Ireland in Focus: Film, Photography, and Popular Culture

9. “Colleens and Comely Maidens”: Representing and Performing Irish Femininity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

144 9 “Colleens and Comely Maidens” Representing and Performing Irish Femininity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Barbar a O’Connor Idealized women have long played a central role in the Irish cultural imagination . Visual representations of allegorical and mythical female figures such as Queen Maeve, Mother Ireland, the Virgin Mary, and Hibernia have, along with their more anonymous sisters, colleens, and comely maidens , been presented as role models of Irish femininity. There have been numerous critical analyses of political allegorical figures such as Mother Ireland (Loftus 1990; Curtis 1998–99; Steele 2004), but although the lure of the “colleen” has been central in popular Irish iconography since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, she has received much less critical attention than her counterpart figure as emblematic of a gendered ethnicity . “The Colleen Bawn” as dramatized in Dion Boucicault’s Victorian melodrama is possibly the most famous colleen in Irish popular culture and has been well represented both on stage and screen, as well as in critical academic literature. But it is her less tragic sisters who have come to symbolize young Irish womanhood in the visual arts since the mid–nineteenth century. Visual representations of colleens and comely maidens have been determined largely by the historical, political, cultural, and artistic contexts in which they emerge, and reflect the deep gender cleavages in the society I would like to acknowledge the invaluable encouragement and assistance of Dr. Jonathan Bell of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. “Colleens and Comely Maidens”   |   145 of origin.1 To understand the role of the colleen in Irish visual iconography therefore, we must look at the ways in which gender was implicated in the construction of national identity in Ireland during the period under review. Emerging in post-famine Ireland, the fortunes of the colleen have changed over time. Initially, she was the subject of paintings, illustrations, and folk songs, but developments in print technologies enabled the proliferation of a wider range of visual imagery in the late Victorian era (Curtis 1998– 99). Since then, representations of the colleen have been crucial markers of Irish femininity in a diverse range of “high” and popular media alike, from paintings to postcards, photographs, advertising posters, book illustrations, fashion, television advertisements, and Web pages. This chapter examines the trajectory of colleen images from the 1860s to the present. In doing so, it addresses the ways in which particular political ideologies such as colonialism and nationalism have determined that imagery, and how it has maintained a symbolic value into the era of global capitalism. Although the images to which I refer are selective, I think they can be instructive in demonstrating how visual representations of Irish femininity reflect the dominant ideologies regarding women in any particular era, while at the same time acknowledging representations are sometimes contested, and the preferred meanings and pleasures they elicit are constantly in the process of negotiation and flux.2 In setting out to explore the figure of the colleen, three basic questions need to be addressed: What are the distinguishing iconographic features of the colleen? When and why did the colleen emerge as a popular iconographic figure? Finally, what are the points of similarity and difference between the colleen and Mother Ireland figures? The term colleen is a direct translation from the Irish language word for young girl: cailín, with the suffix “ín” denoting the diminutive, and connoting both affection and junior status, not just in age terms, but more crucially, I would suggest, in social standing.3 The 1. See for example Loftus 1990; Coombes 1994; Curtis 1998–99. 2. Although acknowledging each of the above genres will have its own specificity and effectiveness in terms of the form and interpretation of images, this essay will, for the most part, highlight commonalities rather than genre specific differences. 3. The significance of naming is illustrated by Coombes’s 1994 account of African women performing dances during the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in White City, 146   |   Popular Culture colleen figure developed initially as a country/peasant girl, and was associated with a rural landscape and way of life. Links with particular places were common and regional versions of the colleen were lauded in both popular song and in painting.4 In appearance, she was portrayed as either beautiful or pretty with long dark or red hair, dressed in native attire, the essentials of which are the cloak or shawl...