A WOMAN'S LIFE IN MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND: THE CASE OF LETITIA BUSHE

Abstract

Letitia Bushe (c. 1705–57), daughter of a minor Irish landowner and one-time office- holder, was a member of the intellectual and cultural circle that included Swift's friend, the letter writer Mary Delany, the ‘proto-bluestocking’ Anne Donnellan, and the ‘heretic’ bishop Robert Clayton. The means by which, as a single woman of independent but limited means, Bushe maintained her position within this circle had elements of informal domestic servitude. At the same time a cache of unusually intimate letters reveals a determined individualist, consciously distancing herself from some of the official pieties of her society, and enjoying a greater freedom of thought, action, and speech than might at first sight have been expected. The letters also document Bushe's intense and tortured relationship with a younger woman, Lady Anne Bligh, an episode which raises important questions about the nature of women's friendships at this time.