Producing ‘decent girls’: governmentality and the moral geographies of sexual conduct in Ireland (1922–1937)

Abstract

In this article we examine the mode of governmentality constructed in Ireland with regard to the regulation and disciplining of sexuality in the post-independence era up to the writing of the Constitution (1922–1937). Drawing on the writings of Michel Foucault, we document how Ireland became an intense site of applied, national bio-politics with a panoply of government commissions and legislation, accompanied by new sites of reform (Magdalene Asylums and Mother and Baby Homes), which together were designed to mould and police the sexual practices of its citizens and create a sanitised moral landscape. Whilst a thoroughly gendered project, with nearly all legislation and sites of reform targeting women, we contend it was also a highly spatialised endeavour. The modes and practices of governmentality produced a dense spatialised grid of discipline, reform and self-regulation, seeking to produce ‘decent’ women inhabiting virtuous spaces by limiting access to work and public spaces, confining women to an unsullied (marital) home, and threatening new sites of reformation, emigration or ostracisation.

En este artículo examinamos el modo de gobermentalidad construida en Irlanda respecto a la regulación y el disciplinamiento de la sexualidad en la era de la post independencia hasta la redacción de la Constitución (1922–1937). Basándonos en los trabajos de Michel Foucault, documentamos cómo Irlanda se tornó un lugar donde se llevó a cabo una intensa biopolítica nacional aplicada con una multitud de comisiones y legislación gubernamentales, acompañada por nuevos lugares de reforma (los Asilos de Magdalena y los Hogares de la Madre y el Bebé), que juntos fueron diseñados para moldear y vigilar las prácticas sexuales de sus ciudadanos y crear un paisaje moral aséptico. Mientras que fue un proyecto profundamente marcado por género, con casi toda legislación y sitios de reforma dedicados a las mujeres, sostenemos que fue también, importantemente, un esfuerzo altamente espacializado. Las formas y prácticas de la gobermentalidad produjeron, por un lado, un denso patrón espacializado de disciplina, reforma y autoregulación, con el objetivo de producir mujeres ‘decentes’ que habiten espacios virtuosos con limitado acceso al trabajo y a los espacios públicos, restringidas a un hogar inmaculado (marital), y, por otro lado, amenazantes nuevos sitios de reforma, emigración y ostracismo.

Keywords:

• governmentality
• bio-politics
• sexuality
• places of formation

Keywords:

• gobermentalidad
• biopolítica
• sexualidad
• lugares de formación

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and critical comments on previous drafts of this article.

Notes

 1. William T. Cosgrave became the first leader of Cumann na nGaedheal, the first party to hold power in the Irish Free State after the granting of independence. The party was officially constituted in March 1923 and remained in power until 1932.

 2. The only reference to religion in the 1922 Constitution was one that guaranteed religious freedom and equality to all the citizens of the Free State.

 3. This Report is often referred to as the Carrigan Report after James Carrigan its chairman.

 4. These institutions helped maintain and sustain each other. For example, many of the children born in County Homes (the old workhouses and subject to Poor Law regulation) and Magdalene Asylums were generally fostered out, adopted abroad or eventually sent to an Industrial School. Girls brought up in Industrial Schools frequently ended up working in the laundries attached to the Magdalene Asylums. Those admitted to the religious run, state-funded, Mother and Baby Homes were for the most part ‘first offenders’ from families who could afford to pay a fee and in a position to keep the ‘secret’ intact. Their children, however, often suffered the same fate as those born in the County Homes and Magdalene Asylums. The last Magdalene Asylum closed in 1996 (Culliton 1996).

 5. The project is funded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) through their postdoctoral fellowship scheme (Project title: A Genealogy of Sexual Standards and Practices in Ireland: 1880–2003).

 6. During this period, the Irish Independent was viewed as a nationalist and Catholic national newspaper which gave its allegiance to Cumann na nGaedheal. The Irish Times was viewed as a liberal, Protestant national newspaper.

 7. TD stands for Teachta Dála, meaning Member of Parliament.

 8. A woman could only claim independent domicile after 1986. Before 1986, a married woman had the domicile of her husband and could not acquire a domicile independently of him so long as the marriage subsisted. The effect of the Domicile Act was to give married women the same capacity as anyone else of having an independent domicile.

 9. Prior to the enactment of the Social Welfare (No. 2) Act 1985, married women were not allowed to claim unemployment assistance unless their husbands were incapable of self-support.

10. Available on http://www.rte.ie/laweb/11/11_t09b.html/.

11. The Irish céilí is a form of group dancing to traditional Irish music.

12. Michael McCarthy, author of Priests and People in Ireland (1908: 282–3) designated Monto ‘the greatest blot upon the social life of Dublin and Ireland’ where ‘the trade in immorality is carried out as openly as any branch of legitimate business’ and ‘the principal houses are as attractively painted and fitted up on the outside as private hotels which are legitimately licensed for the sale of drink in the principle streets of the city’.

13. In 1930, 60 of the 120 children born in Sean Ross Abbey died (Department of Local Government and Public Health, 1938).

14. In orphanages catering for illegitimate children, the infant mortality rate in the mid-1920s ranged between 29% and 34% at a time when infant mortality rate in the rest of society was 5% or 6% (Annual Reports of the Registrar General of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1923–1928).

15. The marriage bar was removed in 1973. Divorce became legal again in 1996. Contraception could be imported for personal use from 1973, from 1979 they could be sold in Ireland to married couples upon receipt of a medical prescription, from 1985, they could be bought by anyone over 18, from 1993, they could be sold via a vending machine, and from 1995 sterilisation became a legal means of contraception and contraception became free to the economically disadvantaged (Hug 2001). Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1993. Abortion remains illegal in all but exceptional circumstances (e.g., threat to the life of the mother, rape).