“A Most Important Instrument”: Women, Literature, and the Social Good in 1790s Dublin

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay addresses distinctions between Irish and British literary theory and writing on education to sketch an intellectual tradition in which women’s education and public roles were accepted, even promoted. This tradition informs Lady Morgan’s representation of intellectual women, particularly in her later writings, as “instruments” of social change. Eighteenth-century Irish arguments for women’s intellectual equality, at least one so prominent that it was repeatedly republished and excerpted in periodicals, aligned with nationalist arguments at the end of the century which prioritized widespread education as a foundation for progress, peace, and self-government. Irish literary theory around 1800, particularly in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, resonated with such concerns about the collective rather than the individual, stressing community and collaboration on terms consistent with Dublin circles’ practices. The social function of literature was also understood in collective rather than expressive terms and thus those who shape events are characterized by Morgan, Preston, and others as “instruments” rather than leaders. These intellectual trends and cultural practices provide a key context not only for Morgan’s later writings about women as politically active but also for a distinctive feature of Irish Romanticism more broadly: the centrality of women writers.