Being Neither and Both:  
The Liminal Nationality of Four Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Irish Women Writers,  
A Study of Genre, Gender, and Nation 
 
by 
 
Adrea Marie Rita McDonnell 
 
 
 
 
A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of 
Auburn University 
in partial fulfillment of the 
requirements for the Degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
 
Auburn, Alabama 
May 9, 2011 
 
 
 
 
Eighteenth-century, Irish literature, Nationality, Gender, Cultural Studies, History 
 
Copyright 2011 by Adrea Marie Rita McDonnell 
 
 
Approved by 
 
Jonathan W. Bolton, Chair, Associate Professor of English 
James Emmet Ryan, Associate Professor of English 
 Joanne Chia An Tong, Associate Professor of English 
  
ii 
 
Abstract 
 
 
 This dissertation examines the work of four Anglo-Irish women writers who published in 
the long eighteenth century, an integral voice in the development of Anglo-Irish nationality. 
These voices present a counter-perspective that breaks down the ideology of Nation-building and 
reveal the relationship between gender and Nation and how that relationship functions to silence 
marginal voices. I employ the concept of liminality as a guiding paradigm. This study illustrates 
the liminality of being Anglo-Irish in the eighteenth-century and the effects of the liminal phase 
on a developing national consciousness, specifically how the doubly-liminal role of woman 
writer disrupts the construction of a metanarrative of Nation. Working from travel narratives in 
early, post-Glorious Revolution England to autobiography in the Jacobite era to the sentimental 
novel and constitutional debates of the 1770s and concluding with sonnets and the Act of Union 
in 1800, I explore generic and gender conventions deployed and challenged as each woman 
attempts to construct herself as an Anglo-Irish citizen and the reception that such constructions 
receive. There is a noticeable shift in descriptions of Nation from Mary Davys?s The Fugitive, 
published in 1705, to Mary Tighe?s sonnets, written in Age of Revolution, from loyal English 
citizen to patriotic Irish anti-unionist. The work of these four women and this analysis suggests 
that the idea of Nation in the Anglo-Irish mind was a mutable concept, at once dominant and 
vulnerable. This dissertation also shows that debate over identification, kingdom or colony, 
reached far into the minds of writers, especially those for whom oppression was concrete rather 
than abstract.  
iii 
 
Acknowledgments 
 
 
 I am indebted to many people for the extraordinary help that I received while writing this 
dissertation. First, I would like to thank Paula Backscheider for helping me develop the initial 
ideas for this project. For helping me with final and thorough editorial commentary, I would like 
to thank my committee members, Professors Ryan, Tong, and Crocker for the generous and 
supportive feedback. My most heartfelt appreciation goes to Dr. Jonathan Bolton, who not only 
directed this final project, but also supported me throughout the many years it took to write. I 
would not have finished without him. 
 Outside of the academic circle, I have received unconditional support from my family. 
First, to my brother, Kyle McDonnell, I say thank you for asking ?What are you going to do with 
a PhD?? I needed to be reminded why I was doing this. For my sister, Julie McDonnell, I say 
thank you for the tireless cheerleading that she gave throughout the years. I also appreciate the 
late-night phone calls and glasses of wine. To my mom, Wyann McDonnell, I cannot express in 
words how much her editorial and emotional support meant to me this last year. Also, thank you 
for the Big Pink Princess Pen, which was exactly what I needed to finish. To my father, Donald 
McDonnell, I have two things to say thank you for. First, I am fortunate that he is the kind of 
person who does not give up even when things become difficult. I have never known anyone as 
brave and steadfast as my father. Next, I appreciate the one million times he told me, ?Adrea, if it 
were easy, everybody?d be doing it.? This is some of the best advice I have received.
iv 
 
 There are three final people I must thank. Julie Kaetz helped me to see that I could finish 
this. Her patient ear and compassion gave me courage when I could not find it. Next, I would 
like to thank my husband, Lt. William Blair.  His compassion, which seems to have no end, and 
support helped me through the most difficult parts of this project. He unfailingly believed that I 
would finish even when I did not. And the last person to thank is the person for whom I did this, 
my daughter, Bella. She gave me the reason to pursue a college education?I had to be the 
person I wanted her to grow up to be. And after countless hours of sitting at the computer, with 
her head between me and the screen as she asks, ?Mommy, what?re you doing? Mom, when are 
you going to be done?? I can finally say, ?I was writing, ma cushla, but I?m done now.? 
 
v 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 
Abstract   ........................................................................................................ .............? ? ? ? ...ii 
 
Acknowledgments .........................................................................................................................iii 
 
Introduction: A Historical Perspective of Nationness, Genre, and Gender in Eighteenth-Century 
  Anglo-Irish Women Writers ...............................................................................................1 
 
Chapter 1: The Discourse of the Travel Narrative in Mary Davys? The Fugitive; or, A Country 
 Ramble: Creating and Negotiating Anglo-Irish Identity in the Kingdom of Great Britain ...25 
 
Chapter 2: Finding Nation in ?the minute details of daily life? by Reading the Discourse of  
 Virtue in The Memoirs of Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington ............................................................60 
 
Chapter 3: Sensibility, Nationalism, and Survival: Using Sentimental Discourse to Negotiate an 
 Anglo-Irish Identity .?????????????????? .???? ..????.. 94 
 
Chapter 4: Staying the "rude axe": Mary Tighe's Romantic Nationalism and the Anglo-Irish 
 Sonnet? ? ? ? ? ..?????????????????? ? ??? ..????. 128 
 
Conclusion: Of Miscegines, M?tissages, Sentimentalists, and Sonneteers.......................................160 
 
Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................178 
  
1 
 
Introduction: 
A Historical Perspective of Nationness, Genre, and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-
Irish Women Writers 
 
 This project is more than a recovery project of four women writers whom most have 
labeled ?minor? wherein I would seek to educate the reader about the work of a heretofore 
unknown writer in order to incorporate marginalized writers and their texts into the tradition of 
literature usually dominated by male writers. It is more than a generic analysis which seeks to 
explore the politicization of literature wherein I would explore the boundaries of generic 
conventions as each author employed or crossed them. It is also more than a materialist feminist 
project which seeks to illustrate the subordination of these women writers by culture, whether 
political, literary, or social. Though this project has elements of all of these types of projects, it 
crosses the boundaries of each of them in order to study the ideology of Nation, specifically what 
Anglo-Irish Nation meant in eighteenth-century Great Britain, as it was imagined from a 
marginal perspective. I am seeking to understand how nationality is constructed from the doubly-
liminal space that is an Anglo-Irish woman writer. 
 I began this project by investigating the history of Ireland in the eighteenth century. My 
studies took me beyond the more recognized events such as the Battle of the Boyne, Wood?s 
halfpence controversy, Jacobite rebellions, or the United Irishmen?s Rebellion of 1798. I realized 
that the voices that have most influenced the scholarly conception of Ireland in the eighteenth 
century were surprisingly narrow. Swift, Berkley, Grattan, and Tone, among others, have shaped
2 
 
 our understanding of the national experience in that era of tumultuous politics. Yet, these men 
were only one part of the collective experience and provided only a part of the lived reality of the 
Anglo-Irish culture. This project also developed out of another area of research that I was 
exploring, eighteenth-century dramatists, where I researched an obscure comedy of manners, The 
Northern Heiress, written by an equally obscure writer, Mary Davys. From this venture, I moved 
to researching other writers that shared a similar position as Davys?an Anglo-Irish woman 
writer with an active, public voice. 
 But it was my study of history that directed me toward a perspective for understanding 
the texts by these women. Founding my analysis on the concept of a political unconscious, the 
sub-narrative of a text that illustrates the political influences on the writer, I returned to Davys to 
work out how she experienced the history of Ireland, to include its relationship to England, at the 
turn of the century. And from this inquiry, I worked to understand how these women saw 
themselves as part of the nation. My most important conclusion was that Nation in a hyphenated 
identity was contradictory and elusive. It is a paradox of being a part of both cultures while at the 
same time accepted in neither. The in-between, or liminal, status of a hyphenated nationality is 
also nuanced with gender ideologies. Gender is inextricably tied to the paradox that is a 
hyphenated identity, and this study shows the doubly-liminal space that these writers wrote from. 
Ideas of Nation 
 The concept of Nation is, at its most basic, a way of identifying and organizing a group of 
people based on some commonality, which has historically been race. But, in modernity, 
language, geography, ethnicity, and/or political ideology have been used to identify and organize 
a community, especially when ?race? is not easily differentiated. The concept of Nation did not 
come into regular use until the late eighteenth century replacing earlier uses of the terms 
3 
 
kingdom or country.1 Appropriately, it is not until the last two authors in this project, writing in 
the 1770s and the 1790s, that any level of cohesion comes into the concept of an Anglo-Irish 
Nation, where a drift toward Irishness begins to appear. There is a long history of scholarship on 
what the concept of Nation encompasses, but in this project, I began in the Anthropology section 
of the library. It is cultural anthropology that I found most interesting through the works of 
Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner. This perspective focuses on the culture of people?s daily lives 
and their individual experiences. It explores their communities?through events sometimes 
mundane, sometimes grandly symbolic?and the way in which they conceptualize themselves as 
part of a collective experience, or as a Nation.  
 In The Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz interrogates development of Nation.2 He 
identifies four phases of nationalism in which a culture develops a national identity. His stages 
are articulated as thus: 
[T]hat in which the nationalist movements are formed and crystallized; that in 
which they triumphed; that in which they organized themselves into states, and 
that?in which, organized into states, they find themselves obliged to define and 
stabilize their relationships both to other states and to the irregular societies out of 
which they arose.3 
These stages are not necessarily linear, and often elements of the fourth, I find, occur during the 
first stage. Indeed, Geertz claims that the second and the third stage receive the most attention, in 
theoretical as well as journalistic circles, but ?the bulk of far-reaching changes, those altering the 
                                                 
1 Raymond Williams, ?Nationalism? in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed. (New York: Basic 
Books, 2000) , 213-214. 
2 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 
3 Ibid 238. 
4 
 
general shape and direction of social evolution?[occur] in the less spectacular first  and fourth.?4 
More importantly, the attempts to define and stabilize that occur in the fourth phase have already 
begun in the first and were in fact integral to the crystallization. In regards to an Anglo-Irish 
Nation, the definition by difference, which is identifying themselves out of the ?irregular 
societies,? is essential to understanding the complexities of a hyphenated identity and how a 
loyal English citizen such as Mary Davys, the first author in this project, might become a 
Romantic nationalist like Mary Tighe, the final author. 
 But attempts to define Nation or any of its variants, like nationalism, face two possible 
results?relativism, which renders the analysis ineffectual, or positivism, which renders the 
analysis essentialist. Geertz argues that the way around this theoretical bind is to realize that 
?peoples of new states are simultaneously animated by two powerful, thoroughly interdependent, 
yet distinct and often actually opposed motives??to matter and to govern. Understanding these 
motives works in both the experiential and the abstract concepts of Nation. A national conscious 
must be recognized by other nations as significant, ?agents whose wishes, acts, hopes, and 
opinions? have meaning. A Nation must ?matter? to other nations, meaning be considered of 
some consequence. In effect, the people of a coalescing nation must be recognized as separate 
from other nations, including the one out of which they are coming. And in the history of Anglo-
Irish politics, especially the constitutional debates of the 1760s and 1770s, this desire to be 
recognized as independent of Great Britain fuels speeches, pamphlets, and even popular 
literature, such as Elizabeth Griffith?s The History of Lady Barton. But to gain such recognition 
required a consensus, however loose it might be, about who was a part of the coalescing nation. 
The initial stage of Nation-building attempted to define these parameters. But, as I discuss 
below, the Anglo-Irish Nation was far from homogenous, so these parameters were difficult to 
                                                 
4 Ibid 238. 
5 
 
define, and these negotiations were fraught with contradiction. Further complicating the 
negotiations were voices from the margin. There is an assumption here, that Nation is a construct 
of men. Rarely does Geertz incorporate the perspective of women in his analysis. However, the 
works of post-colonial feminists like Trinh T. Min-ha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak5 address 
the marginalized voice of women in the hyphenated Nation. This project seeks to establish that, 
acknowledged or not, these Anglo-Irish women writers of the eighteenth century did have ideas 
of Nation and considered themselves active members of it. 
 Perhaps most useful in Geertz?s anthropological theory is ?The Politics of Meaning? 
where his review of Culture and Politics in Indonesia teases out the tension between 
circumstantial evidence and abstract theory. He argues that his purpose ?is an understanding of 
how it is that every people get the politics it imagines? by ?penetrate(ing) deeply enough into 
detail to discover something more than detail.?6 The cultural anthropologist works uses the study 
of an individual to extrapolate how the imagined Nation was constructed. And for my purposes, I 
chose to focus on ?every people? because a Nation is comprised of all the voices it attempts to 
govern, both the politician and the whore, since both have the ability to take up the pen. 
 In Imagined Communities, Anderson makes the bold statement that ?nation-ness is the 
most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.?7 Three centuries earlier, in the 
burgeoning imperialistic policies of ?Western? powers, nationness was equally ?universally 
legitimate? as kingdoms changed into nations and territories became colonies. What Anderson 
offers is an answer to the question posed by Geertz: how is it that people imagine Nation. He 
                                                 
5 Trinh T. Min-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, (Bloomington: Indiana University 
Press, 1989. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, (New York: Routledge, 
1988). 
6 Ibid 313. 
7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. 
(London: Verso, 2006), 3. 
6 
 
suggests that ?it is an imagined political community?and imagined as both inherently limited 
and sovereign.?8 With these parameters, limited and sovereign, Anderson explores how people 
think Nation.9 During the eighteenth century, when concepts of Nation began to take shape 
actively, communities required new modes of thinking about how they are formed, or more 
specifically, what joins them together and makes them a community. As religious ideology 
waned in influence and revolutionary politics began triumphing over God/King/Subject 
hierarchies, it became necessary to create new ways of thinking, of imagining, political 
relationships between and among people. But being limited and sovereign in a hyphenated 
culture created numerous complexities. To be limited required finite boundaries, but such 
boundaries, even mutable ones, were almost impossible to delineate in an Anglo-Irish nation in 
eighteenth-century England and Ireland. Much of that century was spent negotiating those 
boundaries. To be sovereign, the desire for self-rule and the freedoms it afforded, was equally 
elusive although this was similar to other kingdom-colony relationships that Great Britain had. 
For example, the American colonies could approach revolution from the concrete perspective of 
colony, a political territory under the authority of a greater political entity, in this case Great 
Britain. There was never a Kingdom of American and Great Britain. And even if independence 
was not a universally sought outcome in these colonies, questions of sovereignty were predicated 
on such labels. Yet, Ireland was not definitively a colony. Prior to the Act of Union in 1707, 
which created the political entity of Great Britain, Ireland had shared the title of Kingdom with 
England and Scotland, employing familial metaphors like ?sister kingdom.? But in the 1707 Act, 
only England and Scotland were identified as kingdoms. Ireland had become subordinate. 
Paradoxically, the Irish parliament remained in power so the idea of self-governance continued. 
                                                 
8 Ibid 6. 
9 Ibid 22. 
7 
 
Thus, in the era of burgeoning nationalism, the English in Ireland found themselves in-between 
imagined political communities, marginalized by this ambiguity. With one of his more 
provocative statements, that ?regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation?the nation is 
always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship,? Anderson articulates one of the most 
difficult boundaries that the English in Ireland struggled to define: did they share a horizontal 
comradeship with England, which would make them English, or with the English in Ireland, 
which would include the Old Catholic English?10 Such matters were not easily resolved. 
Although a community was clearly imagined, the negotiations of limits and sovereignty kept that 
community in a space of becoming rather than crystallizing. 
The relationship between Nation and the function of printed word to the process of 
crystallization has been ably discussed, but it bears further consideration in the concept of 
Anderson?s imagined community. The imagined community exists, as Anderson articulates, on a 
national level, as a collective experience. What I hope to convey is how the individual 
experience of Nation shapes and is shaped by the collective experience. Instead of a 
metanarrative of Nation, I look at the individual voices of Nation. And these voices speak from 
marginalized positions, which are usually considered as part of the imagined community, but as 
silent partners. Nation is assigned to them. But the public sphere of printed texts allows such 
voices to influence the collective experience and rupture the limitations of the imagined 
community. In Anderson?s conceptualization, it is important to recognize that the origins of 
national consciousness begin in the printed word, specifically capitalizing on the printed word as 
a means of disseminating ideas of national consciousness, helping to define its boundaries. In 
that way, print can be an agent of the burgeoning state, but it can also be an agent of a subaltern 
public sphere in which the voices from the margin participate in the collective experience and 
                                                 
10 Ibid 7. 
8 
 
reveal the tension that is at the core of a hyphenated nationality as it attempts to be both 
sovereign and limited. How the dominant political voice constructs the marginalized subject, 
how the polity constructs women, can show the uncertainty bound up in the imagined 
community as it seeks to establish itself as a nation. And the marginalized voice of a hyphenated 
culture is doubly conflicted as she must negotiate not only the paradox of being both and neither 
of the pair of Nations, but she must also contend with the limitations that the burgeoning 
imagined community must place on her in order to control the boundaries of Nation. 
The Insufficiency of Labels 
 To approach a term such as Anglo-Irish is to immerse oneself into an endless circular of 
ideas, definitions, and assertions that fail to identify adequately who might be considered Anglo-
Irish and what such a designation could mean. In regarding the eighteenth century, the term is 
anachronistic since most people of that century who might be identified today as ?Anglo-Irish? 
would have then referred to themselves in reference to arrival time, i.e. New English or Old 
English, the English in Ireland, or more simply, ?English.? Furthermore, scholars such as 
Nicholas Canny, Thomas Bartlett, Toby Barnard, and S. J. Connolly have illustrated the decided 
unwieldiness of such a broad term since it attempts to encompass a vast number of identities that 
have very disparate histories such as the Ascendancy class (Anglican), the Old English 
(Catholic), and the other New English (Methodists, Dissenters, etc. who don?t identify with the 
Anglican Church). Canny?s work explores the conflict between the old and new, the Anglo-
Norman and the later English settlers of Ireland. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth century, 
these two groups, both of which could be described as the English in Ireland, struggled for 
control of the island. It was not simply the parliament at Dublin Castle, but the land beyond the 
Pale. In fact, it was outside the seat of government where these struggles were most vigorous. 
9 
 
The core of the debate was the process of the subordination, couched in terms of ?civilizing.? 
The New English saw the failure of this process as a result of improper policies, like allowing 
intermarriage. Later, the Old English would apply that same charge to the failures of the new 
settlers to subdue effectively the majority of the inhabitants of Ireland. Thus, these two groups, 
both of which have been described as Anglo-Irish, were far from a singular cultural or national 
identity.  Yet, they shared one perspective. Canny asserts that after the Glorious Revolution, the 
Protestant population was ?more conscious of themselves as an Irish community because, 
thereafter, they could justly claim to be the only group in Ireland who should enjoy full political 
rights.?11 And they shared another identifier, as he points out, that this perception of ?full 
political rights? was ?a point?that was never conceded by the Bri tish government.? As Canny 
describes the political minds of the English in Ireland, he details not only the differences between 
them, but the similarities in the way they were identified by Great Britain. Importantly, Canny 
does not use the term Anglo-Irish until he speaks of the eighteenth century, wherein he argues 
that a national identity began to coalesce. 
 Bartlett?s makes the same claim in his 1990 article, ??A People made Rather for Copies 
than Originals?: the Anglo-Irish, 1760-1800.?12 His guiding inquiry is the political status of 
Ireland in the kingdom of Great Britain: was she a colony or a sister kingdom? Drawing 
distinctions between Ireland and other British colonies, Bartlett illustrates some of the 
contradictions of being Anglo-Irish in such an ambiguous state. While ?other colonies argued 
over the degree, if any, of dependence involved in their colonial relationship with England,? the 
                                                 
11 Nicholas Canny, ?Identity Formation in Ireland: The Emergence of the Anglo-Irish,? in Colonial Identity in the 
Atlantic World, 1500-1800, ed. Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 
204. 
12 Thomas Bartlett, ??A People Made Rather for Copies than Originals?: The Anglo-Irish, 1760-1800,? International 
History Review 12, no. 1 (February 1990): 11-25. 
10 
 
governing body of Ireland ?denied that it had one.?13 And for Bartlett, the governing body was 
Anglo-Irish. He makes some distinctions between the various groups of Irish Protestants, but he 
treats them collectively as means of drawing out the complexities of Ireland?s political status. 
The Catholic question?the pervasive tension between the majority Catholic population of 
Ireland and its role in/threat to the governing minority Protestant population?is at the center of 
Bartlett?s descriptions of late-century Irish Protestants. A growing national consciousness among 
the Anglo-Irish eventually broke apart because the limitations imposed excluded the majority of 
the population, and this majority was far from compliant. 
Barnard?s A New Anatomy of Ireland journeys through the Irish Protestant identity, a 
phrase which distinguishes itself from the broader Anglo-Irish.14 His analysis addresses the 
different aspects of identity within this group, including peerage, soldiers, and bureaucrats. In 
some ways, his analysis echoes the work of Linda Colley?s Britons. He makes some important 
distinctions between the various components of this group who share a broad religious ideology. 
For example, it was not only the peasant, Gaelic-speaking Catholics that experienced poverty 
with its associated invisibility. Though Protestant, even those who were Anglican, shared a 
religious ideology with the ruling class, ?The majority of poor Protestants found there was no 
room in the churches for them if they could not afford either seats or decent clothes. Left to drift 
outside the net of officialdom, they were hard to distinguish from the shoals of Catholics.?15  
What Barnard alludes to is an association between undesirability and Irishness, meaning that 
even if one was an Irish Protestant, poverty made one ?merely Irish.?16 It is associations like 
                                                 
13 Ibid 14. 
14 Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 1649-1770 (New Haven and London: Yale 
University Press, 2003). 
15 Ibid, 330. 
16 The term ?merely Irish? was used throughout the eighteenth century as a way of designating a person as separate 
from any connection with England and to highlight the subordinate status of the Native Irish. 
11 
 
these that worked to marginalize the writers in this project. He concludes his exploration by 
reforming the disparate groups back into the Irish Protestants. Barnard claims that ?as yet, how 
they (the Irish Protestants in the eighteenth century) made sense of their situation, at once 
precarious and precious, has not been addressed explicitly? because, and this is his most potent 
claim, ?nimble craft have busily explored Irish waters, their able pilots returning with 
authoritative charts. Too often, it seems they neither disembarked to tread the terrain nor quizzed 
the inhabitants.?17 Barnard?s metaphor echoes the beginning of Elizabeth Griffith?s novel The 
History of Lady Barton when the heroine is shipwrecked onto a remote part of the island and is 
confronted with this alien culture. This is her first encounter with the ?mere Irish.? 
In Religion, Law, and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660-1760, Connolly 
makes similar distinctions, but discusses the shifts in constructions of national identity within the 
cultural groups in Ireland. Designations like the English in Ireland fell away. Conflations of 
religion and nationality, meaning that English stood in for Protestant and Irish for Catholic 
despite actual national origin, were replaced by religious designations alone, meaning that one 
was Protestant or Catholic regardless of ancestry. The ramification was that the cultural groups 
of the Old English and the native Gaelic-speaking Irish were now collapsed into one group. 
Subsequently, as Barnard argues as well, the Irish Protestant, as they chose to define themselves, 
became a political consciousness. 
Though identifying as Irish, in the early eighteenth century, Irish Protestants still laid 
claim to an English ancestry, when needed, and were loyal to the English crown. However, as the 
century progressed, such associations would change dramatically in some, and ?for a variety of 
reasons, Protestants (in Ireland)?were both pushed and attracted by a stronger sense of 
                                                 
17 Ibid, 331. 
12 
 
themselves as Irish.?18 But this was not identification with Irish Catholics though a minority of 
revolutionaries did embrace that approach in the later years. In fact, the exclusion of Irish 
Catholics was a significant marker of Anglo-Irish nation forming, and historians often suggest 
that the threat of a Catholic rebellion was at least as significant as the threat of subordination to 
the English crown. However, Connelly?s text argues that ?above all?it is important not to seek 
significance, or even coherence, where none existed,? and the urge to find a singular narrative in 
the Anglo-Irish is impossible.19 Political tension between all cultural groups persisted through 
the eighteenth century. And the ambiguous status of being neither colony nor kingdom, in 
addition to English stereotypes of the Irish, meant that these identities were under negotiation 
both in and out of Ireland. Connolly?s purpose is to begin to consider alternative organizations 
through which to understand the diverse peoples of Ireland. His analysis navigates the maze of 
associations through which people tried to understand their position in the society of Ireland.  
All four of the historians discussed above agree that the term Anglo-Irish is an 
insufficient expression to describe the English-descendant population in Ireland. However, they 
also agree that the English crown considered them, diverse as they were, as subordinate. And, by 
implication and public policy, it appeared that the English government considered them to be 
unequivocally Irish. This perspective frequently identified the English in Ireland, both Catholic 
and Protestant, with stereotypes that portrayed them as fervently nationalistic and occasionally 
barbaric. Thus, a nationality is created that is neither English nor Irish, but somehow a part of 
both. 
 David Valone and Jill Marie Bradbury expand on this work and this paradoxical 
nationality by moving beyond religious and political influences which are based on historical 
                                                 
18 S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law, and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760, (1992; reprint Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 2002), 124. 
19 Ibid, 123. 
13 
 
events. Their analysis uses ?the multitude of ways in which individuals and blocs of select 
individuals aligned with or opposed themselves to other groups in the face of changing social, 
political, and cultural conditions.?20 This approach builds on the work of Bartlett and Connolly, 
specifically discussions of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century conflicts between the Old 
English and the New English and the changing nature of Irish Protestant identity in the 
eighteenth century, and serves to demonstrate not only how the status of political relationships 
with England, later Great Britain, developed and influenced Anglo-Irish identities, but also how 
genres of literature, conventions of gender, and constructions of subjectivity function in 
understanding the complexities of being Anglo-Irish. Literary expressions of nationality interpret 
historical events through the individual perspective. Thus, they demonstrate how an author can 
manipulate identity based on association with different, even competing ideologies of Nation, 
something that the women of this project practiced well. 
 But, the term Anglo-Irish is not useless even in its broadness. The complexities that are 
caught up in this term, even its problematic nature, show a space of contradiction in the identities 
intertwined within this identification. It is, perhaps, a more culturally appropriate term than the 
English in Ireland. And it is in the hyphen where this is most telling. Although it is intended to 
show union, the hyphen is a bearer of incongruity, of ambiguity, especially in designating 
nationality. This hyphenated nationality, Anglo-Irish, illustrates the paradox of being English in 
Ireland, even when one was not in Ireland. Being Anglo-Irish meant that one was not English, 
not Irish, but both and neither. Thus, I employ this term purposefully, including in it all the 
omissions and conflations. This project explores how the hyphen functions in nationality, even 
                                                 
20 David Valone and Jill Marie Bradbury, introduction to Anglo-Irish Identities, 1571-1845, ed. David Valone and 
Jill Marie Bradbury, (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2008) 13. 
14 
 
though hyphenating Anglo-Irish was not a contemporary usage. The hyphen, in this project, is 
the symbolic representation of liminality, of being in between cultures. 
 The history of the Anglo-Irish in Ireland is not one of kingdom or of colony. Rather, it 
occupies a space between those imperialist concepts even as it is a part of both of them.21 Any 
colonialist reading of Anglo-Irish culture in the eighteenth century inevitably folds in on itself. It 
was both a nation of oppressed and oppressors, sometimes in the same person. And it was far 
from a linear organization, meaning the oppression didn?t trickle down from Crown to beggar, 
but rather took a circuitous path among the different subcultures of those who identified 
themselves as the English in Ireland or the Irish loyal to England or the Irish Protestant who is 
not Catholic. This analytical predicament is what became lost in revisionist Irish historical and 
literary scholarship. 
Liminal Nationality 
Eighteenth-century Ireland was a troublesome concept for the Kingdom of England/Great 
Britain. This was not necessarily in terms of rebellions or revolutions. It was a comparatively 
peaceful century in the history of the two islands. Yet, the uncertain status in relationship to 
Great Britain made the kingdom/subordinate/colony construction rather a vague thorn in the side 
of the British nation. With a world to conquer, the Parliament in London had little time to 
consider the status of the land across the Irish Sea. Without clear domestic/foreign political 
policy (indeed, one could not definitively say that policy concerning Ireland was either domestic 
or foreign), the inhabitants of eighteenth-century Ireland were left to sort out their national 
identity. This would, eventually, be incredibly problematic for the British government in the 
                                                 
21 For a discussion of this paradox, see Jane Ohlmeyer, ed. Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Ireland: 
Kingdom or Colony, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),  Martyn Powell, Britain and Ireland in the 
Eighteenth-Century Crisis of Empire, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), and S.J. Connolly, Kingdoms 
United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500: Integration and Diversity, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999). 
15 
 
following two centuries. But during the eighteenth-century, the question of Nation was 
problematic for the Anglo-Irish, in all senses of that identity. 
Victor Turner?s concept of threshold people, the liminal community, illustrates the 
ambiguity of the unique situation of Ireland in the eighteenth century. In this liminal space, these 
people ?elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and 
positions in cultural space.?22 Hence, attempts to delineate the people living in Ireland who 
identified themselves as Protestant are futile as traditional approaches to cultural study are 
ineffective since the liminal persona is ?neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between.? 
Liminality is the second stage of the ritual process and is rich in symbolic meaning. This 
symbolism explores the process through which a culture confers identity on its people. They are 
symbols of people who are outside the constructs of society, and the symbols of liminality exist 
in each text discussed in this project.  
Davys is a wanderer and homeless. Pilkington is divorced and disgraced. Griffith?s Lady 
Barton is disgraced, dying. Tighe?s Ireland is disappearing. These symbols of being on the 
threshold and in the margin bring together an idea of the hyphenated culture as it exists in the 
political consciousness of these women. Thus, by exploring how the Anglo-Irish experienced 
their liminality, and the symbols they used, one lays bare the process in which nationality is 
constructed in absence of identifiable markers of Nation. For example, Ireland had no 
independent government though it was allowed some autonomy. Foreign relations were 
negotiated through England, so official relationships with other Nations were unavailable. These 
parameters limited the Anglo-Irish from creating a firm sense of an Anglo-Irish nation as they 
did not allow for significant differentiation from England, much less from other European 
                                                 
22 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, 1969, ( Reprint, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 
Press, 1991), 95. 
16 
 
countries. These boundaries inhibited the expression of the Irish Protestant citizen, as late-
century patriotic discourse illustrated. These boundaries were doubly limiting when surrounding 
marginal voices such as a woman writer. Not only did Davys, Pilkington, Griffith, and Tighe live 
as subjects in a liminal culture in the circumstances described above, but also as marginalized 
voices in a public sphere that demanded virtue and domesticity and met independence with 
skepticism. Yet, these women chose to write. And their texts explored, even scrutinize, the 
ideologies that place them in alternate public spheres in addition to scrutinizing ?the central 
values and axioms of culture? in which this liminal phase occurs.23  
Building on the concept of national liminality, The Location of Culture explores cultural 
hybridity in a post-colonial construction. Scrutinizing the concept of nation as narrative, Bhabha 
challenges horizontal constructions of Nation, instead proposing a frame of splitting, one that 
interrogates the pedagogical narratives of the horizontal nation with the performative realities of 
the individual subject.24 Liminality, for him, is the state of the modern nation. Fictions of 
stability fall apart as the marginalized subjects of nation disrupt the flow of history and attempts 
to codify Nation as a production of events and ideas. These marginalized subjects, those voices 
that challenge the boundaries used to establish sovereignty, breakdown traditional narratives of 
nation (indeed all narratives of nation) into the ?patches and rags? of the modern nation.25  
There is an important critique of Bhabha?s design. One might wonder if he wanders too 
far into abstraction at the expense of necessary detail. As Marjorie Perloff argues, he is so intent 
on arguing his manifesto?of articulating his theory?that he forgets to read the book.26 Thus, 
                                                 
23 Ibid 167. 
24 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (1994, Reprint New York: Routledge, 2006). 
25 Ibid 211. Bhabha is quoting Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). 
26 Marjorie Perloff, ?Cultural Liminality/Aesthetic Closure?: The ?Interstitial Perspective? of Homi Bhabha? in 
Electronic Poetry Center [online journal], (Buffalo, N.Y., 1998 [cited April 15, 2010]). Article available at < 
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/perloff/bhabha.html> 
17 
 
his readings of cultural hybridity, in literature or in art, sometimes hide the very un-horizontal 
constructions of Nation that he seeks to demonstrate. However, I would also argue that his 
theoretical structure, the basic premise of his argument, is still relevant to a study of liminality in 
the development of the modern n/Nation. More importantly, while much of his argument centers 
on third-world post-colonial nations of the twentieth century, it is his abstraction that allows for a 
broader application. His methodology provides an avenue into understanding a culture that is not 
so clearly colonial, that lacks the benefit, as it were, of being definitively a colony. Cultural 
hybridity, after all, has some constants; it is both and neither a part of a dominant and subjected 
culture. The English in Ireland/Irish Protestant/Anglo-Irish led far different lives from the 
subjects of Bhabha?s analysis, but they did share the same ambiguity of identification. Being 
hyphenated, or hybrid in Bhabha?s terms, whether in an industrialized or third-world nation, 
leads to the same goal?the desire to establish a stable idea of Nation. And what this analysis of 
Nation, genre, and gender illustrates is that, regardless of geographic location or modernity, such 
stability frequently remains elusive. 
The Anglo-Irish represent this liminal phase that is the narrative of Nation.  Having left 
England, this group entered the preliminary stage, but remaining in Ireland prevents them from 
moving on to the post-liminary stage.  Yet, in the politics of the period, we can see them 
struggling with the liminality and attempting to create an Irish society into which they can enter 
and thus, finish the rite of passage. With the Act of Union, the Anglo-Irish symbolically rejoined 
English society and complete the rite of passage. 
Women Writing Nation 
 This project takes a chronological approach to the liminality nationality in Anglo-Irish 
women writers, but it is not a chronological construction of Nation in eighteenth-century Irish 
18 
 
Protestants.  I begin in the post-Glorious Revolution Kingdom of Ireland and Kingdom of 
Britain, which became the Kingdom of Great Britain and Scotland in 1707. This act politically 
subordinated Ireland to Great Britain, evidenced by the naming as well as public policy. It was, 
as I have stated above, a period of uncertainty in the Anglo-Irish nation. Though scholars 
disagree about the depth or prevalence of insecurity felt by those who could identify as Anglo-
Irish, the presence of apprehension is undeniable. Jacobite rebellions in 1716 and 1745 were 
tangible reminders of the deep divide between the small, governing population of the island and 
the very large governed population comprised mostly of Gaelic-speaking Catholics. Growing 
sympathy in Great Britain for the Irish Catholic exacerbated such tension. While some historical 
scholars are careful not to overstate the influence of such currents, the Penal Laws and the 
Declaratory Act suggest that the tension was significant.  
In Chapter One, I begin by analyzing an author who writes at the politically turbulent turn 
of the century. Mary Davys wrote in the waning years of the seventeenth century and published 
until 1732, the year of her death. What is believed to be her first publication, The Amours of 
Alcippus and Lucippe, later revised as The Lady?s Tale, was published in 1704 followed by The 
Fugitive; Or a Country Ramble in 1705, the travel narrative discussed in first chapter. She is 
known primarily as a novelist, especially The Reform?d Coquette, though she wrote two plays, 
one of which was performed at Lincoln?s Inn Field in 1716. Much of her work is didactic, and 
she is credited with developing the archetype of the coquette and as an influence on Samuel 
Richardson, especially his work in Clarissa. Her novelistic output has been thoroughly and ably 
approached in the last few decades; however, I chose to analyze The Fugitive, one of her earliest 
documented works. Approached as either fiction or autobiography, The Fugitive has been 
primarily an aside rather than a focus for literary scholars. To read this text as a travel narrative 
19 
 
is a challenge because of these previous labels. But, at the core of this text is a journey, and at the 
core of a journey is Nation. All travel narratives are constructs of the author, and this one is no 
different. What is most intriguing in this choice of text is the ideological journey it portrays?an 
author who is traveling through a land, both foreign and domestic to her, as she argues for 
inclusion in that Nation, but is irrevocably tied to that whence she came.   
 Mary Davys wrote primarily in England, and her travel narrative is a journey through 
England. Thus, the focus of the first chapter is an Anglo-Irish experience in England. I feel this is 
an important perspective to take. In considering the assertion of many scholars, that the English 
in Ireland or the Irish Protestant identified themselves as English, Davys?s work is a litmus test 
for such a claim. It tests that identification with complicated results. In this chapter, I argue that 
the ambiguity in Davys?s nationality demonstrates how an Anglo-Irish author struggles to 
identify as English while not participating in institutionalized critiques of the Irish national 
character, critiques that associate all inhabitants of Ireland with barbarism and extremism.  
 In the second chapter, I consider the genre of autobiography and the era of Jacobitism. 
Though the bloody English civil wars were half a century past, this conflict between supporters 
of the Stuart house?called the Jacobites?and supporters of the Hanoverian succession 
established at the death of Queen Anne in 1714, continued to influence the negotiation of Nation 
in the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, published in 1748, 
demonstrates this tension in both her reception by society and her response to that reception. This 
tension dictated which community Pilkington could imagine herself as did her gender and the 
importance of Virtue to that construction, for Pilkington had been labeled a whore before she 
wrote the first line of her memoirs. After a poorly planned book exchange in her bedroom late at 
night while she was still married, an exchange which Pilkington vehemently claimed was 
20 
 
nothing more, the ensuing scandal colored not only the texts she wrote, but the life she was able 
to lead, and since she was labeled an ?Irish whore,? the ideology of Nation breaks through 
revealing the very present connection between Nation and Virtue that is implied in Davys?s 
travel narrative. This connection, or barrier, illustrates how the collective experience of Nation, 
the imagined community of the Anglo-Irish, worked to limit the boundaries of who might 
participate in the negotiations of the boundaries of nationhood. While Davys was also in a 
position wherein she needed to establish her virtuous reputation, the ambiguity with which she 
wrote provided some measure of protection. If there were any compromising situations in her 
past, they would have been left in obscurity once she left Ireland because she does not identify 
any specific details of her past. That Pilkington?s indiscretion was documented and very public 
superseded the literary promise she showed as a young poet which illustrates those at the center 
of the negotiations of Nation sought to silence the margins and the threat they posed to 
establishing a cohesive construct. 
 I argue that autobiography, gender, and Nation meet?even collide?in Pilkington?s 
Memoirs and show how the interstices of these ideologies construct this author?s idea of a 
national consciousness. Pilkington?s claims of a prestigious ancestry, which are more ambiguous 
than she acknowledges as they alternately align her with both sides of the hyphen even as they 
contradict each other, provide a construct of an individual experience of Nation as it exists 
outside of the center. The individual experience, which is the basis of an autobiography, ruptures 
the metanarratives of Nation and depicts the paradox of this hyphenated culture. 
 In Chapter Three, I analyze the fictional constructs of Nation in Elizabeth Griffith?s most 
popular and most criticized novel, The History of Lady Barton, published in 1771. Griffith 
published as a playwright and a novelist more frequently and widely than any of the other writers 
21 
 
discussed in this project. Like Davys and Pilkington, though, she wrote for profit to support her 
family. Unlike Davys and Pilkington, Griffith was married, to an Irish farmer, and this provided 
her with a more stable cultural position than a widow traveling alone or a disgraced, divorced 
scribbler. This difference is reflected in her text as she interrogates the construction of Virtue 
rather than work to establish its presence. Lady Barton is Griffith?s only novel set in Ireland and 
presents a microcosm of Anglo-Irish society including transplanted Englishmen, English 
landlords born in Ireland with vast estates, and, occasionally, glimpses of the Native Irish. And 
her title character represents the cultural conflict of the hyphenated Anglo-Irish as she is an 
English-born gentlewoman living in Ireland and married to an Anglo-Irish landlord. 
 Griffith?s novel is published during the decades when the government of Ireland, still 
subject to the English Parliament, is debating the constitutional position of Ireland within Great 
Britain. It is in this period that some of the most recognizable voices of Anglo-Irish politics arise 
including Henry Grattan and Edmund Burke. The core of these debates rested on the nebulous 
position of Ireland since the country could not definitively be called colony or Kingdom. And in 
these debates, one sees the stages of Geertz, especially the desire to stabilize and crystallize the 
boundaries of a Nation of Ireland. Griffith?s novel reflects the tensions inherent in a hyphenated 
culture and the fragility of such constructions of Nation. 
 Rising alongside these politically charged negotiations is the literary construct of 
sensibility. Sensibility is an inherently contradictory concept in which the subject experiences 
spontaneous, intense delicate feelings?feelings which cannot be experienced by rougher, less 
refined subjects?but must also experience these feelings in socially acceptable ways so as not to 
descend into the extremes of emotion. Thus, the delicacy of feeling must be individually, but 
appropriately experienced. Bound by constructs of gender, the line between appropriate and 
22 
 
scandalous could be crossed easily by a gentlewoman, as Lady Barton?s character illustrates. In 
fact, it was the mere questioning of virtue that ultimately destroys her despite her relative 
innocence (her infidelity was in thought rather than action). And the men she is caught between, 
the Irish Lord Lucan and the English Col. Walters, are unable to stop her destruction by their 
competing ideologies. I argue that the death of Lady Barton demonstrates that the urge to limit 
and crystallize a construct of an Anglo-Irish nation works to silence or excise those voices that 
disrupt the construct.  
 In the final chapter, I consider the work of Mary Tighe and analyze her sonnets, which 
create an evanescent image of Ireland in the late eighteenth century. Tighe published less than 
the other three writers, but enjoyed more critical acclaim in what might be described as rarified 
literary circles. Perhaps most important about her work is that she was participating in a unique 
literary movement of this period, unique in that it was driven predominantly by women writers?
the Sonnet Revival. Tighe is best known for her verse retelling of the legend of Cupid and 
Psyche, Psyche; or, the Legend of Love. But in a study of nationality, I feel her most potent work 
is in her lyrical representations of Nation that are found in the sonnets of Ireland. 
 Tighe?s work was composed during the tumultuous final years of the eighteenth century 
and what would be the final years of a separate Irish Parliament. The Act of Union in 1800 
dismantled the Irish government and effectively subordinated the country to the Kingdom of 
Great Britain. The 1798 rebellion of the United Irishmen brought the tensions of the previous 
decades into sharp focus for the English government, and a definitive answer to the ?Irish 
question? was needed. As Anglo-Irish Ireland disappeared into the folds of a British government, 
Tighe depicts a poignant picture of Ireland as fading away, sometimes quietly and sometimes 
angrily, but disappearing nonetheless. 
23 
 
