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ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, MARY MC ALEESE, ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE SEMINAR

ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, MARY MC ALEESE, ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE SEMINAR “FROM REBELLION TO RECONCILIATION"

Twenty years ago, Margaret McCurtin, the woman who “discovered” Irish women in history wrote “Many Irish women find it difficult to learn about their historical identity, or their role in the life of the country because they have neither the information readily available, not the skills of evaluation at their disposal”. The absence of women in popular recorded history, not just of Ireland, is in large part due to the attitude to women that has permeated public and academic life for hundreds, if not thousands of years. I suppose things got off to a bad start in the book of Genesis, which tells us that ‘woman’ is so called “..because she was taken out of Man”. And maybe the writers of history took their cue from Pericles who, when dealing with the history of the Peloponnesian War said that “The greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about by men” – and that was sometime between 495 and 429 BC. Four hundred years later, Virgil told the world, as it was then, that “Fickle and changeable always is woman”. And if you’re happy that that was all in pre-history, we have Shakespeare who told us in Hamlet that “Frailty, thy name is woman!”; or Friedrich Nietzche who told us in 1888 that “Woman was God’s second blunder” – from which we can deduce, I suppose, that we could only have been an improvement on his first blunder – man!

- When you look at the great icons of our education – the people we’ve been spoon fed since we were able to comprehend the simplest spoken word – if you consider what they had to say about women, is it any wonder that women don’t feature in history? Can we be surprised that history is about the deeds of men in waging wars and battles, and about the achievements of artists writers and poets, the vast majority of whom were men. Maybe it’s not all accident. It could, perhaps, have something to do with what Kipling said of “The female of the species” being “more deadly than the male”. Or maybe it was summed up by George Eliot – or Mary Ann Evans as she was to her family - when she said, in “The Mill on the Floss” in 1860, that “The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history”.

- Looking at past conflicts and reconciling the different elements or factions in those conflicts involves the deconstruction of perceived notions and myths – a close inspection of who and what was involved. Too often, we use history – or our versions of history - as a vindication or validation of our current thinking and prejudices. We forget the hidden complexities – we don’t take account of hidden agendas – we revert to the headlines of history – to the “we defeated them” or “they invaded us” mentality. It’s so easy to go down that road and, as we know only too well today, to use those sound bites of history to whip up hatred, prejudice and, worst of all, to use them as justification for terrible misdeeds. It’s a process we should have a particular insight into, as we see so often the world of scholarly journalism subverted by lazy, hysterical journalese, which feeds untruths, half-truths and invective – which become quickly adapted as fact by copycat journalists too anxious to fill space and with no commitment to scholarship, never mind truth.

- While the availability of material on the role of women in situations like 1798 is scant, it is there buried in the letters and pamphlets and in the social histories of that and succeeding ages. As Seamus Heaney says in his poem, ‘From the Canton of Expectation’, “the future lies with what’s affirmed from under”. Thanks to Margaret MacCurtain and the women she has inspired since she wrote that piece in 1978, more and more analyses of the role of women in history is becoming available – their buried stories are being sucked up from under, brought to the surface and affirmed. In December, I launched a book entitled “Women and Irish History”, which is a collection of essays in honour of Margaret MacCurtain, by various women historians. It is material like that which gives us a far clearer picture of women in Irish society. It gives us the knowledge we need to affirm and the determination to sustain a full boundaryless role for women in the making of history.

- I recently read an article by Brigette Anton, who as a post-graduate research student at the Department of Modern History at Queen’s University Belfast, wrote in 1993 about the women of “The Nation”, the popular journal of the Young Irelanders in the 1840s. In her well researched article, she covers the significant contributions of the ‘three Graces of the young Ireland movement’ – ‘Mary’, ‘Eva’ and ‘Speranza’ - the latter of whom, was not only the mother of Oscar Wilde, but wrote a piece that was “used in evidence” against Charles Gavan Duffy because it called on Irish people “never to let down your arms, never to cease hostilities, till you regenerate and save this fallen land”. Yet in the same article, Brigette points out that “The Nation” saw women as mere supporters of men, exemplified by this piece, “We are constantly hearing that ‘women have no business with politics’ this we deny”. Then it goes on to say that “This is not a women’s sphere . . . A woman’s sphere is in her home, her school, her fireside, where she has all holy things to teach”.

- As I said, if you look closely you will see the significant role of women in Irish history, but you will also see its complexities. And looking at the unsung role of women in Ireland – as home keepers, educators, as nurses of children and as teachers of holy things – there is a whole dimension to be “reconciled” in dealing with our history. As protectors of children and managers of homes, they would all too often have felt the brunt of conflict – as many women still do today in the troubled areas of the world. As teachers of holy things they handed on the baton of faith, of insight into the world beyond this world, the world where boundaries and time have no place and where all are reconciled in one family.

- The commemoration of 1798 that will take place in many parts of Ireland this year tells us how widespread the events of that year were. It was more a series of disparate events than a cohesive and structured “campaign” in the military sense. There must have been many local conditions, influences and prejudices which determined the outcome and aftermath of events in each area. These need to be exposed and reconciled if we are to get a true picture of that troubled, and still troublesome year. 1998 is also a troubled and troublesome year. One in which hope of reconciliation hangs tantalisingly in front of us, but is it just within or just out of our reach? Time will tell and people of courage will make the leaps needed to bring it into our grasp. Others at their back will hope to see them fall. Women are playing a small enough role at the macro political level, but their voices are often the most prophetic and important. What will be written of the role of women in 1998?

- This seminar will go a long way in dealing with that and developments in Ireland in the last two hundred years. It should prove to be a welcome addition to our store of knowledge and our appreciation of the role of women in Ireland which, for far too long, was silent.