Date of Award
8-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Committee Chair/Advisor
Michael Silvestri
Committee Member
Archana Venkatesh
Committee Member
Tara Wood
Abstract
During the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, women participated increasingly in the fight for Irish independence, with this level of participation increasing significantly following the 1913 Dublin Lockout, a labor strike which lasted about five months from late summer of 1913 into the early weeks of 1914. Though this was not a nationalist demonstration, many of the participants, both men and women, were also members of various nationalist organizations and would later go on to participate in the various nationalist uprisings in the following years. Historian Fearghal McGarry in particular argues that the Lockout served as an inciting force for the radicalization of women, citing Irish suffragette, nationalist, and labor activist Helena Molony’s belief that activist women prior to the Lockout held more Victorian beliefs, but became more radical afterward. It is my belief that McGarry’s assessment is one-dimensional and neglects to take into account the nuance and intersectionality of women’s activism in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Thus, building on the work of Senia Pašeta, who discussed the overlap between activist women in the suffrage and nationalist movements, adding labor women to this discussion, I have attempted to show that women were not in fact radicalized following the Lockout, but participated in violent acts of protest across the three movements well before the outbreak of violence within the nationalist movement. This thesis is also intended as a contribution to the still-growing study of Irish women, and to the process of historical recovery, as women’s participation in the nationalist movement in particular was often omitted from historical literature prior to Second Wave Feminism.
Recommended Citation
Cook, Kayla M., "From “Victorian” to “Unmanageable”: Radical Irish Women in the Revolutionary Years, 1900-1923" (2022). All Theses. 3896.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/3896