 Like the other texts in this project, this analysis examines the individual experience of 
Nation. The sonnet, with its problem-solving function, works to reconcile the competing 
ideologies that exist in a hyphenated culture. However, it also offers a form in which the author 
can construct an individual lyrical subjectivity in which to explore the contradictions inherent in 
hyphenation. In a turbulent political period, Tighe assumes the mantle that Shakespeare and 
Milton had done centuries earlier and creates brief moments that illustrate how Nation 
crystallizes in her construction. Unlike Davys, Pilkington, or Griffith, I argue that Tighe 
constructs an idea of Nation that is truly individual, working not to incorporate itself into a 
dominant collective experience, but to create an individual experience of Nation that is private, 
yet revealing. 
 The four writers represent a trend in the evolving national consciousness of the Anglo-
Irish through the course of the eighteenth century. This evolution occurs as part of a larger, 
global shift in defining nationality as the age of Empire rises and the religious-political state 
disappears. Nation becomes a construct of conqueror and conquered. But the uncertain status, the 
lack of a definitive label as colony or kingdom, plagued not only Great Britain, but the Anglo-
Irish ideology of Nation as well. These authors illustrate a shift from the loyal English citizen?
who just happens to live/come from Ireland?to a nostalgic Irish sonneteer. But these are 
representations of Nation from the margins; thus they are not recognized as part of the collective 
experience of Nation, but are still active in negotiating this. It is most revealing to consider how 
the margin speaks in the stabilization and crystallization of Nation as it reveals how a culture 
works to reconcile a hyphen that is, in itself, a contradiction. 
The Inspiration 
24 
 
 In 1982, D. George Boyce sought to redirect political scholarship on Ireland not 
only away from revisionist mythologies of Irish nationalism, but also away from narrow 
representations of the political voice of Irish politics.27 This project expands on Boyce?s critical 
endeavor by listening to voices from the margin, often far out of the public sphere of popular 
politics. I agree that there is more to eighteenth-century Ireland than Swift, Burke, Grattan, or 
Tone. Ideas of Nation did not only concern great men with grand visions. Mary Davys, Laetitia 
Pilkington, Elizabeth Griffith, and Mary Tighe considered themselves, and indeed were a part of 
the collective experience of nationness that evolved during the eighteenth century. 
In 2002, Cork University Press published two additional volumes to the Field Day 
Anthology of Irish Literature.28 The original project, the first three volumes, was a 
comprehensive project itself compiling a history of Irish literature and a suggestion of Irish 
identity, occurring during the final years of The Troubles. Initially, the project was criticized for 
its political bias, but that was followed by an equally passionate response to the choice of 
authors. The first three volumes revealed a gap in the traditional canon of Irish literature, the 
experience of women in Irish society. Building on that original project, the editors of Volumes 
IV and V created an exhaustively comprehensive history of Irish women?s writing.29 The Field 
Day anthologies helped create a concept of Irish literature as a living tradition grounded in a long 
national history, even in the periods where Nation was only imagined. The volumes on Irish 
women?s writing, rising out of the growing feminist scholarship in academics, added voices to 
that imagined. 
                                                 
27 D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1995). 
28 Seamus Deane, ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols. (Derry: Field Day Theater Co., 1990). 
29 Angela Bourke, et at., ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Irish Women?s Writing and Traditions, Vol. 
4 and 5, (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 
25 
 
Chapter One 
The Discourse of the Travel Narrative in Mary Davys? The Fugitive; or, A Country Ramble: 
Creating and Negotiating Anglo-Irish Identity in the Kingdom of Great Britain 
 
The literary history of the travel narrative ranges from methodically scientific studies of 
the physical world to modern travel guides offering tips on dining and shopping. One can begin 
with Herodotus? tour of Greece and end up with Eyewitness Travel Guides. The travel narrative 
has provided a means for its readers to understand cultures outside of their daily lives. But the 
travel narrative of Mary Davys attempts, at the same time, to understand a culture within the 
daily life of the author.  
It is the title that first invites an interesting comparison. A fugitive can be a tale of 
?passing interest? or someone in ?the act of running away.?30 Both represent generally accepted 
concepts in eighteenth-century writing. But the word is a paradox, and it permeates the personal 
narrative of Mary Davys?s The Fugitive; or, A Country Ramble.31 A fugitive exists in a state of 
constant fluctuation with no recognizable home. The word connotes running away or escaping, 
but the term undeniably implies leaving an undesirable place. It is a state of fleeting identity and 
an identity in transition. And this fugitive, Mary Davys, is leaving Ireland.
                                                 
30 Oxford English Dictionary Online. Entry "fugitive, A5." Acessed July 3, 2008. Both of these definitions have 
usage around the year The Fugitive was published. 
31 Mary Davys, The fugitive. Containing, several very pleasant passages, and surprizing adventures, observ'd by a 
lady in her country ramble; being both useful and diverting for persons of all ranks. Now first published from her 
own manuscript, London, 1705, Based on information from English Short Title Catalogue, Eighteenth Century 
Collections Online, Gale Group. 
26 
 
Conversely, a ramble describes an entirely different experience, one closer to the 
secondary concept of ?fugitive? as it is articulated in eighteenth-century literature?the tale of 
passing interest. A ramble is an aimless journey, one of exploration and pleasurable experience. 
As a description of a writer, a fugitive who rambles presents a quaint framework for a simple tale 
of a casual journey that doesn?t seek purpose but experience. But the word fugitive is also the 
antithesis of ramble. Both are negotiating a relationship with the land/country/nation, but the 
rambler does so with the security of self whereas the fugitive is searching desperately for such 
security. A rambler exists within a community, the fugitive without. It is this paradox in Mary 
Davys?s The Fugitive; or, A Country Ramble that I will explore in the following chapter. The 
incongruence of rambling and fleeing or of belonging and/or being outside reveals the complex 
socio-political construction of an Anglo-Irish identity in Ireland and England during the post-
Restoration era of the early eighteenth century. 
The late seventeenth century was a turbulent period in Irish history. Cromwell, in the 
1649 massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, and William III, in the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, 
ravaged the Irish land and people in battles for control of the English government. English wars 
fought on Irish soil paid for with Irish lives. It is against this historical backdrop that The 
Fugitive is unconsciously cast. Davys?s tale relates an objective, and, in her words, ?almost 
exactly true?32 representation of the English in England. While the story appears innocuous?she 
offers it as a means of entertainment for a discerning audience; the text is laced, both implicitly 
and explicitly, with the ideological struggle between the competing nationalities that 
simultaneously exist in a writer who is neither Irish, nor English, but both. Moreover, the 
palimpsest in this text does not only conceal the anxiety over national identity, but an anxiety 
over, and defiance of, gender identity. Davys is equally bound by the social standards of 
                                                 
32 Ibid., dedication, 6. 
27 
 
womanhood, which she has compromised by the mere act of picking up the pen. Thus, this 
narrative reveals not only the nationalistic ideologies that occupy the political arena at this time, 
but also the ideology of gender as it is dictated in the genre conventions of a travel narrative 
since the narrator of the journey must assume an authority over that which is being described, an 
authority traditionally not afforded to women writers. Deploying the cultural capital of the travel 
narrative, Mary Davys?s The Fugitive illustrates a pivotal moment in the histories of both 
England and Ireland as one culture struggles for dominance and one for recognition. 
The travel narrative provided a means by which the reader could experience a foreign 
culture, but these texts also worked to reaffirm the preeminence of the traveler/writer?s own 
culture. Mary Louise Pratt first explores this transculturation construction in her 1992 book, 
Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. She argues that while the travel narrative is 
an active construction of the foreign destination that is being described/proscribed, it is equally 
constructing the domestic identity of the traveler/author. Pratt contends that ?travel books by 
Europeans about non-European parts of the world went (and go) about creating the ?domestic 
subject? of Euroimperialism.?33 The reciprocity that Pratt describes materializes in gender 
palimpsests as well. In presenting herself as a woman writer, Davys expands the concepts of both 
woman and writer by constructing an authorial voice that challenges the concept that only men 
can experience travel, and that traveler equals man. 
Ambiguity in a Hyphenated Culture 
In the first few pages of Davys?s travel journal relating her first adult excursion into 
England, she presents a carefully worded account of her nationality and, thus, her ideological 
position. Describing her years in Ireland, she writes, ?Fortune?had toss?d me out of one hand 
into the other, for the space of Eighteen or Twenty Years, and had all that time made me her 
                                                 
33 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, (New York: Routledge, 1992) 4. 
28 
 
sport.?34 The instability she describes casts her not as a content rambler, but as a fugitive from 
the capricious nature of Ireland. However, in the opening pages of the narrative where she begins 
describing her journey, she acknowledges a different, more diplomatic tone towards Ireland. She 
writes, ?When I was in the sixth year of my Age I began my Ramble?carried by my Mother 
into Ireland.?35 In contrast to the chaotic description she provides in the Preface, the second page 
of the narrative expresses a different attitude. Ireland is a ?a place very much despis?d by those 
who know it not, and valued by them that do?such as have gone there without prejudice, and 
have given their opinions without partiality.?36  This contrast suggests to the reader the conflict, 
and ultimately the paradox, of her ideological position as a local and an outsider. While none of 
these allusions to her origins assert that she was either English- or Irish-born, they do emphasize 
the paradox that Ireland is both capricious and valued. The ambiguity created by the absence of a 
claim to a birth place (and no birth certificate exists to establish this) typifies her conflicting 
approach to nationality. The concept of a hybrid nationality is present, diplomatically arranged 
by Davys to take advantage of and avoid the dangers of the issue of national origin in an era in 
which this identity, that of being ?Anglo-Irish?, is only the beginning stages of development.37 
This ambiguity, however, has troubled scholars who try to place Davys within a tradition 
of Irish or English literature. There seems to be a need to identify her with one or the other 
country. The way scholars categorize Davys?s nationality ranges from a positive claim that she 
was born in Dublin in 1674 to carefully worded descriptions that avoid making any positive 
claim to the birthplace of the author. But accepting the ambiguity of her birth and ethnicity 
                                                 
34 Davys, Preface, 1. 
35 Ibid., 2. Author?s italics. 
36 Ibid., 2. 
37 ?Anglo-Irish? is an anachronistic term when used to describe the English in Ireland in the eighteenth century. And 
it in no way encompasses the variety of cultures that it seems to label. However, this broad term is useful in 
distinguishing the English in Ireland from the native Irish population, as the issues of a hybrid culture exist in all 
varieties of the Anglo-Irish. See my introduction for more information. 
29 
 
allows for a more socially and politically aware reading of her texts. This need, or even 
imperative, to categorize her based on national origins should illustrate the necessity of 
understanding how her nationality and her gender impacted not only how she constructed her 
textual self, but also how that construction was dictated by her readers.  Falsely asserting a 
certainty about her origins obscures the value in ambiguity. In order to appreciate fully the 
cultural value of Mary Davys as a writer in the tradition of Irish literature, a fairly new 
supposition and my approach in this chapter, one has to consider how both she and her critics 
have categorized her nationality given that how a person identifies national loyalty in the 
eighteenth century had serious ramifications both socially and politically.  
Eighteenth-century biographies, like the Biographia Dramatica in 1782, claimed that 
Davys was born in Ireland.38 There is little mention of her beyond this brief entry until the 
twentieth century. Most contemporary scholars have taken the assumptions of this encyclopedia 
as fact and incorporated this birthplace, asserting she was Irish-born, into their biographical 
analysis. For instance, Frans De Bruyn?s entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography 
unequivocally states that Davys was born in Dublin, as does Roger Lonsdale?s pivotal anthology, 
Eighteenth-Century Women Poets.39 Even the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography claims 
that she was ?almost certainly born in Ireland.?40  These sources, however, can provide no 
support for those claims because no archival evidence exists.  
Some older entries, like Myra Reynolds?s 1920 Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760, 
refer to Davys?s husband and his profession as an Anglican clergyman at St. Patrick?s in order to 
                                                 
38David Erskine Baker, ?Mary Davys? in Biographia dramatica, or, a companion to the playhouse: ... By David 
Erskine Baker, Esq. A new edition: carefully corrected and continued from 1764 to 1782, vol. 1 of 2, (London, 
1782) 118-119. 
39 Frans De Bruyn, ?Mary Davys? in Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists, 1660-180, Part 1: A-L, ed. 
Martin C. Battestin (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1985) 132. Roger Lonsdale, ed., Eighteenth-Century Women 
Poets: An Oxford Anthology, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 102-103.  
40 Paula R. Backscheider, ?Davys, Mary (1674?1732)? in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford 
University Press, 2004)  <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7327>, accessed 22 Oct 2007. 
30 
 
imply the Irish connection without the fact of her birthplace.41 Reynolds?s implication that Davys 
is of Irish origin is problematic. Seventeenth-century European nationalism was closely 
associated with religion, and the Irish nobility reflected this by their embrace of Roman 
Catholicism. Thus, singling out her marriage to an Anglican clergyman even if he was Irish-
born, would suggest a closer connection with England rather than with Ireland. In 1972, Alison 
Adburgham described Davys as ?the wife of an Irishman?, which again uses Peter Davys as the 
means of identifying her origin.42 However, she characterizes Davys?s Familiar Letters as having 
an ?atmosphere of British middle-class realism?, which likely stemmed from her time in England 
where she wrote the novel. Adburgham also describes an epistolary relationship between Swift 
and Davys. While there is some contradiction here, these claims still appear to highlight a firm 
association with Ireland, but avoid the necessity of further factual support beyond the existing 
marriage license. In 1990, The Biographical Dictionary of English Women Writers lists the 
geographical locations where Davys is known to have lived?Dublin, York, and Cambridge?
but gives no birthplace or descriptions like ?Irish-born? or ?wife of an Irishman.? She is simply, 
?Mary Davys...widowed in 1698.?43  
Recognizing this attempt to connect Davys with Ireland, or the opposite attempt to avoid 
connecting her with either England or Ireland, establishes that such critical assumptions of an 
Irish identity reveal a tendency to overlook the complex nature of an Anglo-Irish identity as it 
was experienced at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, to make such 
connections assumes that Davys has been considered a part of an Irish literary tradition when, in 
practice, she has not. Davys does not appear in the Dictionary of Irish Biography or in the 
                                                 
41 Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920) 231. 
42 Alison Adburgham, Women in Print: Writing Women and women?s Magazines From the Restoration to the 
Accession of Victoria, (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1972) 71-72. 
43 Maureen Bell, et al., A Biographical Dictionary of English Women Writers 1580-1720 (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 
1990) 63-64. 
31 
 
Oxford Encyclopedia of Irish Literature, as the writers in later chapters due.44 There could be a 
number of reasons for these omissions, not the least of which is Davys?s relative obscurity in 
both her century and today. The lack of factual information regarding her origins has only 
complicated that obscurity. However, in 2002, she was included in the landmark addition to the 
Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing?Irish Women?s Writing and Traditions.45 The editors 
excerpted not only her novel Familiar Letters, Betwixt a Gentleman and a Lady  and her never-
performed comedy, The Self Rival, but also the rarely discussed text of The Fugitive. Her 
inclusion in this anthology works to incorporate Davys into the tradition of Irish literature written 
in English and identifies her as an Irish writer by acknowledging the connection with Ireland that 
is present in her texts rather than external evidence from her public life. Siobhan Kilfeather, in 
her introduction to Davys?s work, briefly addresses the political difficulty of an author who is 
Anglo-Irish and a woman: ?Davys is aware of the prejudices which accompany representations 
of Ireland in English writing, but as a woman she is situated in a different mythologizing strain 
than are the men of her culture and class.?46 This interpretation of Davys?s nationality is 
supported by the author?s words in opening pages of the Fugitive, as quoted above. However, 
this interpretation has been obscured by the aforementioned desire to identify Davys as Irish 
through external evidence rather than looking to the intratextual narrative of nationality 
embedded in The Fugitive. Kilfeather?s conclusions illustrate the multiple prejudices that a writer 
in Davys? cultural position, an Anglo-Irish woman with vague beginnings, would confront. This 
reading of Davys highlights the necessity that she be aware of the prevailing social and political 
                                                 
44 Henry Boylan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1998).  The Concise Oxford 
Companion to Irish Literature. Ed. Robert Welch, (Oxford University Press, 2000) Oxford Reference Online. 
(Oxford: Oxford University Press) accessed October 22, 2007  
<http://www.oxfordreference.com.spot.lib.auburn.edu/views/BOOK_SEARCH.html?book=t55> 
45 Angela Bourke, et al, Irish Women?s Writing and Traditions, vol. IV of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing 
(New York: New York University Press, 2002).  
46 Ibid., 777. 
32 
 
attitudes she would have to negotiate by publishing her journey through England. However, 
Kilfeather claims that because Davys was a woman ?situated in a different mythologizing strain? 
than writers such as Wycherley or Congreve, she must confront limitations on a woman?s public 
space in addition to the English perceptions of Irish writers. The political unconscious that 
permeates The Fugitive grows out of this double-bind of Davys?s cultural position. Thus, 
exploring the political aspects of her texts provides a methodology that incorporates the author 
into not only a tradition of the travel narrative, but into the political sphere as well. 
A review of the literary scholarship that moves beyond strictly anthological or 
encyclopedic considerations shows a focus in early to late twentieth-century scholarship on 
Davys? contribution to the development of the novel. This scholarship seeks to incorporate her 
novels into the history of that genre, which had been dominated by canonical writers such as 
Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. This scholarship is founded in the criticism of Ian Watt?s Rise 
of the Novel47 for not including women novelists, especially those who seem to have influenced 
later male novelists. Since she preceded Watt?s male triumvirate, Davys?s novels have been cast 
as foundational rather than marginal. Her published work is considered a decisive body of texts, 
primarily The Reform?d Coquette; Or, Memoirs of Amoranda, because of her development of 
archetype of the coquette. One example of this direction is William H. McBurney?s 1959 article, 
?Mrs. Mary Davys: Forerunner of Fielding.?48 This analysis of Davys?s work provided the first 
comprehensive consideration of her as a major contributor to the novel form. McBurney?s article 
is also the one most often cited as proof of Davys?s ?Irishness.? Since he unequivocally claims 
that she was ?born in Dublin,? later researchers have taken this assumption and employed it as 
factual evidence, despite the lack of actual fact. He makes other claims such as describing her as 
                                                 
47 Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957). 
48 William H. McBurney, ?Mrs. Mary Davys: Forerunner of Fielding,? PMLA, 74 (1959): 348-55. 
33 
 
?happily married? though, again, he provides no evidence to support that. In his later 1963 book, 
Four Before Richardson: Selected English Novels, 1720-1727, McBurney repeats the same 
misstatements about her past.49 The continual references in later twentieth-century scholarship to 
McBurney?s work reveal an approach to Davys?s work that obscures the complexity of a travel 
narrative like The Fugitive. The unquestioned reproduction of assumptions to the point that they 
become fact cloaks valuable information that allows for more culturally accurate interpretations. 
Following the themes in McBurney?s work, Margaret Doody?s 1974 Natural Passion: A 
Study of the Novels of Samuel Richardson explores Davys? novels The Reform?d Coquette and 
Familiar Letters as precursors to Richardson?s novels?Pamela, Clarissa, etc.  Here, Doody 
categorizes Davys as an English author grouping here with Penelope Aubin, Jane Barker, and 
Eliza Haywood.50 Then, in 1988, her essay, ?Swift Among the Women,? she changes this to 
?Irish women writers? and includes Laetitia Pilkington and Mary Barber.51 Doody claims that it 
is the association with Swift that characterizes Davys as Irish whereas her earlier work had 
claimed that the association with, and influence on, Richardson constituted Englishness. In a 
later essay, ?Swift and Women?, Doody takes Davys?s Irishness further by asserting that Davys 
?identified?as Irish? and ?felt a  certain kind of Irish patriotism.? This was possible because 
?patriot women in times of crisis get more license to speak out.? 52 I would argue that in 1705, 
Davys did not have such license; hence, one reads a number of conflicting statements about 
nationality in The Fugitive, which suggests that Davys intentionally did not identify herself as 
exclusively Irish. The progression in these three works, from English author to Irish patriot, 
                                                 
49William H. McBurney, ed., Four Before Richardson: Selected English Novels, 1720-1727, (Lincoln: University of 
Nebraska Press, 1963). 
50 Margaret Doody, Natural Passions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974) 18. 
51 Ibid., ?Swift Among the Women,? in The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 18 (1988) 68-92. 
52 Ibid., ?Swift and Women,? in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift, edited by Christopher Fox, 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 108. 
34 
 
illustrates how ambiguous Davys?s own representations of her nationality were. She has been 
included in a multitude of literary traditions depending on which particular text or vignette is 
most relevant to that tradition. Doody?s textual evidence is also telling. In Natural Passions, she 
explores the didacticism and form in Davys?s novels. However, her two later essays use the 1725 
The Merry Wanderer, a revision of The Fugitive, to illustrate an Irish loyalism. Thus, Davys?s 
novels are English, but her personal narrative is Irish. Such claims cannot be positive, and they 
illustrate the necessity of understanding how Davys positions herself through the entirety of her 
text rather than a line here or there. 
In 1983, Jean Kern provided the first wholly feminist approach to Davys and begins by 
crediting McBurney as ?the first to assess all her fiction.? 53 She then establishes a literary 
relationship between Davys and other Anglo-Irish restoration dramatists such as Wycherley and 
Congreve. Criticizing McBurney?s description of Davys?s ??masculine temperament,?? Kern 
values Davys ?because she wrote as a woman?who uses her inner experience as a basis for 
claiming the attention of the outer world.?54 Kern almost entirely separates Davys from her 
national background and focuses instead on the internal rhetoric of the texts. The merit of Kern?s 
approach is that she takes the critiques of Watt?s omissions to another level by providing a 
feminist framework through which to read Davys, but avoids the tangle of politics that 
accompanies her national identity. 
In the last decade of the twentieth century, Davys?s work experienced a relatively 
energetic rejuvenation. Linda Riley and Natasha Saje focused on the gender palimpsests 
imbedded in the novels Familiar Letters and The Reform?d Coquette respectively.55  Riley uses 
                                                 
53 Jean B. Kern, ?Davys as a Novelist of Manners,? Essays in Literature 10, no. 1 (spring 1983): 29-38.  
54 Ibid., 37. 
55 Linda Riley, ?Mary Davys?s Satiric Novel Familiar Letters: Refusing Patriarchal Inscription of Women,? in 
Cutting Edges: Postmodern Critical Essays on Eighteenth-Century Satire ed. James E. Gill (Knoxville: University 
35 
 
McBurney?s assertions of an Irish birth as a means of introducing Davys?s position as a 
subversive author using satire to critique gender stratification. She briefly addresses the political 
overtones in Familiar Letters, which is established by the discussion over Tory/Whig politics 
between Berina and Artander, the correspondents of the novel.56 Though this element of Davys?s 
text, a political discussion stemming from current public debates and negotiations, seems 
appropriate for an examination of Riley?s claims about nationality, the author instead employs it 
to illustrate the rational versus irrational aspects of gender identification. While the anxiety over 
gender constraints permeates The Fugitive, to hail the author as ?Irish? overlooks an equally 
constraining anxiety over nationality. Saje?s article, like Kern, McBurney, etc. looks at The 
Reform?d Coquette as it functions in the evolution of the novel genre. Using the archetype of the 
coquette, she uncovers the feminist palimpsest in the moral education of Amoranda. Saje, like 
Kern, avoids any designation of nationality choosing instead to provide a textual analysis 
focused on the cultural position of a woman writer. 
Virginia Duff?s 2001 contribution to the critical collection The Eighteenth-Century 
Novel, ?I should not care to mix my breed: Gender, Race, Class, and Genre in Mary Davys?s The 
Accomplished Rake, or Modern Fine Gentleman?, introduces the concept of miscegenation into 
the criticism on Davys.57 For Duff, the miscegine is ?the result of mixing of concepts of genders 
or races or classes.?58 In terms of race and class, she positions Davys as a miscegine due to the 
author?s identification with both Ireland and England. Devoting the first third of her article to the 
regional origins of Davys, Duff relies heavily on the work of Martha Bowden (discussed below) 
                                                                                                                                                             
of Tennessee Press, 1995) 206-221. Natasha Saje, ??The Assurance to Write, The Vanity of Expecting to be Read?: 
Deception and Reform in Mary Davys?s The Reform?d Coquette,? Essays in Literature 23, no. 2 (Fall 1996) 165-
177. 
56 Kern points out this discussion, but does not provide any context for it. 
57 Virginia Duff, ??I should not care to mix my breed?: Gender, Race, Class, and Genre in Mary Davys?s The 
Accomplished Rake, or Modern Fine Gentleman,? in The Eighteenth-Century Novel Vol. 1, ed. Susan Spencer (New 
York: Alms Press, Inc., 2001).  
58 Ibid., 311. 
36 
 
to establish the hierarchical organization of gender, nationality, and social class in The 
Accomplished Rake. The concept of the miscegine is an important contribution to the scholarship 
on Davys work, but also to the cultural significance of the ambiguity of nationality. The idea of a 
mixed identity provides a useful representation of the political ramifications of Davys?s 
hyphenated nationality, which according to Duff, is a ?term that indicates a miscegine person.?59 
Duff?s assertion that the term ?Anglo-Irish? is a modern concept is helpful, but her claim that 
Davys was ?a woman who was considered and considered herself Irish? echoes Doody?s claim 
and, again, is not supported by Davys?s texts. Eventually, Duff shifts the miscegine concept of 
Anglo-Irish nationality to a fact of being Irish, referring to Davys as ?the Irishwoman? and ?our 
Irish author.?60 The miscegine, however, should not be discarded. As a representation of a 
mixing of nationalities, this figure embodies the ambiguity inherent in The Fugitive. The 
conflicting statements in The Fugitive represent a miscegine more than an Irish author. 
Most important to this reexamination of Mary Davys is the work of Martha Bowden.61 
Beginning in 1996 with her article, ?Mary Davys: self-presentation and the woman writer?s 
reputation in the eighteenth century?, her archival explorations of the author?s life and work 
provided the first comprehensive consideration of Davys? Irish background, and she was the first 
scholar to positively assert the ambivalence of her nationality, which Irish Women?s Writing 
would later echo. Bowden combines archival evidence?and the absence of such?with textual 
analysis in order to bring to the surface the discrepancies in how Davys has been characterized 
by literary scholars with the words that Davys uses to characterize herself. Countering the claims 
                                                 
59 Ibid., 314. 
60 Ibid., 315, 317. 
61 Martha Bowden, ?Mary Davys: self-presentation and the woman writer?s reputation in the eighteenth century,? 
Women?s Writing Vol. 3, no. 1 (1996): 17-33. --, introduction to The Reform?d Coquette; Familiar Letters Betwixt a 
Gentleman and a Lady; and The Accomplished Rake (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999). --, ?Silences, 
Contradictions, and the Urge to Fiction: Reflections on Writing About Mary Davys,? Studies in Literary 
Imagination Vol. 36, no. 2 (fall 2003): 127-147. 
37 
 
of Doody, Duff, etc., Bowden makes no assertion that Davys considered herself Irish, but 
illustrates how the author worked to manipulate her national associations to suit her audience by 
looking at the self-presentation of Davys in The Fugitive and its later reincarnation, The Merry 
Wanderer.  
In searching for details about the life of Mary Davys?one meets with multiple 
uncertainties?the contradictory information she gives about her life in her 
writing is matched with an obvious desire to make herself appear at once a 
marketable writer, a respectable woman, and a loyal citizen of Great Britain.62 
 The ?obvious desires? illustrate the interstices of identity that Davys had to negotiate in her 
texts. Bowden addresses the difficulty of establishing the author?s connections to Ireland and the 
manner in which Davys, in her literary personae, tries to address the prejudice that dictated her 
representation. She also considers the constraints placed on a professional woman writer?to be 
successful and respectable. While Bowden?s analyses offer the most comprehensive perspective 
of the work of Davys, critical work on the author has yet to address specific issues of nationality, 
which is surprising given the importance of such category. Likewise, studies of eighteenth-
century Anglo-Irish nationality have rarely discussed female authors. Thus, this analysis of 
Davys?s travel narrative with its accompanying ambiguity demonstrates how she participates in 
the active constructions of nationness. 
The following analysis is a historical contextualization of the significance of that 
ambiguity along with the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining it. In considering the 
political and social history of Ireland and England in the last decades of the seventeenth century 
and the first decades of the eighteenth century, the ambiguity presented in Davys?s national 
identity reveals the complicated political and social boundaries that illustrate the liminality, or 
                                                 
62 Bowden, ?Mary Davys?, 17. 
38 
 
becoming, of what we now term the Anglo-Irish in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth 
century. In The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha claims that ?it is in the emergence of the 
interstices ? the overlap and displacement of domains of difference ? that the intersubjective and 
collective experiences of nationness?are negotiated.? 63 These domains of difference are the 
paradox of being a fugitive and a rambler. They are the construction of Englishness in the 
concept of not Irish and the construction of woman as not man. Where Ireland and England 
overlap, most literally in the figure of the Englishman in Ireland, the intersubjective and 
collective experiences had to be negotiated. Likewise, as a woman, the concept of writer had to 
be negotiated at the intersections of gender conventions. One could imagine this as cross-
hatching out of which a liminal identity, one existing in the in-between, emerges just as 
questions of empire and colony grew increasingly important to both Irish and English 
governments. As a fugitive from Ireland and a rambler through England, Davys challenges the 
typical approaches to herself and her text, and out of this challenge, a historically framed 
analysis, one which applies social, political, and generic conventions at the turn of the eighteenth 
century, reads The Fugitive as a cultural artifact of a liminal culture.64  
Tradition, Travel, and Gender 
The travel narrative is, as Mary Louise Pratt argues, a process of creating nationness, as 
Bhabha articulates that concept. The imperial eye of the English travel writer negotiates 
nationness through the collective experience of the traveler and the Other. However, the 
imperialistic tendencies of the travel writer are often blind to the influence of those outside the 
domains of power. Pratt argues: 
                                                 
63 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge Classics, 2006) 2.  
64 I use the term liminality in its anthropological sense, using the work of Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep. 
39 
 
(The empire) habitually blinds itself to the ways in which the periphery 
determines the metropolis?beginning, perhaps, with the latter?s obsessive need 
to present and re-present its peripheries and its others continually to itself.65 
 Yet, when the traveler is only marginally a part of a dominant culture, in this case England, the 
eye of the traveler creates an even more complex identity, one that is situated in a doubly liminal 
space?a space in which she is becoming a part of something that is becoming. In such an 
ambiguous space, the use of tradition can work to confer subjectivity to one who lacks the 
inherent foundation to acquire it. Tradition, in this case a literary one, allows ?the periphery of 
authorized power? to present ?other, incommensurable cultural temporalities into the invention 
of tradition.?66 When voices from the margin write, tradition is irrevocably changed and 
seemingly stable ideas of nationness are ruptured in the presence of a periphery that is and is not 
a part of the Nation. Davys?s text offers a voice from the periphery that works to affirm and 
challenge how Ireland and England view nationality and how the British Empire constructs its 
margins in terms of a British national identity. Texts like Davys?s uncover the veil of empire and 
present the margin to the center by conforming to and rupturing the ?obsessive need? of the 
imperial eye to construct the object as Other.  Davys will construct even as she is being 
constructed. 
As Bhabha argues, ?the recognition that tradition bestows is a partial form of 
identification? which can then, through its presentation of ?other?, change tradition.67 The 
periphery can change the past. Writing a travel narrative, like all forms of writing, is an act of 
claiming subjectivity that invokes the cultural capital of literary tradition. Since The Fugitive 
invokes the tradition of the travel narrative, Davys assumes a partial identification of the Nation 
                                                 
65 Pratt, 6. 
66 Bhabha, 3. 
67 Ibid., 3. 
40 
 
that tradition imparts. It is within the first pages of The Fugitive that she employs the language of 
the travel narrative. In her dedication to Esther Johnson, where she has drawn a ?short sketch? of 
Johnson?s ?perfection?, Davys follows this description, which is itself of means of partial 
identification, with a short explanation of her text. It is a ?Trifle?, or, ?a plain Relation of the 
variety of Accidents and Passages which usually happen to those whose Stars have ordain?d 
them to wander?they are not barely probable only, but almost exactly true?real Events, just as 
they happen?d, without running into Romance.?68 She follows this description with a similar 
claim at the end of the preface: ?I will not say that every Circumstance of the book is true to a 
tittle, but the Ground and Foundation of almost every Story is a matter of Fact, and what I have 
not taken upon Credit from any Body, but have been a witness to the greatest part myself.?69 
These are the claims of truth directed at the reader. It is an important, if obvious, move to 
distinguish The Fugitive from fictional genres in general, and romance in particular. She offers 
this text as a record of her observations, a ?plain Relation.? This text is firmly outside of the 
realm of imaginary literature, which allows for the tradition of the travel narrative to emerge as a 
governing convention.  
Charles Batten, in 1978?s Pleasurable Instruction, provided the first extensive and 
comparative study of travel narratives of this period, specifically seeking to compile a list of 
conventions for such writing. He claims that the travel narrative had a ?firmly defined tradition? 
by the eighteenth century and that tradition, as it developed over the century, ?elevated the genre 
to the rank of poesy? and aligned it with more established genres of literature. 70  This ?firmly 
defined tradition? offered a path by which one could create subjectivity, especially to writers 
                                                 
68 Davys, Dedication, 6. 
69 Ibid., Preface, 3. 
70 Charles Batten, Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature 
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) 3, 25. 
41 
 
who had no inherent claim to it, those writers on the periphery of the public sphere. However, 
while tradition presented the opportunity to such writers to ?restage the past?, as Bhabha argues, 
the writer must first conform to the demands of genre.71 Thus, in her country ramble described in 
The Fugitive, Davys must first invoke this tradition even as she breaks with it.  
Like other travel writers, Davys attempted to elevate her prose, but she does this 
indirectly. She admits in the preface that her text ?wants three or four of the Modern Traces and 
Embellishments?, which she lists ?as Prophaneness, Baudy, Faction, and a general contempt of 
Religion.?72 Though the language of her admission takes the form of an apology that her text is 
wanting, her implicit criticism of ?Modern? literature serves to place her narrative above that 
which she characterizes so harshly, elevating it herself to the level of poesy. A position like this 
confirms Batten?s claim that travel writers considered themselves above writers of fiction, or at 
least that authors and readers alike considered travel writing to be more ?serious? than other 
genres like the novel. She asks, in a decidedly sarcastic tone, that ?if the Reader can pass by 
those faults (my italics)? and ?meet with something that will please?, then she has accomplished 
her goal. And the goal for an eighteenth-century travel narrative, according to Batten, is to 
provide pleasurable instruction to the reader. Since traveling beyond the borders of Britain was a 
privilege for few, the travel narrative provided a mode for the reader to experience the traveler?s 
encounters and to learn from them. Thus, a travel narrative served to provide both enjoyment and 
enlightenment for the reading public: ?[T]he travel account directed at the general reader, the one 
in search of something more than assistance in preparing for his own travels, always aimed at 
blending pleasure with instruction in order to achieve an artistically pleasing literary 
                                                 
71 Bhabha, 3l. 
72 Davys, Preface, 2. 
42 
 
experience.?73 And Davys illustrates this by describing her text as a ?variety of Accidents and 
Passages? that avoids ?Prophaneness, Baudy, Faction?, among other literary transgressions and 
gives her readers with ?something that may please.? To please, however, was a complicated 
objective in The Fugitive. Words like ?prophaneness? and ?baudy,? even ?faction,? were all 
associated with Irish culture as well as literary genres, and Davys needed to please an English 
audience, giving this statement more depth than previously considered. In her attempts to 
pleasing instruct, Davys was also negotiating her reception by the English reader. It appears that 
in order for her text to please, she must distance herself from Ireland. 
In addition to the pleasing nature of the instruction, as Batten articulates, the text needed 
to provide a picture with ?descriptions that are novel in content and clear in the manner in which 
they portray the country?74 because this instruction, as Batten claims, was ?not about the traveler, 
but about the countries he visited.?75 Thus, tradition dictated that the center of the narrative was 
place, as opposed to person. Davys accomplishes this with brief descriptions of her physical 
environment: [T]he Gardens, which were very fine?the Trees were dress?d in all their Gaiety, 
and the little Birds were in the height of all their Mirth, the Beautiful Flowers gave the greatest 
content to the Eye and Smell, and the little Fishes in the Ponds, peept out to see the Rising Sun.76 
Such description seek to inspire ?in their readers an emotional response to the beauties of a 
particular geographic location? which makes the author subservient to the place.77 By placing 
England at the center of the narrative, and providing a description of a typical English garden in 
such glowing discourse, Davys has again invoked tradition in order to connect with her English 
readers.  
                                                 
