Book Reviews
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e study of women in Irish society, past and present, remains an important and challenging project. Although the voices of Irish women can be characterized as ‘emerging’ (O’Connor, 1998), much remains to be done before Irish women, as subjects of research and study, can be said to have been brought ‘in from the shadows’ (Lentin, 1995). The three books reviewed here offer the reader a taster of what has been achieved but each adds to the call for more research and for increased diversity in that research. There is a welcome reprint for In Their Own Voice, edited by Margaret Ward. Ward has collected a variety of ‘voices’ – public, private and always political – from Irish women involved in the Irish independence movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such, it represents both a chronology of events and from the perspectives of the women involved. Their determination, political commitment and forbearance through the deprivations (physical, political, ideological) of the struggles for Irish independence shine through the individual pieces collected here. This book illustrates the rich seams of history that can be mined through seeking women’s perspectives on the events in which they participated and commented on. In her introduction, Ward acknowledges the particular focus of the book, and argues that there remain many gaps to be filled: ‘we also want to know what women from all the different religious, political and social groups thought about all those important everyday issues that affect us all’ (p. 1). The acknowledgment that Irish women’s history remains largely untold is a concern shared by the other two books reviewed here. However, The Irish Women’s History Reader, edited by Alan Hayes and Diane Urquhart, indicates how much the study of Irish women’s history has achieved, while also illustrating how much more there is yet to explore. It offers a range of definitive pieces, including a section on historiography, which grounds both this edited collection and provides a useful contextualisation of the study of Irish women’s history. Women’s places in the family, their participation in education and politics are all examined here. There is also a welcome section on Irish women and emigration. As such, the collection offers the reader and student an insight into
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many different aspects of Irish women’s lives, and points to the work that remains to be done. The main gap in this edited collection arises from the focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth century – but as the editors point out, this is for practical reasons, given the paucity of writings on Irish women in earlier times. Linda Connolly’s book is the culmination of research publicised in her contribution to Women and Irish Society. That chapter shared a similar title to the book reviewed here and similarly argued that much of the study of the women’s movement in Ireland was based on ‘speculative observation from the outside’ (Connolly, 1997: 553), a troubling sentiment repeated in the c
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