The women that history forgot MARY CARR
An engrossing selection of ‘capsule biographies’ of some of those whose work is well worth remembering
The mammoth task of reclaiming women’s history continues in this engrossing collection of essays by journalist Clodagh Finn. In a series of what the author terms ‘capsule biographies’ of 21 extraordinary women, the history of this island from the Neolithic period through to medieval times and up to Georgian society and into the Digital Age is also revealed.
Some of the women like Aoife MacMurrough, wife of Strongbow, or Lady Ranelagh, older sister of the celebrated chemist Robert Boyle, and one of the most prominent women of science and politics in her era, are known chiefly for their relationship with powerful men .
The names of Roesia de Verdun and Margaret O’Carroll – a patron of the arts and wily negotiator from the 1400s – may be known only in the most scholarly or arcane circles or, if it wasn’t for the author’s labours, may have slipped off the radar forever.
Like any collection seeking to right an act of historical neglect or oversight, deeper questions may emerge in the course of reading about why or how one particular cast of female figures are sanctified as heroic, their place in their country’s narrative assured for posterity, while others, like many of Finn’s discoveries, are written out of history completely.
Finn does not directly explore why official history developed along the lines it has, selecting some women while other, sometimes more accomplished figures languished in the shadows.
Some of her essays however offer insights into how it happened.
The overarching dominance of the struggle for independence in the national consciousness for instance has ensured that figures from Countess Markievicz to Dr Kathleen Lynn have been embalmed in the pantheon of freedom fighters and ministering angels, at the expense perhaps of the Overend sisters, Letitia and Naomi, from Airfield House in Dundrum, Dublin, who selflessly tended the oft forgotten Irish soldiers of the Great War.
Letitia Overend volunteered for years in the war depot in Dublin and although she was offered an OBE from the King in recognition of it, she modestly declined on the grounds that ‘it would be impossible that everyone who did good work during the War can be recognised’.
In the case of Roesia de Verdun and Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, Finn offers concrete suggestions as to why they are forgotten. According to Professor of Archaeology
Tadhg O’Keeffe, if the spectacular castle Roesia de Verdun commissioned for Dundalk in 1236, was like the Rock of Cashel visible from the main road, she would be celebrated as the creator of one of our best known monuments rather than let sink into obscurity.
Finn suggests that 17th-century manners prevented the formation of Lady Ranelagh’s legacy. ‘It would have been considered improper for a woman to commit her words to print, but Lady Ranelagh succeeded in crossing boundaries while remaining modest and pious,’ she writes. ‘That decorum though, partly explains why her influence was largely forgotten in the centuries that followed.’
Lady Ranelagh became a brilliant society figure in London where she raised her children despite the ferment of the English civil war and she gained respect for her fierce intelligence, her piety and philanthropy.
She championed education for girls and for 23 years she collaborated with her brother Robert Boyle, the so-called Father of Chemistry on a wide range of scientific and philosophical projects. So much so that in the 17th Century her name was inseparable from his.
At her brother’s funeral, which took place eight days after hers, the Bishop of Salisbury said that Lady Ranelagh had ‘made the greatest figure in all the Revolutions of these kingdoms for about 50 years, of any woman of our age’.
Finn’s collection of capsule biographies is bookended by one of the country’s earliest farmers from 6,000BC, known to archaeologists as the Woman of the Burren, and by the late Jemma Redmond who died in 2016 at the age of 38.
Remains discovered under the prehistoric portal tomb at Poulnabrone show the Woman of the Burren reached the grand old age of 55, an incredible feat given the average life expectancy of her peers was late 20s.
Redmond was an award-winning technologist, who sought to pioneer a way to 3D-print human organs to aid patient recovery. She also tapped into the zeitgeist as one of the most public intersex people in the country.
In between there are essays on women as diverse as the Dominican nun Sr Concepta Lynch, mountaineer Lizzie le Blond and Victorian painter and muse Jo Hiffernan.
One of the more contemporary women, Rosy Gibb who died in her 50s in 1997 was a genuine free spirit who taught Travellers, learned the art of clowning and became the first Irish woman to be admitted into the International Magic Circle.
In her introduction, Finn points out that her collection is hardly representative of Irish women. These women were often, she writes, ‘privileged and had opportunities unavailable to millions of others. Many come from the Church of Ireland tradition. For others the
Catholic Church offered opportu nities that women otherwise might not have had.’
Finn could also have added that many of them were also widow hood. stubbornly wedded to it was through Indeed, in some cases
‘Lady Ranelagh championed education for girls and collaborated with her brother Robert Boyle’
stepping into their husband’s shoes that they discovered their capabilities in a society where women’s role was circumscribed and policed, and cemented their reputation as power players.
Roesia de Verdun took adversaries to court and paid a heavy duty to the English king to allow her to remain single after her husband died in 1230. Under the law she was a femme sole – an unmarried woman who had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name.
Lady Ranelagh separated from her good-for-nothing husband Arthur Jones, heir to Viscount Ranelagh, as soon as she could and even more unusually, spent decades wrangling over their settlement. Lady Sligo, the formidable 19th-century chatelaine of Westport House ran the estate on her husband’s death while supporting her tenants during the worst ravages of the famine. When her fortunes dipped she took the pragmatic decision to move into a modest house in town and disposed of her carriage.
After Strongbow’s death Aoife MacMurrough emerges as a supremely confident negotiator, not the biddable bride whose teenage marriage was forged in the white heat of her father Dermot’s ambitions for regaining the kingdom of Leinster .
According to Finn, ‘it speaks of the confidence of the Irish aristocratic class that she was able to hold off King Henry II and stop her estates being asset stripped’.
The Overend sisters saved their enthusiasm for motor cars over men and, with no heirs, left Airfield to the people of Ireland so that they could enjoy a little piece of the countryside in Ireland. Through Her Eyes sheds light on the different ways an often forgotten group of fascinating women bequeathed so much to their country.
‘After Strongbow’s death Aoife emerges as a supremely confident negotiator’