Brighton in 1891.
Parliamentary methods had once again revealed their limitations, and a younger generation of intellectuals turned from politics back to culture and to the teachings of Thomas Davis. The poet Yeats met the ship which bore Parnell's remains back to Dublin; and when the leader was buried at Glasnevin a meteor appeared to fall from the skies. The way was open for a literary movement to fill the political vacuum. Its writers would take Standish O'Grady's versions of theCuchulain legend, and interpret the hero not as an exemplar for the Anglo-Irish overlords but as a model for those who were about to displace them. Cuchulain provided a symbol of masculinity for Celts, who had been written off as feminine by their masters. A surprising number of militant nationalists accepted that diagnosis and called on the youth of Ireland to purge themselves of their degrading femininity by a disciplined programme of physical-contact sports. TheGaelic Athletic Association had been founded in 1884 to counter such emasculation and to promote the game of camán (hurling) beloved of the young Cuchulain. If the British Empire was won on the playing fields ofRugby andEton, then on the playing fields of Ireland was being perfected a new generation which might call the permanence of that victory into question.
IRELAND – ENGLAND'S
UNCONSCIOUS?
ANGLO-IRELAND:
THE WOMAN'S PART
THE WOMAN'S PART
As offspring of Dublin's Protestant middle class, both Wilde and Shaw found it perfectly natural to seek a career in London which was, after all, the metropolitan centre of culture in the English-speaking world Such a move was much less obvious for members of the Protestant aristocracy. England by the final decades of the nineteenth century, was a very changed place, heavily industrialized and filled with a new élite, whose social standing derived more from money than from land. Many leaders of English society were now openly hostile to aristocrats: and even those who admired people of caste were by no means certain that the occupants of draughty, decaying mansions in windswept Irish landscapes really counted as "top drawer".
Ever since the time of Jonathan Swift, there had been a pressure on the Anglo-Irish to throw in their lot with the natives. Faced with an uncomprehending monarch and parliament, Swift had urged his compatriots, by way of surly revenge, to burn everything English except coal Over the century and a half which followed, it became more and more clear that a strange reciprocity bound members of the ascendancy to those peasants with whom they shared the Irish predicament. Many decent landlords genuinely cared for their tenants and felt responsible for their fate: that care was often returned with a mixture of affection and awe. Others were negligent and some cruelly exploitative: but these attitudes served also to emphasize the kindness of the better sort. Ascendancy women, employing kitchen maids and domestic staff, often enjoyed rather developed relationships with a whole network of families in the wider community: they shared in the joy of christenings and weddings, the sadness at sickbeds and wakes. When the doom of the big houses was sealed by the Land Acts, Shaw was not the only commentator to wonder whether the lot of the landless labourer would prove happier under peasant proprietors than it had under paternalistic landlords. These fears were most often articulated by ascendancy
women, among whomEdith Somerville,Violet Martin and Augusta Gregory were the outstanding literary figures.
It was the new economic pressure which compelled both Somerville and Martin to turn to art for a living which the big house could no longer provide but also for a fully comprehensive image of the crisis. Their profound Christian convictions led them to a tragic sense of the underlying injustice of their own privileged position, while their concern for family tradition led them to lament what seemed sadly like the end of the line. They
Parliamentary methods had once again revealed their limitations, and a younger generation of intellectuals turned from politics back to culture and to the teachings of Thomas Davis. The poet Yeats met the ship which bore Parnell's remains back to Dublin; and when the leader was buried at Glasnevin a meteor appeared to fall from the skies. The way was open for a literary movement to fill the political vacuum. Its writers would take Standish O'Grady's versions of theCuchulain legend, and interpret the hero not as an exemplar for the Anglo-Irish overlords but as a model for those who were about to displace them. Cuchulain provided a symbol of masculinity for Celts, who had been written off as feminine by their masters. A surprising number of militant nationalists accepted that diagnosis and called on the youth of Ireland to purge themselves of their degrading femininity by a disciplined programme of physical-contact sports. TheGaelic Athletic Association had been founded in 1884 to counter such emasculation and to promote the game of camán (hurling) beloved of the young Cuchulain. If the British Empire was won on the playing fields ofRugby andEton, then on the playing fields of Ireland was being perfected a new generation which might call the permanence of that victory into question.
IRELAND – ENGLAND'S
UNCONSCIOUS?
ANGLO-IRELAND:
THE WOMAN'S PART
THE WOMAN'S PART
As offspring of Dublin's Protestant middle class, both Wilde and Shaw found it perfectly natural to seek a career in London which was, after all, the metropolitan centre of culture in the English-speaking world Such a move was much less obvious for members of the Protestant aristocracy. England by the final decades of the nineteenth century, was a very changed place, heavily industrialized and filled with a new élite, whose social standing derived more from money than from land. Many leaders of English society were now openly hostile to aristocrats: and even those who admired people of caste were by no means certain that the occupants of draughty, decaying mansions in windswept Irish landscapes really counted as "top drawer".
Ever since the time of Jonathan Swift, there had been a pressure on the Anglo-Irish to throw in their lot with the natives. Faced with an uncomprehending monarch and parliament, Swift had urged his compatriots, by way of surly revenge, to burn everything English except coal Over the century and a half which followed, it became more and more clear that a strange reciprocity bound members of the ascendancy to those peasants with whom they shared the Irish predicament. Many decent landlords genuinely cared for their tenants and felt responsible for their fate: that care was often returned with a mixture of affection and awe. Others were negligent and some cruelly exploitative: but these attitudes served also to emphasize the kindness of the better sort. Ascendancy women, employing kitchen maids and domestic staff, often enjoyed rather developed relationships with a whole network of families in the wider community: they shared in the joy of christenings and weddings, the sadness at sickbeds and wakes. When the doom of the big houses was sealed by the Land Acts, Shaw was not the only commentator to wonder whether the lot of the landless labourer would prove happier under peasant proprietors than it had under paternalistic landlords. These fears were most often articulated by ascendancy
women, among whomEdith Somerville,Violet Martin and Augusta Gregory were the outstanding literary figures.
It was the new economic pressure which compelled both Somerville and Martin to turn to art for a living which the big house could no longer provide but also for a fully comprehensive image of the crisis. Their profound Christian convictions led them to a tragic sense of the underlying injustice of their own privileged position, while their concern for family tradition led them to lament what seemed sadly like the end of the line. They
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