Date of Award

5-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

English

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Lucy McDiarmid

Committee Member

Jonathan D. Greenberg

Committee Member

Wendy C. Nielsen

Abstract

This thesis explores representations of motherhood across several genres in Irish literature. In my essay, I look at two short stories from James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914): “The Boarding House” and “A Mother.” I argue the way spatiality functions in “The Boarding House” and “A Mother” reveals Mrs. Mooney’s and Mrs. Kearney’s overall ability to exercise maternal agency; it shows the extent to which their agency is circumscribed. The spaces themselves act as defining factors contributing to the mothers’ abilities to engage with power structures and ultimately fail or succeed in their endeavors. I also examine two autobiographies: The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen (1938), and Kathleen Clarke’s autobiography Revolutionary Woman (1991). In my work I expand upon how Gonne and Clarke were able to engage in “maternalist” actions within the public sphere. The juxtaposition of Joyce, Clarke, and Gonne offers new ways of looking at how motherhood is represented in different social classes, as well as how differing societal and historical circumstances affected mothers and their children.

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