73 Batten, 25. 
74 Ibid., 24. 
75 Ibid., 119. 
76 Davys, 14. 
77 Batten, 29. 
43 
 
  Arrangement is equally important to generic convention in this genre. The travel 
narrative is, by nature, autobiographical. The journey, related in first person, is a story of the 
traveler?s experience. However, Batten argues that it would be imprudent to read such narratives 
as ?unrestrained autobiography?, what Batten claims is the most significant mistake that 
nineteenth and twentieth-century scholars have done in treating such texts.78 Yet, reading as an 
unrestrained biography is primarily how most scholars have approached not only the Fugitive, 
but her other works as well. Misunderstanding the expectations of the eighteenth-century reader 
in terms of the travel narrative and the impact of those expectations on the construction of the 
text has led to skewed evaluations, if not a total disregard, of the textual significance of the 
author?s representations, especially in terms of nationality.  
But autobiographical elements should not be discarded. This tradition of the travel 
narrative developed in conjunction with an increasing awareness of the subjectivity of the 
individual that characterized Enlightenment philosophy. The travel narrative became an active 
site for exploring that subjectivity because the writer is always at the center of the text, either 
explicitly or implicitly. Casey Blanton suggests in Travel Writing: The Self and the World that 
?the entanglement between self and world was one of the central concerns of travel writers? in 
the eighteenth century.79 The narrative, then, becomes a place in which the author works to 
create a subjective position within the world as an individual. But it also impels the author and 
the reader to situate themselves in the larger world in the terms of their nationality. 
In addition to privileging place over author, as tradition dictated, a woman writing a 
travel narrative had an equally important responsibility. As Kristi Siegel explains in Gender, 
Genre, and Identity in Women?s Travel Writing, ?the tension between the constraints of travel 
                                                 
78 Ibid., 15. 
79 Casey Blanton, Travel Writing: The Self and the World (London: Twayne Publishers, 1997) 11. 
44 
 
writing posed and the benefits that it promised surface as one of the genre?s distinguishing 
characteristics? in narratives written by women.80 The constraints were manifested in those 
demand of womanhood?virtue, domesticity, etc.?while the benefits included a public voice in 
the construction of nationality, of being included in the negotiation of the ?intersubjective and 
collective experience of nationness.? Siegel characterizes these constraints in suggesting that ?to 
get an audience, a woman needed to provide material that was reasonable exciting; to keep an 
audience, she needed to remain a lady.?81 For example, Siegel notes that Lady Montague, in her 
Turkish Letters, limited the comparison between herself and her exotic companions. By limiting 
this comparison, Montague was able to maintain a safe distance from less than ideal 
representations of women since her Turkish counterparts were decidedly Other. Furthermore, in 
deference to gender, ?most early travel writing (by women) began with an apology? that in some 
way acknowledged the inappropriateness of writing and traveling as a woman. However, Davys 
does not offer any real apology for daring to travel and write. The only transgression that she 
admits to is the possibility that her account might be boring. Remaining a lady is an implicit 
rather than explicit act in this text. She accomplishes this through her pleasurable instruction 
which describes not only England, but the virtuous woman as well.  
Davys provides several vignettes that invoke a comparison between different women 
with the aim of establishing the appropriate behavior of a lady. One tale describes a young 
woman, with the highest sense of morality, who is placed in an unfortunate situation in which it 
is her virtue that wins her the ultimate reward. The woman had ?wound herself into the favor of 
the best Families hereabouts? by her ?Air and Mein? in addition to the ?sharpness of her Wit.?82 
                                                 
80 Kristi Siegel, ?Intersections: Women?s Travel and Theory? in Gender, Genre, and Identity in Women?s Travel 
Writing, edited by Kristi Siegel, (New York: Peter Lange Publishing, Inc., 2004) 5. 
81 Ibid., 2. 
82 Davys, 90. 
45 
 
After agreeing to marry the son of the family, the woman travels to London with a cousin, who is 
meant to be her chaperone, but must lodge at an inn halfway there. During the night, her ?true 
Love? of music draws her out of her room.83 Returning, the woman enters the wrong bedroom 
and is forced to invite the man, who threatens to rape her, to the wedding as a means of 
preserving her secret and her virtue as she claims that ?she would purchase her Freedom at any 
Rate, which did not touch her Honor.?84 A day before the wedding, the stranger arrives and 
falsely accuses this woman of infidelity in front of her husband-to-be. The groom 
unquestioningly accepts the stranger?s account and ?without staying for her Answer, flung out of 
the House like a fury, and bid Defiance to all in it, for he was resolved to see them no more.?85 
The stranger then admits to the woman, ?the same Measures I took with you, would have been 
sufficient to have made the severest Vertues86 among them totter.? As she demonstrated her strict 
devotion to honor, she is rewarded with marriage to this stranger, who will now trust her 
implicitly given the outcome of the situation.87 Davys is then a guest at the house of this couple 
and relates that ?our Entertainment was such as we might have expected from one of her Fortune 
and Character.?88 This story helps to establish Davys?s knowledge and approval of the 
requirement to ?remain a lady.? However, it also illustrates the difficulty of doing so in a world 
dominated by men, symbolically representing her struggles with the demands of genre and 
gender. 
Davys also provides examples of women who fall short of idealized constructions of 
womanhood. In describing the marriage of a male friend, she paints the wife as ?the most 
                                                 
83 Ibid., 92. 
84 Ibid., 95. 
85 Ibid., 107. 
86 This is an early to mid-seventeenth century spelling of ?virtue? as used by Dryden and Milton, a small but 
significant choice. 
87 Ibid., 110. 
88 Ibid., 111. 
46 
 
Perverse, Bawling, Scolding, Revengeful, Ill-nature?d Brute in the Universe.?89 Illustrating 
sympathy with the husband, Davys declares if ?thou wert mine, I would send thee for a venture 
to the Great Mogul.?  She distances herself from this woman, not only by describing her so 
undesirable, but by offering compassion to the husband: ?Truly, said I, your condition calls for 
the greatest Pity, and I wish my Abilities were as good as my Will is, towards redressing your 
Grievances.?90 Thus, her sympathy for this troubled husband works to distance her from the 
deplorable character of this ill-tempered wife. These short sketches of her encounters give Davys 
the opportunity to situate herself firmly within the constraints of gender; however, they also 
reveal the anxiety of a woman not only traveling alone, but a writing woman as well. 
Batten?s generic conventions, Blanton?s tangle of self and world, and Siegel?s constraints 
on the woman travel writer all help to frame The Fugitive as something more than unrestrained 
autobiography and more than the ramble that Davys claims in the title. Siegel claims that in 
women?s travel writing ?travel writers, to some degree, construct their own persona? through the 
use of genre conventions, but ?the process of travel constructs them in return.?91 The travel 
narrative is a powerful medium through which a burgeoning writing of a burgeoning nation (both 
England and Ireland), constructs an idea of Anglo-Irish woman writer. Against the backdrop of 
the English countryside, which is itself transitioning to the Kingdom of Great Britain,92 Davys 
reverses the construction of a travel narrative by seeking actively to incorporate herself into the 
nation by simultaneously adhering to and challenging how a travel narrative can create an 
identity.  
                                                 
89 Ibid., 41. 
90 Ibid., 46. 
91 Siegel, 7. 
92 The Act of Union in 1707 created the Kingdom of Great Britain. Previously, there had been three separate sister 
kingdoms of Ireland, England, and Scotland. The Act of Union of 1707 brought England and Scotland under the 
domain of Great Britain. The kingdom of Ireland, however, remained subordinate to Great Britain. 
47 
 
Creating Nation Out of the Narrative 
As Mary Louise Pratt argues in Imperial Eyes, a journey that wanders through a foreign 
county creates a ?domestic subject? as much as it constructs the destination. However, when a 
writer embarks on a journey through her own country, the typical ideological path of the travel 
narrative is ruptured. For instance, when writers like Lady Montague set out to explore the 
world, they did so with a solid sense of their nationality; they knew from whence they came. 
They were, unquestionably, English. However, The Fugitive has no such definitive identification 
with either England or Ireland. Therefore, it seems plausible that, when the nationality of the 
author has no certainty, the journey becomes a path to creating a subject position within that 
nation traveled in addition to the nation she is fleeing from, England and Ireland respectively. 
While Pratt?s work focuses on the European/Non-European relationship of empire 
building, her methodology is equally applicable to the intranational relationship at the center of 
The Fugitive. By applying her methodology to Davys?s text, one can position the writer as a 
marginalized subject of a dominant culture, someone outside of the center of power or traditional 
concepts of Anglo-centric subjectivity, a modification of Pratt?s Euro-centric subjectivity. Thus, 
Davys?s narrative works to construct her as a domestic subject within a culture that does not 
recognize her as such. She employs the travel narrative, and its function of establishing the 
domesticity of the subject, to incorporate her into the center of power while it functions at the 
same time to challenge and rupture that center. The result of such negotiations is the ambiguity 
that permeates her Fugitive. 
It is important to remember that, in writing this narrative, Davys is presenting England to 
the English, following the generic convention of making place the center of the text. 
Paradoxically, by placing England at the center of her narrative, she casts herself as a foreigner 
48 
 
while at the same time working to identify herself as a domestic subject. The duality of being 
observer and being observed takes on a new significance when one considers Davys?s The 
Fugitive as a travel narrative with England at its center. Instead of a domestic subject developing 
out of the discourse of an experience in a foreign location, the authorial identity is created in the 
domestic location. Pratt uses the term ?contact zone? to describe the ideological territory of the 
travel narrative, ?the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into 
contact with each other and establish ongoing relations.?93 However, she argues that this space is 
less about ?separateness and apartheid? and more about ?copresence, interaction?, but it is 
?within radically asymmetrical relations of power.?94 But in The Fugitive, the territory moves 
from international to intranational because Ireland and England are not unfamiliar cultures, nor 
do they share a typical relationship of colony and empire. Thus the contact zone of Fugitive 
illustrates how a subject of two nationalities that exist in one nation, or more specifically in one 
individual that has at least some claim to both nations, negotiates the duality inherent in such 
hybrid designations. Writing in the contact zone allows a mutability of identity that grants the 
writer freedom to explore the contradictions of being in between. But it requires the author to 
confront the obstacles of being on the periphery. Pratt reiterates several times that travel 
narratives represent the ?highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination? that 
come with the socio-political relationship between colony and empire.95  While mutability 
offered freedom, the ambiguous relationship between Ireland and England before and after the 
Act of Union in 1707 made this negation of a hybrid nationality treacherous. 
                                                 
93 Pratt, 6. 
94 Ibid., 7. 
95 This statement is not intended to reinscribe old narratives of colonial domination of Ireland by England. Recent 
scholarship works to move away from such nationalistic metanarratives. However, I argue the construction of 
colony and empire is a significant consideration in this period. The Act of Union of 1707, which created the 
Kingdom of Great Britain, did not include Ireland as a part of the empire. 
49 
 
Davys?s journey leads her through England, and she initiates the discourse of nationality 
almost immediately by presenting a comparison between herself and the English reader. The 
comparison compels the reader to acknowledge the duality of her nationality, which invites the 
reader to imagine Davys as a fellow countrywoman, but also, unintentionally, as Other.  Her 
primary audience is the English reader: she refers to Ireland as ?our Neighboring Nation (my 
italics).?96 She also opens with a dedication to Esther Johnson. There are multiple reasons why 
Davys may have chosen Johnson aside from the latter?s connection to Swift, not the least of 
which is the idealized character of Johnson that she presents in the dedication. Johnson is ?an 
accomlish?d Person of our Sex? and ?a Blessing we cannot easily want.? 97 She displays ?all the 
Decencies of Behavior and Conversation that I could conceive in my Mind, much Knowledge, 
true Judgment, lively inoffensive Wit, Modesty without constraint, and perfect good Humour, 
and all without the least Inclination to Censure.?98 And, in a humble tone, she gently claims that 
Johnson might be ?one to whom I am, perhaps, not altogether unknown.?99 Thus, the dedication 
to The Fugitive works to associate Davys with an idealized embodiment of English female 
virtue, Esther Johnson. These appear as deliberate attempts to identify the author as an English 
rambler rather than a fugitive from Ireland. This type of identification would offer her stability 
like that in unquestionably English travel writers. 
While these statements assert an English nationality, she complicates such a designation 
by acknowledging and challenging prevailing prejudice toward the Irish. As I described above, 
Davys characterizes Ireland as ?a place very much despis?d by those that know it not, and valued 
by them that do.?  While she does not directly identify herself as one or the other, by revealing 
                                                 
96 Davys, 2. 
97 Ibid., Dedication, 5. 
98 Ibid., Dedication, 4. 
99 Ibid., Dedication, 5. 
50 
 
the fact that she had spent many years in that country suggests that she resides in the company of 
those who do value that place because she knows it. Davys recognizes that ?some Peoples 
Aversion to (Ireland is) so great, that three lines more in its defence, would give them disrelish of 
the whole Book.?  And the ambiguity here?is she or is she not Irish??is useful. 
?That Ireland was figured as England?s Other?, claims Deana Rankin, ?has now become 
a critical commonplace? in studies of Anglo-Irish literature of the eighteenth century.100 This 
construction represented ?the anxiety (over being Other) of the English author between two 
countries and cultures.? In Between Spenser and Swift, Rankin asserts that writers in this liminal 
state would not have ?necessarily considered themselves ?Irish.?? In fact, she argues, ?some 
perceived ?Irishness? as a birthright, others as an accident of birth, others still as a condition of 
temporary exile (like Davys and Swift), or even as an insult, a tarnish on their deeply felt 
Englishness.?101 That one would assume Davys to be Irish neglects these anxieties in favor of the 
?theorized Anglo-Irish? myth that in some ways has become standard in the field of Anglo-Irish 
studies. However, that anxiety?of being cast as Other, but desiring to demonstrate loyalty to 
England?illustrates the very ambiguity of The Fugitive.  
One of Davys?s initial encounters illustrates the conflict in the author. At an inn, she 
meets a ?Man... who had heard that some of the wild Irish were here.?102 In jest, she agrees to 
meet with the fellow and decides to encourage his assumptions about the Irish. The wild Irish, he 
describes, are ??Foke we long Tails, that have no Cloaths on, but are  cover?d laik my brown 
Caw a whome, with their own Hair.??103 Astounded by her seemingly ordinary appearance, his 
description demonstrates residual ideas about the Irish. Comparing them to cows, suggesting not 
                                                 
100 Deana Rankin, Between Spencer and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland, (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2005) 3. 
101 Ibid., 16. 
102 Davys, 3. 
103 Ibid., 4. 
51 
 
only a simple intellect but herd mentality as well, allows Davys to lay bare the asymmetrical 
power relationships that frame the contact zone when empire meets colony. The simian 
representation of the Irish invites a comparison to mythical concepts of English character. Linda 
Colley, in her 1992 Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, argues that the British national 
identity was often formed in the negative and refers to descriptions of the Irish as jovial in 
comparison to the mannerly, reserved, and morally superior Briton. Such a contrast worked to 
uncivilized the Irish, which casts them as a threat to the civilized Englishman. Davys encourages 
these ideas of the Irish by relating to this man a story of her fictional capture, at three years old, 
by the English who immediately ?cut off my Tail, and scalded off my Hair.?104 Her captors 
taught her to speak, walk upright, and civilized her so that she might leave the primitive life of 
the ?waild Irish.? This is the anecdote that most scholars use to verify Davys?s Irish origins.105 
However, she refers to this man as one of her ?own Country-men.? Such contradictions 
demonstrate the variable nature of Davys?s national identification, and by extension, the variable 
nature of being Anglo-Irish. 
However, some of her statements do seem to endorse the prejudice that this story 
conveys. In reference to this man?s character, she claims that she thought she had ?left all the 
Fools behind? upon leaving Ireland.106 This commentary reflects the imperialistic tone of the 
typical English travel narrative. And while Siegel suggests that ?some women managed to elude 
the imperialist tone?, Davys employs it to strengthen her own Englishness.107 
Again, this encounter illustrates Davys justifying her identification as English. Her 
typically satirical tone diffuses the question of what national ideology she adheres to. Her 
                                                 
104 Ibid., 5. 
105 For example, see Duff. 
106 Davys, 2-3. 
107 Siegel, 5. 
52 
 
prejudicial statement, that she ?left all the Fools behind her?, also works to illustrate a ?deeply 
felt Englishness?, in Rankin?s terms. At the same time, however, she abuses the character?s, and 
by implication English society?s, misconceptions of Irish society. The man?s ignorance provides 
not only amusement and instruction, but also an implied critique of prevailing prejudices that 
influence how the English interpret the Irish. By presenting and critiquing this stereotype, Davys 
identifies with the Irish side of her identity. 
This encounter also illustrates the duality of the Anglo-Irish identity that Davys must 
contend with in post-Restoration England. While this implied critique of Irish stereotypes 
suggests an Irish pride, she is also defending her Englishness to a distrusting domestic subject 
and to her readership who might question the loyalty of anyone from the island. And mocking 
this man?s characterization of the Irish also serves to distance her from the Irish stereotype. 
Then, one must consider how this man functions in the narrative. In a strict construction of a 
travel narrative, he would be a native, the Other of the author. However, in Davys?s reverse 
construction, he is also a countryman, a representation of Englishness. The mocking comments 
and absence of explicit refutation of his misconception creates a distance that allows her the 
opportunity to identify more closely to her English traveling companions because her comments 
and association with Ireland would, in many respect, cast her as Other, rather than this foolish 
man.  
But this ambiguity comes at a cost. This question of loyalties has its foundations in the 
political environment of Anglo-Irish relations around 1700.  The late 1690s provided ample 
reason for a person with such a close association to Ireland to consider the kingdom of England 
as a chaotic place to be. The newly won throne of England by William III had been attained 
through a hard fight. The wars had compromised much of the social, political, and economic 
53 
 
systems that would have worked to stabilize Ireland and subsequently make it less of a threat to 
the English governance on the island. However, the issue of national loyalty and the relationship 
between the English, the Irish, and the Anglo-Irish is complicated. Davys is writing from a 
position of a Protestant in Ireland. Generally, English prejudice towards the Irish was directly 
connected to Catholicism, not as a religion, but as a social class and political entity. Catholicism 
meant a connection with continental Europe, specifically France. Davys?s Protestantism, which 
would be affirmed by her marriage to an Anglican clergyman, would have worked to dissociate 
her from such ideas, yet her initial reception is characterized by this fear. It is here where Davys 
illustrates the price of being ambiguous. While she can connect herself to the Church of Ireland 
through her dead husband that is the only familial connection she uses to establish herself as 
Protestant. She mentions a brother, but offers no description other than ?he was a Man of very 
good Circumstances.?108 However, Davys would have spoken with an accent that was 
distinguishable from an Englishman/woman. It may not have been the brogue of the stage 
Irishman, like Shakespeare?s Captain Macmorris in Henry V, but it would have likely been 
noticeable.109 As Davys presents herself, in the text and to the ?natives?, she must negotiate this 
vague territory of Anglo-Irish because she is, unquestionably, ?-Irish.? 
Her accounts of her initial experience in England echo the contradiction of her preface. 
Davys?s journey into England following her escape from Ireland has a rocky start that exposes 
the uncertainty and instability of her position in this domestic/foreign nation. The paradox of the 
rambling fugitive helps to establish the ambiguity of the author. As she negotiates the interstices 
that defined and undefined nationness, her narrative puzzles as much as it pleases.  
                                                 
108 Davys, 133. 
109 Robert Welch and Bruce Stewart, ?Stage Irish? in Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1996) 534. 
54 
 
Her next encounter is as unsettling as her first, and she continues to describe an 
environment that, while it is not explicitly hostile, provides little security or comfort to her. 
Leaving the inn and the fool, Davys moves to friend?s house to find an even less hospitable 
atmosphere. She characterizes this experience in terms of being degraded. Upon arriving, Davys 
portrays the undesirable atmosphere: ?Whether welcome or no, I knew not; but she took the 
greatest care by her Words and Actions to keep me from believing I was.?110 She is treated as 
unworthy of the most basic expectations of hospitality. Given the importance of hospitality and 
its function of conferring status and worth to a household, the treatment Davys receives is quite 
shocking. Davys?s very basic needs are poorly provided for leaving her dissatisfied and 
extremely uncomfortable.  
She provides a detailed description of her first meal at this questionable home. The 
detailed account of the experience of dinner works to highlight not only the meager portions, but 
the inedibility of them: ?a half boyl?d Leg of Beef, next with a Grace, enter?d two ribs of a 
Breast of Mutton, with the Neck and Head of a cold Rabbit, and to compleat the Feast, we had in 
its turn a Plate of hard Boyl?d Eggs attended by a Modicum of Whey Butter.?111 These remains, 
which turn out to have been a previous feast, provided no sustenance for the weary traveler.  
Next, the sleeping arrangements cause further discomfort. She ?was laid Linnen of at 
least a Months standing, with the Lady herself, on one side of me, and a Neice[sic] she had on 
the other, to keep me from falling out of Bed; I cannot say, when I wak?d in the Morning, 
because I had not been asleep all Night.?112 Without adequate food or sleep, Davys?s journey is 
far from the country ramble of the title. While she approaches all of these situations with 
characteristic humor, she nonetheless describes a disquieting environment. Davys has been 
                                                 
110 Davys, 7. 
111 Ibid., 9-10. 
112 Ibid., 14. 
55 
 
forced into a place where her needs are not provided for, and she has no opportunity to provide 
them for herself. This encounter, when coupled with the chance meeting of the ignorant fool at 
the inn, reveals the hostile environment of traveling in England and again stimulates a 
comparison between Davys and England. Having only recently left Ireland, she is subjected to 
degrading stereotypes followed by equally degrading treatment. These initial experiences suggest 
that the ?-Irish? of Davys?s identity is not only suspect, but unsavory. She meets discrimination 
as opposed to acceptance. This situation seems to affirm Rankin?s claim that associations with 
Ireland could hamper rather than help the traveling writer. 
The distrust and uncertainty that are displayed illustrate an uneasy environment where 
neither Davys nor the native/citizen can adequately account for how they should relate to each 
other. This uncertainty informs the conduct of each encounter as each character negotiates an 
ideological position. Davys seems to be living the life of a fugitive, with no home, no provisions, 
and no support. This atmosphere mirrors that of English attitudes towards Ireland as the 
discourses of colony and empire continued to plague Anglo-Irish policy. In fact, in his historical 
analysis Religion, Law, and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760 S. Connolly 
asserts that this was a period ?in which politics did in fact revolve around serious conflicts of 
political and religious principle.?113 Connolly?s text illustrates the seventeenth century in Ireland 
as a place of changeable loyalties and confused religio-political policy. Thus, at the turn of the 
eighteenth century, the reception that Davys receives illustrates how useful an ambiguous 
nationality could be when the traveler is so closely linked with Ireland and/or England where 
loyalties are changeable. These literary experiences of Davys?s journey echo the political 
environment in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century between the English and the 
                                                 
113 S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law, and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760 (Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1992) 74. 
56 
 
Irish, and the intersection of Anglo-Irish cultures. Her initial comments on her own nationality 
and the contradiction within those comments followed by the harsh treatment by the fool and the 
country woman suggest that ambiguity serves as a safer identifier. By maintaining some 
ambiguity about her nationality, Davys can possibly negotiate her reception depending on the 
situations that she meets. 
These two experiences, since they are placed at the very beginning of her narrative, create 
an environment of instability which exposes the uncertain nature of her journey. As a fugitive 
from chaos, she seems to have landed right back in it. Though the second encounter does not 
deal explicitly with issues of nationality, it does serve to jeopardize further her reception as an 
Englishwoman. Beginning with the wild Irish and following with the poor hostess, Davys 
illustrates a journey that is far from idyllic and does indeed seem to characterize her as a fugitive 
rather than a rambler. Not only do these experiences illustrate a mixed reception that leads to an 
ambiguous situation, paradoxically, they suggest that ambiguity might provide a more secure 
identifier.  
In the latter half of the story, Davys relates the story of a loyal English soldier: loyal to 
his country and to his lover. However, his ultimate disappointment and dismissal suggests, again, 
how uncertain her position is. The rise and fall of the English soldier illustrates an important 
political moment in this text. The gentleman came from a comfortable home and his father 
bought him a commission into the Army. He reveals that he had ?been fond of a Sword, and 
could never be brought to Study any thing, but English Military Discipline, in which I always 
very much delighted.?114 As a soldier, the unnamed man represents the pride of England and 
devoted Whig sentiment through his support of William III and Queen Anne. John Brewer, in his 
study of the rise of England?s imperialistic power, describes the characteristics of English 
                                                 
114 Davys, 150. 
57 
 
soldiers as ?saturnine?doggedness, tight -lipped determination?imagination and energy.? 115 
They saw themselves as ?valiant and brave.? The patriotism of the soldier is hyperbolically 
described as he explains his reasons for pursuing a career in the military contrasted against the 
career of seducing a woman. He distinguishes himself by questioning ?how so many young Men 
could lie at home wrapt up in Ease and Luxury, while their King and Country, nay, and their own 
safety, wanted their help abroad.?116 In describing William III, the ?late excellent Prince?, he 
characterizes him as ?he who was all Justice, Goodness and Gratitude, never fail?d to reward 
great Actions, because they were the Delight of his noble Soul.? He would ?rather have chosen 
to die under that belov?d Monarch?s Command, than to have lived under any other Prince in 
Christiendom.?117 By depicting this soldier as embodying the superior qualities of an ideal 
English soldier, it would be easy to interpret this description as indicative of Davys?s inclinations 
toward an English nationality, or at least the Whig party. However, the soldier?s devotion to his 
country is replaced later by devotion toward a fickle lover who leaves him, ultimately, broken-
hearted. Such a conclusion suggests that such blind devotion leads to disappointment. While this 
episode certainly does not promote a pro-Tory position, it does echo her early distaste for 
factionism that she displayed in her Preface. She has again reinstated the impression of 
ambiguity while also positioning herself outside of such political conflicts. 
After reading through this travel narrative, one comes to the conclusion that Davys is 
hard to classify. She could think of herself as English. She might consider herself an Irish patriot. 
There are moments in this narrative, as she travels through England that could attest to either one 
of those statements. What is certain about this journey is that Davys is constantly negotiating her 
                                                 
115 John Brewer, Sinews of Power: War, Money, and The English State, 1688-1783 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 
Harvard University Press, 1990), xiv. 
116 Davys, 151. 
117 Ibid., 152. 
58 
 
ideological position as a hybrid nationality. As she crosses the English countryside, providing a 
proper, didactic travel narrative, one watches the concept of nationness construct Davys as much 
as she constructs it. 
Letting The Fugitive Ramble 
Approaching the Fugitive as a travel narrative recasts the text in terms of the ambiguity 
of an Anglo-Irish nationality symbolized by the paradox of a fugitive rambler.  In a few cases, 
Davys directly addresses the concept of nationality and the conflicts inherent in her own, but, in 
a more indirect way, it is the world of this travel narrative that is most telling. Meeting with 
distrust, uncertainty, and occasionally, blatant fear, the political and social environment of her 
?country ramble? is fraught with instability. She was ?toss?d? out of Ireland by Fortune only to 
find herself in an equally unstable position. 
As I suggested above, making England the subject of her text constructs Davys as an 
outsider. This is important in order to understand how she sees herself in English society, for that 
is primarily, I would argue, what she hopes to do with this narrative. Davys is working to 
incorporate herself into an English national identity, both explicitly and implicitly. However, 
underneath this desire to identify herself as English is the undeniable connection to Ireland, if 
there is even a desire for the opportunity to deny it. The travel narrative is of a palimpsest of 
identity. Using the genre conventions of the travel narrative, Davys establishes herself as a 
credible recorder of travel experience while simultaneously remaining a virtuous woman. The 
author is situated in a liminal space between England and Ireland, just as she is between woman 
and travel writer. Embedded in these progressively unconscious rhetorics is the language of self-
identity. Davys employs this text to establish a connection with an English readership, but at the 
same time struggles with a connection to Irish society, all the while arguing for her right to write 
59 
 
this picture of the English nation. She is negotiating a position for herself within a community?
of the English, of the Anglo-Irish, of writers. 
 Considering the political unconscious of the text, the ambiguity of the author?s 
nationality characterizes the uncertain nature of Anglo-Irish politics in the early eighteenth 
century. The negotiation of identity requires a writer to ideologically map the territory of nation. 
When such a task is performed in the liminal space of a hybrid nationality, the upheavals of 
politics are reflected in the upheavals of self.  Siegel writes, ?Travel writing elicits a similar 
identity upheaval. Arguably, whether travel writers record the collisions of their identity with a 
new culture or not, travel necessarily brings about change.  Travelers might lose their sense of 
identity altogether or, conversely, find their sense of self sharpened by the journey.? 118 This 
claim identifies the process of writing a travel narrative as a process of writing a self. The risk 
inherent in the process is losing one?s sense of self. However, though Davys?s nationality never 
sharpens, what is elucidated is the liminal space of the hybrid nationality. This representation 
offers a counter perspective to texts that claim any level of certainty of nationality within any of 
the different groups that make up the conglomeration of Anglo-Irish identity. The Fugitive 
presents an ambiguous author negotiating the blurred lines of nationality that plague both her 
literary scholars and Irish historical scholarship without ever seeking to resolve the contradiction 
or ambiguity, but instead to lay them out as indicative of her temporal space.
                                                 
118 Siegel, 7. 
60 
 
Chapter Two 
Finding Nation in ?the minute details of daily life? by Reading the Discourse of Virtue in 
The Memoirs of Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington 119 
 
As I wrote these Memoirs in England, describing particular Places or Customs 
peculiar to Ireland, in order to make the Work intelligible to the English Readers, 
will, I hope, be excused.120 (7) 
 
I propose myself, not as an Example, but a Warning?that by my Fall, (the 
reader) may stand the more secure.121 
 
[T]o my no small Surprize, (sic) entered a Couple of ill-favoured Fellows, the 
Sight of whom struck Terror to m Soul; I demanded their Business, one of them 
answered, ?Get up, you Irish Papist Bitch, and come along with us.? The other, 
who had employed himself in looking over my Papers, cried, ?Ay, the Irish 
whore, here is something about some Roman Father, that?s the Pope, and be 
damn?d to you, is it??122 
 
There are two important ideas in The Memoirs of Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington that lay bare 
the liminal characteristics of the Anglo-Irish: the tangle of Virtue and Nation and the historical 
in/accuracy of autobiography. First, in this autobiography nationality and gender are not separate 
concepts, but rather inextricably linked and governed by the concept of Virtue. In Pilkington?s 
case, it is the absence of virtue that dictates her nationality, as she implies in the second excerpt. 
She has to serve as a ?Warning? not an ?Example.? In Mary Davys?s travel narrative, the status 
of virtue as it affects nationality is implied, but it is central for Pilkington. Yet, she actively 
                                                 
119 Samuel Johnson, The Ramble, no. 60 quoted in A.C. Elias Jr., introduction to Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, xix. 
120 Laetitia Pilkington, Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, ed. A.C. Elias Jr. 2 vols. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia 
Press, 1997). Vol. 1, 7. 
121 Ibid., 1:9. 
122 Ibid., 1: 202. 
61 
 
struggles against interpellations that reduce her complex identity to something simpler?an Irish 
whore. She worked tirelessly, and some suggest hopelessly, asserting not only her innocence but 
her Anglo-Irish identity as well. She is, after all, labeled an Irish whore, not a British or English 
one. Even a letter by Jonathan Swift similarly labels her ?the most profligate whore in either 
Kingdom? and implies that she was unfit in both England and Ireland.123 She was disowned from 
being either English or Irish, leaving her in a transitional, unidentified state.  
Second, I am arguing against claims that Pilkington does not situate this autobiography 
within her historical moment. Carolyn A. Barros and Johanna M. Smith counter such claims and 
argue that ?autobiographical discourse? works ?as the textual account of an actual someone in an 
actual time and place persuading some situated others of one?s view of what happened.?124 In 
considering the category of the scandalous memoir, one of four categories that they designate 
and the natural progression of the spiritual autobiography of the seventeenth century, they 
address contemporary criticism which has argued that as memoires scandaleuses frequently 
followed conventions of the novel ?such as seduction and betrayal? then these texts are 
?suspect.? However, Barros and Smith argue that ?if the scandalous memoirist?s choices of 
narrative patterns and conventions are read as negotiations with her assumed audience, then her 
text can be read as the author?s effort to maneuver within her status as ?public woman.? In this 
way the memoirs become historically specific ?sites of converging and competing discourses that 
display ideologies of gendered character??125 using Felicity Nussbaum?s description of 
autobiography.  
                                                 
123 Quoted in Elias, xvi. 
124 Carolyn A. Barros and Johanna M. Smith, introduction to Life Writings by British Women, 1660-1815, (Boston: 
Northeastern University Press, 2000) 20-21. 
125Ibid., 11-12. Quoting Felicity Nussbaum?s The Autobiographical Subject. 
62 
 
I argue that ideologies of nationality are equally prevalent in the genre because life 
writings are ?historically specific.? Each convergence/competition is unique to its temporal 
moment. Barros and Smith suggest that a scandalous memoir ?may point to the parliamentary 
reform movement of the 1770s and 1780s and to the revolutionary politics of the 1790s? even if 
the text does not explicitly address that political atmosphere.126 They argue that the ?class and 
political scandals in these texts? portraits of ruling-class men at least as engaged by gambling, 
fornicating, and frolicking as by governing? suggests that these courtesans ?may point to 
parliamentary reform movements.? It is, I would argue, a representation of at least a political 
unconscious and perhaps something more active. For Pilkington, there was no other 1748 Dublin 
and London in which her Memoirs were published. In fact, this text is imbued with the tension 
surrounding the political and social relationship between Ireland and England in the middle of 
the eighteenth century. She establishes this tension in preface of her Memoirs in the first excerpt 
above; she must translate Irish culture for the English reader, but must also apologize for the act 
of translating.  It is a curious statement to make and demands a greater inquiry. The Forgotten 
Famine of 1740-41 and the ?45 Jacobite rebellion created perhaps not an explicitly hostile 
environment for the Anglo-Irish, but certainly an uncertain and potentially unstable one. These 
events would seem to separate the Protestant Anglo-Irish from the Catholic Irish, giving more 
credence to the idea that being ?Irish? was ?an insult, a tarnish on their deeply felt 
Englishness.?127  The Memoirs represent a persistent and arduous struggle to reconcile a position 
of marginality with an imagined subjectivity. But the figure of Pilkington is mirrored in the 
developing imagined community of the Anglo-Irish. She was undeniably Protestant, but 
                                                 
126 Ibid., 12-13. 
127 Deana Rankin, Between Spencer and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland, (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2005) 16. 
63 
 
unequivocally labeled Irish. And this oversimplified and un-interrogated pairing extended 
beyond her lifetime as scholars have used it as well. 
Barros and Smith claim that ?eighteenth-century British (and I argue, Anglo-Irish) 
women were entangled in a number of conflicts that, though they often affected women more 
severely than men, were disputes over which they had little, if any, control: ?European wars, 
battles with colonies, religious suppression, economic disasters, marriage and property laws.?128 
And in such circumstances, the autobiography illustrated ?ways that creative women have 
responded to larger struggles that affected them profoundly but precluded their direct 
participation and could readily have consigned them to utterly passive roles? like that of a fallen 
woman.129 But, as Barros and Smith assert, ?scandalous life-writings reveal? that ??scandalous 
women? had courageous voices and would be heard.?130 Miriam Fuchs suggests that ?such 
writing is especially compelling to persons who are, or believe themselves to be, susceptible to 
events beyond their own determining.?131 The autobiography provided Pilkington with a measure 
of control in which to negotiate not only her reception as a whore, but also as Irish because she 
clearly identifies herself as Anglo-Irish as I describe below.  
In exploring the Memoirs in particular and women?s autobiography in general, there has 
been one ideology that has largely been overlooked in favor of gender and that is the political 
narrative embedded in her life story. Foregrounding the political unconscious links the text and 
the author to her temporal moment in Anglo-Irish history and situates her as a cultural artifact as 
equally valuable as a compendium of law or a political pamphlet. In mid-eighteenth-century 
Great Britain, nationality is an important component of identity, and Pilkington is not just a 
                                                 
128 Barros and Smith, 24. 
129 Miriam Fuchs, The Text is Myself: Women?s Life Writing and Catastrophe (Madison: University of Wisconsin 
Press, 2004) 4. 
130 Barros and Smith, 29. 
131 Fuchs, 4. 
64 
 
woman or just a writer. She is also Anglo-Irish because in the aggregation of identity, nationality 
is as present as gender and profession. Spacks writes that ?the heroes and heroines of 
autobiography achieve identity as objects of their own imagination.?132 They achieve that 
subjectivity in the act of writing. It is a similar act to Anderson?s imagined community wherein 
the goal is to imagine the hybrid culture as both limited and sovereign. Pilkington imagines her 
identity as an Anglo-Irish writer and as a thinking, politically aware woman. She attempts to 
limit and create sovereignty within a public sphere that seeks to marginalize her on the precepts 
of Virtue. Fuchs suggests that life writing is ?especially compelling to persons who are, or 
believe themselves to be, susceptible to events beyond their own determining.?133 Pilkington 
must create a boundary around her nationality, one that includes a very specific Irish association 
but excludes stereotypes that would characterize her as unsavory. Britons, as a culture, did not 
differentiate between native and colonial inhabitants of Ireland; in his study of the traces of 
Irishness of Jonathan Swift, Andrew Carpenter claims that living in Ireland meant being Irish.134 
Though there were many significant differences between the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish, 
this distinction was not always recognized by the English. Hence, making statements like 
?describing particular Places or Customs peculiar to Ireland, in order to make the Work 
intelligible to the English Readers, will, I hope, be excused? was, in many ways, required. 
However, this is not a statement which entirely dismisses ?Place or Customs peculiar to Ireland,? 
but acknowledges distinction. The value in liminality, as Bhabha argues, is that ?the liminal 
figure of the nation-space would ensure that no political ideologies could claim transcendence or 
                                                 
