Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860-1914, by Maeve O’Riordan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914 by Maeve O'Riordan Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga (bio) Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914, by Maeve O'Riordan; pp. xv + 339. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018, £85.00, $120.00. Maeve O'Riordan's meticulously researched and well-written study, Women of the Country House in Ireland, 1860–1914, reflects the growing interest in the private and public lives of aristocratic women. In one of the first attempts to focus on women of the landed class, Trevor Lummis and Jan Marsh's The Woman's Domain: Women and the English Country House (1990) argued that, even though the home traditionally is defined as the woman's domain, the research into country house living had for a long time been determinedly male-centric. When scholarship set its sights on the landlords, women were either forgotten entirely or assumed to be insignificant; in effect, the popular perception of aristocratic women veered between images of husband-hunters and passive, unhappy victims. Since then, the research into aristocratic women's private lives and their role in the public [End Page 346] and political spheres has grown significantly, redefining many popular misconceptions. Concurrently, the broadly defined category of the British aristocracy has been nuanced by studies of the elites in other parts of the British Isles. O'Riordan's study contributes to this process of nuancing by examining a largely unexplored theme of "the female half of the landed class" in Ireland during the second half of the Victorian era (19). The book spotlights the lives of women in twelve aristocratic families who had houses in Munster. Munster is "chosen as a microcosm of the island of Ireland" and claimed to represent best the "landowning families in the country" (5–6). The sample selected for the study is sufficiently broad to be considered representative and conveniently delineated to enable in-depth analysis. The study "purposely focuse[s] on surviving archival material" and offers a comprehensive analysis of personal records, letters, memoirs, scrap-books, wills, marriage settlements, account books, house inventories, and newspaper cuttings (19). The analysis is complemented by the discussion of artistic and creative works, literary and visual. The aim of the study is to give voice to these women and to examine how they "viewed and acted themselves" (5). While it is not meant as a "road map of social change in Ireland at the time," O'Riordan's book complements such studies by giving a good understanding of what it meant and how it felt to be an aristocratic woman in Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century until World War I (20). While earlier studies tended to concentrate on either the private or public lives of aristocratic women, O'Riordan tries to capture the whole complexity of women's experiences and activities, both in the house and in the wider world. This is a valuable perspective, and on reading the book one gets a fuller picture of the variety of women's roles and the life paths they navigated within the constraints of a patriarchal society. It considers the roles of mothers and wives but also the specific position of unmarried women in aristocratic homes. It gives good insight into the challenges faced by ambitious and artistically talented women and by political activists. The book consists of eight chapters and covers such diverse topics as courtship, marriage, family relations, women's roles in the continuation of family lines, access to education, individual tastes and talents, house management, financial and living arrangements, relations with tenants and servants, philanthropy, and activism. It convincingly argues that "women felt a close connection, and a strong sense of duty, to the house" (48) and "were essential to the continued dominance of a set of ideals which defined the class" (12). In effect, O'Riordan demonstrates that greater insight into the experiences of women is crucial for the understanding of the whole class and that re-gendering the country house is necessary to fully comprehend the functioning of the manorial order. The author explains why aristocratic women living in Munster were loyal predominantly to their class and families rather than to the national cause...