The Mother of a Nation: A Historical and Theatrical Exploration of the Devolution of Mother Ireland Open Access

Abstract

Mother Ireland personified Ireland from prehistory through the present day through incarnations that stretch from the Celtic Sovereignty Goddess, Medb, and the Morrígan to the early modern Róisín Dubh and the nineteenth century's Shan Van Vocht. In the twentieth century, Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan, O'Casey's Juno, and Carr's Hester Swane continued to reinvent Mother Ireland for the modern era. Mother Ireland became a symbol of opposition to England's political domination of Ireland, which began in the twelfth century and continued to the twenty-first century. Mother Ireland's association with violence caused her to begin to represent more negative traits than positive ones. For this reason, the aisling, or vision poetry, that first emerged in the seventeenth century marks a critical moment when colonialism began to distort Mother Ireland's role. Ultimately, aisling poetry serves as the catalyst for the devolution of Mother Ireland. Tracking Mother Ireland's gradual diminishment from prehistory to the present day demonstrates why, at the close of the twentieth century in Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats (1998), Hester, the most contemporary representation of Mother Ireland to be discussed, not only needed to die symbolically, but also had to kill her daughter. Suicide and murder allowed Mother Ireland to move into the twenty-first century. While the devolution of Mother Ireland can be documented and analyzed in a paper, her progression from her initial role as a representative of Irish society and its land to a misused political figure that finds more freedom in death than life is best understood through the visual and oral tradition from which she emerged. Creating a physical representation of Mother Ireland's lineage shows how history shaped her both as a woman and as a symbol of the nation. In order to engage with this literary figure, I developed a performance piece entitled Máthair. The development of this script can be charted along the timeline of Irish history. Ultimately, the script attempts to embody the progression of the physical representation of the Mother Ireland tradition.

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter

1. MOTHER IRELAND IN PRE- AND POST- CHRISTIAN IRELAND.............................................1

Introduction and Early History of Mother Ireland

Medb and The Morrígan: The Early Goddesses

The Bitter Hag: Aisling Poetry

2. MOTHER IRELAND IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY...........................................................26

World War I Ireland: The Recruitment Effort and Cathleen Ni Houlihan

The Regretful Mother: Mother Ireland and the Two Great Irish Wars

The Absence: Oppression of Women's Rights in Ireland and the Effect of

the Absence of Mother Ireland

The Death of Mother Ireland: Three Generations of Mothers in Marina

Carr's By the Bog of Cats

Conclusion

3. INTRODUCTION TO MY SCRIPT...............................................................................60

4. M Á THAIR (Script with Annotations).........................................................................69

5. REFLECTIONS ON PROCESS AND PERFORMANCE.......................................................106

Process

Writing the Script

Rehearsing with a Co-Actor

Solo Direction

Inside Mother Ireland: Costume to Define Identity

Discovery

Performance Reflections

BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................................................................116

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Theater Studies
Degree	BA
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, General Literature, English Theater
Keyword	Nationalism Marina Carr Irish History Performance Yeats Colonization Sean O'Casey Ireland Theater Mother Ireland
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	McDonough, Tim, Emory University
Committee Members	Higgins, Geraldine, Emory University Evenden, Michael, Emory University

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