132 Patricia Meyers Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, 
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976) 21. 
133 Ibid., 4. 
134 Andrew Carpenter, The Irish Perspective of Jonathan Swift, (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag GmbH, 1979), 
16. 
65 
 
metaphysical authority for themselves.?135 As a liminal figure, Pilkington could attempt to 
manipulate the boundaries of Nation. She could also challenge the boundaries of gender and 
Virtue though she had little success in doing so. 
An autobiography functions as a cultural artifact as much as it does an experiment in self 
creation. How an autobiographer sees herself reflects prevailing attitudes about gender, as 
feminist critics have argued. Yet, in the eighteenth-century crisis of empire, an autobiographer 
also reflects the liminality that is the hybrid Nation. In that respect, there is one concept of 
female autobiography that symbolizes the negotiation of nationness and re/presenting an Anglo-
Irish identity in a memoir at mid-eighteenth-century Great Britain?the m?tissage.136 Francoise 
Lionnet calls for a ?thick description? of texts like Memoirs in order to understand the ?traditions 
and vernacular cultures (or dialects)? that create ?intertextual weaving or me-tessage of styles.?  
She sees this as ?a fundamentally emancipatory metaphor for the inevitable relational and 
interdependent nature of peoples, nations, and countries.?137 Thus, the m?tissage represents the 
blurring and blending of mixed cultures and shows ?the relationship between historical context 
and individual circumstances.?138 Shari Benstock expands on this concept of ?woven things? to 
illuminate how the ?heavy mantle of academic citizenship? has worked to obscure the 
?individual strains and colors within the larger pattern? that form the ambiguous group, one like 
the Anglo-Irish in Ireland.139 The historical threads that intertwine in Pilkington and in her text 
do not form a tightly knit garment that can be worn to signal affiliation. Rather, the hybridity 
                                                 
135 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1994 (Reprint New York: Routledge, 2006) 212. 
136 M?tissage, as a construct in autobiography, was developed by Francoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices; Race, 
Gender, Self Portraiture, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). ?Woven Things? was developed by Shari 
Benstock, ?The Female Self Engendered: Autobiographical Writing and Theories of Selfhood? in Women and 
Autobiography, ed. Martine Watson Brownley and Allison B. Kimmich, 3-13 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly 
Resources, Inc., 1999). Formerly published ?The Female Self Engendered: Autobiographical Writing and Theories 
of Selfhood,? Women?s Studies 20 (1991): 5-14. 
137 Lionnet, 29. 
138 Ibid., 29. 
139 Benstock, 5. 
66 
 
illustrates that the weave is loose and blurred, that one part cannot be privileged over another and 
that this nationality is in constant flux. Though the m?tissage was imagined to illustrate the 
relationship between gender and autobiography, it is equally useful as a metaphor to elucidate 
the relationship between culture and nationality in the autobiography. 
The Power of Interpellation and Mrs. Pilkington?s Big Mistake 
 Unlike Mary Davys, Laetitia Pilkington?s life can be documented fairly comprehensively, 
primarily due to the evidence she provides in her memoirs and the public nature of her life. 
Typically, infamy results in more journalistic and civic documentation than virtuous behavior 
does in addition to being a much better read. Davys presented an ambiguous nationality which 
privileged in turn either the Irish or the English elements, but never definitively one or the other. 
She was able, with relative success, to remain indefinable by not becoming one or the other, 
which had its advantages. An integral part of such ambiguity was, I suggest, that Davys was able 
to create and maintain a virtuous reputation. Though she was also interpellated, such attempts 
were usually implied. When they were direct, those who sought to subordinate her as merely 
Irish were cast as fools. Pilkington had no such ambiguity. Not only were her parentage, 
marriage, and career publicly well-documented, her autobiography provided the necessary detail 
to construct her position on Nation. Her cultural position as an Anglo-Irish writer has been 
verified by archival research and in her own words.140 But what that identity means is 
complicated, and those complications have been largely ignored. 
In the first pages of Memoirs, she immediately identifies herself as belonging to the 
culture of Ireland, invoking a distinguished ancestry of Irish nobility. On her maternal side, she 
claims to be the great granddaughter of the Earl of Kilmallock, ?an antient, and honourable 
                                                 
140 See Diana Relke, ?In Search of Mrs. Pilkington? in Gender at Work: Four Women Writers of the Eighteenth 
Centur,y ed. Ann Messenger (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990) 114-149. A. C. Elias Jr., introduction to 
Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington.  
67 
 
Family, who were frequently inter-married with the Nobility.?141 This identification has been 
employed to classify her as an Irish writer by most scholars who read Pilkington?s Memoirs. 
And, like Davys, these assertions have rarely been interrogated. No one has moved beyond that 
declaration to explore the significance of this obviously pointed claim to a matrilineal connection 
to Irish nobility. However, if one employs a Geertzian description, this claim is much richer than 
has been supposed and alludes to something far more complicated than being ?Irish.?142 Invoking 
the name of the Earl of Kilmallock was an important and underestimated rhetorical move on 
Pilkington?s part because the conflicts of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries 
illustrate a complex history of affiliation between Ireland and England that should not be 
overlooked. Kilmallock is a small town in Co. Limerick that flourished in medieval Ireland, but 
then waned in its influence in the Irish political sphere. 143 In fact, there was no position ?Earl of 
Kilmallock? documented in historical records, but this small village was the home of the Earl of 
Desmond. Mainch?n Seoighe, a scholar of Kilmallock history, describes James, the 12th Earl of 
Desmond as being ?fearful? after the ?Silken Thomas,? a neighboring Earl, led a rebellion in 
1537 against Henry VIII, who was then both Lord of Ireland and King of England. Desmond 
writes to the king ?stressing the faithfulness of his (Desmond?s) family, and offering, with 300 
men, to reduce all Munster to obedience to the English Crown.?144 Therefore, in naming 
Desmond, through the misnomer ?Earl of Killmallock,? Pilkington is in fact describing a loyal 
English citizen devoted to protecting the crown against native usurpers.  
                                                 
141 Pilkington, 10. 
142 Clifford Geertz, ?Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture? in The Interpretation of 
Cultures, rev. ed., Clifford Geertz, ed., (New York; Basic Books, 2000) 3-30. 
143 Mainch?n Seoighe, The Story of Kilmallock, Kilmallock Historical Society, 1987. 
144 Ibid., 43. 
68 
 
Seoighe is also able to trace another surname that Pilkington identifies?Meade. The 
family has been documented in that town from the thirteenth century.145  Colonel Meade, as 
Pilkington writes, married her grandmother, the daughter of this earl. The Meade family was 
?closely associated with Kilmallock for many centuries? and was ?a merchant family of Norman 
descent.?146  The Norman invasion is considered the beginning of the English presence in 
Ireland. So, by calling upon the name of Meade, Pilkington places herself in a line of English 
settlers of Ireland, those who are frequently grouped as the Old English.147 Pilkington appears to 
be recalling a noble pedigree with which to establish validity to her story and the validity of her 
own character, a necessary rhetorical move as she had admitted that she should serve as ?a 
Warning? rather than ?an Example.? However, a surprising number of people, both in her time 
and today, employ these words to infer her affiliation with an Irish consciousness, a loyal Irish 
nationality, which obscures the complexity of her statement because it erases the distinctions that 
were socially, economically, and politically important in mid-century Anglo-Irish identity. It is 
likely that Pilkington intended to employ this ancestry not as proof of her Irish loyalties, but as 
proof of her ?Reputation? because, as she quoted Othello, ?the loss of it/ Will make them poor 
indeed!?148 In fact, it is this relationship between reputation and nationality that is most 
illuminating in Mrs. Pilkington?s Memoirs. 
There are many instances in Pilkington?s life which damaged her reputation, but the most 
significant and most discussed is the late-night book exchange that led to her divorce. Prior to 
this event, she argued that her husband had initiated a campaign to discredit her and thus give 
him sufficient reason to separate from her. Yet, she admits to being ?very indiscreet in permitting 
                                                 
145 Ibid., 21. 
146 Ibid., 42, 115. 
147 See S.J. Connolly?s Religion, Law, and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760 (Oxford; Oxford 
University Press, 1992). 
148 Pilkington, 9. 
69 
 
a Man to be at an unseasonable Hour in my Bed-Chamber; but Lovers of Learning will, I am 
sure, pardon me, as I solemnly declare, it was the attractive Charms of a new Book, which the 
Gentleman would not lend me, but consented to stay till I read it through, that was the sole 
Motive of my detaining him.?149 However, while she acknowledges her liability in this decision, 
she clearly does not accept it all. Not only is the man150, liable because he would not consent to 
lend the book, Pilkington also accuses her husband of manipulating the situation; She was caught 
in the act by ?Mr. Pilkington?s Machinations.? Pilkington would claim that this debacle was the 
catalyst for her downfall and indeed it is the impetus for Swift?s description of her character 
quoted above. Never able to overcome fully the social and financial devastation of her divorce, 
Pilkington would spend the rest of her life being both socially and economically marginalized, as 
both adulteress and as Irish, but steadfastly resisting the marginalization that extended from those 
labels. She was proud; she was clever, and she had a pen. 
When considering the scandalous reputation that characterized Pilkington?s experience in 
both Dublin and London, it seems appropriate to consider how women embodied the nation in 
the eighteenth century. Kathleen Wilson, in her study of provincial English politics, discusses the 
ramifications of ?virtue? as a bearer of patriotic sentiment.151 Though men were the English 
citizens, Wilson argues that women also ?contributed to subscriptions or were activists in the 
political public sphere of propaganda and debate.?152 However, their contributions were strictly 
defined, both by men and by themselves. Linda Colley describes these boundaries in her analysis 
of Mary Wollstonecraft?s activism. ?Female reformers? would work ?to present themselves as 
embodiments of virtue and high morality? in order to ?reconcile what was undoubtedly a 
                                                 
149 Ibid., 88. 
150 Elias identifies him as Robin Adair. 
151 Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785, (New 
York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 
152 Ibid., 226. 
70 
 
departure from orthodox female behavior?with what was expected of their sex.? 153 To bear 
Nation required Virtue in order to challenge the concept that citizen equaled man. Wilson echoes 
this necessity by claiming that ?the status of women as even ?auxiliary? political subjects 
depended in part upon their conformity to a gender-specific model of sexual virtue; as symbolic 
or biological mothers of citizens, their private lives had to adhere to the exacting and ultimately 
hypocritical standards of maternity and domesticity.?154 It stands to reason that any nation, in 
defining itself as such, benefited from the idealized concept of the virtuous woman since both 
metaphorically and biologically she was the future of the nation. Scandal-ridden as Pilkington 
was, she would have made a poor standard-bearer for English nationality. It would have been 
easier to disown her as Irish. She could not represent England as a prostitute, and such a 
designation was a convenient reason to interpellate her as Irish, though she had as much of a 
claim to being Anglo-Irish as Jonathan Swift. Yet, she would also be a liability to the Anglo-Irish 
nation because of her compromised virtue and her self-imposed exile from the country, a feeling 
that is echoed in Swift?s condemnation of her character.  
Caught in this tangle of Virtue and Nation, Pilkington demonstrates a liminal figure. 
Herein is where one finds the unexplored reverberations of being neither Irish nor English while 
simultaneously being both. I argue that this autobiography is a necessary site for an analysis of 
national identity in that it establishes the connection and the dissonance between hegemonic 
histories of politics and the real individual experience of those ideologies. The autobiography 
disrupts those horizontal constructs of narratives of nation. Reading how an author writes herself 
into the nation, especially in eighteenth-century Great Britain and especially from a marginalized 
position, illustrates the complexities in which people experience nationality in a hybrid culture. 
                                                 
153 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 277. 
154 Wilson, 226. 
71 
 
And reading how the nation writes her illustrates the answering negotiations of nationness. In 
considering how Pilkington constructs herself as Anglo-Irish, even as those constructions 
contradict each other, the crisis of identity in the Anglo-Irish that grew over the course of the 
eighteenth century is laid bare. Mary Davys?s Fugitive illustrated a muted conflict of loyalties, 
but Pilkington?s conflict is considerably more apparent. 
Reputation is Everything 
Sometimes an author and a text become emblematic of a critical intersection of culture 
and genre, and so it has become with feminist studies, autobiography, and Pilkington?s Memoirs. 
This text is frequently featured in studies of women?s life-writing, a growing body of scholarship 
that is working to redefine not only what constitutes an autobiography but also how one reads 
these texts that tell the story of a life.  The literary scholarship on Pilkington follows the 
evolution of the scholarship on autobiography as a literary genre, as it shifts from a focus on 
factual accuracy to an analysis of a cultural artifact. There are attendant valuations that go along 
with these frameworks, which worked first to diminish the usefulness of women?s autobiography 
due to a perceived absence of historical context. Pilkington has long suffered from 
marginalization by critics because of a lack of factual evidence with which to show a distinct 
time and place. But a shift toward the concept of autobiography as cultural artifact, searching not 
for facts but for nuance, allows for reading Pilkington as a representation of her cultural moment 
instead of merely a scribbler of anecdotes about great men. More specifically, by conceiving of 
the Memoirs as an artifact of mid-century Anglo-Irish nationality, Pilkington offers a perspective 
similar to that of Davys, a vulnerable identity sensitive to the political environment that attempts 
to construct a picture of cohesiveness that, in reality, is not there. Pilkington shows the 
precarious position of being a hybrid nationality in mid-century Dublin and London when the 
72 
 
ideologies of those two nations were growing steadily apart. The sharp, witty writer captures the 
reader?s attention, willing or not, and invites one to question those assumptions that inform the 
connection between Virtue and Nation.  
There is an interesting trend in the critical scholarship on Pilkington. Most readers have 
interpellated her as both Irish and indecent, echoing the very labels she was given in her life. 
Additionally, it is not until Walter and Clare Jerrold?s Five Queer Women that Pilkington 
receives any substantial acclaim as an author.155 For example, in Virginia Woolf?s The Common 
Reader, Pilkington is found under ?The Lives of the Obscure? with another Anglo-Irish writer, 
Maria Edgeworth. Woolf both admires and satirizes Pilkington, but claims that Pilkington?s 
obscurity is due to gender. However, since she is grouped with another Anglo-Irish writer, there 
is an implication that this marginalization is equally true of a hybrid nationality. Woolf portrays 
Pilkington as ?an extraordinary cross between Moll Flanders and Lady Ritchie.?156 The 
contradiction in that description informs much of Woolf?s analysis as she admires the 
characteristics of the writer that defy gender expectations while subtly satirizing those that do 
not. For example, while she admires Pilkington because despite her ?hard life? she remained 
?young and attractive and gay, with an inordinate passion for scribbling verses and an incredible 
hunger for reading books,? Woolf mocks that spirit by declaring, ?Who should know better than 
the Earl of Killmallock?s great-granddaughter that it is the part of a lady to hide her 
sufferings??157 Knowledge of Pilkington?s lineage is of little concern to Woolf beyond the social 
confines of gender. Though Woolf has privileged gender over nationality, she has also illustrated 
how Pilkington?s identity is difficult to confine into a tidy label. 
                                                 
155 Walter and Clare Jerrold, Five Queer Women (New York: Brentano?s Ltd., 1929). 
156 Ibid. 108. 
157 Ibid. 109. 
73 
 
Renewed interest in autobiography in general and Pilkington?s work in specific brought 
about a reprint in 1928 of Memoirs with an introduction by Iris Barry. She calls the writer ?a 
random little hack,? but grants that her work ?is true? (author?s italics).158 Barry is primarily 
dismissive with occasional moments of sympathy. Pilkington?s writing is ?prolix and jerky,? and 
she is ?a silly little thing to protest so much and fight so ardently to keep up appearances.? This 
dismissive tone casts Pilkington as a marginal writer of little interest save ?for short vivacious 
sketches of some of her patrons? who included Swift and Richardson in addition to a number of 
notable socially and politically significant men of the time.159 Yet, Barry adds that the author ?in 
a queer, outlandish way?preserved the honour of womanhood.? Barry?s analysis of the Memoirs 
tells the story of a sad and defeated woman who had occasional moments of bravery, but was, for 
the most part, pitiable. In describing the author?s time in London, Barry argues that ?Mrs. 
Pilkington was in an even more vulnerable position. A divorced, penniless, unprotected young 
Irish scribbler, living alone in St. James?s, was obviously the easiest of game.?160 It is important 
to note that, like Woolf, Barry has reduced Pilkington?s nationality to simply ?Irish.? There is an 
implication here that there exists a connection between her Irish birth and her vulnerability. 
Pilkington demonstrated this same connection when she was taken into custody for nonpayment 
of her debt. The men charged with arresting her shouted ?Irish Papist Bitch? and ?the Irish 
whore.?161 This experience is degrading and demoralizing to the point where she attempts suicide 
by starvation. These descriptions illustrate the depth of truth in Barry?s statement to a degree that 
                                                 
158 Iris Barry, introduction to Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, ed. J. Isaacs (London: George Routledge and Sons, 
Ltd., 1928) 22. 
159 Ibid.. 13. 
160Ibid., 24.  
161 Pilkington, 202. Note that the word ?Irish? is often italicized in her text. This is a common device that she uses 
throughout her story and is generally employed when another person is describing her. 
74 
 
the biographer did not realize. The ?young Irish scribbler? was vulnerable, not only because she 
was divorced, but also because she was ?Irish.? 
 With a similar theme as Barry?s introduction, Lord Ponsonby?s analysis of the Memoirs 
labels Pilkington a mere ?curiosity.?162 He asserts that her work is of no ?literary 
consequence.?163 Like Barry, Ponsonby feels that the value of Pilkington?s work is ?the glimpse 
of patron?s and admirers? whom she lauds and critiques, a sentiment which echoes Barry?s 
assertion about ?vivacious sketches.?164 His patronizing tone trivializes the text by commenting 
on the ?indecent? style and substance of her narrative.165 He establishes her as an Irish writer by 
detailing her birth and her father?s reputation as a Dutch-born male midwife. He also mentions 
her claim of kinship to Kilmallock, but of her mother, her real connection to Ireland, he says only 
that Pilkington ?detested her.?166 Similarly, Mallie Murphy, in a short analysis of Samuel 
Johnson?s The Rambler, No. 191, made decency claims about the Memoirs, arguing that 
Johnson?s moral standards had fallen in the last edition because of his coverage of Pilkington?s 
memoirs with which he ?temporarily lowered his standards in a bid for increased circulation.?167  
The claim of indecency must be read in connection with her Irishness because this claim 
would have been a prominent part of her identity and the reception of her work. Writing on the 
Irish quality of the works of Jonathan Swift, Andrew Carpenter links Gulliver?s Travel with 
native Irish folk tales, specifically in reference to the ?ribald? nature of the stories.168 The 
presence of ?sexual grossness?and the vulgarity? found in his stories was ?very common in 
Irish literature.? It appears that indecency was linked to ?Irish? in the eighteenth century in much 
                                                 
162 Lord Ponsonby, ?Laetitia Pilkington (1712-1750)?A Curiosity of Literature,? English: The Magazine of the 
English Association 1, no. 4 (1937): 297-306. 
163 Ibid., 297. 
164 Ibid., 303. 
165 Ibid., 298. 
166 Ibid., 297. 
167 Mallie Murphy, ?The Rambler, No. 191,? PMLA 50, no. 3 (Sep., 1935): 926-928. 
168 Carpenter, 16. 
75 
 
the same way that Ponsonby and Murphy link it to Pilkington. In arguments such as these, the 
axes of gender and nationality are inextricable. The author is marginalized because of her gender 
and because of her nationality, but it is difficult to say whether she is ?ribald? because she is 
Irish or because she is a ?profligate whore? as Swift calls her.169 Or it could be that those two 
interpellations, Irish and whore, work continually to reaffirm each other. 
These early readings of Pilkington are important because they illustrate a continuation of 
assumptions, even prejudices, about nationality that Pilkington received while she lived. The 
connection between Nation and Virtue was intact even into the twentieth century. She was still 
an Irish whore with the added slight that she did not write particularly well.  
Walter Jerrold departs from these dismissive evaluations in that he finds much to be 
admired in Pilkington?s Memoirs.170 Jerrold assumes the role of a biographer using the memoirs 
as his source to retell Pilkington?s life story. In his analysis, he finds Pilkington to be queer 
because ?what she was, or was reputed to be, has been allowed to obscure more or less 
completely, what she achieved.? Jerrold argues that the reputation of women like Pilkington 
eclipsed the extraordinary achievements of their texts. His approach moved beyond the scandal 
that wrecked the author?s life and sought to understand the autobiography in its temporal 
moment, reading it as a mid-eighteenth-century text. In fact, Jerrold claims that the subjects of 
her memoirs were ?paralleled in the writings of?male contemporaries? suggesting that claims of 
indecency or exaggeration stem from the stereotypes of her gender and/or her nationality rather 
than the content of her text. Jerrold identifies the Memoirs as the first ?frank and intimate 
autobiography? written by a woman.171 By acknowledging Pilkington?s text as parallel with 
                                                 
169 The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. F. Elrington Ball, 6 vols. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1910-14), 6: 68-
69.  
170 Jerrold, xi. 
171 Ibid., xi, xii. 
76 
 
?male contemporaries,? he provides a perspective that could enrich the analysis of Memoirs with 
a historical context though he does not take that direction. Jerrold was the first scholar to provide 
a counter argument to Barry?s claim that Pilkington provided no historical context for her 
Memoirs.172 
It is important to note that these earlier analyses demonstrate the reduction of Anglo-Irish 
to Irish, typical of the nationalistic ideology of early twentieth-century Ireland. However, it is 
equally important to recognize that marking Pilkington as solely Irish continued throughout the 
century. In 1994, Bernard Tucker reexamined Pilkington?s work as it referenced Swift.173 He 
frames her as an Irish poet, grouped with Mary Barber and Constantia Grierson, claiming that 
?there are no doubts about their being Irish.?174 Yet, Tucker does not explain what ?being Irish? 
is. Tucker?s analysis is a critique of Patrick Fagan?s A Georgian Celebration, Irish Poets of the 
Eighteenth Century published in 1989, and his primary point of contention is Fagan?s omission 
of female poets from that collection. His argument is similar to Jerrold?s?that Pilkington has 
been unjustly overlooked, but Tucker argues that this is due to economic status because she was 
not a ??blue-stocking separated from society in wealthy homes with wealthy husbands.?175 As an 
Irish poet, Pilkington helps ?give us a more rounded picture of eighteenth-century life? in Ireland 
since anthologies of Irish poetry had practiced ?a kind of exclusion (whether deliberate or 
accidental)? that worked ?against Irish women poets of the eighteenth century.?176 The 
association of Nation and Virtue is continued un-interrogated. Though the discourse of Virtue 
has been discussed and ostensibly disentangled, the effect of the entanglement of the two 
                                                 
172 Barry, 17. 
173 Bernard Tucker, ?Swift?s Female Senate?? Irish Studies Review No. 7 (Summer 1994): 7-10.  
174 Ibid., 8. 
175 Ibid., 10. 
176 Ibid., 8. 
77 
 
concepts has continued to inform interpretations. She was and is still Irish, but no one has asked 
why. 
Virtue in an Autobiographical Nation 
The core of life writing is the writing subject, and in the story there is a conscious 
re/presentation of an idealized subject couched in the discourse of ?truth.? It is an assertion of 
being which transcends the limitations of a living reality.  ?The autobiographer,? Patricia Meyers 
Spacks explains, is ?attesting (to) his existence by the fact of his writing?through his 
explanations, tacit or explicit, of how he came to be the person he is.?177 And the story, as Barros 
and Smith defined it, is ?the textual account of an actual someone in an actual time and place 
persuading some situated others of one?s view of what happened.?178 Taking up the pen with the 
intention of telling one?s story is a purposeful act, which seeks to establish the intellectual being 
of the author and a request?maybe even a demand?that she be recognized as such. 
Superficially, the memoirist might seek the immortality of the written life. The purpose might 
also be a defense, a pointed and biting one, which seeks to rewrite public opinion. It is this 
purpose that is most often interpreted in Pilkington?s text. Spacks claims that Pilkington and 
other women autobiographers ?need simply to authenticate their lives by setting them down.?179 
She casts memoirs like Pilkington?s as extended defenses for the lives of the authors, or ?The 
female apology, heavily tinged with resentment? which seeks ?to resolve? the conflict between 
the need ?to assert the reality of the protagonist and her mental life? with the desire ?to declare 
that she is nonetheless a good and valuable woman.?180 The dissonance here is between the 
intellectual desire for the subjectivity that is conferred in writing an autobiography and the 
                                                 
177 Spacks, 1. 
178 Barros and Smith, 20-21. 
179 Spacks, 78. 
180 Ibid., 78. 
78 
 
requirements of Virtue such as domesticity and maternity. I believe that a writing woman was in 
a liminal state. By choosing to write, she removed herself from the only sphere in which she was 
allowed, the private sphere. Leaving that meant leaving her socially and politically dictated 
space. Yet, she searched for aggregation, the reformation of identity, by imagining a self within 
autobiography. Ironically, aggregation requires conformity to social standards. A woman needed 
to imagine a self that fit into the conventions of gender. Virtue and writing were not completely 
exclusive, but the parameters were certainly narrow. And given Pilkington?s reputation, such 
aggregation was impossible. However, from this philosophical failure, the weight of Virtue upon 
Nation is laid bare.  
The scandalous memoirist presented a complex literary figure. Though widely read, she 
was nonetheless widely disparaged. The typical writer/character was a ?courtesan in debt,? but 
Pilkington?s text is read into this category even though she never had the privilege of a consistent 
benefactor.181 Fallen women?s life writing was an attempt in which ?they were defining 
themselves as subjects rather than objects and pointing to conditions in their cultures that 
contributed to their situations.?182 Lynda Thompson explores such endeavors in her comparison 
of the texts of Pilkington and Constantia Grierson, which is an interesting choice of authors since 
Pilkington repudiated any connection with Grierson after the latter published her own scandalous 
memoir.183 The conclusion that Thompson reaches is that the memoires scandaleuses represented 
a rupture in the patriarchal ideology that governed sexuality. They served as a foundation for 
?question(ing) the sexual politics which blamed the weaknesses of woman?s nature for all 
                                                 
181 Barros and Smith, 19-20. 
182 Ibid., 28. 
183 Lynda M. Thompson, The ?Scandalous Memoirists?: Constantia Phillips, Laetitia Pilkington, and the shame of 
?publick fame?, (New York: St. Martin?s Press, 2000). Kathryn King, in a review of Thompson?s text, points out this 
contradiction. ?Writing the Lives of Women: Recent Biographies of Eighteenth-Century Women Writers? in 
Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 5; 1 (Spring-Summer 2005) 99-111. 
79 
 
licentiousness, and the laws which restricted women?s opportunities to work and earn 
money?the memoirist exploited these contradictions and found a public keen to read their 
vision of events?they proved that writing ?scandalous memoirs ? was one way of earning that 
independence.?184 Susan Goulding, in a similarly focused analysis, describes Pilkington?s text as 
an attempt to combat contemporary definitions of Virtue. She claims that ?while Swift might 
strike back as an Irishman?Pilkington strikes back for being excluded from consideration as a 
serious writer?because she could be called ?the most profligate whore in either kingdom.? 185 
Yet, in Memoirs, Pilkington not only criticizes the double standards of sexuality and gender, but 
also provides an implicit critique of how Virtue bears on nationality. 
Pilkington is also trapped in the liminal space of the hybridity that characterized the 
Anglo-Irish. In Ireland, she cannot be a symbol or a patriot of the Nation, and in England, she is 
marked as Irish. But it would be incorrect to surmise that Pilkington is defending herself because 
she was Irish, or was perceived as Irish. While she would certainly have been considered Irish by 
the English, Pilkington constructed herself as Anglo-Irish. For example, in describing London 
during her first trip, she writes that the city ?has very attractive Charms for most People, as our 
Irish Nobility and Gentry sufficiently evidenced, by spending the greatest Part of their Time and 
Fortune there.?186 Though Pilkington italicizes Irish, it would be more telling to italicize 
Nobility. One can surmise that nobility refers to her earlier comments on being a descendant of 
the Earl of Desmond. She associates with the English settlers of Ireland rather than a native Irish 
culture. Furthermore, it would be only Anglo-Irish nobility that would travel to London as they 
would possess the necessary money and status to travel. It is here that one can see the ?liminal 
                                                 
184 Ibid., 14-15. 
185 Susan Goulding, ?Claiming the ?Sacred Mantle?: The Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington? in Lewd and Notorious: 
Female Transgression in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Katharine Kittredge, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan 
Press, 2003), 54. 
186 Pilkington, 63. 
80 
 
figure where no political ideology could claim transcendence or metaphysical authority.?187 She 
is caught in between and consider outside. As a liminal figure, she is outside the confines of 
culture and outside the boundaries of identity.  
Looking at both marginality and gender-influenced discourse, Diana Relke wrote ?In 
Search of Mrs. Pilkington.?188 Relke?s analysis was the first comprehensive look at the intra-
textual persona of Laetitia Pilkington, and she considers the memoirs a ?legitimate literary self-
portraiture? in contrast to what was the prevailing opinion of women?s autobiography as ?not 
serious.?189 In Relke?s analysis, the characters of Pilkington?s story mirror the ?process of self-
creation? that follows ?a pattern of disintegration rather than integration.?190 The traditional view 
of autobiography was ?the story of a personality unfolding and developing over time. This 
implies a one-directional, forward movement through life that begins with a set of aspirations 
and ends with their fulfillment.?191 Such a concept assumes that an integration of one?s life 
experience into ?an organic whole? is something that is possible and to which one aspired.192 
However, such a goal is not possible for Pilkington, and I would argue for the Anglo-Irish in 
Ireland. Pilkington?s harrowing experiences in Dublin not only reflect the prevailing attitudes 
toward a woman in her position, but also reflect prevailing attitudes toward the Anglo-Irish. 
Relke believes that the experiences illustrate a disintegration of a cohesive identity as opposed to 
a construction of one. The ?literary self-portraiture? that Pilkington creates not only reveals her 
struggles with gender, but also the representation of Ireland at mid-century. Disintegration is 
progressing and becomes more apparent over the next fifty years. 
                                                 
187 Homi Bhabha, ?Dissemination: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation? in The Location of 
Culture (New York: Routledge Classic, 2004) 212. 
188  Relke, 114-149. 
189 Ibid., 115. 
190 Ibid., 123. 
191 Ibid., 122. 
192 Ibid., 123. Author?s quotations. 
81 
 
Relke?s method of treating the people that Pilkington meets throughout all three volumes 
as doubles of Pilkington herself provides a framework for understanding how she produces a 
political text. Usually, her doubles are victims, like the ?Mrs. Mead? she finds in the Marshalsea 
prison.193  Because the two share important past experiences, ?betrayed? husbands? and 
?exposition? of those men, the woman becomes a minor character who helps develop the heroine 
of sorts. But Mrs. Mead dies while Pilkington survives. The ?facts? of the story are less telling 
than the psychological truth of the story, which is that feelings of entrapment were a very real 
experience for women in general, but especially for a young, disgraced Irish writer looking to 
profit from her pen. It is a matter of factual record that Pilkington was imprisoned for failure to 
pay her rent. But the lived ?reality? of the experience is not fully expressed by simply stating the 
dates and reasons for the imprisonment. The story of Mrs. Mead creates a larger context through 
which to read this experience. She represents lived experience of that situation, the desperateness 
of it, but doesn?t taint the strength of Pilkington in the telling because, again, while Mrs. Mead 
dies, Pilkington survives. In rethinking such vignettes, Relke reveals Pilkington as a proud, 
ironic, savvy writer with a modest fear of public ridicule, but equally bound by public 
expectations of women. The facts are not as relevant as the truth, ?for in order to tell the truth 
Mrs. Pilkington must lie? or at least enhance her memories with imagination.194  
 While Mrs. Mead offers a double for Pilkington?s experience of the constraints of gender, 
we could also look at the character of Jonathan Swift as a double of Pilkington?s political 
experience. I do not intend to examine Pilkington?s work in terms of the anecdotal artifacts of 
Swift that she provides, but instead consider the relevance of his appearance and its ramifications 
on the discourse of Nation. Swift was a dominant figure in Irish politics in the first half of the 
                                                 
193 Ibid., 144. 
194 Ibid., 115. 
82 
 
eighteenth century, and his presence in Memoirs reflects trends in Anglo-Irish identity. At the 
time of his acquaintance with the Pilkingtons, he had been socially and politically exiled to 
Dublin after a lustrous career in the Georgian court. He had begun publishing several political 
satires criticizing English policy toward Ireland and was a leading opponent in the controversy 
over Wood?s halfpence. He was an active and critical political figure. Pilkington gives an 
intimate portrait of Swift which suggested a close relationship between them. She portrays that 
relationship as a mentor/mentee, and in doing so, she works to elevate her literary value, which 
would also provide a stanchion for her reputation. Of her knowledge of Swift, Pilkington writes 
that ?tho? his Works are universally known, and as universally esteemed; yet few Persons now 
living, have had so many Opportunities of seeing him in private Life, as my being a Person sans 
Consequence afforded me.?195 Pilkington demurs, but it is not sincere. To be in Swift?s circle had 
merit. She considers herself equally talented as a writer. Yet, she was still relegated to the realms 
of women who know famous men. It is interesting that Pilkington appears as equally dismissive 
of her ?Consequence? as so many of her editors were, but claims an eminent place as the only 
truly capable biographer of her mentor and Anglo-Irish iconoclast. 
With that established, the character of Swift is created as a double of Pilkington?s that 
symbolizes the political environment in which she is writing, or more importantly her individual 
experience of that environment. She describes him in terms that illustrate the same contradictions 
that she lays bare in her opening:  
yet as the Irish are the eternal Ridicule of the English for their Ignorance, I am 
proud Hibernia had the Happiness of producing this brilliant Wit, to redeem the 
Credit of the Country, and to convince the World, a Man may draw his first 
                                                 
195 Pilkington, 24. 
83 
 
Breath there, and yet be learned, wise, generous, religious, witty, social and 
polite.196 
Here, she employs Swift to ?redeem? the reputation of Ireland, which simultaneously uncovers 
the dissonance of being Anglo-Irish. However, the doubling has a cost. A. C. Elias Jr. considers 
the reception of Memoirs in Ireland and distinguishes the Irish reader specifically. He claims that 
Pilkington?s portrait of ?their great and beloved Hibernian Patriot? would have distressed the 
Irish reader as she reveals that he ?had begun to show signs of lunacy many years before his 
mind failed.?197  
The tangle of Virtue and Nation is also present in the doubling with Swift. By redeeming 
Ireland, Pilkington is seeking to redeem herself. Facing interpolations such as ?Irish whore,? a 
character such as Swift could recast the image of ?Irish? as something respectable rather than 
disreputable. An intimate relationship with Swift, one that afforded her information that only she 
could know, might mitigate the scandalous reputation that preceded her. It did not, but the 
motivation is there. Employing Mrs. Mead and Jonathan Swift attempted to imagine a different 
frame of identity for Pilkington. She is imagining herself in an aggregated space which 
conformed to the social expectations of her culture. As a double for gender, Mrs. Mead lays bare 
the limitations placed on women. As a double for political experience, Swift reinforces 
Pilkington?s liminality. She has blurred the lines of nationality even as she tried to focus them. 
The Political Unconscious 
Deciding what does or does not constitute autobiography has dominated the discourse on 
this genre. Historically, scholars have looked for direct reference to contemporary social, 
                                                 
196 Ibid., 31. 
197 A. C. Elias Jr. ?Laetitia Pilkington on Swift: How Reliable is She?? in Walking Naboth?s Vineyard: New Studies 
of Swift ed. Christopher Fox and Brenda Tooley, 127-142,  (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 
1995). 
84 
 
economical, and/or political events within the text in order to validate the truth in a memoir. If an 
author can establish that he/she was present during a significant historical event such as a 
political debate by providing not only details but analysis, then one can trust that all other claims 
in the life history are true.  If such concrete historical references are absent, then a text is non-
verifiable. With Pilkington?s memoirs in particular, the debate over authenticity is especially 
heated. Early readers of Pilkington such as Barry and Ponsonby sought to establish what was and 
was not verifiable in her life story.  Barry and Ponsonby, and to some extent Woolf, find 
Pilkington to be more of a ?curiosity? than a serious author, leaving the majority of information 
in her texts untouched by analysis.198 Then, biographers of Swift and Richardson have mined her 
text for anecdotal evidence on these men while simultaneously devaluing it for its obvious 
fictionality, an interesting paradox. Her work was considered valuable for the ?mine of 
biographical information and salty citations? but was ?too windy and unreliable?since life 
stories ?stretch? the truth?to be worthy of critical investigation.?199 Sidonie Smith and Julia 
Watson challenge this perspective. In the history of autobiographical criticism, a memoir such as 
Pilkington?s was ?seldom taken seriously? because it was ?deemed not appropriately ?complex? 
for academic dissertation, criticism, or the literary canon.?200 They counter such exacting 
parameters by contextualizing ?truth? with the realities of women?s lives, especially the woman 
who takes up a pen. ?Truth? in Pilkington?s work is relative, as Relke argues. In searching for the 
psychological truth of this narrative, Relke confronts the expectation of direct historical fact in a 
?serious? memoir. But she claims that the lack of direct reference to historical fact contributes to 
the ?timelessness? of Memoirs. I would agree, but I would not so quickly dismiss the possibility 
                                                 
198 Quoted from Ponsonby. 
199 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson,  introduction to Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, ed. Sidonie Smith 
and Julia Watson (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 4-5. 
200Ibid., 4. 
85 
 
that Pilkington?s text does reflect the social, economic, and political environment in which she 
wrote. While some scholars of autobiography might look for specific factual commentary of 
contemporary events, i.e. where one was when such and such took place, or focus on the 
formation of a gendered identity, it is also possible to find the effects of the temporal moment, 
the traces of a political unconscious, in which Pilkington is writing. To expect a journalistic 
account of mid-century Great Britain and Ireland is misleading. But the history is there. 
Elias would claim that ?any Dubliner would have recognized? the abbreviated names of 
key characters in the text.201 In the introduction to the 1997 edition of Memoirs, Elias helps to 
reject the notion that Pilkington?s text is apolitical. She introduces Robert Walpole into her 
narrative, but she had also actively campaigned against the unpopular statesman with several 
satirical pamphlets.  Because of these pamphlets, she gains the attentions of another character in 
her story, a Mr. Rooke, who regales her with gossipy stories of the people involved in 
government deigning to speak with her for the sole reason that he liked her pamphlets.202 While 
these connections with contemporary political thought are important, they do not investigate the 
complexity of nationality. Indeed, Elias and Tucker illustrate that Pilkington had become 
recognized as an Irish writer without distinguishing what that means. 
 That distinction is important. By hailing Kilmallock, Pilkington makes a conspicuous 
claim to English politics. Many scholars have considered Pilkington?s story of her great uncle, 
Sir John Meade in addition to statements about her noble heritage, but again this story deserves 
more attention because it offers an interesting metaphor for Anglo-Irish relations prior to mid-
century. 
                                                 
201 A. C. Elias Jr. ?Editing Minor Writers: The Case of Laetitia Pilkington and Mary Barber? in 1650-1850: Ideas, 
Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, Vol. 3 ed. Kevin L. Cope and Laura Morrow, 129-147, (New 
York: AMS Press, 1997), 129-147. 
202 Ibid., 168-173. 
86 
 
