Women in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation (review)

{ 280 } Book Reviews perhaps too obviously a short paper on a specific conference theme. Nonetheless , even these shorter essays provide descriptive introductions to plays that are not necessarily widely known to scholars of the Ameri­ can theatre, particularly those by younger playwrights. This is an interdisciplinary volume in which interpretations of the historical and cultural past of two nations promote an understanding of how national, ethnic, and personal identities are shaped. It will interest those teaching and researching North Ameri­ can drama for the accent placed on the significance of form and the innovative approaches to plays as constructing memory, history, and identity. Barbara Ozieblo — University of Málaga \ \ Women in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation. Edited by Melissa Sihra. Foreword by Marina Carr. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xix + 241 pp. $74.95 cloth. On April 2, 1902, in St. Teresa’s Hall in Dublin, British-­ born and fervent Irish Nationalist Maud Gonne indelibly created the title role of Kathleen ni Houli­ han, the symbolic Mother Ireland who inspires her native sons to defend her honor by becoming martyrs for her—the Nation—in her quest for independence. Exemplifying the “overall disempowerment of women in mainstream channels of artistic expression” (9), William Butler Yeats claimed sole authorship of ­ Kathleen ni Houlihan. Scholarship, however, has proven that Lady Augusta Greg­ ory penned the majority of the play. Gregory remains the token woman represented in the canon of Irish dramatic literature, a monolithic figure of Irish drama whose undeniable contributions have nonetheless overshadowed those of other women of the Irish theatre for the last one hundred years. It is appropriate , then, that Kathleen ni Houlihan, a play for which her authorship has only recently been restored, is perhaps her most important work. The character of Kathleen, promoting feminized concepts of the nation, determined subsequent portrayals by male Irish playwrights of Irish women as icons, disavowing their lack of agency as subordinates in the patriarchy (1). Lady Gregory’s creation of Kathleen ni Houlihan (exacerbated by the hypnotic performance of the striking and influential Maud Gonne) as well as other female characters symbolizing Ireland dominated patriarchal twentieth-­ century Irish drama as the most common representation of women. { 281 } Book Reviews Certainly,as Janelle Reinelt asserts in her preface,contemporary playwrights such as Marina Carr and Marie Jones have some level of recognition, as their works have been produced internationally, and “most theatre scholars and avid theatregoers will have heard of Lady Gregory and associated her with early Irish Nationalism” (xii). However, as Reinelt adds,“few will know in any detail many of the women in between”(xii). Marina Carr notes in her foreword that ­ Melissa Sihra’s edited collection begins to name the “vanished women” (xi) and their unknown or forgotten plays. Sihra, who is interested in representation as well as authorship, proposes that her collection will further attempt “to interrogate the signification of ‘woman’ as idealized trope of nation and to look at the ways in which the works of later Irish dramatists either contests or per­ petu­ ates this legacy” (1). Sihra commissioned twelve essays by Irish academics, arranged chronologically “in order to enable the historical, social and thematic contexts to emerge organically” (11), with brief interchapters providing insight regarding the “governing of gender, sexuality and the female body . . . as encoded by both the Catholic Church and Irish Constitution” (1) that twentieth-­and early-­ twenty-­ first-­ century female playwrights observed, reported, and challenged. Eamon de Valera’s 1937 Constitution of the Republic of Ireland enshrined woman in the home, but urbanization, a booming economy, demands for equal pay and education, and the signal election of Mary Robinson as the first female president in 1990 reflect the evolving status of women since the Republic’s founding , and the fairly recent decriminalization of contraceptives (1985), homosexuality (1993), and divorce (1995)—as well as vocal demands for the legality of abortion—­ reflect the Catholic Church’s waning political power following allegations of child sex abuse by the clergy and other scandals. Sihra acknowledges that the chronological framework allows for “moments of intersection and thematic interrelationship [that] have materialized in the volume of their own accord ” (11). While not a comprehensive...