{"title":"The Treatment of Militant Anti-Treaty Women in Kerry by the National Army during the Irish Civil War","authors":"Mary McAuliffe","doi":"10.1353/eir.2023.a910480","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The Treatment of Militant Anti-Treaty Women in Kerry by the National Army during the Irish Civil War Mary McAuliffe (bio) On 2 november 1922 a short article entitled \"The Lot of Women in Tralee\" was published in Poblacht na hÉireann (Republic of Ireland), an anti-Treaty newspaper. It took notice of the reports in the daily press of the \"arrest by F.S. [Free State] troops of 10 Tralee girls\" on 10 October. It was evident, the author noted, that \"the Dublin Guards have failed to terrorise the women of Tralee into foreswearing their allegiance to the Irish Republican Army by breaking into homes at midnight, dragging them from their beds, painting their bodies, and heaping upon them every outrage and indignity that only the mentality of the Dublin Guards is capable of devising.\"1 The National Army had landed at Fenit near Tralee on 2 August of that year. Attacks on and arrests of anti-Treaty Cumann na mBan women began soon afterward and were reported in various mainstream and anti-Treaty newspapers.2 Poblacht na hÉireann was founded by Liam Mellows, Frank Gallagher, and Erskine Childers in 1922 to disseminate propaganda for the anti-Treaty side. The paper was published in broadsheet format to make it easy to paste onto walls (mainly the work of militant women), where it could be easily and widely read. The newspaper does not seem to have survived past June 1923, but during its lifespan it included many articles on the activities of militant republican women and on the violence committed against [End Page 72] them by the National Army. Although Poblacht na hÉireann generally \"detailed the anti-Treaty position in a mainly level-headed and often quite sophisticated manner,\" this newspaper article about the experience of republican women in Tralee contains both fact and hyperbole.3 Cumann na mBan women had indeed been arrested in Tralee. As the Evening Echo reported on 31 October, \"ten very active girls of [the] Cumann na mBan organisation were arrested in their homes in Tralee.\" This occurrence, it stated, was \"a new departure,\" and the women were lodged in Tralee Female Prison.4 Yet in this report there is no mention of the assault on their bodies with paint or of any other indignities that might have been heaped upon them during the arrest. The writer of this Poblacht na hÉireann article was here conflating the experiences of different groups of militant women in Kerry at the hands of the National Army. This essay focuses on the treatment of militant anti-Treaty women by the National Army during the Irish Civil War. Concentrating on the experiences of women in Kerry from August 1922 to the end of 1923, it explores the anxieties and misogynist ideologies that provoked harsh, gendered, and sexual mistreatment of women as well as both its immediate and subsequent impact on militant and non-militant women in the Irish Free State. Gemma Clark, the leading historian of everyday violence in the Civil War, asks, \"How distinctive were women's interactions with the Irish Civil War, and—a connected question—how useful is a gender framework for understanding these violent and transformative years in Irish history?\"5 While Clark asks this question mainly about female noncombatants, she does acknowledge that \"combatant\" is a contested and ambiguous term \"in civil war generally,\" and that \"women played militant roles during Ireland's conflict specifically.\"6 In the context of such specificity this essay will consider the distinctiveness of militant anti-Treaty women's interactions with violence inflicted by Free State soldiers. As Françoise Thébaud acknowledges, looking at war through [End Page 73] \"women's eyes means analyzing the place of women in wartime societies,\" including \"their political involvement or choices.\"7 Furthermore, if we consider the importance of gender as \"a useful category of historical analysis\" (as Joan W. Scott has argued), then a study of the Civil War through a gendered lens \"poses questions about all forms of sexual hierarchy [and] produces a more complex picture.\"8 As Scott also notes, a gendered lens will provide \"new perspectives on old questions,\" \"redefine the old questions,\" and \"make...","PeriodicalId":43507,"journal":{"name":"EIRE-IRELAND","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"EIRE-IRELAND","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eir.2023.a910480","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The Treatment of Militant Anti-Treaty Women in Kerry by the National Army during the Irish Civil War Mary McAuliffe (bio) On 2 november 1922 a short article entitled "The Lot of Women in Tralee" was published in Poblacht na hÉireann (Republic of Ireland), an anti-Treaty newspaper. It took notice of the reports in the daily press of the "arrest by F.S. [Free State] troops of 10 Tralee girls" on 10 October. It was evident, the author noted, that "the Dublin Guards have failed to terrorise the women of Tralee into foreswearing their allegiance to the Irish Republican Army