Ireland and Masculinities in History

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Ireland and Masculinities in History: An Introduction

   • Rebecca Anne Barr, Sean Brady, Jane McGaughey

   Pages 1-17

3. Caught in a Contract: Congreve, Farquhar and Contractarian Masculinities

   • James Ward

   Pages 19-38

4. ‘Whole Swarms of Bastards’: A Modest Proposal, the Discourse of Economic Improvement and Protestant Masculinity in Ireland, 1720–1738

   • Clíona Ó Gallchoir

   Pages 39-65

5. Bog Men: Celtic Landscapes in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Satire

   • Declan Kavanagh

   Pages 67-88

6. Primogeniture, Strict Settlement and the Rituals of Masculinity on an Irish Landed Estate, 1855–90

   • Kevin McKenna

   Pages 89-108

7. Thomas A. Hickey: The ‘Uncrowned King’ and Irish Masculinity on Two Continents

   • Peter H. Buckingham

   Pages 109-131

8. Games for Boys: Masculinity, Boyhood and Play 1922–1939

   • Mary Hatfield

   Pages 133-153

9. Fianna Fáil’s Agrarian Man and the Economics of National Salvation

   • Aidan Beatty

   Pages 155-175

10. Bachelor Trouble, Troubled Bachelors: The Cultural Figure of the Bachelor in Ballybunion and Mullingar

    • Ed Madden

    Pages 177-202

11. Irish Fatherhood in the Twentieth Century

    • Dara E. Purvis

    Pages 203-219

12. ‘No Idle Sightseers’: The Ulster Women’s Unionist Council and the Masculine World of Politics During the Ulster Crisis, 1912–14

    • Pamela McKane

    Pages 221-252

13. Irish Protestant Masculinities and Orangewomen in Scotland, Canada and England, 1890–1918

    • D. A. J. MacPherson

    Pages 253-272

14. Masculinities, Political Transition and Power: A Case Study of Northern Ireland

    • Fidelma Ashe

    Pages 273-292

15. Afterword: Irish Masculinities and Gender History

    • Sonya O. Rose

    Pages 293-301

16. Back Matter

    Pages 303-313

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This edited collection presents a selection of essays on the history of Irish masculinities. Beginning with representations of masculinity in eighteenth-century drama, economics, and satire, and concluding with work on the politics of masculinity post Good-Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the collection advances the importance of masculinities in our understanding of Irish history and historiography. Using a variety of approaches, including literary and legal theory as well as cultural, political and local histories, this collection illuminates the differing forms, roles, and representations of Irish masculinities. Themes include the politicisation of Irishmen in both the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland; muscular manliness in the Irish Diaspora; Orangewomen and political agency; the disruptive possibility of the rural bachelor; and aspirational constructions of boyhood. Several essays explore how masculinity is constructed and performed by women, thus emphasizing the necessity of differentiating masculinity from maleness. These essays demonstrate the value of gender and masculinities for historical research and the transformative potential of these concepts in how we envision Ireland’s past, present, and future.

• Irish history
• Anglo-Irish relations
• Fianna Fáil
• the Ulster Crisis
• Cumann na nGaedheal
• gender and sexuality

• National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland

  Rebecca Anne Barr

• Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK

  Sean Brady

• School of Irish Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

  Jane McGaughey

Rebecca Anne Barr is Lecturer in English Literature at National University of Ireland, Galway. Her research focuses on fictional form, masculinity, and sexuality in the eighteenth-century novel. With Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon and Sophie Vasset, she is co-editor of Bellies, Bowels and Entrails in the Eighteenth Century (2018).


Sean Brady is Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. His publications include Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861-1913 (Palgrave, 2005 & 2009), What is Masculinity? (Palgrave, 2011), co-edited with John H. Arnold, and The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Popular Culture in Europe (Palgrave, 2018), which he co-edited with Christopher Fletcher, Rachel Moss and Lucy Riall. His current research examines masculinities and sexualities in Northern Ireland's history.

Jane McGaughey is Associate Professor of Diaspora Studies at Concordia University’s School of Irish Studies in Montreal, Canada. She is the author of Ulster’s Men: Protestant Unionist Masculinities and Militarisation in the North of Ireland, 1912-1923 (2012). Her research focuses on popular representations of Irish sexualities, migration, loyalty, and violence since the early nineteenth century.