 The complexity of hybridity allows for the claim of kinship to Kilmallock to speak to 
both an Irish and English identification. It provides a framework for understanding that Sir 
Meade and Sir Seymor will take part in a cultural one-upmanship while sharing philosophy at a 
gentlemen?s club. The historical context is found in the crisis of empire that gripped Great 
Britain at mid-century; the individual circumstances are Pilkington?s experience in the coach on 
her way to London. 
 At the beginning of her second volume, Pilkington has begun her journey to London, 
having left Ireland in disgrace and out of necessity. At this point, she is destitute and entirely 
dependent upon her survival skills and the charity of others. She is in a vulnerable place entering 
into uncertain circumstances. She has become the ?young Irish scribbler? that Barry labels her. 
She enters a coach bound for London with three men: ?a Member of Parliament and two 
Gentlemen of the Law.?203 She is immediately abused for being ?born in Ireland? and later in the 
same vignette labeled ?that little Hibernian Nymph.?204 In these two instances, Pilkington is 
marked as Irish, one actively hostile and one as a veiled insult. The use of Hibernia would seem 
to be affirming because it was a reference to an esteemed Gaelic concept of ancient Ireland; 
however, the gentleman who uses it, Mr. Middleton, reveals himself to be ?unworthy? of his title 
due to his pomposity. It is the reduction to an Irish identity that is most important here. The 
contrast between how the men perceive her and how she perceives them illustrates not only 
knowledge of contemporary politics, but a purposeful interpolation on her part.  
She describes the three men in the coach as ?Walpolians,? supporters of Robert Walpole, 
a dominant and controversial political figure in mid-century England. The men take ?it for 
granted [Pilkington] was a Fool? and proceed to discuss the Machiavellian machinations of 
                                                 
203 Pilkington, 129. 
204 Ibid., 128. 
87 
 
Walpole in gaining his position as the first prime minister in England.205 However, Pilkington 
illustrates her political awareness in that she satirizes the men by answering the inquiry as to why 
she is going to London that she ?hopes Sir Robert would marry [her].? As they laughed at her 
naivet?, she laughs at their ignorance. These comments illustrate the ?ruthless and ironic? 
character that R. F. Foster uses to describe the Anglo-Irish of the eighteenth century. 
 The state of Anglo-Irish identity which Pilkington describes in her text is one, primarily, 
of confusion and contradiction. While Davys portrayed an uneasy balance of the two disparate 
cultures intended to appeal to an English audience while maintaining a simple, but definitive 
affiliation with Ireland, Pilkington?s allusions to nationality are fraught with contradiction. She is 
proud and defensive of both her claim to being Irish-born and her claim to being an active 
political voice in England. She is insulted that the men in the carriage label her Irish, but equally 
insulted that they do not consider her intellectually capable of understanding current politic 
thought. Such contradiction is present in her uncle?s story as well. 
The story of Sir John Meade that Pilkington relates would have happened between 1703 
and 1707 when James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde was the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.206 It is 
this Duke of Ormonde that knighted Meade at the wishes of her great grandfather, Colonel 
Meade. Ormonde was a commander at the Battle of the Boyne and fought valiantly for William 
III. This would suggest a familial fidelity with Whig party policies.  However, when Pilkington 
was in the process of writing her memoirs, Ormonde had been exiled to France for his 
participation in the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, a decidedly anti-Whig behavior. It is clear that she 
hails him in order to employ him as a means of elevating the status of Colonel Meade. Ormonde, 
born in Dublin, presented a valued commodity to the Anglo-Irish community as both a loyalist 
                                                 
205 This title is given to him by later historians as the office of Prime Minister had not been created yet. It is the 
measure of his influence that earns him this title. 
206 Also known as the viceroy. 
88 
 
and a rebel. Yet, the meaning of the affiliation becomes blurred as the Duke?s own nationality 
was. The m?tissage blends the Ormonde of the Glorious Revolution with the Ormonde of 
rebellion. 
In a further study of character, Pilkington describes Meade, a practicing lawyer, as 
possessing ?all those Advantages of Nature, Education and Fortune? so that he received 
?universal Respect and Esteem.?207 In typical eighteenth-century hyperbolic terms, Meade is an 
ideal gentleman, in both English and Irish culture. Sir Edward Seymor was the client looking for 
quick access to an inheritance that he had been left by an acquaintance in Ireland (it is unclear 
how the deceased is related to Seymor). Of Seymor, Pilkington reveals that he had a ?natural 
Contempt for the whole Country (Ireland), which those of the English, who have not been 
resident amongst them, are but too apt to express.?208 This sentiment was also present in Davys?s 
work discussed in the preceding chapter which illustrates continuity in political thought.209 Then, 
Pilkington describes Seymor as ?accounted to be the proudest Man in England? while Meade 
?was as remarkable for the same Fault? in Ireland. Pilkington has juxtaposed two men to 
represent their respective countries, both certain of their own worth and skeptical of the other. 
Yet, Seymor is placed in a position where he needs Meade in order to be financially successful. 
 Seymor seeks out Meade because the latter was so highly regarded as a lawyer. Yet, 
when he condescends to meet the lawyer in person, Seymor is humiliated because of his 
underestimation of Meade?s character. The Englishman is left waiting in a parlor, summarily 
dismissed after a few minutes, and finally intimidated during the trial as Meade remains silent 
throughout the proceedings. Such a display disrupts the balance of power in favor of the proud 
                                                 
207 Pilkington, 10. 
208 Ibid.. 10. 
209 Mary Davys describes Ireland as ?very much despis?d by those who not it not, and valued by them that do.? See 
Chapter One. 
89 
 
Irishman while leaving Seymor desperate and humiliated. However, Meade ultimately wins the 
trial with his ?powerful Eloquence.?210 Seymor reacts with enthusiasm calling him ?An Angel! by 
Heaven, an Angel!? The two men retired to a club, discussed philosophy, and ?contracted a 
Friendship, which did not terminate, but with their Lives.?211  
 The story of Meade and Seymor, as they exemplify their respective countries, shows both 
an idealized vision of an Anglo-Irish relationship and the obstacles to this relationship. Seymor?s 
contempt and his eventual humiliation illustrates that prevailing English attitudes toward the 
Irish are incompatible with productive economic relationships. That Meade and Seymor are 
dealing with an issue around money and jurisdictions is clearly representative of the 
controversies over trade and governance during this period. Such a condition echoes the 
import/export debates over trade in Ireland during the century and the economy of Great Britain 
after the South Sea Bubble in 1720. Incidents like the Wood?s halfpence scandal demonstrated 
that Anglo-Irish trade relations were a contentious subject at mid-century, but Foster argues that 
Ireland was generally well off during this period, in regards to the Anglo-Irish population. 
Though crop failures caused great famine earning 1740-41 the moniker ?Year of the Slaughter,? 
these disasters devastated the Irish peasantry rather than the merchant and upper class. A healthy, 
if contentious import/export relationship put Ireland in a relatively good economic position, if 
one was not native Irish. However, the South Sea Bubble was a disaster for England?s economy, 
and it took many years to recover. This historical context enriches the story of Meade and 
Seymor by locating it in the political and economic environment of the time. 
The M?tissage Writes Nation 
                                                 
210 Pilkington, 11. 
211 Ibid., 12. 
90 
 
The result of the trial and the mutual esteem that it engenders in the two men does 
suggest an idea of a working relationship. One might say that if Sir John and Sir Edward could 
live ?happily ever after,? then there existed the possibility that an Anglo-Irish relationship can be 
productive for both parties. However, the path to that harmonious relationship was through the 
perceived misconceptions of Sir Edward, suggesting that prevailing attitudes of the English 
toward the Irish, both native and immigrant, would have to change. Ultimately, though, one is 
left to wonder what exactly Pilkington intended to represent with this anecdote. There is 
certainly a critique of English behavior toward Ireland in the character of Seymor, but Meade is 
equally proud and inflexible. And the relationship is established only after Meade delivers his 
responsibility to acquire wealth for Seymor. While the idealized relationship is admirable, it is 
the contradictions that dominate the interpretation. It is during this halfway point that emergent 
ideas of nationality continued to grow and cohere. When high profile figures like Swift wrote 
pieces about Ireland?s enslavement to the English crown, they were representing a burgeoning 
national consciousness, a nascent identification by the Anglo-Irish with Ireland as a nation. The 
perception by Anglo-Irish people of English affiliation was hampered by prevailing attitudes 
toward the native Irish in England.  
Spacks interrogates the relationship between memory and imagination and their function 
in autobiography because ?to read an autobiography is to encounter a self as an imaginative 
being.?212 The question she explores is whether or not memory is reliable because it can be 
influenced by imagination. Autobiographers, she claims,  
?affirm the significance of the identity of imagination as well as that of memory; they 
demonstrate that a sense of identity can be put into words, that the mysteries of 
personality can be expressed, through the operations of memory and imagination, in 
                                                 
212 Ibid., 19. 
91 
 
objectified form, that identity, in short, can be made substantial and communicated as 
substantive fact.?213 
Such a claim subordinates a search for physically verifiable facts to the fact of imagination?s role 
in the construction of selfhood. Imagination works in tandem with memory to create the ?I? of 
the autobiography. 
For understanding the complexity of the contradiction, the presumptions of Seymor are 
important. His approach to Ireland is not unique. As I stated above, Andrew Carpenter claims 
that the English, as a culture, did not differentiate between native and colonial inhabitants of 
Ireland; they were all Irish. For example, Pilkington had a verifiable claim to an Anglo-Irish 
identity through both her family and her husband. However, in London, she is received in a 
similar manner to the native immigrants who flooded the streets of London after the famine. The 
autobiography allows for these types of representations even though they are laden with 
contradiction. By discarding a traditional notion of truth?using the individual experience of her 
temporal moment rather than a political analysis?the Memoirs can illustrate not only the 
contradiction that is inherent in crisis, but also the lived reality of that contradiction. Pilkington?s 
experiences help recreate an environment that reveals the paradox of the idea of ?Anglo-Irish? as 
it was experienced in mid-century Great Britain. 
And imagination is a component of community, the imagined community of Benedict 
Anderson, who argues that nationalism is an invention.214 Nationalism is invented as a means for 
connecting and sustaining relationships, especially in times of crisis. Love for one?s country, one 
way of defining nationalism, is found in ?the cultural products of nationalism?poetry, prose, 
                                                 
213 Ibid., 23. 
214 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed.  
(London: Verso, 2006). 
92 
 
fiction...?215 Since these products are predicated on the use of language, language becomes a 
primary instrument for inventing, or imagining, community. 
?Something of the nature of this love can be deciphered from the ways in which 
languages describe its object: either in the vocabulary of kinship?or that of home?Both 
idioms denote something to which one is naturally tied?all those things one cannot 
help.?216 
Pilkington employs both kinship and home in her descriptions, but it is perhaps her initial 
pronouncements of kinship that are most compelling and most illustrative of the contradiction 
present in the Anglo-Irish national community. Though Pilkington?s text might not directly, or 
factually, address the immediate political concerns of mid-century Anglo-Irish politics, those 
issues are a part of her imagined self and her imagined community. It is not necessary, indeed 
impossible, for her to identify concretely who are the Anglo-Irish in Ireland. It is sufficient that 
she imagines herself as part of that nebulous community. 
The move toward aggregation is a natural and necessary direction that the liminal figure 
must pursue. With a disintegrating subjectivity, however, Pilkington?s liminality becomes even 
more pronounced.  The autobiography, as a medium for reconstructing and stabilizing an 
author?s identity, can also show the impossibility of that cohesion. The imagined self can be 
woven, blurred, and blended, but not homogenized. Because of her lack of virtue, she is 
disconnected from being either Irish or English. Denied culturally accepted identities?virtuous 
woman and Anglo-Irish?she is thrust into a liminal stage. Yet aggregation is not possible as it 
requires conforming to social norms which she is prevented from doing. Thus she cannot become 
an Anglo-Irish woman. But the thrust of the subject is equally strong. She imagines herself as 
                                                 
215 Ibid., 141. 
216 Ibid., 143. 
93 
 
part of the Anglo-Irish community even if that community does not recognize her. She attempts 
sovereignty by writing and publishing and the poetic bearing of Nation. Indeed, her memoirs 
echo Roy Foster?s words: ?Marginalized if not isolated, the Anglo-Irish developed a ruthless but 
ironic pursuit of style.?217 
                                                 
217 R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1989) 170. 
94 
 
Chapter Three:  
Sensibility, Nationalism, and Survival: 
Using Sentimental Discourse to Negotiate an Anglo-Irish Identity 
 
?In the eighteenth century ideals and ideas such as these?notions of man?s innate benevolence, of 
his ?humanity, of his capacity to sympathize, of his ability and his right to exercise his own 
judgment, to formulate alone and unaided his own moral sentiments?functioned not only as 
powerful fantasies but also as complex and sometimes precisely defined concepts which were 
developed and investigated in the work of the philosophers, scientists and imaginative writers? a 
terminology and a set of concepts evolved which enabled people to explore in new and significant 
ways the whole question of what it means to be a human being living in the society of his 
fellows.?218 
 
?The novel must represent all the social and ideological voices of its era, that is, all the era?s 
languages that have any claim to being significant; the novel must be a microcosm of 
heteroglossia.?219 
 
 It might seem that understanding The History of Lady Barton (LB) in the terms of 
novelistic discourse and the discourse of sensibility is a futile endeavor.220 Bakhtin has 
elucidated the very complicated nature of defining the novel as a genre, arguing that the 
multiplicity of discourses that exist within novels prohibits generating any definable set of 
characteristics. And the concept of sensibility, especially in the novel, is no less ambiguous. It 
was as nebulous to contemporary eighteenth-century readers and critics as it is to twenty-first 
century scholars. Such permeable and mutable borders would seem to sink me before I even 
leave the harbor. However, it would seem appropriate to exercise some of the adventurous, if 
                                                 
218 R. F. Brissendem, Virtue in Distress: Studies in the Novel of Sentiment from Richardson to Sade, (London: 
Macmillan Press Ltd., 1974) 34. 
219 M. M. Bakhtin, ?Discourse in the Novel? in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, edited by 
Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981) 411. 
220 Elizabeth Griffith, ?The history of Lady Barton, a novel, in letters, by Mrs. Griffith. In three volumes?? 
(London, 1771). Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. Auburn University. 3 Feb. 2009. 
95 
 
perilous, attitude that Captain Cook displayed with his maritime journeys during this same time 
period in order to understand how sensibility and nationality are linked. Unlike the travel 
narrative and the memoir, the novel is the first and only wholly fictional genre that I have 
considered in this study. Though The Fugitive and The Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington have some 
fictional constructions, LB is a sentimental novel written and published with the express intention 
to instruct and entertain through an imaginative story. Similarly, communities, like fiction, are 
imagined. Thus, the imaginative story is a reflection of the imagined community out of which 
that story is written, and the cultural imagination of the Anglo-Irish community is one in flux 
during mid-century. Griffith?s novel imagines a tragedy wherein idealized possibility is 
overcome by cultural reality. And just as the story of Lady Barton exists as an imaginative 
construct, the community of the Anglo-Irish exists as an imagined community that constructs 
relationships and identities based on a mythic past and a troubled future.221 As imagined, 
Griffith?s novel is a multi-layered text imbued with the controversy and tension that 
characterized being Anglo-Irish in the 1760s and 70s. At first thought, any link between a 
melodramatic story of love and loss and a historical period of constitutional debates and imperial 
crises would appear contrived and tenuous at best. But a sentimental novel is as concerned with 
nationality as any political treatise of that period. Indeed, it cannot help but be so. 
Real Literature or Popular Fiction 
 This particular novel of Griffith?s has, almost universally, been judged to be ?a poor 
novel indeed?222 by literary scholars of the last century. Described as unrealistic, overly 
melodramatic, and disjointed, LB represented to scholars of the sentimental novel all that 
belittled the beautiful sophistication found in writers such as Richardson or Burney. Yet, such a 
                                                 
221 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006). 
222 B. G. MacCarthy, The Female Pen: Women Writers and Novelists: 1621-1818, 2 vols. 1946, Reprint, (2 vols in 
1), (New York: New York University Press, 1994) 320. 
96 
 
label is unfair. First, LB was Griffith?s most commercially successful novel. While popularity 
does not necessarily equate to quality, it certainly suggests a cultural resonance with a great 
number reading public; readers found something in LB with which they could identify, an echo 
of their lived world that interested and intrigued them. Undeniably, this novel was a 
sensationalist text employing the stock conventions of sensibility to gratify a reading public?s 
desire for provocation to intense emotional reaction, but it was also emulating paradigmatic 
works like Clarissa. However, its wide appeal should not be overlooked. I argue that this 
popularity was influenced by the historical period in which it was written and read. LB is also an 
artifact of Anglo-Irish identity during the decades leading up to the turbulent 1790s. Though 
critics have largely disregarded the concept of nationality, in the years preceding the Age of 
Revolution it seems imperative to read the negotiations of nationness as they are articulated from 
a marginalized position. Griffith was an Anglo-Irish woman who was writing from England 
about an English heroine living in Ireland and existing in-between two cultures. Lady Barton is a 
symbol of liminality, and like Pilkington, she is prevented from aggregating. The significance of 
these details deserves to be explored, not dismissed as irrelevant, because they challenge a label 
such as ?poor novel? and might even suggest one such as ?dynamic.?  
To address the concept of nationality and understand the dynamic aspects of LB, one 
must begin with a survey of the various nationalities that have been assigned to the writer. Like 
Davys, Griffith?s place of birth is uncertain, but it was likely Wales or Dublin, Ireland. Her 
biographer, D. H. Eshleman, believes that it was probable that she was born in Ireland,223 a claim 
that Susan Staves repeats in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 89224and Elizabeth 
                                                 
223 D. H. Eshleman, Elizabeth Griffith, a biographical and critical study, (Ann Arbor: Edwards Bros., 1949). 
224 Susan Staves, "Elizabeth Griffith", Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Dramatists: Third Series, ed. Paula R. 
Backscheider. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 89, (Detroit; Gale Research, 1989), Literature Resource 
Centre, Gale. AUBURN UNIV. 9 June 2009. 
97 
 
Napier in 1985.225 The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, in 2004, claims that Griffith 
was born in Glamorgan, Wales, but it is unclear from where this archival evidence came. This 
ambiguity is less important with Griffith than it was with Davys because the former?s early life is 
well-documented. Regardless of her place of birth, Griffith was raised in Dublin. Her father was 
a prominent manager-actor in the Smock Alley Theater, and her mother came from Queens 
County in the northern part of Ireland.226 Griffith grew up immersed in the Anglo-Irish culture of 
Dublin from 1727 until 1764 when she left in order to live in London. In 1751, after many years 
of exchanged letters that would later be published,227 Griffith married Richard Griffith, a 
Kilkenny farmer of no relation to her. Most biographical accounts claim that they had a happy 
marriage, but it was fraught with difficulty due mainly to economics. Their nuptials had to be 
kept secret from Richard?s father for a number of years in order for the young man to earn his 
fortune, and then claim an inheritance. During that time, and through much of the rest of their 
working life, it was Griffith?s pen that put money into their hands and bread on their table. There 
is little evidence that Richard was ever very successful in his financial endeavors. However, 
Griffith was able to procure a position in the East India Company for their eldest son, and his 
financial success allowed him to take care of them in their later years when they moved back to 
Ireland.228 
 It bears noting that the three women discussed thus far have followed a similar path. 
Spending their youth in Ireland, usually Dublin, and then immigrating to England, usually 
London, where they found publishing opportunities. However, Griffith was far more socially and 
                                                 
225 Napier, Elizabeth R. "Elizabeth Griffith", British Novelists, 1660-1800, ed. Martin C. Battestin. Dictionary of 
Literary Biography Vol. 39, (Detroit; Gale Research, 1985), Literature Resource Center, Gale. AUBURN UNIV. 9 
June 2009. 
226 Elizabeth Eger, ?Griffith, Elizabeth (1727-1793)?, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University 
Press, 2004. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11596, accessed 8 March 2007]. 
227 A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances, published in 1757 in Dublin and London. 
228 This information found in Melinda C. Finberg, ed., Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatist, (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 2001). 
98 
 
financially successful than either Davys or Pilkington. Though she received a fair amount of 
criticism about her initial publications, largely questioning the moral value of her work, she 
adapted her themes to be more socially suitable and enjoyed popular and critical acclaim 
thereafter. Aside from LB, most readers considered the novelistic work of Griffith, especially A 
Series of Letters and The Delicate Distress, to be exemplary in its expression of mid-eighteenth-
century concepts of sensibility. In these novels, the function of sensibility was to instruct and to 
caution young women about the moral and social imperatives of preserving a woman?s virtue.  
The primary aim of such work was didactic, to educate young women in not only the value, but 
also the fragility of their virtue?a theme, Griffith employed and for which she was noted in 
critical responses to her work. But in order to be a commercially successful novel, it must also 
entertain, and Griffith needed to generate income from her writing as she was supporting her 
family. One had to balance quality with popularity. She had significant literary success in her 
lifetime, and her work has received critical attention fairly regularly thereafter. Griffith practiced 
and published in many genres, including a number of successful dramas, but it is her work in the 
sentimental novel that has received the most attention from scholars. 
In reviewing the literary scholarship on Griffith, many of the names that have appeared in 
earlier chapters such as B.G. MacCarthy and Janet Todd, appear again, especially with Davys 
since both women are considered innovators in the development of the novel. And also like 
Davys, it is the didacticism of Griffith?s work that has received the most attention. In 1946, B. G. 
MacCarthy praised Griffith?s Delicate Distress as a ?graceful? work in which the author values 
?gentleness and magnanimity,? qualities which ?enable one to bear all trials and vexations with 
self-respecting dignity.?229 This discourse of sensibility informs much of her analysis, including 
her claim that the genre lacked sufficient talent, leaning more toward hack work than literature. 
                                                 
229 MacCarthy, 319. 
99 
 
Griffith?s Delicate Distress and LB represent the best and the worst, respectively, of this type of 
novel.   MacCarthy reads an occasional ?feminine point of view?230 which situates Griffith into 
the sea of minor writers who were recovered in the first wave of feminism. However, the 
?masculine notion of womanhood? that she interprets in LB functions as the chief detractor in the 
novel. This dichotomy of masculine and feminine characteristics of sensibility is revelatory of 
the limitation in which the author and her characters must live. And while those limitations are 
dictated by gender and class, I believe they are also dictated by nationality, which she does not 
discuss apart from labeling Griffith ?Irish.?231 Like Davys and Pilkington, what ?Irish? meant 
was left unexplored. 
Katharine Rogers discusses Griffith?s novels as representations of both the ideal and the 
tragic opportunities in marriage for women in the eighteenth century. 232 She claims that novels 
of sensibility ?repeatedly disprove the comfortable assumption that woman ought to be able to 
adjust happily to an uncongenial marriage.?233 In Rogers?s estimation, Griffith and her husband 
shared a ?mutually rewarding? relationship. For her, A Series of Genuine Letters illustrates an 
open dialogue that interrogates the roles of each partner in a marriage relationship and by 
implication that Griffith?s marriage must have mirrored that. However, in contrast to such a 
sympathetic view through that novel, LB shows a far more tragic picture of marriage. Where 
Henry and Frances lived in ?perfect congeniality,? Sir William and Louisa Barton experience 
only sorrow and guilt.234 Rogers? characterization of an idyllic marriage between Griffith and her 
husband is questionable, but her analysis of the tragic marriage in LB highlights a vulnerability in 
the heroine that bears a more descriptive analysis.  While it is demonstrative of the position of a 
                                                 
230 Ibid., 322. 
231 Ibid., 318. 
232 Katharine Rogers, Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England, (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982) 15. 
233 Ibid., 149. 
234 Ibid., 164. 
100 
 
middle-class woman who is the focus of Rogers?s study, I believe that vulnerability is equally 
present in the traces of nationality. Rogers?s claim that ?these novels express women?s wish-
fulfillment fantasies? echoes the equally wishful political relationships that subconsciously 
develop in LB. If there is an incompatibility between self-fulfillment and marriage, there is also 
an incompatibility between the dual nationalities of Lady Barton. 
In 1986, Jane Spencer argued that this novel was ?an attack on fashionable and 
mercenary marriage customs? which employed what she calls  the ?cult of the pure heroine? in 
order to advance ?a feminist consciousness?evident in her sympathetic portrayal of the heroines 
dilemma (that she is in love with a man other than her husband).? 235 The pure heroine is the 
woman of sensibility, meaning capable of refined and delicate feeling, who is able to keep her 
virtue in the face of adversity. Of Lady Barton, Spencer writes that ?for all her mistakes, [she] is 
a pure heroine. She remains faithful to her husband.?236 Fidelity, if purely physical, is what 
spiritually saves Lady Barton. She still dies in the end, but her fidelity casts her as a martyr 
instead of a fallen wretch.237 Spencer shows the heroine at her most vulnerable and illustrates the 
impossibility of an assured and/or rewarding future for a woman in marriage. But within the 
tragic vulnerability, Spencer argues that a resistance fomented. She describes Lady Barton as a 
?rebellious heroine chaffing under the yoke of marriage to a misogynist? and one who exercises 
an ?angry resistance? to the limitations inhibiting her spirit.238 In Spencer?s analysis, Lady 
Barton has agency?the ability to think, to act, and to resist?however fruitless that resistance 
proves to be. Indeed, that such agency leads to inevitable death is what proves so illuminating in 
                                                 
235 Jane Spencer, The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, (New York: Basil Blackwell, 
Inc., 1986) 124-127. 
236 Ibid., 125. 
237 Marie, one of the interpolated tales, provides the ?fallen wretch? archetype since she submits to the physical 
affections of her lover. 
238 Ibid., 125. 
101 
 
the story. Virtue and agency oppose each other because the concept of submission is so 
thoroughly intertwined into Virtue. And because they cannot be reconciled, the heroine must 
submit. But Spencer?s concept of the rebellious heroine illustrates how a woman negotiated what 
she wants to be against what she can be. Conceptualizing marriage as an unequal partnership, 
one in which one party must submit to the other, is a typical approach to describing eighteenth-
century relationships between England and Ireland, especially as the Age of Revolution dawned. 
In the way that Agency and Virtue cannot be reconciled, the status of Ireland within Great 
Britain was also irreconcilable. Lady Barton exists in the liminal space in-between subjectivity 
and social expectations while the Anglo-Irish are equally liminal in the place between kingdom 
and colony. 
Marla Harris again considers LB more consciously structured than previous readers had 
allowed for. Her short article challenges the prevailing opinion of this book as nothing more than 
formulaic decorative fluff employed to flesh out a pocketbook as much as a library. Similar to 
the concept of doubling that Diana Relke employed in reading The Memoirs of Laetitia 
Pilkington, Harris finds intentional critical structure in the form and content of the novel, 
specifically in the three interpolated tales that Lady Barton relates. She claims that these tales, so 
often dismissed as digressions, are not formulaic characters and stories that have been inserted 
arbitrarily, but instead serve to illustrate the palimpsest of the text: ?The women in the novel 
subvert this imprisoning male authority and exert power over their own lives and plots, 
redefining themselves as controlling subjects, instead of controlled objects, as heroines rather 
than victims.?239 Harris argues that Griffith uses these women to double for Lady Barton. For 
example, Olivia, the imprisoned wife of Colonel Walters contacts Lady Barton by sending 
                                                 
239 Marla Harris, ??How Nicely Circumspect Must Your Conduct Be?? Double Standards in Elizabeth Griffith?s The 
History of Lady Barton? in Eighteenth-Century Women and the Arts ed., Frederick M. Keener and Susan Lorsch, 
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1988) 282. 
102 
 
messages through her young daughter. Lady Barton facilitates Olivia?s escape and refuge in 
England. With this subplot, Griffith has invested both Lady Barton and Olivia (and Barton?s 
sister, Frances, to a certain extent) with ?female power?, the ability to act (not just be acted on) 
within socially acceptable parameters.240 Lady Barton is fulfilling her role as the sentimental 
heroine by rescuing the less fortunate Olivia. Olivia has suffered at the hands of her malevolent 
husband, but she is saved by her unassailable character.  Harris also notes the vulnerability that 
women faced, but she interprets resistance and cleverness. Griffith, she claims, employs the 
doubling to not only reveal the ?socio-sexual? limitations of women, but to satirize the comic 
disparity of those standards. The palimpsest, so often overlooked, proves to be a prolific source 
for understanding the unconscious text, both social and political. 
In The Sign of the Angelica, Janet Todd only mentions this writer a handful of times and 
mainly in passing. However, the few comments that she does make illustrate the evolution of the 
reception of characters like Lady Barton and writers like Griffith. The ?lively, resourceful? 
Griffith ?saw that the needed money was in morality.?241 Todd constructs Griffith as an 
intentionally socially aware writer as opposed to a simple parody of Richardson?s masterpiece, 
Clarissa. Lady Barton is still cast as a tragic heroine, but Todd reads this as a purposeful, even 
economic decision, rather than an inability to write. Women writers understood the capital of 
virtue and employed it accordingly.  
In Gillian Skinner?s 1995 article, ??Above ?conomy?: Elizabeth Griffith?s The History of 
Lady Barton and Henry Mackenzie?s The Man of Feeling?, she makes an argument in which she 
links scholarly readings of the function of gender and class in the sentimental novel, specifically 
                                                 
240 Ibid., 279. 
241 Janet Todd, The Sign of the Angelica: Women Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800. (New York: Columbia University 
Press, 1989) 127. 
103 
 
the decision to privilege one over the other.242 Instead, she argues, ?a novel by a woman writer 
translates class, or ?political,? differences into those of gender.?243 Thus, the concepts are not 
separate, but exist as mirrors of each other. She claims that ?in the body of the novel?focusing 
on gender conflict becomes a strategy which addresses first the issue most immediately vital to 
women (feminine purity) and then inevitably goes on to address issues of class politics?a 
strategy of engagement, rather than of avoidance.?244 By prefacing gender conflict, a woman 
writer can address not only disparities between the sexes, but also between the classes, and in 
doing so they engage in active discussions of subjectivity rather than quietly retiring into a 
?feminine? realm. This position challenges John Mullan?s argument that the sentimental novel 
was a terminal genre and irrelevant to the practical concerns the reader, as he articulates in 
Sentiment and Sociability.245 She specifically criticizes Mullan?s generalizations since they do 
not account for ?the contexts from which other (i.e. not Scottish writers) examples come.?246 
Since much of Mullan?s argument is founded on Henry Mackenzie, David Hume, and Samuel 
Richardson, there is a noticeable absence of serious attention to the social and political depth of 
women sentimental writers. There is also a notable lack of diversity in terms of nationality. 
Skinner recognizes that LB has a ?female Anglo-Irish author? and therefore speaks from a 
different position than that of Henry Mackenzie in The Man of Feeling, which was published the 
same year.  
Skinner?s argument is a culturally economic one. She argues that characters like Lady 
Barton lives in a world that is typically above the common economic concerns of the average 
                                                 
242 Gillian Skinner, ??Above ?conomy?: Elizabeth Griffith?s The History of Lady Barton and Henry Mackenzie?s 
The Man of Feeling? in Eighteenth-Century Life 19, no. 1 (Feb. 1995): 1-17. 
243Ibid., 11. 
244 Ibid., 15. 
245 John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century, (Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1998). 
246 Skinner, 14. 
104 
 
reader. This is evidenced by the lack of reference to such concerns within the novel. Ostensibly, 
Lady Barton is granted freedom from these concerns because of rank. However, ?a novel by a 
woman writer translates class, or ?political,? differences into those of gender.?247 So, Lady 
Barton is, paradoxically, both above and trapped in the moral economy that a sentimental hero 
can transcend at will. She is free from worrying about money, but not from worrying about 
virtue, something the sentimental hero has little concern for because his value is not derived from 
sexual purity. So, Skinner argues that an informed critic must ?read for class and gender 
simultaneously? because ?LB links gender and class to challenge the contemporary organization 
of society.?248  
In the opening pages of LB, the initial encounter with native Irish cottagers brings this to 
the forefront. Lady Barton?s harrowing journey over the Irish Sea ends in a near shipwreck as the 
vessel was ?driven upon the northern coast of Ireland.?249 Her first impression of the land is ?a 
desert island?uninhabited by everything but a few goats, and some fishermen, who are almost 
as wild as they.? It was ?a dismal place?for darkness, rain, and wind, I never saw.? The tone is 
set for an adversarial encounter with native Islanders, but such a situation is also created to 
illustrate the depth of the character. The Irish countryside is forbidding, inspiring fear even as it 
is a refuge from the perilous sea. However, the contact zone in which Lady Barton and the Irish 
fishermen250 meet establishes an amicable if patronizing relationship between the two cultures. 
Thus, this initial encounter serves as a metaphor describing the complicated relationship between 
English and Irish governments. 
                                                 
247 Ibid, 11. 
248 Ibid.., 15. 
249 Griffith, 1:13. 
250 It?s difficult to say whether these fishermen are Gaelic-speaking native Irish. There is no mention of a language 
barrier; however, the references to wildness and the association of the fishermen to their sheep?implying the 
animalistic perception that Davys employs in her travel narrative?suggests that they could be. 
105 
 
The bedraggled passengers are received in ?huts? by ?hospitable cottagers.? But, she 
interpolates them as recognizant of their inferior status: the cottagers ?received us with that sort 
of surprize, [sic] which I imagine we should feel, if an order of higher beings were to descend by 
miracle to visit us.? Their primitiveness is further reinforced by the wooden cups in which they 
serve tea to the shipwrecked aristocracy. Here, Griffith makes precise distinctions between 
classes. The cottagers, in their wild and animal nature, are set in stark contrast to the civilized 
and refined Barton. In fact, the distinctions are so sharp as to suggest that one culture is alien to 
the other.  
This initial encounter presents a complicated socio-political situation. According to 
Skinner, ?the passage neatly encapsulates an attitude typical in the period?that the poor are in a 
wholly different category from their social superiors and, furthermore, they are lucky to be 
so.?251 But, the inferiority of the cottagers only serves to delineate Lady Barton?s own 
limitations. While the cottagers are socially inferior, they are also untroubled or limited by the 
constraints of polite, i.e. aristocratic society. Lady Barton, however, is bound by the dictates of 
gender though she is above the concerns of fiscal responsibility.  In fact, she is even forbidden 
from access to money. After arriving at the estate that will become her home, Lady Barton 
attempts to give one of Sir William?s?her husband?tenants a small gift of money because they 
?had lost their intire [sic] substance by fire.? Sir William quickly steps in to prevent her act of 
generosity, stating that she was ?too young? to understand economic concerns.252 Her encounter 
with the native Irish illustrates her class superiority, but Sir William is quick to illustrate her 
gender inferiority. Indeed, Skinner also reads the interpolated tales as demonstrative of this 
paradox as well. The heroines of the three tales are destroyed or nearly so by the financial 
                                                 
251 Skinner, 7. 
252 Griffith 1:68. 
106 
 
punishments of their husbands/protectors. Lady Barton, however, is well provided for, but 
equally trapped. In these sub-narratives, ?The suppression of Louisa?s feminine moral economy 
by an unsympathetic husband becomes the economic oppression of powerless women by 
powerful men in the interpolated narratives, thus helping to undermine the gender conflict of the 
main story by rendering it in more explicit terms.?253 Here, Skinner connects the sentimental 
trials of Lady Barton to the economic trials of her interpolated counterparts, which also 
reinterprets the encounter with the cottagers. The connection between gender and economics that 
Skinner tries to illuminate illustrates the political unconscious in this text. Repeatedly, Griffith 
presents encounters which display unequal power relationships, and each time she presents a 
critique of the social and political values that create these relationships. And in doing so, she 
shaped a text, fraught as it is with contradiction and paradox, which reflects the troubled 
relationship between England and Ireland during mid-century: the Anglo-Irish considered 
themselves ?Irishmen with English civil liberties,? but the English government was not so 
clear.254 
 After relating the tragedy of Olivia, Lady Barton imagines a scenario that echoes this 
paradox. In writing to Frances about the plight of Olivia, specifically the fact that society has no 
place for a refugee such as her, Louisa imagines a place that provides protection for ? unhappy 
object, forsaken, and ill treated wives, to betake themselves to.?255 However, this asylum would 
not be a ?retreat?from the world, but from the misfortunes, or slander of it?, and would provide 
them a place where they ?might enjoy all the pleasures of the world and advantage of living still 
in the world, have their conduct vouched by one another, and be screened from those artful and 
insidious essays, which young or pretty women, when once become helpless adjectives of 
                                                 
253 Skinner, 11. 
254 R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972, (London: Penguin Books, 1989) 248. 
255 Griffith, 2:56. 
107 
 
society, are generally liable to.?256 Though her concept is based on the private and limited 
convent, she clearly believes that women in such a community would continue to engage in the 
secular world of society while escaping the limitations of comparisons with ?artful and 
insidious? women. This asylum must provide a place for women to retire from and engage with 
society?in essence, to act freely within the public sphere without needing to conform to the 
bounds of gender which restrict social and political engagement. 
(The convent) seen as the necessary display of virtuous femininity, such presence 
in the world can be justified. But such an argument also allows the women that 
Louisa wishes to protect to gain ?pleasures and advantages? from the world. 
Where the idea of virtuous displays seems to imply a one-way process in which 
the world is gratified by the confirmation of approved femininity in its women, 
the women of this asylum are apparently to enjoy a two-way traffic, and gain 
from the world at the same time as ?displaying? to it. 257 
This construction of being at once both a part of and separate from a larger unit and the ability to 
move fluidly between them also applies to the political traces in the novel. It reflects the 
constitutional debates going on between Irish parliament and the English government. Skinner 
continues to speculate that if such a subjective place could potentially be differentiated ?from the 
amorphous mass...., an ideology of bourgeois individualism,? then such a political distinction 
was also possible.258 Thus LB, specifically this imagined Protestant Convent, could potentially 
demonstrate a political relationship in which Ireland could be both in a kingdom and also act as 
an independent nation. Ultimately, though, Lady Barton and Griffith are unable to reconcile 
these contradictions.  
                                                 
256 Ibid., 2:57. 
257 Skinner, 12. 
258 Ibid., 13. 
108 
 
 Spencer, Harris, and Skinner created a very different image of LB than earlier critics had 
done. The sentimental heroine is vulnerable, as a model sentimental heroine should be, but Lady 
Barton is also rebellious, angry, intelligent, and, more importantly, aware, and the text develops 
a palimpsest that challenges any claim that might seek to dismiss this novel as pulp fiction. 
These readings of Griffith?s novel, which delve into the complicated palimpsest of the axes of 
gender, class, and genre, proposed new ways of reading a novel that has essentially been 
dismissed as popular literature. 
One element that has been overlooked is the geographical setting of the novel?Ireland. 
Lady Barton was born in England, but marries an Irishman and moves to his estate. It is in 
Ireland where the tragedy of Lady Barton?s life plays out. This structure suggests that the 
incompatibility of virtue and rebellion displayed in Lady Barton might also suggest an 
incompatibility between England and Ireland, neither of which can suffer silently or 
submissively. But Louisa Barton makes attempts within the limited space that she is allowed to 
assert her right to construct herself as she desires instead of what she is supposed to be. In doing 
so, she suggests that those two constructions might not be mutually exclusive. The novel works 
to tease out the contradictions inherent in these troubled relationships, but it does not seek to 
provide a reasonable solution. Rather, LB seems to foreshadow the turbulent future of Irish 
politics. The tragedy of sensibility is also the tragedy of hybrid nationalities. 
Reconciling Reason and Passion: The Sentimental Novel and Nationality 
In her preface, Griffith establishes LB as a sentimental novel by providing the necessary 
claims required by her readers.  She appeals to arbiters of taste and morality by explaining ?such 
sort of writings (sentimental novels) may be rendered, by good and ingenious authors, extremely 
serviceable to morals, and other useful purposes of life?depend(ing) upon the choice that 
109 
 
parents and preceptors make of such compositions.?259 This claim establishes that her text is one 
of good taste, and distinguishing it from more base forms of literature. She characterizes herself 
as ?good and ingenious,? but also morally inspired. She even goes so far as to assert that a writer 
?stationed below the familiar converse of polite life? could not have penned this novel and thus 
stations herself above the professional hack.260 She further acknowledges the preeminence of 
parental consent in the selection of literature. This is important for her because traditional 
practices in marriage negotiations, though challenged, were still firmly entrenched. She 
acknowledges the expectation for entertainment as well.  Griffith recognized that ?Works of this 
kind are in general of so captivating a nature to young readers, that let them run through but a 
few pages of almost any Novel, and they will feel their affections or curiosity so interested?that 
it is with difficulty they can be diverted.?261 By 1771, the year this novel was published, Griffith 
had already experienced a fair amount of success, in both fiction and drama. She acknowledges 
that she was ?fortunate? to have had success with ?former work of the same kind? as LB.262  
While this claim has a transparent self-aggrandizement, it also identifies her novel with the 
popular sentimental literature movement and the cultural capital that went along with that. By 
invoking ?works of this kind,? she claims two important qualities, didactic and ?captivating,? 
giving her readers a reason to pick up her book and not be ?diverted? until the end. The reality of 
the market place demanded entertainment in addition to moral didacticism. The preface provides 
the necessary framework for the reader to categorize her novel at the same time she is 
consciously constructing her right to present the text. 
                                                 
