political independence shaped Irish writers' representations of New Womanhood. Within my dissertation, each chapter focuses around a different aspect associated with the New WomanÌ¢âÂ'sexuality, emancipation from the domestic sphere, modernity, and political engagement. Each chapter explores how these specific aspects become inflected in the Irish context in the works of Emily Lawless, Rosa Mulholland, George Moore, and M.E. Francis respectively. I contend that the geography and specific cultural experience of Ireland produce distinctly Irish versions of the New Woman, figures who challenge the New Woman's assumed connection to an urban and British modernity. My analysis follows the lead of such recent critics as LeeAnne Richardson and Iveta JusovÌÄåÁ to uncover the varied intersections of the New Woman with Empire while arguing that a modernity capable of producing New Women also exists in the colonial periphery. This dissertation also alters understandings of the Irish literary scene of this period by recovering literature that remains outside the dominant narratives primarily devoted to the Irish literary revival and Irish nationalist politics.