by breaking into homes at midnight, dragging them from their beds, painting their bodies, and heaping upon them every outrage and indignity that only the mentality of the Dublin Guards is capable of devising."1 The National Army had landed at Fenit near Tralee on 2 August of that year. Attacks on and arrests of anti-Treaty Cumann na mBan women began soon afterward and were reported in various mainstream and anti-Treaty newspapers.2 Poblacht na hÉireann was founded by Liam Mellows, Frank Gallagher, and Erskine Childers in 1922 to disseminate propaganda for the anti-Treaty side. The paper was published in broadsheet format to make it easy to paste onto walls (mainly the work of militant women), where it could be easily and widely read. The newspaper does not seem to have survived past June 1923, but during its lifespan it included many articles on the activities of militant republican women and on the violence committed against [End Page 72] them by the National Army. Although Poblacht na hÉireann generally "detailed the anti-Treaty position in a mainly level-headed and often quite sophisticated manner," this newspaper article about the experience of republican women in Tralee contains both fact and hyperbole.3 Cumann na mBan women had indeed been arrested in Tralee. As the Evening Echo reported on 31 October, "ten very active girls of [the] Cumann na mBan organisation were arrested in their homes in Tralee." This occurrence, it stated, was "a new departure," and the women were lodged in Tralee Female Prison.4 Yet in this report there is no mention of the assault on their bodies with paint or of any other indignities that might have been heaped upon them during the arrest. The writer of this Poblacht na hÉireann article was here conflating the experiences of different groups of militant women in Kerry at the hands of the National Army. This essay focuses on the treatment of militant anti-Treaty women by the National Army during the Irish Civil War. Concentrating on the experiences of women in Kerry from August 1922 to the end of 1923, it explores the anxieties and misogynist ideologies that provoked harsh, gendered, and sexual mistreatment of women as well as both its immediate and subsequent impact on militant and non-militant women in the Irish Free State. Gemma Clark, the leading historian of everyday violence in the Civil War, asks, "How distinctive were women's interactions with the Irish Civil War, and—a connected question—how useful is a gender framework for understanding these violent and transformative years in Irish history?"5 While Clark asks this question mainly about female noncombatants, she does acknowledge that "combatant" is a contested and ambiguous term "in civil war generally," and that "women played militant roles during Ireland's conflict specifically."6 In the context of such specificity this essay will consider the distinctiveness of militant anti-Treaty women's interactions with violence inflicted by Free State soldiers. As Françoise Thébaud acknowledges, looking at war through [End Page 73] "women's eyes means analyzing the place of women in wartime societies," including "their political involvement or choices."7 Furthermore, if we consider the importance of gender as "a useful category of historical analysis" (as Joan W. Scott has argued), then a study of the Civil War through a gendered lens "poses questions about all forms of sexual hierarchy [and] produces a more complex picture."8 As Scott also notes, a gendered lens will provide "new perspectives on old questions," "redefine the old questions," and "make...
1922年11月2日,一份反条约报纸《Poblacht na hÉireann》(爱尔兰共和国)上发表了一篇题为《Tralee妇女的命运》的短文。委员会注意到每日新闻报道10月10日“自由邦部队逮捕了10名特拉利女孩”。作者指出,很明显,“都柏林近卫军未能恐吓特拉利的妇女宣誓效忠爱尔兰共和军,他们在午夜闯入民宅,把她们从床上拖起来,在她们身上涂上颜料,对她们施加只有都柏林近卫军才能想出的各种愤怒和侮辱。”1 .国民军于当年8月2日在特拉利附近的芬尼特登陆。此后不久就开始攻击和逮捕反对《条约》的妇女,各主流报纸和反对《条约》的报纸都报道了这一事件Poblacht na hÉireann由Liam Mellows, Frank Gallagher和Erskine Childers于1922年创立,旨在为反条约一方传播宣传。这篇论文以大报的形式发表,以便于贴在墙上(主要是激进妇女的作品),这样它可以很容易地被广泛阅读。这份报纸似乎没有熬过1923年6月,但在它的生命周期中,它包括了许多关于激进的共和派妇女的活动和国家军队对她们的暴力行为的文章。虽然Poblacht na hÉireann总体上“以一种主要是冷静的、往往相当老练的方式详细描述了反条约的立场”,但这篇关于共和党妇女在特拉利的经历的报纸文章既包含事实,也包含夸张确实有许多妇女在特拉利被捕。正如《回声晚报》在10月31日报道的那样,“库曼纳姆班组织的10名非常活跃的女孩在她们位于特拉利的家中被捕。”报告称,这一事件是“一种新的离开”,这些妇女被关押在Tralee女子监狱。然而,报告中没有提到她们的身体被涂上油漆,也没有提到在逮捕期间可能对她们施加的任何其他侮辱。这篇Poblacht na hÉireann文章的作者在这里将克里不同群体的激进女性在国民军手中的经历混为一谈。本文主要研究爱尔兰内战期间国民军对激进的反条约妇女的待遇。本书聚焦于1922年8月至1923年底克里妇女的经历,探讨了焦虑和厌恶女性的意识形态,这些意识形态引发了对妇女的严厉、性别和性虐待,以及它对爱尔兰自由邦激进和非激进妇女的直接和后续影响。研究内战中日常暴力的著名历史学家杰玛·克拉克(Gemma Clark)问道:“女性与爱尔兰内战的互动有多独特?一个相关的问题是,性别框架对理解爱尔兰历史上这些暴力和变革年代有多有用?”虽然克拉克主要针对女性非战斗人员提出了这个问题,但她确实承认,“战斗人员”是一个有争议的、模棱两可的术语,“在一般的内战中”,“女性在爱尔兰冲突中扮演了好战的角色”。6 .在这种特殊性的背景下,本文将考虑激进的反条约妇女与自由邦士兵施加的暴力相互作用的特殊性。正如franoise thacimbaud所承认的那样,通过“女性的眼睛”来看待战争意味着分析女性在战时社会中的地位,包括“她们的政治参与或选择”。此外,如果我们认为性别的重要性是“一个有用的历史分析范畴”(正如琼·w·斯科特所说),那么通过性别视角研究内战“就会对所有形式的性别等级提出问题,并产生一幅更复杂的画面。”斯科特还指出,性别视角将为“老问题提供新的视角”,“重新定义老问题”,并“使……
期刊介绍:
An interdisciplinary scholarly journal of international repute, Éire Ireland is the leading forum in the flourishing field of Irish Studies. Since 1966, Éire-Ireland has published a wide range of imaginative work and scholarly articles from all areas of the arts, humanities, and social sciences relating to Ireland and Irish America.