259 Griffith, 1:vi-vii. 
260 Ibid., viii. 
261 Ibid., v. 
262 Ibid., ix-x. 
110 
 
Sensibility is broadly understood to represent the ability to feel in a refined and delicate 
manner, to be susceptible to acute emotions (usually painful, but sometimes ecstasy), and to 
embody the benevolent nature of man (though some scholars argue that malevolence is also a 
characteristic of sensibility). The stress is on feeling as opposed to thinking. It represents an 
epistemology that stems from experience rather than thought, as articulated by philosophers such 
as John Locke.263 Experiential knowledge was not exclusive to the philosophy of sensibility, but 
this type of knowledge was at the center of this philosophy. The moral sense was, in essence, a 
sixth sense as argued by Locke. This construction of sensibility claimed that rather than being 
innate, this moral sense was developed out of experience but was founded on the innate 
benevolence of human beings. If the source of all knowledge was sensory experience, then such 
experience must be used to construct the ways in which human beings related to each other, their 
sociability. The knowledge gained from experience, specifically the experience of feelings, 
should guide man inexorably to the proper and correct establishment of social relationships.  
This progress, nevertheless, is an idealized vision rather than a practical application. Reconciling 
reason and passion proved to be an impossible paradox. However, within the realm of the 
imagination, it did seem possible to turn experiential knowledge into an imagined community. 
Yet, the most intriguing stories often illustrated the irreconcilability of sensibility rather than a 
complementary relationship between reason and passion.  
To understand the function of sensibility within an imagined community, especially in 
the eighteenth century, one must almost certainly first turn to the novel. As a product and 
generator of cultural discourse, the novel with its attendant heteroglossia invites an exploration 
of the relationship between sensibility and nationality because it ?must represent all the social 
and ideological voices of its era, that is, all the era?s languages that have any claim to being 
                                                 
263 Geraint Parry, John Locke, (Boston: G. Allen and Unwin, 1978). 
111 
 
significant.?264 And every language within the novel must be a ?concrete, socially-embodied 
point of view, not an abstract purely semantic position.?265 In the terms of a paradigm, the 
culture of sensibility provided a structure through which to mediate the social and political 
ideologies that constructed the epistemology of mid-eighteenth-century Ireland, and the 
sentimental novel provided a tablet on which those ideologies could be written. The nature of the 
sentimental novel reflects the conflicting and contradictory state of national identity as it existed 
in the imagination of the Anglo-Irish population in the 1760s and 70s and even into the twenty-
first century.  
During the imperial crisis, the ideological debates over the status of Ireland within or 
without Great Britain became more prominent. My purpose here is to look at the parallels 
between these debates and the concept of sensibility as it was deployed in the novel. Within both 
of these movements, there existed a tension between passion and reason, between cultural myth 
and political reality. The tension arose from a seeming incompatibility between the refined 
feelings that identified the sentimental aristocrat, which was an individual experience, with the 
sociability of moral sense, an organizing value of society. Similarly, there was a tension between 
College Green, which was the seat of the Irish Parliament, and Dublin Castle, which was the seat 
of the Lord Lieutenant, the King?s representative in Ireland. The political status of Ireland within 
Great Britain, a question that was centuries old, was becoming increasingly important to the Irish 
government from the 1750s onward as the imperial crisis began consuming British political 
thought. The constitutional debates spurred on by Anglo-Irish politicians and events in the 
American colonies revived and pushed to the forefront the ideological debate over the question 
of Ireland as a nation or colony, and if nation, in what way. This question is best represented by 
                                                 
264 Bakhtin, 411. 
265 Ibid., 412. 
112 
 
the tension between individuality and community, which is inherent in the ideology of sensibility 
and by the manifestation of that tension in political thought. Governmental policy had to 
negotiate the conflict between individuality, Ireland as a separate nation, and public good, what 
serves the empire. 
In 1974, R. F. Brissendem surveyed the concept of the sentimental novel through the 
work of Samuel Richardson and the Marquis de Sade. 266 Beginning with an etymological 
approach to understanding the roots of the word sensibility and its ?unusually high degree of 
connotative valence? in the eighteenth century, Brissendem explores how the power within the 
concept of sensibility shaped the discourse of British philosophers and, subsequently, the 
discourse of the sentimental novel.  The concept of sensibility was ?charged with great and often 
vague emotive power?moral, sexual, political,? and thus its capacity to insert itself into the 
languages of culture?I would argue that it even constructs the form of those languages?vaulted 
it from a mere literary form to the status of a cultural paradigm.267 Beyond its literary 
significance, sensibility represented a paradigm for society in constructing feeling that was in 
opposition of and adjacent to reason. What mattered was how reason was supposed to function in 
the sentimental man or woman, the social model. Brissendem stresses that while reason and 
feeling were considered to be dichotomous, ?ideally the man or woman of sentiment as present 
in the fiction of the age was seen as someone in whom the claims of reason and feeling were 
properly balanced.?268 But such an idea was at once both a ?pragmatic approach to life? and a 
?powerful fantasy.?269 The incompatibility of these two functions and the equally powerful urge 
                                                 
266 Brissendem, 20. 
267 Brissendem uses Thomas S. Kuhn?s explanation of the paradigm in his book. See pg. 37. 
268 Ibid., 24. 
269 Ibid., 55, 33. 
113 
 
to integrate them led to the demise of the sentimental novel in the following decades, Brissendem 
argues. 
As a paradigm, sensibility also informed political thought, and the political echoes in this 
concept have the same inherent contradictions found in the debates over its social function?
policy that serves English interests and policy that recognizes the Anglo-Irish as a nation of 
equals. In Brissendem?s words, the idea of man?s ?ability and his right to exercise his own 
judgment, to formulate alone and unaided his own moral sentiments? highlights the difficulties in 
reconciling the tension between reason and feeling. Man deserved the freedom to explore his 
individual experience and construct his understanding of the world through that experience. 
However, these conclusions must be applicable to all sentimental participants in the nation. 
Society must individually arrive at the same conclusions because, in order to not be irrelevant, 
sensibility had to function as a unifying force within society, a universal response to experience 
which served the public good. The universality was important in that it could be repeatable, thus 
creating a shared response which would in turn create a standard by which social action could be 
judged. Yet, the experience of sensibility was, by nature, both individual and spontaneous. The 
philosophy out of which it is generated is predicated on the idea ?that the source of all 
knowledge and all values is the individual human experience.?270 In political terms, tension 
arises from the very different individual experiences of the Anglo-Irish and the English.271 So the 
tension between reason and feeling is reproduced in a tension between individual experience 
generated through feeling and a collective social response predicated on rationality. And 
Brissendem argues that ?the notion of a necessarily reasonable feeling is both extraordinarily 
                                                 
270 Ibid., 22. 
271 This is a general statement. I am not arguing that there was any one universal experience in either of those 
cultural groups. However, I am using the arguments presented in works such as Linda Colley?s Britons and R.F. 
Foster?s Modern Ireland, which deconstruct the imagined communities of these cultures. 
114 
 
attractive and profoundly ambiguous.?272 If one extends this contradiction to politics, such 
tensions were manifested through debates on nationality. The Anglo-Irish, by individual and 
collective experience, considered themselves Irish with English civil rights. But translating such 
experience into policy proved as ?extraordinarily attractive and profoundly ambiguous? as a 
reasonable feeling. 
Ireland was undoubtedly and inextricably part of Great Britain. Though the parliament at 
College Green represented an Irish government, laws such as the Poynings Law and the 
Declaratory Act273 illustrated the very real control of the English Crown over Irish government, 
and from the 1760s onward, the resident Lord Lieutenant provided a tangible Crown presence. 
Martyn Powell argues that the ?Bute and Grenville ministries, with half an eye on similar 
administrative problems in America, resolved to reform the Irish system of government,? and 
this position was intended to help ?control the Irish Parliament.?274 
The influence of the American Revolution on Irish political ideology in the 1760s and 
70s is important, but can be overstated. Neil Longley York argues that ?with the deepening crisis 
in the 1760s, the Irish followed American affairs closely, looking for signs of what lay ahead for 
themselves.?275 Unlike the Jacobite rebellions of 1716 and 1745, which sought to restore the 
Stuarts to the throne of England, the American Revolution engendered forward-looking 
aspirations though based on ancient ideals of self-government. Longley identifies a group of 
constitutional reformers as the Anglo-Irish Patriots, who ?were obliged to carve an identity for 
                                                 
272 Ibid., 55. 
273 Poynings Law, passed in 1494, required that Irish parliamentary meetings be approved by the King?s 
representative in Ireland and the King. The Declaratory Act, passed in 1720, asserted the right of the British 
parliament to legislate for Ireland. See R.F. Foster. 
274 Martyn Powell, ?Ireland: Radicalism, Rebellion, and Union? in A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. 
H. T. Dickinson, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 415. 
275 Neil Longley York, Neither Kingdom Nor Nation; The Irish Quest for Constitutional Rights, 1698-1800, 
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994) 3. 
115 
 
themselves as the rightful leaders of Irish society and as equal partners in the British Empire.?276 
These leaders ?hoped to secure rights within the empire (my italics).?277 Unlike the goals of the 
Americans in their Declaration of Independence, which sought a clear political break from Great 
Britain, these Anglo-Irish patriots still saw themselves as part of Great Britain and were 
?dedicated to preserving what they thought was the spirit of the British constitution as well as 
their liberties under a reified Irish constitution.?278 The emphasis here is that independence from 
the English crown was not a majority opinion. In this era of debate over constitutional reform, 
the polity of Anglo-Irish still considered themselves inextricably linked to the British Empire, 
but not as a colony. This was not the only philosophical approach to reconciling the position of 
Ireland within Great Britain. These patriots faced opposition from ?separatists wanting to leave 
the empire altogether and reformers advocating a democratic political leavening.?279 These 
divisions amongst the Anglo-Irish were not new to mid-century politics, but they were 
developing into something more tangible, and the concept of sensibility helped to demarcate the 
political motivations behind these positions.  
The paradigm of sensibility is founded on a conviction that there exists an innate 
benevolence within human beings: this benevolence ?helped to provide the basis for a liberal and 
a revolutionary political ideology?humanist, anti-authoritarian, and compassionate.?280 This 
ideal of government, in the midst of the imperial crisis, provided a powerful cultural narrative for 
the Anglo-Irish people. It fueled ideas that a kingdom of Ireland was possible within the realm of 
Great Britain. However, the ambiguity of sensibility rather than offering a paradigm of 
                                                 
276 Ibid., 4. In this context, Longley uses ?Anglo-Irish? to refer to the Protestant Ascendancy, the elite class of 
Anglican politicians.  
277 Ibid., 5. 
278 Ibid., 5. 
279 Ibid., 5. 
280 Ibid., 55. 
116 
 
government laid bare the glaring incompatibility of the goals of the Anglo-Irish Patriots and the 
English Crown.  
The idea of the innate benevolence of human beings proved one of the more difficult 
characteristics to deal with in deploying sensibility as a socio-political model. According to 
Brissendem, such an assumption followed that ?if man had a natural right to be happy he also 
had a natural capacity to act virtuously, i.e. benevolently.? Conversely, someone unable or 
unwilling ?to act benevolently, was thought to be less than human.?281 In LB, Griffith illustrates 
such malevolence with the character of Colonel Walters, who is most certainly ?less than 
human.? In describing Colonel Walters, who is on his way to ?take possession of his estate, and a 
seat in parliament for a borough he never saw,?282 Lady Barton comments that ?I am no 
politician, or should animadvert a little upon this subject.? This is a carefully worded statement 
that at once denies any public voice?she is ?no politician??while at the same time offering a 
decidedly political statement?that she would criticize the practice of granting office to an 
Englishman, who has never resided in Ireland. In these two short lines, we can see a 
representation of the changing political environment. Absentee landlords were a staple in the first 
part of the century, but growing political unrest required England to provide a more tangible 
presence in Ireland; thus, Walters would physically have to move and reside in Ireland. 
But Lady Barton?s comments suggest some resentment regarding his placement. She 
questions his right to not only hold property, but also a seat in the parliament because he has no 
claim to an Irish identity. Further characterizations of Walters only further emphasize his 
undesirability. Not only is he morally bankrupt, his actions serve to destabilize the lives of Sir 
William and Lady Barton, eventually destroying any chance of a mutually rewarding relationship 
                                                 
281 Ibid., 32. 
282 Griffith, 1:10. 
117 
 
between them. The intrusion of Colonel Walters and his malevolent machinations lead to the 
death of Lady Barton and emotional pain for Sir William. He and what he represents of the 
English attitude toward Ireland are detrimental to good society. He is a thoroughgoing villain, 
possessed of what later scholars would call the bad or negative sensibility, employing no 
constraints on his most base desires, illustrating that while the sentimental man or woman could 
act benevolently, it was just as likely that he or she could act malevolently. Considering all of 
this in light of Louisa Barton?s initial description of his character, Walters appears as the 
antithesis of a productive relationship?The Englishman who would serve only his own desires 
and uses Ireland as a raw material rather than a partner, much as he does Olivia. This character is 
Col. Walters?s first wife, whom he left in France almost immediately after marrying her and 
getting her pregnant. When she is finally able to reunite with him, he takes her to his estate in 
Ireland and forces her to live in the attic concealing her existence in his life. In this case, the 
unrestrained feeling, ambition that was not tempered sufficiently by reason, destroys and 
destabilizes society rather than creating a community of refined citizens. A character such as 
Colonel Walters makes an argument against sensibility as a controlling paradigm for a socio-
political system and characterizes Englishmen as self-serving rather than humanist. Interestingly, 
Lady Barton?s brother, Sir George, who remains in England, is a model of sentimental 
benevolence. 
Stephen Cox considers such arguments about this concept and claims that ?the salient 
characteristics of sensibility employed as argument? where particularly effective as ?political 
argument.?283 Building on the concepts of Jean Hagstrum and Brissendem, he probes more 
deeply into the ideological functioning of sensibility ?as a tool of intellectual mastery and 
                                                 
283 Stephen Cox, ?Sensibility as Argument? in Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from 
the Augustans to the Romantics: Essays in Honor of Jean H. Hagstrum ed. By Syndy McMillen Conger (Cranbury, 
NJ: Associated University Press, 1990) 63. 
118 
 
manipulation?: He expands on their definitions and claims that ?the argument of sensibility 
might be very loosely defined as persuasive discourse that tends to equate intellectual authority 
with the power to display or elicit emotional susceptibility.? Such a definition begins to uncover 
the political ramifications that are inherent in the use of sensibility as a controlling paradigm.  In 
his construction, power is determined by a subject?s ability to present feeling to the public. 
Power structures, then, are created and maintained through regulative forces that encourage the 
?correct? feeling and discourage those feelings that disrupt those power structures. The 
regulative force most prominently displayed in the sentimental novel is the power of virtue. And 
this is where some of the most strenuous arguments against sensibility arise.  Cox begins his 
analysis with Mary Wollstonecraft?s critique of sensibility?that it was a hegemonic tool 
employed to secure ?traditional social structures.? Sensibility, characterized by the refined and 
delicate feeling of the aristocrat, perpetuated a feudal-like society based on moral sense. The 
argument of sensibility, the socio-political imperative to achieve this ideal sentimentality, was 
?an artificial rhetoric? that reinscribed the status quo of gender conventions. This critique, 
especially when it was leveled at women writers, challenged any proto-feminist interpretations of 
the sentimental novel and was critiqued itself by twentieth-century feminist scholars. As an 
idealized representation of woman, the sentimental heroine was either rewarded for her blind 
devotion to the preservation of her virtue or tragically punished for her sacrifice of that virtue. 
Thus, Wollstonecraft?s critique is that sensibility confirmed rather than challenged the 
conventions of gender. 
But it is in this argument against sensibility that Cox finds a ?contrary thesis,? one that 
uncovers the ambiguity and paradox of reasonable feelings. ?Writers who try to argue against 
sensibility,? he writes, ?find the charms of their adversary impossible to withstand, but writers 
119 
 
who wish to exploit sensibility, find themselves struggling to master the oddly recalcitrant 
concept.? The charm of sensibility was its adaptability ?to many kinds of arguments,? but it was 
also ?deviously resistant to argument.?284 The ambiguity of the individual experience and its 
translation into social conformity was ?capable of revealing the inadequacies of the rhetorical 
formulations that were based on it.?285  In essence, sensibility was both a producer of 
conformities and a disrupting force of those conformities. As a disruptive force, sensibility 
relegated reason to a subservient position and feeling became the master producer of knowledge. 
But, as Virtue was the controlling measure of a woman?s reputation, it left little room for a 
public voice. However, in an argument against the preeminence of virtue as the measure of a 
woman, the importance of virtue remains apparent; having it ensures a public voice. A virtuous 
woman can bear Nation. Cox describes a concept which cannot be mastered at the same time that 
it promises mastery. But its promise of intellectual authority based on individual experience is 
alluring for those who wish to disrupt traditional power structures founded on the certainty of 
reason. A parliament searching for an identity that balances individuality with kingdom wishes to 
disrupt the traditional power structures while preserving the very liberties those structures 
ensure.  
 Like Brissendem, Cox must confront what he calls the ?doubleness in political 
rhetoric.?286 As a persuasive discourse, sensibility had two functions: ?to provide education in 
the type of consciousness that is, or should be, socially ?required? and to encourage the 
development of an ideally individual self-consciousness.? In the second function, sensibility is an 
individual experience that arose from spontaneous self-consciousness. The sentimental 
individual developed a more sensitive subjectivity through which to experience the world, 
                                                 
284 Ibid., 63. 
285 Ibid., 64. 
286 Ibid., 69. 
120 
 
consequently making the community a more humane society. However, there is the possibility 
that unrestrained feeling could to lawlessness such as the deviousness of Colonel Walters. This 
posed a threat to sensibility?s other function, to form the right self-consciousness ?among all 
possible varieties of consciousness.?287 It is the same contradiction that Brissendem hints at?
what must be at once unique and common. Cox argues that sensibility, while it was ?tragically 
and comically flawed? as a moral and political argument, it was ?a source of 
education?imputing valu e and interest to the individual selves that participate in moral and 
political systems.? As formal political policy, the argument of sensibility could be both powerful 
and futile. But, as a way of thinking, it provided the individual a framework for understanding 
how a part can fit (or not fit) into a whole. 
Cox?s definition makes a more explicit connection between power and feeling than 
scholars like Brissendem. Specifically in this association, power is assumed with the appearance 
of sensibility and that is what confers subjectivity. Sir William is denied intellectual authority 
because he cannot display the appropriate emotional susceptibility. Griffith describes him as 
having a ?roughness in his manner? with ?contempt for the understandings of women? which is 
?proof of [his] superiority.?288 In contrast, Lord Lucan is ?elegant?, and capable of emotional 
susceptibility as evidenced by his suffering for his love for Lady Barton. Sir William is left with 
no heir and no wife, and thus no future. As a land-holding aristocrat of Irish birth, he represents 
the failure of reason without passion. Without the individual self-awareness that the experience 
of sensibility imparts, his status becomes defunct. 
Like the political ?doubleness? that Cox finds in the argument of sensibility, Patricia 
Meyer Spacks analyzes a similar idea in a socio-literary context, and she too links intellectual 
                                                 
287 Ibid., 72, 
288 Griffith, 1:33-34. 
121 
 
authority to the appearance of sensibility. The doubleness she discusses is ?the problem of 
concealment versus display and the related matter of isolation versus community.? Since 
sensibility is a ?peculiarly audience-oriented? practice, its performance is ?an aspect of private 
life presented for public consumption.?289 It is ?the fundamental paradox of human openness? 
because its claim to transparency is mitigated by its ability to conceal through performance.  
While emotional susceptibility seems to present sincere, uncontrived emotion, that performance 
could also work to conceal much stronger and potentially more dangerous feelings, like 
substituting the pain of a loss for the guilt of a deed. Sensibility is, above all, an ?ambiguous 
practice.? Spacks illustrates how ?the novel of sensibility lends itself particularly well to the 
evocation of uneasiness and anxiety.? Because of the appeal of the display, readers are pulled in 
by the vicarious experience. But even in the watching, readers are moved to anxiety as the 
fictional situations unconsciously connect with their lives. Therefore, readers must be constantly 
vigilant about exercising restraint lest they lose control like the characters; this is the didactic 
force of sensibility. However, the experience of this anxiety is also telling. As Griffith narrates 
the decline of Lady Barton, the reader is forced to follow her tragic story to its inevitable end?
for she has to die in order to prove her virtue?and feel the uneasiness of the experience, what 
Wollstonecraft would call reconfirming traditional practices. Lady Barton can never be fully 
honest with Sir William or with Lord Lucan because, as Spacks argues, ?a woman demonstrates 
her virtuous femininity partly by her possession of delicate sensibility, yet the same system of 
conventions that dictates tender feelings demand also their judicious concealment.?290 Thus, 
Lady Barton as a sentimental woman must display and hide feeling in a complex dance that 
                                                 
289 Patricia Meyer Spacks, ?Ambiguous Practices? in Eighteenth-Century Genre and Culture: Serious Reflections on 
Occasional Forms: Essays in Honor of J. Paul Hunter ed. Dennis Todd and Cynthia Wall, (Newark, DE: University 
of Delaware Press, 2001), 151, 163. 
290 Ibid., 157 
122 
 
negotiates appearance and expectation. But the ability to conceal is also what makes her so 
dangerous. 
Within Spacks? methodology, one that concerns the literary value of the ambiguity of 
sensibility, it is also possible to construct an equally political argument. For example, consider 
the setting of Griffith?s novel?Ireland. Serving as a backdrop to the melodramatic events of LB, 
it is both knowable and unknowable for both the English and the Anglo-Irish. It is known 
because the two cultures had been linked since the twelfth-century Norman Conquest, and the 
Anglo-Irish had identified more closely with English culture than with the native Irish through 
much of that time. But Ireland is equally unknowable partly because the vast majority of the Irish 
were Gaelic-speaking Catholics and partly because the Anglo-Irish were beginning to delve into 
the history of these people, attempting to make it knowable. The ambiguity of sensibility, as 
Spacks articulates, is its ?uncontrollability? and the cause of anxiety. The hiding is necessary in 
order to maintain order. It was required to downplay differences between cultures. However, 
there is a paradox here in that the attempt to claim a loyal English ideology was at odds with this 
attempt to revise history. But sanctioning concealment means ceding control of that which is 
concealed, thus creating a constant source of anxiety. Consequently, political arguments that are 
founded on a concept as unknowable as a hybrid culture are profoundly more dangerous than 
those founded on reason because in its expression as spontaneous and individual, feeling is 
fundamentally uncontrollable.  
Truth and Invented Truth 
The anxiety over the uncontrollability is what places Lady Barton in a liminal space, one 
in which she is barred from aggregation because she cannot prove her conformity, or more 
accurately, is not allowed to prove her innocence. Lady Barton represents a truly liminal figure, 
123 
 
one that resonates with the conflict within sensibility and within a hybrid nation. She is the most 
authentic character because she is the most vulnerable. The tragedy of her life lays bare the 
concealment that negotiations of nationness attempt to protect. Lady Barton is the truth of the 
story. 
Griffith makes a claim to authenticity much like Mary Davys and Laetitia Pilkington. In 
her preface, she claims to ?have had a good deal of acquaintance with the world, and have 
known many private memoirs, and particular circumstances in life, which has afforded me an 
opportunity of supplying both my characters and situations from the living drama, instead of 
borrowing them from the mimic scene.?291 By claiming an authentic source for her story through 
an ?acquaintance with the world? and differentiating her text ?from the mimic scene,? she places 
and validates herself and her text, literally and authentically, in the socio-political environment 
out of which her text comes. Thus, though her story is fictional, it is also true. Thus Griffith 
demonstrates that her novel is an indispensable artifact of her culture and that its value is in the 
truth of the story rather than the entertaining character. 
While Griffith claims authenticity for her text, the authenticity of the Anglo-Irish is in 
question. Specifically, one must consider the need for a linear history in the imagined community 
of hybrid Nation. As the constitutional debates grew more contentious, it became necessary to 
rediscover a past in an effort to create a limited and sovereign place for Nation. Lesa N? 
Mhunghaile, in her study of Anglo-Irish antiquarianism in Ireland in the eighteenth century, 
discusses the fascination on the part of the Anglo-Irish elite to recover/appropriate an Ancient 
Gaelic past. From 1760 onward, there was ?a widening interest in Ireland?s past.?292 While the 
                                                 
291 Ibid., x. 
292 Lesa N? Mhunghaile, ?Anglo-Irish Antiquarianism and The Transformation of Irish Identity, 1750-1800? in 
Anglo-Irish Identities, 1571-1845, ed. David A. Valone and Jill Marie Bradbury (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell 
University Press, 2008) 182. 
124 
 
constitutional debates over the status?colony or kingdom?of Ireland in the Kingdom of Great 
Britain were taking place in Dublin Castle, the library had a coexistent movement that sought to 
connect/reconnect the Anglo-Irish with a history before the Norman conquest.  Such movements 
moved the question of an Anglo-Irish identity beyond Parliament and popular protest and into a 
cultural context that linked the law with literature and myth. As these Antiquarians 
conceptualized themselves connected to a noble Gaelic past?for it was always a noble one 
disconnected from what might be termed the ?poor Irish??they employed significant literary 
license. It was, in N? Mhunghaile words, an ?invented tradition? built upon the work of scholars 
like Seathr?n C?itinn?Geoffrey Keating to the English.293 During this period, antiquarians 
looked to Gaelic scribes and scholars for content and context in writing their history. This 
movement worked alongside the parliament at College Green to legitimize a separate identity 
that existed within a cohesive nation. The antiquarian movement illustrates the profoundly 
conflicted nature of being Anglo-Irish. Groups like the Anglo-Irish patriots in Longley?s 
argument worked diligently to maintain a close relationship with the English government, to 
carve out an identity within the British identity, while at the same time scholars were reinventing 
a past that included a protracted Irish-English conflict or even a pre-English-settlement Ireland. 
What was true was in negotiation. 
But Griffith had a perspective on this truth. She writes of this movement as her heroine 
experiences it in her trip to Dublin. Lady Barton relates to her sister in Letter VII her portrayal of 
the ?better sort of men and women? that she meets in the city. In her opinion, these Anglo-Irish 
have much in common with the French, but she recounts their prevailing self-conceptualization 
as descendant from ?Milesius, a Spaniard, who brought over a colony of his countrymen to 
                                                 
293 Ibid., 184. 
125 
 
people the island.?294 The Milesian myth, as C?itinn argued, held that the ?ancient Gaelic 
civilization had been highly sophisticated and at the forefront in Europe in scholarship and the 
arts, but was destroyed by the Norman invasion.?295 A cultural model such as this worked to 
counter what was becoming a detrimental stereotype. N? Mhunghaile writes that 
As the Anglo-Irish community became increasingly aware that the term 
?barbarous Irish,? once reserved for the Gaelic Irish only, now also referred to 
them, it became imperative to challenge this slur. Strategies employed by writers 
to contest this negative image included constructing an alternative identity by 
rewriting their history and subverting the identity imposed by England.296 
In the display of Gaelic culture, it was as necessary to hide or obscure any connection to the 
?barbarous Irish? as it was to portray similarities with the English. But Griffith?s Lady Barton 
challenges these attempts at concealment by providing a carefully worded description of the 
perceptions that worked to create a truth: ?But I should think, from their manners, as I hinted at 
before, that they were originally derived rather from the French?they seem not to have any of 
the Spanish character among them.?297 By denying the Milesian myth, she questions the 
authenticity of the appropriation of a Gaelic past, echoing her earlier critique of Colonel Walters 
and his claim to a position within the Irish government. She substitutes a potentially damaging 
comparison to French culture, especially in the wake of the Seven Years War. Lady Barton?s 
critique of the antiquarian movement challenges the truth of the reinvented past and in doing so, 
Griffith exposes the concealment that is in many ways necessary to imagining an Anglo-Irish 
nation. She offers her truth as an alternative, one that illustrates how the liminal figure disrupts 
                                                 
294 Griffith, 1:54 
295 Mhunghaile., 182. 
296 Ibid., 184. 
297 Griffith, 1:54. 
126 
 
the construction of Nation and how Nation addresses that disruption. If Lady Barton is destroyed 
by the conflict inherent in sensibility, then Griffith argues that the Anglo-Irish are equally 
vulnerable. 
Heteroglossic Sensibility  
The History of Lady Barton is a microcosm of Anglo-Irish culture in mid-eighteenth-
century Great Britain. Griffith explores the ideological voice of the ?precisely defined concepts? 
that worked to understand ?the whole question of what it meant to be a human being living in the 
society of his fellows.? The epigrams to this chapter illustrate the function of the sentimental 
novel, to explore the profound contradictions between individual and social experience. The 
Anglo-Irish experience during this turbulent period of growing unrest within the Irish parliament 
throws such contradictions into relief. As Lady Barton, Sir William, Colonel Walters, and even 
Ireland function in this sentimental novel, Elizabeth Griffith queries the relationship between 
England and Ireland. She illustrates a profoundly complicated relationship as she seems to 
identify with and feel distanced from Ireland. The demise of the heroine suggests the 
incompatibility between the individual consciousness and the social necessity of sensibility. As 
Lady Barton becomes more aware of her place, as the wife of Sir William and as a resident of 
Ireland, she becomes more conflicted. And Colonel Walters, as a privileged English man, 
functions as the figure of exploitation while Sir George, who remains in England, functions as a 
figure of benevolent human compassion. Such irreconcilabilities create a dynamic novel imbued 
with the heteroglossic discourse of Nation and a dialogue that works toward understanding how a 
nation can be a nation within another nation?how nationalities can be both a part of while at the 
same time independent from each other. More importantly, LB shows an imagined community 
that is disrupted by its liminality, working toward aggregation but barred from it by internal and 
127 
 
external forces. The deduction, then, is that if Lady Barton is defeated through her liminality, 
what future lay ahead for the Anglo-Irish.
128 
 
Chapter Four: 
Staying the ?rude axe?: Mary Tighe?s Romantic Nationalism and the Anglo-Irish Sonnet 
 
It was possible to believe, just for a brief period, that improvement, both 
on the physical and spiritual planes could be made real, and that humanity 
was about to be transformed.298 
 
The sonnet is, of course, one of the four major forms at the end of the 
century to which women made major contributions, especially as they 
became distinctively English.299 
 
Though lost to me, here still may Taste delight   
To dwell, nor the rude axe the trembling Dryads fright!  
?On Leaving Killarney. August 5, 1800?300 
 
 Duncan Wu?s description of the romantic spirit embodies the hopefulness that fueled the 
ideologies of revolution in the late eighteenth century. The emancipatory function of romantic 
nationalism and the Sonnet Revival brings the liminality of gender and Nation into sharp focus. 
Though Victor Turner?s explanation of the ritual process ends with aggregation, the sonnets of 
Mary Tighe illustrate how the Anglo-Irish Nation sought to move out of the liminal stage, 
bolstered by the hope of romanticism, but were not able effectively to construct an identity 
within the British Empire. There was, ultimately, no space for aggregation.
                                                 
298 Duncan Wu, introduction to Romanticism: an anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2000) xxxv. 
299 Paula Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre, 
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 
300 Mary Tighe, The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe, ed Harritet Kramer Linkin, (Lexington: 
University Press of Kentucky, 2005) 46. 
129 
 
The three previous chapters have explored how the writers both conformed to and 
disrupted the function of tradition. During the late-eighteenth-century Sonnet Revival, women 
emancipated themselves from the traditions of poetic composition just as the Society of United 
Irishmen sought to emancipate themselves from the ambiguous space that the Anglo-Irish Nation 
had dwelt in, between kingdom and colony. It seems natural that I should end this study 
considering the very English sonnet as it develops through the pen of an Anglo-Irish woman 
writer in the Age of Revolution. There is, ironically, no more appropriate way to study the 
monumental paradigm shifts of eighteenth-century Great Britain and Europe and the shift from 
Enlightenment to Romantic philosophy than the singular, short, interior sonnet. Writing a sonnet 
is a socially symbolic act that is imbued with centuries of literary tradition, Englishness, and 
authenticity.  To compose a sonnet invokes some of the great fathers of English literature such as 
Shakespeare and Milton. The Sonnet Revival of the late eighteenth century redefined this form 
and negotiated its use in ways that not only elevated the traditional conventions, but also 
challenged those same conventions with experimentation. The sonnet provided a medium 
through which women poets could gain ?canonical inclusion by deferment to those established 
literary giants.?301 But, in Homi Bhabha?s The Location of Culture, he claims that ?the 
recognition that tradition bestows is a partial form of identification? while at the same time 
?restaging the past? in order to present ?other, incommensurable cultural temporalities in the 
invention of tradition.?302 The sonnet, then, was a medium to both reaffirm and disrupt not only 
the ideology of literary conventions, but ideas of Nation as well. No choice is ever free from 
social, political, or economic considerations, but Mary Tighe?s choice of the sonnet seems 
particularly pointed and appropriate given the instability of the political relationship between 
                                                 
301 Daniel Robinson, ?Reviving the Sonnet:  Women Romantic Poets and the Sonnet Claim? European Romantic 
Review 6, no. 1 (1995): 98-127. 110. 
302 Homi Bhabha, introduction to The Location of Culture. 1994,( reprint, New York: Routledge, 2006) 3. 
130 
 
Ireland and England, and the in-between space of the Anglo-Irish during the Age of Revolution. 
The definitions of liberty, democracy, rights, and responsibilities were being renegotiated 
frequently.  This moment of instability, however, was important because it opened up the 
opportunity for female poets to renegotiate the ideologies of gender and authorship and for an 
Anglo-Irish writer to renegotiate the ideologies of nationality. 
The sonnet is, by design, an intimate monologue representing the interior feeling of the 
speaker, and in Tighe?s compositions, she often takes the role of speaker. They are tableau 
moments, a singular view of the world framed in a lyrical rhythm that blends Nature, feeling, and 
oftentimes, Ireland. The final couplet of ?On Leaving Killarney, August 5, 1800? presents such a 
moment; it is the author?s last look at the ?sweet scenes? that ?wrapped my charmed soul in 
peace profound!?303 Tighe characterizes Killarney as endowed with ?Taste,? which is a more 
politically-influenced comment if one considers David Hume?s ?Of the Standard of Taste? 
published in 1757, as the genre of sensibility was emerging. He concludes that unanimity is 
improbable in developing a catalogue of Taste, yet Hume asserts that ?though men of delicate 
taste be rare, they are easily to be distinguished in society, by the soundness of their 
understanding and the superiority of their faculties above the rest of mankind.?304 This claim that 
?Taste? resides in Killarney, and by extension Ireland, places her in the rarefied group of 
Hume?s. To claim that this faculty will ?delight? suggests there is some characteristic to this 
countryside that encourages the understanding and superiority that Hume describes. Tighe is 
likely traveling back to Dublin, and this journey endows the final line with a political palimpsest 
that is, I argue, only thinly veiled. The violence of the ?rude axe? against the ?trembling Dryads? 
echoes quite closely the rural rebellions that stemmed from the United Irish movement. Thus, the 
                                                 
303 Tighe, 46. 
304 David Hume, ?Of the Standard of Taste? in The Portable Enlightenment Reader ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: 
Penguin Books, 1995) 328. 
131 
 
understanding and superiority that endows ?men of delicate taste? are threatened by the patriotic 
fervor that drives such rebellions. This sonnet was composed four days after the Act of Union 
was passed in the Irish parliament. This act disbanded the Irish parliament and stipulated that 
only Anglicans could vote in this new union, effectively placing control of the country with the 
Protestant Ascendancy and excluding both Catholics and Dissenters. Ireland was subsumed into 
Great Britain, but what would become the Home Rule movement of the nineteenth century was 
beginning. Tighe envisions a nation of refined sensibility being ruptured by violence, and 
consequently disappearing. The political unconscious of Tighe?s sonnet mourns the passing. 
Nation as a concept had evolved tremendously over the course of the eighteenth century. 
When Mary Davys was traveling across southern Great Britain, Nation was still dictated by 
religion. Nearly one hundred years later, cultural nationalism had subsumed religion, and 
romantic nationalist movements incited the revolutions of the later decades. The romantic Nation 
was based on a coherent, definable culture through which the boundaries of sovereignty could be 
established. The romantic?s relationship with Nation was much like the speaker of the sonnet to 
the love object, inspiring ?profoundly self-sacrificing love.?305 And this love was displayed 
through the ?cultural products of nationalism?poetry, prose, fiction, music, plastic arts.? Since 
it was through culture instead of political sovereignty that Nation was defined, romantic 
nationalism was ?the nationalism of people who do not enjoy independence.?306 The imagined 
community is based on the shared culture of its ?citizens? and in this way the idea of Nation is 
sharpened. As one of the salient characteristics of this phase of nationalism was the break from 
traditions, the inherent danger to the liminal nation was a permanent transitional state. Such 
                                                 
305 Bendedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism., rev. ed. 
(London: Verso, 2006), 141. 
306 Thomas Nipperdey, ?In Search of Identity:  Romantic Nationalism, Its Intellectual, Political, and Social 
Background? in Romantic Nationalism in Europe, ed. J.C. Eade, (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 
1983), 5. 
132 
 
emancipation from the power of tradition created ?the uncertainty and homelessness of the 
individual, disintegration and an accompanying need for new integration.?307 The Society of the 
United Irishmen initially sought this new integration into the British Empire, but as the radical 
elements of the reformers became revolutionaries, integration became impossible. The solution 
for the British Parliament was subordination. 
Given the influence of the Society of United Irishmen on contemporary political 
propaganda, it is surprising that no scholar has explored Tighe?s sonnets in the context of this 
defining period in the history of Ireland and England. The political unconscious that lives in 
lyrical compositions like ?On Leaving Killarney, August 5, 1800? is, I argue, greatly influenced 
by the turbulent 1790s and the republican philosophy and practice of the Society of United 
Irishmen. Nancy J. Curtin examined the political history of this chaotic period as it developed in 
Ulster and Dublin and illuminated the complex political and social climate that led to the 
uprising of 1798 and the subsequent defeat of the United Irishmen?s rebellion in 1803 with the 
failure of Emmett?s Rebellion.308  The focus of Curtin?s historical study is the philosophy of the 
Society of the United Irishmen, the founding ideology of which represented exactly what its title 
implied?a unification of the men of Ireland, spanning multiple political, social, religious, and 
economic backgrounds.  In contrast to ?the socio-political basis of the ascendancy?s dominance? 
which was founded on ?the exclusion of Catholics and, to a lesser extent, Presbyterians? and 
?defined by religion and property,? the United Irish practiced ?a politics of inclusion.?309 It is in 
this philosophy, I argue, that the divisions in the term Anglo-Irish become clearer, and, more 
importantly, demonstrate the evolving ideas of Nation in Ireland. An Irish nation was developing 
                                                 
