The last few years have been nothing short of extraordinary for feminism in Ireland. The year 2015 saw the legalisation of same-sex marriage, and a landmark referendum in 2018 saw the repeal of the 8th Amendment of the Irish constitution, legalizing abortion and thereby saving the lives of countless women. For feminists at the theatre, these same years have been marked by #wakingthefeminists, a movement dedicated to out-and-proud demands for proper equity in theatre and other arts organizations across the nation. At last, women's stories, and the nuances of their embodied experiences, are being uplifted in Ireland's cultural imaginary.
Shonagh Hill's new monograph arrives at the crossroads of these auspicious developments to offer a genealogy of women's myth making at the Irish theatre, one expressly designed to counter the pervasive perception of masculine dominance in Irish literary modernism since the early twentieth century. Hill begins from the premise that ‘Irish theatre has long been steeped in mythic narratives, an obsession which has hindered women's participation in the cultural fabric of society’ because these narratives trade in ‘idealized and dematerialized tropes of femininity’ (p. 1), including Mother Ireland, the Virgin Mary and more. Hill's central argument is that, although frequently relegated to the margins of canonical Irish literary culture, women theatre-makers have ever been interested in reshaping and re-embodying shared mythologies in order to return the materiality of women's psycho-physical experiences to the stage. Shifting back and forth from the early part of the twentieth century to the first years of the twenty-first, and reflecting on the work of artists as varied as Alice Milligan, Maud Gonne, Lady Augusta Gregory, Eva Gore-Booth, Mary Devenport O'Neill, Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy, Paula Meehan, Edna O'Brien, Marina Carr, Olwen Fouéré and the Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), Hill builds a feminist genealogy of ‘coalitional politics’ (p. 2) rather than one steeped in linear cultural inheritance, and in the process reframes our understanding of the development of (post-)nationalist Irish theatre.
As a reader whose own research and teaching rarely focus on Irish contexts, I was most compelled by Hill's rereading of early works and the rich historico-political context that accompanies them. Hill's assessment of the early performances she discusses, drawn painstakingly from often scant archival resources as well as analyses by other scholars, convinces because she attends with care to the weave between the volatile political moment of Irish nationalism and the burgeoning feminism of modernity. In her readings of later artists and works, Hill frequently draws parallels to Celtic Tiger Ireland and its imbrications with neo-liberal post-feminism, but these parallels are less fulsomely historicized and do not always convince. This disparity may result in part from the fact that Hill is able to bear witness herself to productions of the later plays, and thus she spends extensive time on close readings of both text and performance.
Hill foregoes a conclusion, and instead spends her final twenty-five pages on a tour de force assessment of the corpus of Olwen Fouéré – the book's feminist muse. Hill nods to the importance of Fouéré in her introduction, and so the final chapter feels fitting as a full-circle return. It is also in this final chapter that the full strength of Hill's argument landed for me; Fouéré's virtuosic physical theatre work, and her deliberately feminist engagement with the canonical legacy of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, drive home with gorgeous power the full meaning of embodied myth making as a countercanonical feminist gesture. I ended the book exhilarated, and yet reflecting on my journey through this genealogy I wonder whether Hill might have benefited from embedding Fouéré more thoroughly throughout. This is not a flaw per se, but more of a question. I hope Hill will undertake a large-scale project focused on Fouéré's work in the future.
Women's Embodied Mythmaking in Irish Theatre is a timely intervention in a cultural narrative still very much in process. It will be essential reading for teachers, students and researchers working in Irish theatre studies, in Irish studies internationally and on Irish literary modernism.
