Constructions of civil war masculinities in the writings of Dorothy Macardle

ABSTRACT

Through the lens of her jail journal and published works such as Tragedies of Kerry (1924) and The Irish Republic (1937), this article examines the manner in which Dorothy Macardle encoded her attitude to the Treaty split and civil war in constructions of masculinities. Male behaviour towards women was a signifier of the integrity or otherwise of political stance on the issue of the 1921 Treaty. Soldiers and officials of the Irish Free State were guilty of moral failure in their willingness to sanction violence against republican women in the civil war sites of incarceration and by acting in a similarly repressive manner as the British had previously acted against the Irish. In her writing, Macardle constructed a chronicle of the female prison experience during the civil war that marked the Free State official and solider as “other” in his boorishness to the courtly, dignified republican male.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• women’s history
• Irish Civil War
• Dorothy Macardle
• Irish revolutionary period

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Beatty, Masculinity and Power, 4.

2. Weihman, “Doing My Bit for Ireland,” 241–2.

3. For an insightful discussion of the values, culture and politics of the rising Catholic middle classes see Pašeta, Before the Revolution.

4. Alexandra College, a Protestant-run school, was designed on its foundation in 1866 to provide a more academic second-level education to girls. The passage of the 1879 Act that established the Royal University as an examining body resulted in Alexandra College offering classes to facilitate female students to sit third-level exams. The ethos of the college was “British – well Anglo-British to the core”. Manning, “The Schoolgirls of Alexandra”.

5. Smith, Dorothy Macardle, 29.

6. Dorothy Macardle, BMH WS 457.

7. Alexandra College Magazine, vol. 11, 1950–1960.

8. Macardle, Jail Journal (hereafter JJ) handwritten section entitled “To the citizens of the Republic”.

9. Report on lecture entitled “Ireland in America” delivered by Mary MacSwiney at the Cork Opera House, 16 October 1921, Cork Examiner, October 17, 1921.

10. Macardle, JJ, December 1, 1922.

11. Macardle, JJ, December 2, 1922.

12. Macardle, JJ, November 28, 1922.

13. Macardle, JJ, December 13, 1922.

14. Macardle, JJ, December 4, 1922.

15. O’Halpin, “Historical Revisit,” 390.

16. See Lane, Dorothy Macardle.

17. Beatty, Masculinity and Power, 22.

18. Macardle, “By God’s Mercy” in Macardle, Earth-Bound, 84.

19. Macardle, JJ, February 1922.

20. Macardle, “This Losing Day,” Éire, June 9, 1923.

21. Macardle, JJ, December 4, 1922.

22. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 30; Macardle, JJ, December 4, 1922.

23. Hopkinson, Green Against Green, 189.

24. Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, 87.

25. Macardle, JJ, December 13, 1922.

26. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 48. See also Macardle, The Irish Republic, 693, 730, for her contention that Republicans released those they captured.

27. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 44–5.

28. Macardle, JJ, December 15, 1922.

29. Beatty, Masculinity and Power, 42. Beatty is referring to similar accusations of irrational behaviour levelled at the anti-Treaty side.

30. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 32, 17.

31. Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 26.

32. Beatty, Masculinity and Power, 11.

33. See note 25 above.

34. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, xii.

35. Dolan, Commemorating the Civil War, 167.

36. O’Halpin, Defending Ireland, 36–7.

37. Macardle, JJ, February 9, 1922.

38. Macardle, JJ, February 7, 1923.

39. Hopkinson, Green Against Green, 134.

40. Kissane, The Politics of the Irish Civil War, 113.

41. See note 10 above.

42. Ibid.

43. Macardle, JJ, February 9, 1923.

44. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, x.

45. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 27.

46. Macardle, The Irish Republic, 743.

47. Macardle, JJ, November 24, 1922.

48. Macardle, “A Year Ago,” Éire, July 14, 1923.

49. Macardle, JJ, November 1922.

50. Macardle, JJ, February 1923.

51. Ibid.

52. Macardle, “The Rising of the Moon – to Ennis with the President,” Éire, August 23, 1924.

53. Beatty, Masculinity and Power, 21.

54. Macardle, JJ, February 22, 1923.

55. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 19.

56. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 20.

57. Macardle, “In Rebel Cork”, Sinn Féin, September 20, 1924.

58. Macardle, “The Rising of the Moon”.

59. Letter from P. McCartan to William Cosgrave, 16 April 1923, Department of the Taoiseach Files, S 1369/3 “Civil War Prisoners, 1922: Prison Treatment”.

60. Letter from William Cosgrave to P. McCartan, no date, Department of the Taoiseach Files, S 1369/3 “Civil War Prisoners, 1922: Prison Treatment”. Cosgrave does not clarify who the “delicate” woman was.

61. Irish Times, January 1, 1923.

62. Ryan, “In the Line of Fire”, 54.

63. Macardle, The Irish Republic, 740.

64. Macardle, “The Curlew’s Cry”; Macardle, Earth-Bound and Other Supernatural Tales, 98, 100.

65. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 13–4.

66. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 67.

67. See Lane, Dorothy Macardle, 123–134.

68. Macardle, Tragedies of Kerry, 21.

69. Macardle, JJ, November 30, 1922.

70. Macardle, JJ, November 27, 1922.

71. “Another Statement by a Woman Prisoner on Kilmainham and North Dublin Union Brutalities,” Éire, June 2, 1923.

72. Macardle, “Farewell to Kilmainham”.

73. Ibid.

74. Macardle, “Hospital Conditions in the Military Prison North Dublin Union”.

75. Daily Sheet, October 31, 1923.

76. Macardle, The Irish Republic, 764.

77. Letter from Dorothy Macardle to Joseph McGarrity, June 8, 1924, Ms 17,528/4, Joseph McGarrity Papers, National Library of Ireland.

78. Daily Sheet, November 22, 1923.