307 Ibid., 6. 
308 Nancy J. Curtin, The United Irishmen:  Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin, 1791-1798, (Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1994). 
309 Ibid., 6-7. 
133 
 
out of the Anglo-Irish culture by delineating its imagined community, which included Catholics, 
from the Protestant ascendancy. Anglo-Ireland was becoming Ireland. The philosophy sought to 
limit itself by this delineation while also establishing sovereignty from Great Britain.   Yet, the 
Society of United Irishmen was not homogenous. According to Curtin, ?the union of Catholic 
and Dissenter which gave rise to the United Irish movement in the 1790s was based on a 
common hatred of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy.?310 Yet, the motivations for this feeling were 
very different: ?The Catholic peasant felt such dominance most immediately through the 
landlord whom he regarded as a member of an alien and conquering race. The middle-class 
Dissenter resented the institutions which upheld a landed elite.?311  As Curtin describes: 
To the middle-class radical, the ascendancy represented illiberal government, the 
exercise of unmerited privileges, and a collection of renegade Irishmen, but 
Irishmen nevertheless, who subordinated the interests of their country to the 
rewards offered by them to English ministers.  To the rural Catholic poor and 
especially to the secret societies known as the Defenders, the ascendancy simply 
represented the descendants of conquerors and confiscators.312   
Both cultural groups considered themselves unjustly subordinated to the British government, and 
both saw the ascendancy as tools of that government. Yet, the disparate histories of those 
communities, each imagined differently, would inevitably prohibit a genuine and productive 
collaboration. They were fighting for different reasons and from different cultural positions.  
Though the 1798 rebellion did not bring about independence from Great Britain, the event 
provided later Irish nationalists with a mythic moment of Irish history, one that would inspire 
radicals for more than a century. 
                                                 
310 Ibid., 284. 
311 Ibid., 284. 
312 Ibid., 10. 
134 
 
The popular politicization that characterized this society made it possible to extend the 
imagined community beyond the Pale, the center of politics and culture in Ireland. Curtin argues 
that ?popular politicization of the late eighteenth century was precisely about citizenship.?313 
And citizenship to the United Irish was not dictated by property, but by shared culture?a 
romantic nationalism. And this communal movement found its strength in ?literary and symbolic 
expressions.?314  
(The United Irishmen) possessed a genius for propaganda evidenced not only in 
their wide-ranging literary productions, but also?the calculated use of the 
symbols and rituals of their mobilization?The United Irishmen served to define 
an alternative political culture designed to supplant traditional mentalities. It is an 
exercise in political self-definition rather than as a reflection of political 
culture.315  
Employing the written word, the primary means of defining Nation according to Benedict 
Anderson, meant that this self-definition was made available to a much greater community than 
previously considered. The policy of inclusion which ?reached across class barriers? would also 
have resonated with another historically excluded group, the women of Anglo-Ireland, an idea 
evidenced by Tighe?s poetry.316  
Upon this terrain of national conflict, Tighe also had to negotiate the limits of gender and 
authorship that dictated her social environment.  While women were participating in 
unprecedented numbers in the literary market, they were subject to different standards than their 
male counterparts; however, ?the sonnet was the ground on which male and female Romantic 
                                                 
313 Ibid., 6. 
314 Ibid., 8. 
315 Ibid., 7-8. 
316 Ibid .,7. 
135 
 
poets met at the turn of the eighteenth century.?317 To take on the mantle of writer, especially of 
sonnets, Tighe claimed an identity at odds with the expectations of both her gender and her class. 
The Sonnet Revival, however, challenged such ideologies: 
This correlation between the revival of the sonnet and the increased participation 
of women in the literary world also suggests that the sonnet is a form that women 
writers deliberately claimed in order to legitimize themselves as poets. The sonnet 
offered them a means of expressing themselves within an established literary 
tradition that had largely been defined by men.318 
 They were, in fact, rewriting literary tradition.  
Tighe?s sonnets represent in particular the larger ideological shifts in the literary, social, 
and political environment during the 1790s as they unfolded between Ireland and Great Britain. 
The subsequent devaluation of her work in the next century illustrates how the negotiations of 
nationness often functioned to exclude the marginalized voices in attempts to create the imagined 
community. By exploring Tighe?s poetry in its historical moment, one can understand how the 
Anglo-Irish nation, the imagined community, was evolving into an Irish imagined community. 
Ultimately, the literature of Mary Tighe is a contact zone between literature and nationalism, 
gender and writing, Anglo and Irish wherein we can unpack the history of her poetry, but also 
the history of Anglo-Irish writing. 
Lived Experience in a Liminal Space 
Mary Tighe was born into a wealthy Anglo-Irish family in Dublin on October 9, 1772.  
Her father, Reverend William Blachford, was both a clergyman and a librarian for the prestigious 
Marsh?s Library in St. Patrick?s Cathedral, one of the first public libraries in Ireland.  Theodosia 
                                                 
317 Robinson, 99. 
318 Ibid., 99. 
136 
 
Tighe, her mother, was an activist in the Methodist movement in Dublin and an ardent believer 
in a liberal education for her daughter.  Since her father died in her first year, the young Mary 
was raised only by her mother, who never remarried. Theodosia Blachford provided an 
impressive study rotation for her daughter that included foreign languages, literature, and even 
the composition of her original poetry.  Thus, the young poet?s first role model was a single 
woman who offered a nurturing and supportive home that encouraged education and writing. In 
the first publication of Tighe?s Psyche, she prefaces the text with a sonnet, ?Addressed to My 
Mother,? wherein she describes the supportive environment that encouraged her ?first wild 
song.?319 It was her mother?s ?tender smile,? ?prompt attention,? and ?eloquence of tenderness? 
that provided Tighe with the grace that she hopes the epic possesses. The sonnet itself is an 
Italian composition beginning with two quartets, abbaabba and ending with two tercets; 
however, each tercet has its own rhyme scheme, following a cdc efe pattern. She establishes her 
knowledge of, but independence from the conventions of the sonnet form. More significantly, 
Tighe takes the traditional role of the speaker, the adoring lover. She appends six lines from 
Ludovicio Ariosto, a late fifteenth-century writer, which describes a man who seeks to please the 
unattainable object of his affection, and if he succeeds, it will make him ?the sole ruler in this 
state.?320 This construction suggests that Tighe?s mother has granted her an independent 
subjectivity with which to compose her poetry. Theodosia Blachford is not only a muse, but also 
a liberator. The uncommon experience of her childhood allowed the opportunity for Tighe to 
explore alternative modes of self-awareness than those traditionally available to women in her 
position. Chastity and devotion were important for a woman active in a religious movement as 
Tighe?s mother was and could in many ways help excuse her ambition and a need to live outside 
                                                 
319 Tighe, 55. 
320 Ibid., 296. 
137 
 
the bounds of traditional female roles. Mrs. Blachford seemed to value all of those things in the 
young Tighe and encouraged her bright daughter to continue her poetic aspirations. 
Tighe had begun formally composing poetry by 1789 and would continue writing until 
1809, less than a year before her death, which likely resulted from an extended battle with 
tuberculosis. She received considerable acclaim for her work during these years and for the 
posthumous publication of Psyche. However, the tragic image of a poetess passing away at the 
pinnacle of her poetic achievement dominated representations of Tighe and her work for more 
than a century. Yet, there is much more to her life than the manner of her death. This writer?s 
lived experience is a study in the intersection of gender and authorship at a time when such 
contact zones were undergoing extensive refashioning, and it is first necessary to understand 
where she came from, how she wrote and published, and what scholars have chosen to include 
and exclude from her lived experience to understand how the complexities of nationality at the 
end of the eighteenth century have been simplified to ?Irish? or ignored altogether.  
After John Keats published ?To Some Ladies? in 1815, in which he praised the work of 
Tighe, interpretations of her poetry had been consistently associated with his work, usually to her 
disadvantage. As Laetitia Pilkington?s text served as the primary source for biographical 
information on Jonathan Swift rather than its own achievement, Tighe has been evaluated in 
reference to Keats and his varying opinion of her work; she was only one component of the 
poetic imagination of Keats. This association has resulted in two significant exclusions from the 
lived experience of Tighe. First, her own work was devalued through the comparison to Keats 
until the latter half of the twentieth century. For example, Earle Vonard Weller claims that ?the 
Irish poetess taught him the Celtic felicity of phrase but she was also responsible to a great extent 
138 
 
for the languor and sentimentalism that mar his finest work.?321 And his description of Tighe 
illustrates yet another exclusion from her life. The uninterrogated comparison with Keats omits a 
very important difference between them; Keats was English, and Tighe was Anglo-Irish. Weller 
managed to reduce Tighe to a singular nationality with an innocuous ?Irish? though such a label 
was in fact exceedingly complex. It is likely that he could have used works like Elizabeth 
Blackburne?s 1877 Illustrious Irishwomen as evidence of this; however, Tighe appears far more 
frequently in nineteenth-century anthologies of British writing such as George Bethune?s 1848 
British Female Poets and Jane Williams?s 1861 Literary Women of England.322  Even in the 
feminist recovery movement of the late twentieth century, this distinction was still overlooked. 
From that period, however, the first exclusion of Tighe?as a muse for Keats?was addressed in 
works such as Marlon Ross?s The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of 
Women?s Poetry and Greg Kucich?s ?Gender Crossings: Keats and Tighe.?323 Ross explores the 
limitations placed on Tighe by the expectations of gender and authorship, but uses Tighe?s poetic 
achievements as a way of illustrating Keats?s struggle with ?the discovery of poetry as a fit 
medium for giving voice to (making public, communal, socially valued) the normally private 
ephemeral experience of women.?324 Kucich takes a similar approach that considers the 
ambiguity of gender in Keats?s work as evidence by his use/exploitation of Psyche. Certainly, 
works such as these give cultural value to Tighe?s work, but she is still inextricably tied to Keats 
                                                 
321 Earle Vonard Weller, introduction to Keats and Mary Tighe: The Poems of Mary Tighe with Parallel Passage 
from the Work of John Keats, 1928 , (reprint, New York: Kraus, 1966) xvi. 
322 Elizabeth Owens Blackburne, Illustrious Irishwomen. Being Memoirs of Some of the Most Noted Irishwomen 
from the Earliest Ages to the Present Century. 2 vols. (London: Tinsley, 1877). George W. Bethune, The British 
Female Poets: with Biographical and Critical Notices, (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1848). Jane 
Williams,The Literary Women of England, (London: Saunders, 1861). 
323 Marlon B. Ross, The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women?s Poetry, (New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1989). Greg Kucich, ?Gender Crossings: Keats and Tighe,? Keats-Shelley Journal  44 
(1995): 25-39. 
324 Ross, 157. 
139 
 
in these analyses and excluded from her own historical moment with the exception of gender 
transgressing. 
It was not until the end of the twentieth century that critical works on Tighe constructed 
her as an innovative figure of early Romanticism. Studies in women poets and romanticism such 
as The Contours of Masculine Desire and the anthology A Century of Sonnets generated a 2005 
edition of her collected works that was edited by Harriet Kramer Linkin.325 My analysis builds 
on this recent work and explores a selection of sonnets from the collected works in a national 
context and not in relationship to male authors, but in relationship to Anglo-Irish culture as it 
shifted into the patriotism like that found in the Home Rule movement of the nineteenth century. 
Mary Tighe was Anglo-Irish, not Irish, but this perspective has yet to be addressed in terms of 
her work. These analyses do not incorporate the complexities of the hybrid nationality that 
characterized the Anglo-Irish over the course of the eighteenth century. The Sonnet Revival was 
a period wherein women writers were claiming a culturally significant identity and thus, this 
poetic form offered them an avenue out of the liminal identity between gender and author and 
into aggregation where they conformed to the standards of social behavior after having 
significantly disrupted and reformed them. But the liminality of the Anglo-Irish encountered a 
quite different experience. The socio-political clashes of ideologies worked, in fact, to prevent an 
aggregation of identity within the imagined community. It is this current that makes Tighe?s 
poetry so significant in understanding how, at the end of the eighteenth century, an Anglo-Irish 
woman writer experiences her nationality in the Age of Revolution. Looking at the disintegration 
of the United Irishmen?s movement and Tighe?s sonnets shows the liminal nation that attempts 
the final stages of the negotiations of nationness, but fails. However, from this failure would 
                                                 
325 Paula Feldman and Daniel Robinson eds., A Century of Sonnets:  The Romantic Era Revival 1750-1850, (Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1999). 
140 
 
come the nationalistic fervor of nineteenth-century Ireland and ultimately independence from 
Great Britain. The ideology that fueled the negotiations of the eighteenth century helped 
establish the imagined community of Ireland. 
The Lyrical Political Consciousness 
The ideology of Nation emerges out of Tighe?s poetry in a lyrical representation of 
Ireland. The island where ?Taste delight[s]/To dwell? is characterized as fading, as passing. But 
the politics of her poetry is often more pronounced than that of ?On Leaving Killarney, August 5, 
1800.? As the Anglo-Irish proceed through the stages of nation-making, becoming limited and 
sovereign, Tighe takes a far more explicit political position in some of her poetry than any of the 
other authors that I have discussed thus far. Because of this engagement, the political 
unconscious in Tighe?s poems illustrates a liminal culture attempting to progress into 
aggregation, to realize the imagination. By the time of the publication of Psyche, she had 
developed a firm sense of identity as evidenced by the sonnet ?Addressed to My Mother? where 
she co-opted the male role of adoring lover and transformed it into an empowering subjectivity 
engendered by the maternal ideal. Clearly, Tighe had a defined sense of self and imagines her 
self as a part of the cultural community. 
My analysis focuses primarily on the sonnets that Tighe wrote over the course of her 
twenty-year writing life. However, there are two longer poems that deserve critical attention not 
only because they are composed of lyrical, well-crafted verse, but also because they establish 
Tighe?s literary participation in the conflicted space of Anglo-Irish politics at the end of the 
eighteenth century.  They illustrate that she did, in fact, see herself as part of the imagined 
community of the Anglo-Irish Nation. As an Anglo-Irish writer, Tighe?s impressions of the 
politics of late-century Ireland and the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion can be construed as an 
141 
 
openly political argument.  These following two poems illustrate a confident and politically-
engaged poet whose insights help reveal and record the very complicated temporal moment that 
was the turn of the eighteenth century in the counties of Dublin and Wicklow. 
The first of these poems is a beautiful ballad which records the hostile and unstable 
environment of Wicklow and Dublin in the midst of the rebellion of the United Irishmen, ?Bryan 
Byrne of Glenmalure.? The subject of this poem is based on a little known, but culturally 
significant figure of the rural rebellions of the late eighteenth century. Billy Byrne was a yeoman 
farmer in the Wicklow Yeoman Cavalry and allegedly served as a delegate for the United 
Irishmen in country Kildare.326  His trial and subsequent execution became mythologized in the 
nineteenth century with the popular patriotic ballad, ?Billy Byrne of Ballymanus.?  The ballad 
tells a tale of betrayal at trial by informers to the Crown and of the heroism of ?all such men as 
he,/ That stand upright for Ireland?s cause, and die for liberty.?327  Additionally, in Linkin?s 
edition of the collected works, she references the figures of Thomas, Joseph, and James Bryan, 
three yeoman farmers killed at Ballyknockan estate by rebel insurgents who contribute to the 
figure of Bryan Byrne.328 
 This poem uses the ballad form like the more familiar Irish ballads of the late nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries. Tighe?s composition uses the typical themes of love and war, but her 
politics are dictated by the socio-political climate she lived and wrote in.  Hence, the nationalistic 
fervor found in later Irish ballads is not yet present in all Irish minds, but it is here.329 The setting 
of the story is on Carrickmor in Wicklow after two fierce and deadly battles of the 1798 
                                                 
326 Trial of Billy Byrne of Ballymanus, Arklow, (Ireland: Dee-Jay Publications, 1996).  Foreword by Jim Rees, 1996. 
327 Ibid., vi-vii. 
328Tighe, 286. 
329 See Samuel Lover, The Lyrics of Ireland, as an anthology of Irish ballads.  The section of Patriotic and Military 
Ballads illustrates the nationalistic theme that dominated Irish ballads. 
142 
 
rebellion.330  As a young widow and her orphan son flee the violence, a soldier pursues them to 
inquire why they are leaving.  The story of Bryan Byrne is then told in a dialogue between the 
widow?s elderly father, who flees with them, and the soldier.  The ideological positions of these 
two voices along with their interactions illustrate the complex and murky political climate that 
characterized 1798 in Ireland.  The hero, Bryan Byrne, had fallen victim to the clashes between 
rebels and loyalists. However, as the young widow?s father establishes, Bryan Byrne was not 
representative of either side. 
 Attempting to understand the fear and hatred he meets from the orphaned boy, the soldier 
assumes that Byrne was connected to the United Irishmen: ?Too well,? said he, ?I guess the 
truth;/ His father, sure, was doomed to die,/ Some poor deluded rebel youth.?  With this 
comment, Tighe fashions the soldier as a representation of the English government with the 
attendant disinterestedness and presumption that characterized English attitudes towards the 
Irish.  Although the soldier initially shows concerns for the welfare of the young boy, who is 
Bryan Byrne?s orphaned son, his assumption that the boy?s father was a rebel illustrates one of 
the dominant historical trends in English policy toward the Irish?that at some point all Irishmen 
will rebel if not properly subdued.  
 Byrne?s elderly father-in-law, however, does not present the rebel counterargument.  
Rather, he passionately defends his son-in-law as a loyalist, a supporter of the English 
government:  ?He did not fall in Tarah?s fight,/  No blood of his the Curragh stain.?  Referencing 
another two bloody battles of the rebellion331, Tighe positions her hero away from the nationalist 
agenda of the United Irishmen, claiming instead that  
                                                 
330 This is a part of the Wicklow Mountain Range, in the town of Glenealy. 
331 Tighe is referring to the Gibbet Rath Massacre, 29 May, 1798, in Curragh,  Co. Kildare and the Battle of Tara 
Hill, 26 May 1798 in Co. Meath.  Thomas Pakenham, The Year of Liberty:  The Story of the Great Irish Rebellion of 
1798, (London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1969). 159, 161-163. 
143 
 
?He triumphed not that fatal day, 
    When every loyal cheek looked pale, 
But heard, like us, with sad dismay, 
    Of fallen chiefs in Clough?s dark vale. 
The hero lamented the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Walpole at Clough,332 establishing his 
loyalty to the English governance of Ireland.  Tighe however, complicates these divisions 
through the father?s commentary about the massacres at Tarah and Curragh, wherein he laments 
?many a ghost that moans by night/ Of foully broken faith complains.?  The father?s commentary 
provides a means of complicating the socio-political situation to portray accurately the course of 
violence as it spread through Ireland.  Bryan Byrne was not present at the rebel uprisings, nor did 
he champion the United Irishmen?s cause.  Yet, the father?s words illustrate sympathy with the 
grievances of the rebels, the ?foully broken faith? that dominated criticism by Anglo-Irish 
patriots towards the English government for centuries. 
 The marriage of Ellen, the young widow, and Bryan was literally a marriage of the Anglo 
and the Irish.  Ellen was ?sprung from British race,? and Bryan was ?Erin?s early pride.?  Their 
marriage was above ?party rage.?  Then Tighe reveals that Bryan was not allowed into the 
Yeoman organization, but he supported their cause.  Here, Byrne?s murderers, a mob of Anglo-
Irish yeomen avenging the death of three farmers who were cousins of Byrne earlier in the dawn 
hours, are used as representations of the ideology of the rural rebellion.  The avenging mob came 
into town chanting ?Revenge! revenge!...Let not one escape who owns/The faith of Rome.?  
Assuming that the three farmers? murderers are Catholic peasants, the mob rampages and kills 
Bryan because of his socio-political status as a native Irishman. 
                                                 
332 The Battle of Clough near Ballymore, 4 June 1798. See Pakenham, 181-182. 
144 
 
 The poem ends with the father cautioning the soldier to ?remember still?the murdered 
youth of Glenmalure?though vengeance urge to waste , destroy.?  With this parting moral, Tighe 
uses the ballad as a means to comment on the double-sided nature of vengeance and to reveal the 
prejudice that characterized the violence of the rural rebellion.  For Tighe, the responsibility lies 
with the politicians and ideologues that generate instability by playing on the prejudices of the 
people.  Vengeance always ends in tragedy.  But instead of the classical tradition of the vengeful 
hero dying because he seeks revenge, Bryan Byrne becomes the unwitting Irish victim of Anglo-
Irish vengeance on the English.  The victim, ultimately, is Ireland. 
Written the following year, ?There was a Young Lordling? shifts from the sorrowful tone 
of the ballad to an acerbically witty rhyme, but with the same political aims of calling to 
attention the exceptionally complicated nature of Anglo-Irish politics. This time she addresses 
the Act of Union proposed in 1799.  In a letter to her cousin Sarah Tighe, the poet claims to be 
?too ignorant of the proposed Act of Union to take a stand,? but her lively little rhyme suggests 
that she had sympathies for anti-unionists.333 The specificity of name and character that Tighe 
employs throughout much of the poem suggests that she was far from ignorant of the situation.  
Rather, she displays a comprehensive knowledge of the Irish parliament, the political positions 
of the individual members, and an invested concern in the outcome of the controversy.  As the 
young lord proceeds through the house with his broom, he attempts to sweep aside the anti-
unionists represented by Sir John Parnell and James Fitzgerald.  They are replaced by Isaac Cory 
and Geory Daly, in parliament and in the poem, because they supported William Pitt, who 
proposed the Act of Union to the British parliament.  
Finally, after the lordling has wrecked the house with his cries of ?union! a union!,? 
Hibernia is ?at last arous?d by the noise? and demands that ?the young fool who destroys my 
                                                 
333 Tighe, 290. 
145 
 
estate? be forced out of her realm.  She directs Caulfeild, a staunch anti-unionist, to free her 
estate of the foolish young man and takes back control of her country.  While Hibernia?s 
appearance is brief, it is significant.  Only she wields enough power and influence to control the 
childish yet powerful whims of the young lordling.  Caufeild ends the poem by vowing support 
from her ?favorite youths? to oust the unionist who would destroy Hibernia.  Similar to the 
ballad of Bryan Byrne, Tighe ends the poem by personifying Ireland and poetically recreating 
the political situation that threatens her country.  Far from ignorance, Tighe?s poem suggests not 
only knowledge of the situation, but an investment in the outcome of the controversy.  
These two poems illustrate a conscious and engaged poet as she reflects on the politics of 
a changing Ireland.  Her loyalties are not clear, nor are her views of the future.  Rather, these two 
poems exist in the temporal moment of conflict that defined the Age of Revolution, unresolved 
and unexplained.  In them, one can also read a poet unsure of her own future, unresolved and 
unexplained.  In representing the events of the 1798 Rebellion and the debate over the Act of 
Union, Tighe offers an allegory of her development as a writer at the intersection of ideologies 
that complicated her cultural moment?a longing for the way things were, a dissatisfaction with 
the way things are, and apprehension about the future. 
This connection between Ireland and the poet becomes more intimate, more 
introspective, and more tangible in the sonnets that Tighe composes after these two poems.  The 
overtly political motives give way to more personal explorations of her individual connection to 
her native land.  Shifting from the communal voice of the ballad and the satiric rhyme, Tighe 
moved to the individual voice required for the sonnet as a means of expressing a more intimate 
picture of Ireland. 
The Sonnets of Ireland 
146 
 
 Paul Allen Miller explores the relationship between instability and poetic identity by 
considering the Elizabethan poet Philip Sidney and his famous sonnet sequence, Astrophil and 
Stella.334  Contrasting Sidney?s sonnets with medieval lyrical poetry, Miller argues that the 
Renaissance sonnet sequences ?offered occasion for the creation of a more complex and highly 
self-reflexive lyric subjectivity? specifically because ?the status of the subject was open to 
change.?335  The Renaissance subject, the focus of Miller?s study, had been defined by ?actions 
and attributes, not by a mere accident of birth or the immutable will of God,? an important 
paradigm shift that evolves further in the eighteenth century.336  These changes stemmed from ?a 
series of discreet historical conflicts? characterized by a move from a feudal society to a 
capitalist culture.  The economic and social instability that followed such a transition proved 
useful, since, as Miller argues, the sonnet was characterized by an ?idiosyncratic and highly 
interiorized lyric subjectivity? and required a ?virtually autonomous ego.?337  Thus, the 
instability of the cultural moment provides the necessary rupture in the ?status of the subject?, 
which can then be renegotiated through the composition of a sonnet, or a sequence of sonnets, as 
in the case of Sidney and to some extent, Tighe.  The sonnet becomes a liminal space wherein 
dominant ideologies can be renegotiated in terms of emergent ideologies?a ?new ideological 
space for poetic and personal ego.?  However, as Miller points out, it is ?a contested space? 
because the dominant cultural modes of identification never give easily to emergent ideas that 
threaten to unseat those historically granted power and control over the dissemination of 
identity.338 
                                                 
334 Paul Allen Miller, ?Sidney, Petrarch, and Ovid, or Imitation as Subversion? ELH 58 (1991): 499-522. 
335 Ibid., 499. 
336 Ibid., 500. 
337 Ibid., 499. 
338 Ibid., 500. 
147 
 
 How the sonnet can perform such a tremendous task as fashioning an identity in the midst 
of conflict concerns Miller primarily in the Renaissance, yet the interpretations and conclusions 
he draws about the Renaissance sonnet sequences of Sidney could ably be used to interpret and 
analyze Tighe?s sonnets over two hundred years later.  Since Tighe was also writing in a period 
of historical conflict and in an equally uncertain position as Sydney, the claims that Miller makes 
about the latter are often true of the former.  Tighe?s choice of the sonnet appears as a socially 
symbolic act that is reflective of the uncertainty of her temporal moment. 
Imitation of form is a significant factor for Miller and the manner in which Sydney 
creates his new identity.  He claims that ?Sydney often uses imitation as a means of imparting a 
certain stability to an ego otherwise in danger either of being absorbed into one of the period?s 
competing discourses, or of simply being torn asunder.? Imitation, then, provided the mold for 
the burgeoning poetic ego in a time and place that threatened to annihilate fragile subject 
positions.  Imitation further provided Sydney with a ?sanction of legitimacy? and ?a way of 
mediating between contradictory historical and ideological tendencies, while nonetheless 
preserving the apparent coherence of his poetic ego.?339  Repeatedly, Miller refers to the 
conflicting and contradictory ideologies of the Renaissance as proof that the social fabric woven 
to keep that culture tightly together was rapidly unraveling.  The sonnet provided a way to knit a 
subjectivity, yet this new identity was ?not immediately assimilable? either to existing social 
norms, but created ?a complex and multilayered lyric subjectivity ultimately alien to the 
Elizabethan social order.?340 Thus, the autonomous egos that came out of the sonnet were new 
identities, influenced by but distinct from what had been earlier.  While Sydney used imitation to 
                                                 
339 Ibid., 503. 
340 Ibid., 504, 508. 
148 
 
create his poetic ego, Tighe transformed hers by beginning with imitation and moving to 
invention. 
 Peggy Thompson also explores the question of ideology in verse forms, specifically the 
eighteenth-century heroic couplet, in the work of Stephen Duck and Mary Collier.341  Using J. 
Paul Hunter?s work on poetic form, she founds her argument in his assertion that ?if we are to 
think about the ideology of form, it must be ?in particular historic moments and for particular 
groups of authors and readers.??342  For Hunter and Thompson, there is no essential ideology 
connected to a specific verse form.  Rather, the specific ideologies that do influence a particular 
verse form, the couplet or the sonnet, would be temporally and socially defined.  That definition, 
then, would be subject to change given specific historical events and/or specific authors and 
readers.  What Thompson finds in her analysis of the heroic couplets of Pope?s contemporaries is 
that: 
?When, atypically, Duck and Collier write angrily about thresher?s and woman?s 
labor as inadequately recognized and unfairly compensated, they foreground 
rather than suppress the differences that so clearly distinguish them from other 
poets.  But they do so in the dominant verse form of those other poets.?343 
That their subject matter differed so radically from Pope proves for Thompson that the belief that 
?the heroic couplet is ideologically limited in the kinds of values and ideas it can convey? is 
definitely false.  In fact, Collier?s poetry and skill proves that this particular verse form possesses 
a flexibility that allows all manner of subjects and subject-positions may emerge from within its 
                                                 
341 Peggy Thompson, ?Duck, Collier, and the Ideology of Verse Form,? SEL 44, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 502-523.  
342 Ibid., 505. 
343 Ibid., 510. 
149 
 
venerated conventions and ?the meanings of a verse form must be derived from actual practice? 
instead of an archaic, essentialist position which assumes a static ideology of a verse form.344 
The Sonnet Revival of the late eighteenth century took what had been a highly contested 
poetic form in the Renaissance and continued, even refined, the debate over what was the 
legitimate sonnet form?the Italian or Petrarchan form favored by Milton, an octave followed by 
a sestet, or the Shakespearean or English form, three quatrains followed by a couplet.  It is 
important to note that it was not rhyme scheme or word choice that was disputed, but the generic 
form of sonnets?that is, the construction of the verse paragraph as it relates to groupings of 
lines, such as the octet, sestet, quatrain, couplet, etc.  The rhyme scheme was often the most 
varied and experimental part of the sonnet.  What was deemed a legitimate sonnet, like a child, 
depended on who the father was?for some Milton, for others Shakespeare.  Yet, not all 
sonneteers adhered to these narrow parameters for legitimacy.  In fact, the sonnet forms of this 
revival were far more likely to be experimental than to follow a standard set of generic 
conventions.  During this period, there were a brave few poets who marshaled forward without 
the benefit of paternity such as Tighe and expanded the sonnet form to broaden generic 
conventions.   
The Sonnet Revival was significantly different from past debates on legitimacy, since it 
was largely women poets who pioneered and directed this revival for most of the final decades of 
the eighteenth century and into the next.  Stuart Curran investigates ?this most exacting small 
form of the British tradition? and details how it ?was bent, stretched, reshaped, rethought? during 
the latter years of the eighteenth century, calling attention to the formality and discipline that 
characterized sonnet writing.  Curran?s argument briefly considers that the ?rebirth (of the 
sonnet) coincides with the rise of a definable woman?s literary movement? beginning with the 
                                                 
344 Ibid., 519. 
150 
 
1784 publication of Charlotte Smith?s Elegiac Sonnets.345  This association between the Sonnet 
Revival and a ?definable woman?s literary movement? became the focus of later studies of 
women sonneteers, but Curran?s study only briefly discusses Smith along with a handful of other 
women writers.  Daniel Robinson refined and expanded Curran?s argument in his article, 
?Reviving the Sonnet:  Women Romantic Poets and the Sonnet Claim.? He recounts and 
explores the sonnet claims of Anna Seward, Helen Maria Williams, and Charlotte Smith.  
Robinson?s definition of sonnet claim comes from Seward?s ?To Mr. Henry Cary, on the 
Publication of his Sonnets? and refers to the claim Seward makes of the ?literary preeminence? 
of the sonnet.  Robinson notes that ?this correlation between the revival of the sonnet and the 
increased participation of women in the literary world suggests that the sonnet is a form that 
women writers deliberately claimed in order to legitimize themselves as poets.?346  The sonnet 
claims asserted a paternity for the form or challenged the need for paternity.  Taking Curran?s 
association further, Robinson argues that women poets actively chose the sonnet as a vehicle for 
creating a viable literary public sphere in which to participate. The sonnet, according to 
Robinson, ?is a multi-faceted, self-reflexive prism through which her poetic identity is 
refracted,? and these female sonneteers made active sonnet claims in order to gain ?canonical 
inclusion by deferment to those established literary giants.?347  By associating themselves with a 
literary father, as Robinson argues, these sonneteers could claim legitimacy as poets.  Yet, not all 
sonneteers took Seward?s claim as their own.  His article discusses how Seward and Smith took 
up the century-old debate over what constitutes a legitimate sonnet.  Seward adhered strictly to 
the Miltonic tradition, which opposed the use of the ending couplet that Shakespeare made 
                                                 
345 Stuart Curran, ?The Sonnet? in Poetic Form and British Romanticism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 
30. 
346 Robinson, 110. 
347 Ibid., 104, 110. 
151 
 
famous, and used the octave and sestet that Petrarch had employed.  In contrast, Smith was freer 
with her compositions and more personal in her subject matter. She wrote ?a new kind of poem 
with only the superficial identifier of fourteen lines,? and Robinson calls them ??bastardized? 
because she opts to give them her own name without identifying a father.?348  The concept of the 
fatherless sonnet form is an ?act of literary rebellion? that openly challenges the legitimacy of 
prescribed sonnet conventions and was characteristic not only of Smith, but of Tighe as well.  All 
female sonneteers, however, contended with the ghost of the great father of English literature in 
the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson, who died the same year Smith first published her 
Elegiac Sonnets. 
Robinson uses this debate between Smith and Seward to illustrate the way these two very 
different female poets took ?a ?manly? form? and employed it to establish their own legitimacy 
as British poets.349  In an earlier analysis, Anne Mellor discusses such choices of form in her 
study Romanticism and Gender in which she argues that Romantic women poets? choice of 
?poetic genres?function to create and sustain community.?  Thus, though fraught with anxiety, 
the flurry of sonnet-claiming that these women participated in served to create an active literary 
and very public community---one that privileged growth over solidarity.   Yet, this practice was 
not without its risks.  Mellor points out that the ?choice of genre?exists in contestation both 
with the eighteenth-century ordering of the arts and the masculinist poetics this hierarchy 
reflects.?350  That these women made active sonnet claims was a social rebellion against the 
dominant prescriptions of femininity, and the fatherless sonnet is a decidedly daring attempt that 
risked reputation and livelihood.  Mellor?s discussion of the gendered nature of poetics refines 
Robinson?s argument and establishes that women sonneteers participated in a public space that 
                                                 
348 Ibid., 110-111. 
349 Ibid., 103. 
350 Anne K. Mellor, Romanticism and Gender, (New York: Routledge, 1993), 11.  
152 
 
was gendered, and not in their favor.  Thus the gendered-identity of female sonneteers was a 
significant factor in their reception, and their choice of form would have necessitated and 
encouraged the formation of a community through which they could gain protection and support 
from each other, even in the midst of serious debates over the legitimacy of form.  This sonnet 
revival, then, became a subaltern public sphere for women poets where they could voice their 
experiences and desires in a form already endowed with legitimacy from previous poets.351  
However, this form needed adjustment and refinement since the legitimacy with which it was 
endowed came from a sex/gender system which placed women primarily outside of the public 
sphere of the literati.  Thus, though the debates over legitimacy continued to return to Milton, 
Petrarch, and Shakespeare, these women poets were using tradition to restage the past and to 
fashion a feminine-centric community that negotiated dominant ideologies by including their 
?other, incommensurable cultural temporalities.?  Paula Feldman and Robinson published an 
anthology of the Revival, A Century of Sonnets, which put into print not only the works of 
previously published sonneteers, but the works of other poets who had not previously been 
associated or discussed in relation to this significant literary movement, including Mary Tighe.352  
Using the sonnet as a means of establishing an autonomous identity, Tighe wrote a series of them 
highlighting her impressions of Ireland.  Tighe composed five, beautifully turned sonnets that 
evoke an image of Ireland as she experienced it, often away from the confines of a social or 
public world, the type of symbolism usually associated with liminality.  In the Romantic tradition 
of natural spirituality, Tighe constructs Ireland as a fertile land which gave life to her images and 
sustained her in moments of conflict or pain.  In fact, Ireland and Tighe seem inextricably bound 
together and sometimes lost to a world that does not seem to notice their passing. ?Written at 
                                                 
351 Nancy Fraser, ?Rethinking the Public Sphere:  A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy? 
in The Cultural Studies Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Simon During, 518-536, (London: Routledge, 1993). 
352 Feldman and Robinson. 
153 
 
Rossana? describes a retreat from society into nature in order to escape the harsh sights and 
sounds of the day.353  The structure of this sonnet demonstrates the experimentation that 
characterized the literary period. It is composed of two quatrains with an abbaabba scheme?a 
nod to Petrarch?but is followed by an interesting pattern, cdcddc, a couplet and a quatrain 
joined by rhyme. The turn of the sonnet, which begins in the last line of the second quatrain, 
shifts the poetic gaze outward from the ?dear chestnut bower? where the poet has escaped to a 
summer party, the ?yon throng? with its ?prospects gay.?  She describes her retreat as dark, quiet, 
and ?calm.?  The bower in this text is a shelter of vines or main tree branches, but it was also a 
lady?s compartment in a medieval castle, a private room for her alone.  As Tighe illustrates her 
creative space, she invokes a historically protected place of women, where she is allowed the 
freedom that privacy grants.  The image of the chestnut bower and the protection it provides also 
reveals a connection between the poet and her land. On the grounds of Rossana, in county 
Wicklow, she finds a ?calm retreat? from the pressure of society with its expectations of 
superficial gaiety illustrated by the throng who ?weave the dance, and swell the choral song.?  
She does not, however, position herself as a misanthropic observer of the party she observes.  
The couplet which turns the sonnet sees this party ?Dispersing fear.  Their sunny bank more 
bright,/  And on their circled green more sweets abound,?.  The poet enjoys the scene, but has no 
wish to participate.  In styling herself as a sympathetic outsider, Tighe constructs herself as an 
artist, observing life from outside the boundaries of social discourse. This construction employs 
the symbols of liminality, which highlights the doubly removed space of an Anglo-Irish woman 
writer.  This artist, however, enrobes her psyche in the safety of her bower, firmly grounded in 
her native country, Ireland. However, the final lines of the poem have a tone similar to ?Written 
at Killarney, August 5, 1800?: ?And though no lively pleasures here are found,/ Yet no sudden 
                                                 
353 Tighe, 44. 
154 
 
storms my calm retreat affright.? Probably written a year after the 1798 rebellion, it is important 
to note that General Joseph Holt?s rebel militia held on past the summer defeats making this part 
of Ireland an unstable and conflicted space only months before Tighe composed these lyrics.354 
The retreat from both pleasure and danger casts Rossana as a haven from the violence of the 
revolution. However, unlike the two poems discussed above, the speaker experiences the 
conflict; it has become internal. It is a retreat into liminality that provides safety.  
 ?Written at Rossana.  November 18, 1799? illustrates a consciousness of her actions and 
the mixed reviews that she faces from writing.355  There is an intimate and sometimes violent 
relationship between Tighe?s writing hand and the nature that surrounds her.  The poet?s concern 
in these fourteen lines is the effect her ?rash hand? has on ?the last poor flower.?  Sympathetic to 
the position of the flower, the poet regrets her decision to pick it.  Her act of possession has 
?destroyed?the pride of summer? that had been spared from the harshness of the advancing 
winter season.  She grants her hand ?desolating power.?  The connection in this sonnet is 
between the poet and nature, physically between the hand of the poet and the fruit of nature.  
Tighe styles this relationship violently, again, acknowledging the power of the written word and 
its effect on the natural world.  But, if we consider her earlier juxtapositions in ?Written at 
Rossana? then this sonnet has a double entendre.  While she destroys the flower, she is also the 
flower that is being destroyed, the flower that needs protection.  Again, in this sense, Tighe 
demonstrates a frustration with her position as a female writer and seeks protection, not from a 
patron, but from the natural world. In form, Tighe divides the sonnet by styling the destruction of 
the flower in two quatrains, and then idealizing the flower in two concluding tercets.  It is in 
these tercets that she implies the same juxtaposition that she had in the previous sonnet.  Though 
                                                 
