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Women in Rural Ireland in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries – How the Daughters, Wives and Sisters of Small Farmers and Landless Labourers Fared

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Anne O'Dowd
Anne O'Dowd
Affiliation:
The National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, Eire.
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Extract

The surge in writing by and about women in recent decades in Ireland is contributing to a good understanding of the place of women in Irish society. It is research which shows that women often had to be exceptionally good at their chosen or allotted role in life in order to be recognised and noted, or had to be capable and highly efficient at tasks ordinarily and traditionally done by men. This is especially true of the women who were the wives, sisters and mothers of the labourers and small farmers of nineteenth-century Ireland, with which this article is concerned. It is freely noted at this point that writing about the lives of so-called ordinary people – both men and women – in all centuries is difficult because of a lack of source material. Writing about women, without reference to male siblings, spouses and fathers is extremely problematic and one must seek out information by a very close examination of available facts and by a full understanding and awareness of the usefulness of the collected folk tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , October 1994 , pp. 171 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1. The most recent publications are two collections of essays: MacCurtain, Margaret and O’Dowd, Mary (eds.), Women in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1991)Google Scholar and Luddy, Maria and Murphy, Cliona (eds.), Women Surviving. Studies in Irish Women's History in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Dublin, 1989).Google Scholar See also, Bourke, Joanna, Husbandry to Housewifery. Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland 1890–1914 (Oxford, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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