354Joseph Holt,  Rebellion in Wicklow: General Joseph?s Personal Account of 1798, ed. Peter O?Shaugnessy, 
(Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998). 
355 Tighe, 44. 
155 
 
didactic in tone, the lines direct the flower to ?Cherish what yet in faded life can bloom? and if 
lucky, ?domestic love? will protect her ?treasure? from ?the spoiler?s touch.?  Like her earlier 
political poetry, the contradictions in this poem?the poet as spoiler and spoiled?illustrate the 
conflicted position of Mary Tighe.  First, she assumes the right to speak for her country, Ireland.  
Next, she acts as the destroyer.  Finally, she receives the criticism that she puts out.  Ultimately, 
the sonnet reveals her uncertainty regarding her ability to write about a land that is contested. 
 The next two sonnets in this series take the subjects of the previous two and put them into 
practice. ?Written at the Eagle?s Nest, Killarney.  July 26, 1800? and ?Written at Killarney.  July 
29, 1800? provided a carefully constructed image of Ireland as an idyllic scene, made for poetic 
inspiration.356 She continues to develop her connection between the scene of Ireland and her 
writing. She leaves the destructive tone behind and revels in the nature surrounding her in 
Killarney.  Tighe is inspired by a still moment in the middle of summer. Sitting on the bank of a 
lake that is surrounded by mountains, Tighe describes the scenery as idyllic with ?meridian? 
skies, a ?glorious? sun, ?the cloudless sky? and a lake of ?liquid glass.?  She sees ?arbutus?, 
called the strawberry tree and found in southwest Ireland, and ?fragrant wild shrubs? along the 
mountains that ring the lake.  The second quatrain illustrates an eagle, ?The bird of Jove?, flying 
to ?the lofty brow? of a distant shore.  The ground is ?soft turf? and ?magic sounds? as ?Melody 
from yon steep wood rebounds.?  The concluding couplet detours from descriptions of natural 
scenery, and Tighe accepts a responsibility to remember this scene ?with pencil soft.?  Like the 
previous sonnet, the poet is compelled by a need to represent the cultural space that inspires her 
poetic creation, but with a gentle hand. The July 29 sonnet moves into evening time to describe a 
moment of silence in the middle of the lake depicted in the previous sonnet.  With a beautiful 
illustration of the surrounding banks, Tighe?s lyricism reaches new heights with this sonnet. Like 
                                                 
356 Ibid., 45. 
156 
 
the day sonnet, this one imbues the land with magical power that leaves an indelible mark on the 
poet.  In the serene moment when day turns into night, all sound ceases as the poet revels in the 
sight and feel of the warmth of the air and the light of the moon.  As the musical strain begins 
anew, she is left with another poetic impression of Ireland to inspire her poetic construction. 
These two sonnets leave the violence of two years previous behind. The speaker turns her 
attention to Nature with the tone of the adoring lover. Ireland, or Killarney specifically, is a 
paradise inspiring her with happiness and rapture.  
 Less than a month later, Tighe would pen the sonnet that I discussed earlier. It recounts 
the author?s feelings of ?fond regret? and ?vain reluctance? as she considers her imminent 
departure from the town echoing the feelings of the two previous sonnets. She further enmeshes 
herself with the landscape because she has been ?Borne with the struggling bark against the 
wind,? metaphorically describing not only her own struggle with writing and the resistance that it 
meets in her culture, but the larger political climate as well.  The third quatrain, employing a 
different rhyme,  moves from describing the struggle to illustrating what inspired her while she 
lived there, the sounds: ?voice of pleasure,? ?soft flutes warbling,? and ?A?rial music.?  
However, the final revisits the violence of 1798. It is the ?rude axe? that must be stayed lest it 
destroy the ?charmed soul in peace profound!? 
 Tighe?s five sonnets of Ireland describe both a protected place of poetic inspiration that 
allowed her to experience the range of emotions that composing poetry brought about, but also 
threatened the peace necessary to exercise the inspiration. Ireland was the muse, but the politics a 
?rude axe.?  Each sonnet describes a singular moment for the poet, but together they illustrate a 
connection between Ireland and Mary Tighe and demonstrate a political engagement experienced 
from the margin. 
157 
 
 After the 1805 edition of Psyche, Tighe revisits the political themes of her earlier poems, 
but in the refined genre of the sonnet.  Reflecting the atmosphere of Irish society, Tighe 
dedicates two of her six dedicatory sonnets to William Parnell.  Parnell, the great-grandfather of 
Charles Stewart Parnell, had literary aspirations and relationships with other literary figures 
besides Tighe, notably Thomas Moore.  Politically, Parnell opposed the Act of the Union and 
supported Catholic emancipation.  Unlike Tighe, Parnell was a member of the ascendancy class 
and enjoyed the benefits that come with such a title.  But as an outspoken critic and pamphleteer, 
Parnell distanced himself from the political views of the ascendancy.  In 1804, he published An 
Inquiry into the Causes of Popular Discontents in Ireland that articulated his political grievances 
and two years later published a further response to the controversy it generated.  Throughout his 
public life, Parnell would continue to defend and agitate for Catholic rights in Ireland.  Given his 
very public opposition to the political platform of his social class, Tighe?s two dedicatory 
sonnets should be read as politically and socially symbolic acts, especially since they echo her 
earlier politically-charged poems like ?There was a Young Lordling.? 
 ?To W.P. Esq. Avondale? describes Parnell as a ?dear friend? for whom they (the 
narrator is a plural we) wish a quieter life.  The gentle, natural scenery is compared to ?the busy 
world? and makes ?thy home more dear.?  The poet wishes for W.P. to return to nature?the 
?woods of beauty? and the ?loveliest landscape??to soothe the heart and with the ?muses? 
gentler influence? make it ?uninjured.?  Tighe imagines Parnell as a dedicated statesman fighting 
a difficult political program.  Her sonnet provides a lyrical image of Ireland, ostensibly to 
encourage him in his path.  Following this poem, ?Written in a Copy of Psyche? speaks more 
directly of Parnell, calling him ?The patriot? with ?strength of mind and energy of thought.?  She 
references his ?eye of Taste? in both poems to suggest his literary ambitions and also his superior 
158 
 
state of mind, but in the latter sonnet, she characterizes him as ?lov(ing) the critic?s gentlest 
part.?  Mixing politics with literature, a common strategy in the United Irishmen?s movement 
during these years, Tighe unifies their cause in a common love for the country, Ireland. 
Conclusion 
Ireland, for Tighe, is the origin of her poetic inspiration.  In ?Bryan Byrne,? Ireland 
figured as the title character sacrificed by a bloody war.  In ?The Young Lordling,? Hibernia acts 
as protector of the people and their sovereignty from the British government.  In her sonnets on 
Ireland, the country became the fertile mother of poetry, protecting her from the chaos of society.  
The two poems and the series of sonnets of Ireland, when considered as a group, illustrate an 
image of Ireland as intimately connected with the creativity of the poet, but constantly threatened 
with violence.  By looking as these works as a series, a picture of Ireland and Anglo-Irish culture 
at the turn of the century appears as the poet experienced it and frames her literary productions in 
terms of how she perceived her nationality. The political unconscious of the text is ambiguous. 
Though the tone of ?The Young Lordling? is clearly anti-unionist, the fear of violence repeatedly 
addressed in her sonnets suggests her disaffection with the United Irishmen?s ideologies and the 
rural rebellions that it inspired. Finally, her dedicatory sonnets to William Parnell, a 
contradiction himself, suggest return to her anti-unionists sympathies, but with a much less 
explicitly political tone. The ambiguity present in these varying positions differs greatly from the 
ambiguity of Mary Davys described in Chapter One. Davys, I argue, purposefully constructed 
her identity to manipulate her reception as either Irish or English. Conversely, Tighe presents an 
identity that appears genuinely conflicted about her nationality. The crisis of the 1790s appears 
to have affected her significantly, and that her images often represent pictures of liminality is 
important in interpreting the conflict. 
159 
 
Beyond Psyche, Tighe recorded a vision of Ireland different from what the Nationalist 
movement popularized after the Union.  As an Anglo-Irish woman writer, Mary Tighe is a 
cultural artifact of Ireland at the turn of the century.  Her poetry describes not only how she 
negotiated the ideologies of nationality, but also her marginal perspective on the larger, 
communal negotiations of nationness that were being contested around her.  The liminal space in 
which the Anglo-Irish Nation had existed was changing. It was on the threshold of becoming 
something more or something different, reflecting the hope of romantic nationalism and the age 
of revolution. Tighe?s poetry symbolizes and employs the ideological ruptures that were 
necessary in order for a voice from the margin to take an active role in the creation of Nation. 
The ambiguity that she represents illustrates the profound power of the margin to reconstruct the 
boundaries of Nation.
160 
 
Conclusion: 
Of Miscegines, M?tissages, Sentimentalists, and Sonneteers 
[In eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland] intense struggles occurred at 
political, social, and cultural levels as different groups sought to define 
their place in a rapidly changing power structure. In Ireland, the process 
was complicated by the existence of the Anglo-Irish, a large population 
who viewed themselves as primarily as English, but wrestled with its 
legal, economic, and social subordination to England.357 
 
 In this project, I have explored this conflict that Anglo-Irish writers struggled with?
viewing themselves as English, but viewed as subordinate to England.  Resistance to this 
subordination permeates the texts of Davys and Pilkington. Both writers struggle to identify 
themselves as faithful English citizens, confronting established presumptions of both their nation 
and their gender which sought to label them ?Irish.? It is in these texts, with their professions of 
Englishness, that one can see Victor Turner?s state of liminality and the subordination to ?tribal 
elders? that served to direct the identity of the writers.358 They are necessarily ambiguous, 
labeled by culture, but unable to label themselves. Davys and Pilkington seek to submit 
themselves to England in order to gain the benefits of such an identity. However, both writers 
resist that subordination as well. Later in the eighteenth century, both Griffith and Tighe 
described an incompatibility that arises with such a resistance to subordination. In their texts, 
these two authors present metaphorical Anglo-Irish relationships, which initially seek to 
understand the possibility of productive connections, but ultimately illustrate the resonance of 
                                                 
357 Jill Marie Bradbury and David A. Valone, introduction in Anglo-Irish Identities 1571-1845 (Lewisburg: 
University Press, 2008) 11. 
358 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969) 96. 
161 
 
the conflict of the Anglo-Irish and the inevitable breakdown of the hyphenated culture. Griffith?s 
characterization of Irish natives suggests that she, like Davys, identifies her main character as 
English. The native Irish are unquestionably inferior to the Anglo-Irish landlords, characterized 
as wild or childlike. But through a complicated tangle of relationships, the connection between 
the English Lady Barton and the Anglo-Irish Sir William is broken. Then, Tighe?s nostalgic 
representations of Ireland and anti-unionist themes depart from the three earlier authors in that 
she appears to embrace Ireland, not seeking to distance herself from the ??Irish,? but her 
representation of Ireland complicates that. For her, that nation is evanescent?beautiful, but 
dying. The subordination of Ireland preoccupies the texts of these four authors, but from a very 
different perspective than is usually addressed. Rather than propagating a nationalist, pre-
colonial patriotism, these texts illustrate conflicting and destabilizing ideas of an Anglo-Irish 
nation in the equally destabilized concept of woman writer.  
 These four women represent an evolution of Anglo-Irish identity from post-Restoration 
politics to the 1800 Act of Union. Perhaps most significant about this development of Anglo-
Irish nationness is that it illustrates the shift from a loyal English sentiment to a nostalgic Irish 
nationalism (not patriotism)359, a feeling that would dominate the Celtic Revival of early 
twentieth-century Irish literature. This shift in the ideology that informs the collective 
experiences of Anglo-Irish minds lays bare the complicated existence of being a bridge or an 
island between two distinct cultures with a shared history so similar that it could be 
indistinguishable and at the same time so incompatible that it sparked centuries of conflict. The 
four authors presented in this study represent a public voice that is not often considered in the 
struggle that Bradbury and Valone discuss in Anglo-Irish Identities 1571-1845. Though as much 
                                                 
359 I read patriotism as the political movement to establish a separate Irish nation completely divorced from the 
English government such as the United Irishmen. Nationalism, however, is an identification with a culture. Though 
these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, I consider them to have separate connotations. 
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a part of the ?large population? of the English in Ireland as Swift, Burke, Grattan, or Tone, the 
voices represented here offer a broader perspective of national identity that developed over the 
course of the eighteenth century; they speak from the margin of a hyphenated culture, doubly 
removed from a public voice. The choice of these four authors is not intended to represent the 
entirety of the Anglo-Irish experience in the eighteenth century, nor a complete picture of the 
experience of women who lived this. These women do, however, illustrate that nationness is 
negotiated as much by gender as it is by one?s political affiliations. In fact, in this study of genre 
and nation, gender arises as a pivotal function in negotiating nationness in a hyphenated culture. 
Being woman and being Anglo-Irish dealt not only with the subordination of Ireland to England, 
but subordination to man as the standard of Nation. Each genre provides a different path to 
subjectivity and a unique construction of the individual within her historical moment. These 
genres?travel narratives, autobiographies, sentimental novels, and sonnets?are uniquely suited 
to negotiating nationness in the historical moment of each author. The progression from the 
travelling self to the autonomous ego demonstrates the evolution of Anglo-Irish identity, a 
specifically female one, from 1705-1805, and lays bare the liminality, the becoming, of a 
national identity struggling with the undefined status of being both kingdom and colony, the 
ambiguity of liminality. 
The Travel Narrative 
I began with the travel narrative because it most openly allows for an exploration of 
Nation, as that is its core subject. Yet, being Anglo-Irish immediately complicates the 
construction of this text. The miscegine is a person living in a hyphenated culture. As an 
individual of mixed origins, the miscegine is inherently ambiguous because a specific, culturally 
codified origin cannot be identified. She is part of both, but a whole of neither. And since culture 
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is the core of the travel narrative, the mixed origin of a miscegine ruptures the perceived 
wholeness of the narrating subject. This ambiguity allows for alternative constructions of 
nationhood that reflect the contradictions of hyphenated cultures and even the contradictions 
within the concept of Nation in general. As a miscegine, Davys has both freedom and constraint 
in negotiating how she identifies herself in The Fugitive since the ambiguity provides a space for 
identifying with either of the ideologies of nationness that comprise Anglo-Irish. For Davys, she 
can be both a wanderer and a fugitive depending on the needs of the moment. Such freedom 
allows her to satirize stereotypes like the ?Waild Irish? or to illustrate her Englishness by 
employing those same stereotypes. However, she is constrained by that very ambiguity that 
grants her freedom. She is neither English nor Irish in her cultural construction. Thus, seeking to 
claim a loyal English sentiment proved difficult because she was easily identified as Irish even in 
her own text, and the ideology of a subordinate Ireland permeated English political cultural, and 
in some respects, social as well. In the ambiguous space of a miscegine, constructs of nationality 
become explicitly complicated and contradictory. In a travel narrative where a traveler must 
actively construct nationality in the contact zone of domestic-foreign encounters, the miscegine 
traveler must construct nationality as both imperial subject and as colonial Other. The contact 
zone is both internal and external. Consequently, the miscegine is useful as a depiction of Anglo-
Irish nationality in the early years of the eighteenth century. Though the English in Ireland had 
long been a staple of the population, the political upheavals of the late seventeenth century 
brought forward the question of the political loyalty of all inhabitants of the island, including 
those of English origin. It was a time of changeable and often contradictory allegiances. But this 
period exemplified the desire of the Anglo-Irish to be viewed as loyal English subjects. Yet, 
being of mixed origin, such a desire would seem unattainable. 
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However, a mixed nationality was not the only axis of identity that Davys had to contend 
with. She was as constrained by concepts of virtue as she was by those of nationality. The 
contact zone where gender and social morays meet in the authorial persona was equally 
precarious. This contact zone, as Davys illustrated, is the eighteenth-century concept of Virtue.  
As long as the travel writer was able to present herself as a virtuous woman during her journey, 
she was able to overcome the fear of professional women writers, a fear that labeled writers such 
as Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood undesirable. The presence of virtue afforded a woman travel 
writer the social sanction to write, provided that she maintained her virtuous reputation.  Davys 
employs juxtapositions of women of high caliber and women of ill repute to illustrate her fidelity 
to the concept in addition to framing her text as above such scandalous writing as the romance. 
Fidelity to Virtue also aided in representing her loyal English sentiments. As Laetitia 
Pilkington?s text showed, being Irish could be synonymous with questionable values, especially 
in women. Thus, being a miscegine required Davys to confront these labels in her travel 
narrative. 
In the complex interconnection of self and world, the miscegine woman travel writer 
navigates not only the physical journey, but the metaphysical journey through which nationality 
is conceived. But Davys?s purpose is not to detangle, to separate out the ?-Irish? or the ?Anglo-,? 
but to investigate the overlapping boundaries. As the purpose of the travel narrative was to offer 
pleasurable instruction, knowledge of place was at the core of such a text. However, women?s 
travel writing tended to incorporate personal interaction more than male writers. Thus, ideology 
of nationness is revealed through the contact zone of traveler and native rather than detailed 
descriptions of place. And since the labels of traveler and native are upturned in Davys? journey 
through England because she attempts to be (and is understood as) both traveler AND native, this 
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contact zone ruptures those ideologies into the very contradictions they were created to cover. 
The entanglement cannot be unraveled and cannot be made whole. The mixed self in The 
Fugitive illustrates the mutable boundaries that exist for a woman travel writer from a 
hyphenated culture. The journey is the symbol of liminality, and the miscegine is the ambiguous 
liminal subject outside of, but always within, Nation. 
The Autobiography/Memoir 
 From the story of a journey, I moved to the story of a life. An autobiography, or memoir, 
gives the writer an opportunity to construct her life in her own terms, but it is bound as equally 
by the expectation of virtue as the other genres of literature discussed in this project. As in the 
travel narrative, virtue was central to the reception of autobiographical texts written by women. 
That Pilkington is interpolated as unequivocally Irish by English citizens reflects how central the 
concept was to the concept of Nation in women?s writing. Pilkington defends her English 
subjectivity in a number of ways, but she is constructed as Irish despite her own words. In 
reading Memoirs, one could argue that it is virtue that determines the construction of nationness 
by women as much as the English preconceptions about the Irish people. Pilkington was unable 
to separate the imagined self of her life story from the indiscretions that informed her reception 
in both Ireland and England. They were inextricably linked in this cultural moment. The 
autobiography is a ?woven thing? according to Shari Benstock.360 It is woven by the author with 
the threads of history and individual experience, even those experiences that the author might 
wish to omit. The autobiography is an imagination of self within history, but is also bound by the 
conventions of genre and gender. The burden of fact, that an autobiographical narrative must be 
a verifiable account of history, binds Pilkington to her identification as Anglo-Irish. She can 
                                                 
360 Shari Benstock, The Private Self: Theory and Practice in Women?s Autobiographical Writing (Chapel Hill, NC: 
The University of North Carolina Press, 1988). 
166 
 
claim a noble, Anglo-Irish nationality through her paternal lineage. But the ?fact? of her marital 
infidelity, which she vehemently and repeatedly denies, binds her to a marginalized 
representation?an Irish whore. While Davys can manipulate her identity because of the 
ambiguity of the miscegine, Pilkington is reduced to ?merely Irish? by her English countrymen, 
the subordinate liminal subject. But Pilkington?s autobiography is not the story of an Irish life. A 
compromised virtue may have reduced her to such a reception in her historical moment (and 
perhaps with later scholars as well), but Pilkington imagines herself as Anglo-Irish in many 
places in her text. As such, Pilkington?s memoirs reflect an idea of Anglo-Irish nationality that is 
a defensive, but proud: one that is not dictated by virtue, but national loyalty. Though liminality 
requires unconditional subordination, Pilkington challenges such a limitation. 
However, the imagined self does not exist outside of historical context. The m?tissage 
illustrates where these meet. Like miscegine, the word denotes a mixing of culture. However, the 
m?tissage is most often articulated in autobiographical writing. The miscegine is a fact of 
cultural origin. The m?tissage is a construction of authorial persona dictated by genre. The term 
is sometimes simplified into the concept of cross-breeding, but it embodies far more than a 
genetic implication. The m?tissage employs ?a way of merging and blurring genres, texts and 
identities; an active literary stance, political strategy?a  creative strategy for the braiding of 
gender, race, language and place into autobiographical texts.?361 This blending, blurring, and 
braiding offer mutability to the boundaries of convention. Pilkington can be read as Irish and/or a 
whore, but she can also consciously transcend those designations. Her invocation of her great 
grandfather, the Earl of Kilmalock, whose family supported Henry VIII?s subordination of 
rebellious Irish nobility, works to provide a sound premise of English loyalty. Detailed 
                                                 
361Cynthia Chambers, Dwayne Donald, and Erika Hasebe-Ludt, Creating a Curriculum for M?tissage,  
<http://ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/insights/v07n02/metissage/metiscript.html >, accessed 24 January 2010. 
167 
 
accusations of entrapment by men, including her husband, challenge the label of adulterer. As a 
m?tissage, Pilkington illustrated not only the struggle of being mixed, but its usefulness as well. 
She is not ambiguous, but her claims cannot be summarily dismissed. She can manipulate the 
historical context with her imagined self.  
One cannot imagine a Self without imagining Nation, and for a woman writer in the 
eighteenth century, without confronting Virtue. The historical context out of which the story of 
the author?s life comes informs how the author imagines herself within a nation. And, just as the 
self is liminal, so is the nation in the eighteenth century. In the 1730s and 40s, the Jacobite threat 
bore heavily on Anglo-Irish relations, and doubt about the political support of the Irish 
government infused English popular and political sentiment. Yet, Nation for Pilkington is not 
just politics; it is virtue as well. As the bearer of nationness in a liminal culture, the woman must 
offer a firm moral foundation upon which to rest Nation; subordination cannot be challenged by 
one who is so obviously subordinate. Predominantly bereft of virtue, Pilkington must fight the 
contradictions of her hyphenation. She is labeled Irish (and in some ways accepts that label in its 
noble sense), but maintains a loyal English ideology. The m?tissage, Pilkington, works to 
imagine a self that can be both English and Irish in a temporal moment where they seem 
incompatible. The blurring, blending, and braiding of Self, Nation, and Virtue created a text 
woven into the historical moment and reflective of the mutability of Anglo-Irish as a national 
identity. However, Pilkington?s low status symbolizes the liminality that still echoes the 
subordination.  
The Sentimental Novel 
 Griffith?s novel The History of Lady Barton also presents the difficult relationship 
between the presence/absence of virtue and the construction of nationality. The sentimental 
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novel, the literary expression of sensibility, teases out the conflict between individual 
consciousnesses, which grows out of the experience of intensified feeling, and the function of the 
individual within society, which demands a reasonable expression of those spontaneous feeling 
experiences. Virtue?s role in the sentimental novel is to balance the conflict between feeling and 
reason so that the heroine can achieve the delicate feelings necessary to place her above the 
rough elements of society, but keep her from spiraling into hedonistic pleasures, which would 
negate her value to society and as Pilkington?s text shows, negate her value to the nation. The 
balance that virtue provides works as a metaphor for the concept of an Irish nation within, but 
distinct from, the British nation. These constructions, of sensibility and of balanced intra-national 
government, avoid the extremes in feeling or in reason that break apart relationships and 
cultures. In an era of fomenting revolutions, balance was integral to being Anglo-Irish as it could 
address the construct of subordinate while at the same time provide reassurance of loyalty. What 
The History of Lady Barton illustrates is how precarious such a balance would be and how the 
mere presence of doubt, in virtue or loyalty, will comprise and even destroy the balance and the 
relationship. 
 Most important in Griffith?s novel is the manner in which Lady Barton?s sensibility and 
the subsequent accusations of infidelity lead to an irrevocable break down of the social 
relationships in the novel. Doubt cast upon her character effectively compromises most of her 
relationships, which ultimately leads to her death. Significantly, it is the English Colonel Walters 
that first accuses Lady Barton though he knows she is innocent. Walters is an absentee landlord 
coming to Ireland to take over an estate, which he had inherited from a distant relative. However, 
Griffith?s novel is not a tale of an evil English landlord besmirching the reputation of a noble 
Irish heroine. An overtly nationalist construction like that would inflame the sort of tensions that 
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sensibility sought to cover over. Instead, Lady Barton is an Englishwoman married, somewhat 
resignedly, to an Anglo-Irish landlord, Sir William.  Later, she falls in love with Lord Lucan, 
who is also an Anglo-Irish landlord, and it is this love that drives Colonel Walters to accuse her 
of infidelity. He too wants to possess her. Lady Barton is situated between the boorish Sir 
William, the sentimental Lord Lucan, and the Machiavellian Walters each representing a 
different construction of national loyalty. That Lady Barton could not be trusted by her husband, 
though she was guilty of no transgression, proves to be fatal. This bewildering circle of loyalties 
and relationships, the tension between Lady Barton?s sensibility and her role as a wife, reflects 
the growing conflict between ideas of Ireland as a nation and ideas of Ireland as a colony in the 
era of the constitutional debates of the 1760s and 70s between Stephen?s Green and the Crown. 
  The sentimental novel negotiates nationness implicitly because the role of virtue is bound 
up in the ideology of nationality. Lady Barton, as an English transplant in Ireland, is also a 
metaphor for the Anglo-Irish nation, but one that is separate from the ?Irishness? of the native 
population such as the villagers whom Barton meets upon arriving in Ireland. As an 
Englishwoman living in Ireland, she represents the most basic concept of Anglo-Irish nationality. 
Her marriage to a resident landlord ties her ever more closely to Ireland as does her sympathy for 
the tenants of Sir William?s estate. However, she maintains very close ties with her sister?most 
of the novel is written in letters between the two of them?making her a bridge between the two 
cultures. But if Lady Barton is the bridge between England and Ireland, then her virtue is the 
stanchion. When the stanchion is compromised, a fall is inevitable. Once Colonel Walters 
introduces doubt into her relationship with Sir William, her reputation begins to deteriorate. This 
construction, and its instability, suggests that while a virtuous woman is a sound foundation of 
society, she is simultaneously perfect and ephemeral. The vulnerability of virtue echoes the 
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vulnerability of the position of the Anglo-Irish within a British nation. Subordination seems 
inevitable. 
The Sonnet 
 While Davys, Pilkington, and Griffith find nationality tied directly to the social 
conventions that govern virtue, Mary Tighe found?indeed created?an alternate public sphere 
wherein virtue is superseded by skill and nationality is linked to lyricism and self determination 
rather than sexual purity. The Sonnet Revival of the late eighteenth century, driven primarily by 
women poets, became a forum in which to negotiate subjectivity frequently outside the 
sex/gender system that governed Virtue. Emergent Romanic Nationalism fit naturally into the 
sonnet form as both worked to understand and articulate an individual consciousness dictated by 
individual experience. Unlike the tension between the spontaneous individual feeling and 
socially acceptable expressions of those feeling which characterized the sentimental novel, the 
sonnet was a form that required feeling not only be self-determined, but uniquely expressed. 
Thus, the sonnet comes as a natural conclusion to this project. The travel narrative and the 
autobiography illustrate the effects of mixed origins which focused the author on the task of 
?proving? herself loyal while not accepting a subordinate designation. To do so meant working 
within the constraints of genre and virtue as dictated by the culture. The sentimental novel 
explores the tension between the individual and society and recognizes individuality in the 
Nation, but only as a struggle against the demands of culture. But the sonnet is a space in which 
to explore the conflict and bring those ideas together into a whole subject, or at least a perceived 
whole. Tighe?s sonnets do not create a unified, codified Anglo-Irish subject, but they do 
construct a perception of her nationality that explores an Irish identity because it is an individual 
one. This identity is not absent from a connection with England, but it is centered on Ireland. 
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Thus, Tighe?s work illustrates the culmination of the ideology of Nation in Anglo-Irish women 
writers. She is not a patriot, but she is Irish in that she writes herself that way not struggling to 
?prove? loyalty or struggle against subordination. 
However, the sonnet form is not without a politically significant history. Practitioners 
such as Shakespeare and Milton conferred a quintessential English character onto the sonnet.  
And poets such as Anna Seward and Charlotte Smith wrote of great ?Fathers? of the sonnet in 
their debates over form. Thus, nation and gender still informed the cultural capital of the sonnet 
form. Yet, the sonnet must be created by an autonomous ego, or more accurately, the writing of a 
sonnet is the writing of an autonomous ego, an individual Self. Unlike the miscegine, the 
m?tissage, or sentimental heroine, the sonnet allows for an experience of nation that is separate 
from that of the nation at large, and subsequently, while it is still derived from culture, the 
experience is individual. Although it is not divorced from that nation at large, and indeed is 
greatly influenced by the collective experience of nationness, the experience of Nation in the 
lyrics of the poet is individual, even private. The lyrical subjectivity conferred by sonnet writing 
is a means for a lyrical representation of nation. This offers the poet a space in which nationality 
can be constructed out of the individual experience. Tighe, living in that space between English 
and Irish, can resolve, or attempt to resolve the conflicts that the earlier writers struggled with. It 
is lyrical nationality. 
The subject/subordinate conflict of the Anglo-Irish nationality reaches a tipping point in 
the 1798 United Irishmen?s rebellion. Writing in this historical moment with sonnets such as 
?Written at Rossana, November 18, 1799,? Tighe explores an evanescent Ireland, ?the last poor 
flower? that disappears under a ?rash hand.?362  The function of the liminal state is to raze the 
                                                 
362 Mary Tighe, The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe, edited by Harriet Kramer Linkin, (Lexington, 
KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2005) 44. 
172 
 
identity of the subject so that it can be rebuilt. Tighe?s imagery illustrates the last stages of this 
process?the flower is plucked and then discarded. As it is her hand that destroys the flower, the 
conflict has been metaphorically staged?the English hand destroys the Irish flower. She claims 
that it is the ?desolating power? that has devastated what the flower represents. However, the 
resolution of the sonnet suggests that this identity, this Irish flower, can be revived through 
?domestic love? and brought out of this liminal state. For Tighe, the conflict is resolved by a 
separation from the English experience. 
Becoming Irish  
The trend that is represented in this project, the evolving identification as Irish in these 
Anglo-Irish writers, illustrates the liminal nature of a hyphenated culture as that culture develops 
a concept of itself within the two cultures of its origin. The becoming here, as a state of 
liminality is one of becoming, could be considered a growing Irishness of the Anglo-Irish. Yet, 
the collective experiences of these women illustrate that the Anglo-Irish experienced nationness 
as a contradiction, as a paradox even into the nineteenth and twentieth century. And while a 
culture is in a liminal state, it is unclear how much of its past it will retain as it reaches 
aggregation. Ulick O?Connor writes that the ?assimilating qualities of the island?throughout the 
nineteenth century, though the country was now governed directly from England, it could be 
seen that a personality was emerging on the island, neither Anglo-Irish nor native Irish, but a 
blend of both.?363 However, this blending was not homogenous, but rather just as complicated as 
it had been in the eighteenth century. O?Connor illustrates the complexity by describing the 
process that George Moore and William B. Yeats go through when collaborating on the play 
Diarmide and Graine. He describes the conflict over language between the novelist and the poet 
because Moore wrote in French, but Yeats felt that the character Graine must be written in Irish. 
                                                 
363 Ulick O?Connor, Celtic Dawn, (Dublin: Town House and Country House, 1999) 14. 
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The process would work like this: ?after Moore had written it in French, [Lady Gregory] would 
translate it into English and a member of the Gaelic League would then translate it into Irish. The 
Lady Gregory could translate it back into English again.?364 To make Graine ?Irish? required a 
journey through France, England, Ireland, and then back to England. This, as Yeats rationalized, 
would cast Graine as the archetypal Irish heroine, ancient and sorrowful. Moore agrees to what 
O?Connor calls an ?extraordinary transmutation of dialogue? because the novelist admits that he 
?had come to hate [the English language] for political reasons? and looked to ?tongues that had 
not been corrupted by over-use.?365 But Graine could only be articulated as Irish by first being 
constructed in French followed by English. It would be too easy and oversimplified to 
understand Moore?s words as anti-English, though he likely meant them to be so. There is a tacit 
understanding and acceptance that to be Irish meant that one was irrevocably tied to the English, 
an idea that the eighteenth-century women writers in this project both accepted and manipulated. 
And it is through Lady Gregory that this translation occurs. 
In The Rising of the Moon, Lady Gregory provides another perspective on the 
relationship between the two parts of being Anglo-Irish. The play takes its title from the J.K. 
Casey ballad about the 1798 United Irish Rebellion, and it was performed in an equally unstable 
period of Anglo-Irish history in the early twentieth century. The Sergeant is a loyalist, an 
enforcer of the Crown?s policies. He is certain in his nationality, a loyal English citizen. And he 
is certain of the rightness in his task of finding and arresting the escaped prisoner, who 
masquerades as Jimmy Walsh, the ballad singer. Though Gregory provides no specifics, she 
implies that the escapee?s crimes were politically motivated and against the English governance 
of Ireland. Yet, through a brief, yet passionate conversation between the two men, where the 
                                                 
364Ibid., 281 
365 Ibid., 282. 
174 
 
titular ballad and others are sung, the Sergeant finds himself in the bind of the Anglo-Irish in the 
eighteenth century?being loyal, but being subordinate. Of his duty, he says, ?Well, we have our 
duty to the force. Haven?t we the whole country depending on us to keep law and order? It?s 
those that are down would be up and those that are up would be down, if it wasn?t for us.?366 
From his perspective, the Crown protects law and liberty. However, his encounter with the 
escaped convict/rebel begins to breakdown his certainty. In disguise, the rebel is able to connect 
to the sergeant through their shared history of Irish nationalism. The rebel ballads reach into the 
sergeant?s youthful past of political idealism, but this connection is not uncomplicated. The 
Sergeant?s last line illustrates the paradox of being Anglo-Irish: ?I wonder, now, am I as great a 
fool as I think I am?? Is he a fool for giving up his youthful idealism, or a fool for giving up the 
hundred-pound reward? Such is the question that Gregory poses. 
The nationalist tones of the short play are explicit, but Gregory?s words on her work 
illustrate the paradox of the Sergeant?s character. She writes,  
?The play was considered offensive to some extreme Nationalists before it was 
acted, because it showed the police in too favorable a light, and a Unionist paper 
attached it after it was acted because the policeman was represented ?as a coward 
and a traitor?; but after the Belfast police strikes (in 1907) that same paper praised 
its ?insight into Irish character.? After all these ups and downs it passes 
unchallenged on both sides of the Irish Sea.?367 
The 1907 Belfast strike adds to the ambiguity in this play. It was one of the few moments in the 
troubled and violent history of Northern Ireland when both Unionists and Nationalists stood 
                                                 
366 Isabella Augusta (Lady) Gregory, The Rising of the Moon in Modern Irish Drama, ed. John P. Harrington, (New 
York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1991)  55. 
367 Lady Gregory, ?The Rising of the Moon? in Modern Irish Drama, 432-433. 
175 
 
together against the English government. Gregory?s comments seem to lay bare the political 
unconscious that resonates in her text and resonates in the literature of the eighteenth-century 
Anglo-Irish woman writer. Again, it seems that when one is writing from a marginalized 
position, the constructs of nationality, especially those which seek to establish a singular  
consciousness, are ruptured and fragmented. Gregory?s Sergeant experiences the same 
contradictions that Davys?s traveler, Pilkington?s Scribbler, Griffith?s Heroine, and Tighe?s rash 
hand do?how can one be Irish through being English. 
Hilary Mantel?s The Giant, O?Brien, provides a contemporary perspective on the 
eighteenth-century ideas of Nation. A London-based anatomist, John Hunter, seeks to own the 
remains of the Irish giant, Charles O?Brien. Mantel?s fictional account, based on the factual 
history, illustrates an exploitative relationship between England and Ireland. The Irish giant is 
codified for the morbid curiosity of the scientist. It raises the question of the possibility of a 
mutually productive relationship between the two cultures. In a modern sense, Mantel?s novel 
probes such issues as the exploitation of difference and deformity, yet its setting in eighteenth 
century London invites one to consider the story as a commentary on these collective 
experiences of nationness.  
 Mantel?s novel illustrates a typical characterization of the ideology of Nation between 
England and Ireland. It sets up a dichotomy between England and Ireland. Such representations 
tend to marginalize the experiences described in this project. They marginalize the experience of 
the Anglo-Irish and reduce eighteenth-century Irish nationality to one of conflict between the 
Native Irish and the English oppressor. In a post-nationalist reading of Irish literature, the 
concept of Anglo-Irish nationality ruptures such dichotomies. The experience of being in-
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between represents a nascent identity that confronted the paradox that was being English and 
being Irish.  
As I close this project, I note that ?Anglo? is always first in this cultural designation. It 
could as simply be termed ?Hiberno-English.? That the term we use, Anglo-Irish, privileges the 
Englishness over the Irishness, is perhaps the most important fact to accept because ?Anglo-
Irish? was not a contemporary description of the eighteenth century. Like Rankin has argued, the 
collective psyche of the Anglo-Irish sought to distance themselves from being designated as 
Irish. Thus, one might put the emphasis on ?Anglo? by placing it first. And the texts of Davys 
and Pilkington illustrate that very feeling. However, Griffith and Tighe illustrate more comfort, 
maybe even a desire for, identifying as Irish, yet they are still identified as ?Anglo-Irish.? While 
these writers appear to separate themselves from a native Irish population, the emphasis put on 
this designation can be misleading. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, it is 
difficult to place labels like Anglo-Irish on writers. One could employ the construct that it means 
an Irish writer writing in English, but then the label ?Irish writer? would be just as troublesome 
today as Anglo-Irish is when referring to the eighteenth century literature. But this conundrum is 
in and of itself quite telling. That terms like ?Anglo-Irish? are no longer adequate as cultural 
designations, perhaps even obsolete when discussing literature from Ireland suggests that there is 
still no singular Irishness that one can point to. The eighteenth century was a pivotal period in the 
histories of England and Ireland. England was growing as an imperial power, and Ireland was 
growing independent. English rule spread through the world, touching every continent; Ireland 
lost her parliament and became the subordinate against which the Anglo-Irish writer had 
struggled with. In thinking about Anglo-Irish literature from the eighteenth century, one must 
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remember that the conflict which Bradbury and Valone describe is not a struggle of the Irish 
against the English. It is a struggle between the realities of being both Irish and English.  
This project did not seek to investigate what Nation is. I have not looked for how these 
writers write Ireland or England. I have looked at how they write themselves and how they write 
Nation. Though nationness might arise out of collective experience, it is in the individual writer 
that one finds the lived experience of Nation. And the texts of these authors illustrate the 
significance of the politics of gender in the experience of Nation. The axes of identity?English, 
Irish, Woman, Writer?intersect to create a nationality constructed in the margins. But it is in the 
margins where great change is, inevitably, initiated.
178 
 
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